What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is a business management solution, otherwise known as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, designed for small and mid-sized businesses to automate and streamline business processes.

The product is part of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of products and shares the same codebase as its hugely successful predecessor, Microsoft Dynamics NAV. It is used across the globe by over 100,000 businesses, is available in more than 43 countries, supports 25 languages and is available either via on-premise or as a SaaS (Software as a Service) option.

What modules are available within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central enables you to run your entire business within a single solution, allowing you to streamline your processes, make smarter decisions and accelerate growth. Out-of-the-box functionality includes modules across:

• Finance
• Sales and Marketing (including Customer Relationship Management - CRM)
• Purchasing
• Projects
• Warehousing
• Human Resources
• Manufacturing
• Service

1. Finance

Through an integrated solution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central allows you to manage your financials by helping you with:

• Making informed decisions using connected data from reports, charts and Microsoft Power BI dashboards across finance and accounting, sales, purchasing and stock. The late payment prediction extension helps you reduce receivables.

• Viewing charts and reports in real-time through built-in reports, Excel or Power BI (using unlimited dimensions for your data to identify patterns and trends).

• Accelerating financial closing and reporting by using the integrated sales ledger and payable capabilities. Streamlining the process with approval workflows and Microsoft Power Automate integration.

• Tracking financial performance with custom general ledger (G/L) and account schedules reporting. Evaluating cost, revenue or profit reporting in the cost accounting module.

  

2. Sales & Marketing

Apart from the integration into additional Microsoft applications such as Word and Excel. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps businesses—just like yours—to accelerate your sales process though its ability to:

• Prioritize leads based on revenue potential. Keep track of customer interactions and get guidance on the best upsell, cross-sell and renewal opportunities throughout your sales cycle.

• Optimize revenue and address customers’ needs, with flexible pricing and discount structures for individual customers and customer groups.

• Keep an overview of agreements with sales order and blanket sales order processes. Quickly give customers details about prices, discounts, delivery dates, product availability and fulfilment status.

• Address customer returns with sales return order management, including credit notes, repairs or replacements, as well as standard integration into Office 365 and Microsoft Outlook.

3. Purchasing

Knowing how and when to optimize your supply chain using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will enable you and your business to:

• Predict the best time to replenish stock using built-in intelligence. Use sales forecasts and expected stock-outs to automatically create purchase orders.

• Get a holistic view of your stock and use the same costing method or different methods for your stock items. Freely move items between locations and control the quantity at hand using cycling counting.

• Engage with your suppliers proactively and cost effectively. Register potential suppliers, send enquiries, and convert the best offers to orders. Configure required approvers to help ensure compliance with internal and external policies.

• Use system-generated suggestions to replenish stock based on actual and forecast demand and availability.

Integrate with Artificial Intelligence functionality to understand trends of what to purchase and when.

4. Projects

For project-orientated companies, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers businesses the ability to manage and deliver projects on time and within budget. The capability to recognize revenue allows users to:

• Create, manage and track customer projects using timesheets and advanced job costing and reporting capabilities. Develop and modify budgets to ensure project profitability.

• Manage resource levels by planning capacity and sales. Track customer invoicing against planned or actual costs on orders and quotes.

• Make effective decisions using real-time insights on project status, profitability and resource-usage metrics.

  

5. Warehousing

The ability to manage and run your warehouse efficiently across single or multiple locations comes as standard and gives you the opportunity to:

• Optimize your storage facilities by setting up bins and zones in Business Central to reflect the layout of your warehouse and its racks and shelves.

• Streamline receiving and storage by using a template to determine the best placement of items based on type, size and bin capacity.

• Get recommendations on where to move items to optimize the space and the picking process. Speed up shipments and reduce friction caused by cross-docking.

• Use real-time data on every item’s zone, bin and quantity to better fulfill your customers’ orders.

Integrate this with mobile technology to give yourself a paperless, state-of-the-art warehouse facility at a much lower cost.

6. Manufacturing

As part of the premium licence, the integrated manufacturing functionality available within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a plethora of functions that help the most diverse businesses to reach an optimal output level by:

• Producing within your supply and capacity constraints. Implementing your manufacturing process according to plan, even in agile and complicated environments.

• Specifying a list of sellable items, raw materials, sub-assemblies or resources as a bill of materials that comprises a finished product or a kit.

• Using assembly orders to replenish items to stock. Capturing customers’ special requirements in a bill of materials and using it directly from the sales quote and sales order line in your assembly-to-order processes.

• Using works orders for more complex processes. Registering consumption and output and managing multiple bills of materials and routes. Reconciling scrap and deviations in consumption and output.

Delivering more through limited resources and having greater financial visibility whilst integrating into shop floor data capture, with IoT devices making the manufacturing module a great fit across differing industries.

7. Service

Also requiring the premium licence, any business that sells, manufactures or distributes products which require servicing benefits from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Its service module enables you to live up to your service promises and obligations by helