Tag: #Dyn365BC

Before we discuss the topic at hand let me explain what is ERP?

ERP as we know is software used to integrate the various business processes of an organization which helps interpret data combining this information.

Since its inception, ERPs are used to view the core business processes in common databases that it provides across networks.

ERPs facilitate data flow between various business functions and departments.

How a cloud-based ERP such as Dynamics 365 Business Central a better option?

Business central automates business processes by streamlining them and hence helping you manage the business effectively. It works best for small and mid-sized organizations.

Here are some feedbacks shared by real-time users:

“Cloud-based ERP does not require the elaborate setup and hardware that is required for on premise-based ERP solution.”

“Business Central 365 has the advantage of being accessible via a browser so no firewall issues are there.”

“At work, we share real-time data with our clients and contractors with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business central to rectify and eliminate any errors in advance.”

MS Dynamics 365 Business Central is highly adaptable with many new features and it enables business management, which includes finance, sales, manufacturing, project management, shipping, services, and much more.

It gives the flexibility to companies to add functionality which is region-specific and allows customization to support highly specialized industries as well. The implementation is very quick with easy configurations.

In this article we are going to discuss four most important reasons why you need to choose a cloud-based ERP system such as Business Central do deal with the current work scenario and why it is going to be a permanent norm even after 2020 in the coming years.

1 Rapid Scalability and Business expansion with cloud ERP software

Rapid scalability was a major concern for on-premises ERP systems. There are hardware limitations and difficulties in updating the entire system.

Cloud-based ERPs have the scalability options to grow your business rapidly by adding users and licenses and providing storage capabilities for new plants or manufacturing processes.

Rapid changes in technology would demand significant investments with on-premise ERP but a flexible and adaptable system may help you overcome these barriers quickly.

Cloud ERPs’ operating principles are well-suited for adaptability.

2 Cloud-based ERP system keeps your corporate data secure

It’s a universal myth that cloud cannot provide the stability and security of an on-premises ERP system. Leading cloud ERP app providers have security tools that are at par with any on-premise system. Some of them even have additional features that on-premises systems don’t have.

Some interesting advance features inclusive but not exhaustive on the list are discussed below:

• Multiple surplus layers of backups and fail-safes
• Automatic and system-wide updates to fix security flaws
• Dedicated cloud security professionals for systems
• Constant updating with the current state of technology

3 Unleash the Power of a Smartphone – Use it to run your Business on the go

Smart-phones are an inseparable part of our daily routine and considered a business tool for a while now. But what you may not know is that an ERP-enabled device will allow refined access and control with a cloud-based ERP.

Another feature of a cloud-based ERP that makes mobile compatible is the fact that it offers centralized access to data across the organization at the same time removing the usual barriers of an on-premise system.

It is therefore foresight to use a mobile-enabled cloud ERP such as Business Central and achieve maximum integration of devices as tablets and phones.

What are the benefits of this?

• Well for once, it allows top management access to data whenever and wherever they need it.
• It provides real-time updates and thus facilitates efficient manufacturing.
• Provides the latest information to sales staff which is crucial to make the best deals.

It is like carrying your business on the palm of your hand!

4 Reduce your Carbon Footprint Automatically by Shifting to Cloud

Do we ever realize how much energy an on-premises server room consumes?

Research shows that data centers in the U.S. consumed power which was equivalent to six million-plus homes and was around 2% of the country’s total energy consumption!!

Most of the cloud ERP systems are hosted on multitenant servers. This consolidates different clients onto a single server which is designed to manage storage space and bandwidth very effectively.

If that does not inspire you to switch to the cloud, nothing will!

No doubt each cloud ERP has its own strong points and each business needs to evaluate how it meets their needs. But undoubtedly they keep pushing the ERP software market through their innovative cloud-based solutions.

According to Top10ERP.org “Less than a decade ago, cloud-based ERP software was an exciting but largely unproven technology. Now, it’s clear that not only is the technology prime-time ready, but it’s rapidly becoming the gold standard. ”

According to Top10ERP.org “Less than a decade ago, cloud-based ERP software was an exciting but largely unproven technology. Now, it’s clear that not only is the technology prime-time ready, but it’s rapidly becoming the gold standard. ”

We hope this post inspires you enough to make the change and take that first step. For more product related queries, please contact us.

In this part of blog let me introduce a high level functional over view of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. As you are aware Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is available in two flavors

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Essential and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium, both flavors have certain common features

• New web interface

As true with all other Microsoft Dynamics 365 product offering, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also has highly customizable web interface which is cross browser capable and also certain part of interface is fully optimized for mobile viewing experience. As with NAV you can always customize role center of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with specific view and feed along with notification. Also you can personalize the view only for your self to enable perform several task quickly or get important information.

• Mobile app

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also comes with full functional mobile APP available for all major mobile OS platform including IOS, Android and windows.  Mobile apps are capable of all major functionality and offers rich set of functionalities.

• Integration with other Microsoft services

Being part of Microsoft’s cloud strategy, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is capable to integrate with all Dynamics 365 services including Dynamics 365 Sales (formally known as Microsoft Dynamics CRM). Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is also capable of seamlessly integrate with Office 365, Power BI, Power Apps, Microsoft Flow. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is natively capable of integrate directly in your outlook and can quickly generate quote based on content of invoice and submit invoice which is famously known as “Quote to Cash” feature.

• Inbuild BI

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is benefited from Microsoft’s heavy investment in AI and as a result, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is capable of providing more accurate forecasts and better recommendation and very valuable analytics.

• In client visual editor for customization

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft has made it possible for end user to customize their instance directly from the user interface including editing table data structure, Data entry page design to reporting.

With use of its native capability to integrate with Power BI one can generate very detailed analytics dashboard and with use of power apps and flow one can create customized workflow and integration without writing a single line of code.

As you are aware Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an cloud enabled version of NAV 2018 with several distinct features and thus it includes many of the new capabilities introduced with NAV 2018. As there will not be any new version after NAV 2018 under the brand name NAV , you can also call Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as new version of NAV.

Here is the overview of each functional area of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Finance Management

Being a step up from regular accounting software, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers rich set of features in financial management

General Ledger

Budget

Can create and manage custom chart of account, indentation, general journals and recurring journals, customizable number series and source codes

Quickly create and manage inventory cost, operational and departmental budgets which directly integrates with general ledger accounts

Fixed Assets

Auditing

Easily setup and  track fixed assets and related transactions like purchase/acquisition, depreciations, write offs , appreciations and disposals

With its capability to automatically generate audit trail with posting description one can further enhance audit trails via use of user defined reason codes.

Multi Company/Currency

Reconciliation

Business Central is capable of handling multiple companies and currencies with facility to amalgamation of financial data from multiple company and  cross currency transactions.

Business central is capable of automatically import and reconcile bank transactions

Bank Account Management

Dimensions

Business central can handle multiple bank accounts in different currencies to handle your diverse business needs

Dimension is the most powerful feature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central capable of generating custom analytics . Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is capable of having unlimited dimensions

Deferrals

VAT and Taxation and Regulatory Reports

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers recoding of template which can automate the process of deferring expenses and revenue on a specific schedule

Flexible VAT setup and taxation setup, Country specific VAT and taxation localization is also offered along with local partner is now building their local solutions targeted to business central just like Akkomplish is going to release its highly successful product Akkon at the same time as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is released in Mexico.

CRM – Relational management

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is not a full-fledged CRM solution but has some really must have functionality for every business related to CRM which helps businesses to optimize sales efforts.

Contacts

Leads and opportunity

Create contacts and manage them per entity and their segmentation

Excellent feature of recording lead , communication record. Easily convert a lead to opportunity and to customer and easily track what is going on with sales front.

Campaigns

Integration with Dynamics 365 Sales

Create campaign on target segments and track it

Easily integrate with D 365 sales to synchronize your data including sales order , item , UOM and currencies and inventory status.

Supply Chain Management

One of the vital part of business is to keep track of entire supply chain in real time. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers robust supply chain management

Sales Orders

Purchase Orders

Manage sales order , blanket sales order and posting and tracking of sales

Manage purchase order. Blanket orders and tracking and processing of purchases

Receivables

Locations

Posted sales transaction in journals will automatically manages receivable.

Manage inventory across multiple locations including plants, warehouses and retail location or service center.

Warehouse

Item Transfer

Manage items on bin level with pick and put functionality. Capability to move items across bins and track and optimize positioning of stock and picking process.

Easily transfer inventory from one to another location. Track and account the inventory in transits and manage location wise levels

Stock Keeping

Manage inventory levels, track events in inventory and sophisticated reporting on stock keeping reports.

Project Management

Manage resources, plan and schedule jobs and track resource utilization and costs along with resource availability.

Resources

Estimates

Create, group and track each sell resource including man power and equipment.

Create estimates, monitor resource usage with overview of capacity and their availability. Track just in time their relation with orders and planned costs.

Jobs

Timesheet

Create and manage fixed cost and time and material jobs and estimate them

Manage time registration which can be directly integrated with resource, jobs and services.

Scheduling

Schedule resources for planned capacity and high traceability matrix

Human Resource

Human resource module is significantly upscaled from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Business Edition.

Employees

Tracking

Easily manage employee information including their contact, qualification and contract information. Group and track employee based on their experience, skill set and training.

Track employee availability, their absence and reason for the same. Also directly linked with Project management tracking.

Expense Management

Easily reimburse expenses just like you pay to a vendor

Service Order Management

Service order management is only available with premium edition of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.  Build to support repair and service operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central enables to overview service management from order processing to manning the service.

Service Order

Price Management

Allows to record service request, routine maintenance.

Manage and monitor service prices for various services

Service Item Management

Contract

Manage service items like contract, components and BOM reference along with warranty information

Manage service contract and easily monitor response time, discount levels and SLA and history against each contract.

Planning

Dispatch

Plan and manage logistics of people and resources based on their availability and skill set, manage logs and update order status based on logs.

Manage service personal and field technician information and filter according to availability and skill and stock items.

Service KPI

Easily track SLA levels, resource and material used

Manufacturing

Manufacturing module is available with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central premium subscription. This module offers great set of features to allow business manage and streamline their output.

Production Order

Agile Manufacturing

Create, manage, version production orders and post consumptions and output. Directly integrates with supply chain module this efficient way of handling Quote to delivery process

Offers last minute changes in plan. Plan for rush hours, make and handle exceptions easily with multiple planning options including make to order and make to inventory.

Supply Planning

Demand Forecast

Manage and plan material supply for production based on schedule and material requirement planning. Directly integrates with supply chain module for efficient procurement.

Out of the box capable of generating demand forecast based on inventory level, lead time and manufacturing time along with purchase order and sales order.

Capacity Planning

Work Center/Machine Centers

Manage routing and handle capacity and material requirement

planning

Manage work center , machine centers to granularly manage capacity. Machine centers can be grouped to work centers to have an aggregated view of your capacity.

Finite Loading

Based on capacity and plan system ensures that work assigned to work center is within the capacity constrain thus avoiding delays

I know this is very short introduction to a very large set of capabilities of Business Central. Please keep your eye on this blog as I will further explain many of these functional aspects in detail in my next blogs.

Next in series :Introduction –  how to customize Business Central

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central  is an easy to use and adapt business solution build on functionality of one on the most popular ERP solution Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Microsoft has made license model for Business Central simple and cost effective and has provided good opportunity for existing Dynamics customer who are paying BREP to adopt Business central with upto 40% discount on standard pricing.

Business central is offered in two edition

Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials

• • Financial management
  • Customer relation management
  • Project management
  • Supply chain management
  • Human resource management
  • Warehouse management

Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium

• • Everything what is available with Essential edition plus
  • Service management
  • Manufacturing

Each of these edition has three variant of license

Full User

Full users are the user who work across the system on multiple documents and entries and consume and create new data in the system. Previously such users were know as power users or Pro users.

You need atleast one full user license to start working with Business Central

Team members

Team members represents significant number of users in organization who generally consumes data or report and perform light task like expense entry or  update existing records , approve or reject workflow etc.

Significant change from NAV license in terms of full user v/s limited user in NAV to Full user v/s team members is that now team members can read any data on tenant account based on their permission setup and not by license setup. Also team member license now includes limited write access to data such as

• Update existing data and entries
• Approve or reject workflow tasks
• Create/Edit/Delete personal information
• Create/Edit/Delete a quote
• Enter time sheet
• Use power apps

External users

External users are

third party users of organizations. They do not require additional license and their access is included in internal user subscription license.

External users can not use any clients provided by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business central application, API such as web client, windows client or iphone and android app.

External user access does not extend to the customer or the customer’s affiliate’s contractor, vendors or agents providing business process on the customer’s behalf or using Business Central to manage any portion of their business.

Subscription

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is offered as service (and not as software), this means that one can purchase the subscription and they have to pay monthly fees as per agreement with Microsoft in order to continue using the software.

Current pricing

• Full user (Essentials) : $70 per month/named user
• Full user (Premium) : $100 per month/named user
• Team member : $8 per month/named user

Default subscription Capacities

Production Instance : 1 included
Non Production instance  : None
File and database storage : unlimited
External accountant license : 1 included
Companies : Unlimited
Cortana Intelligence : 1800 seconds per month/tenant

Important note:

Dynamics 365 Business central users are not provided with any general purpose standalone Power BI license or use right.  subscription though include an option to embed Power BI content as a product feature but requires users to subscribe to Power BI (Fee or Pro) saparately to configure access to this content.

Power Apps and Microsoft Flow capabilities are included in Dynamics 365 Business Central so that user can create, modify and use mobile apps based on Business central data.

Please note that this blog is for informative purpose only and refer Microsoft official license guide for more details

Next in series : Business central functional introduction

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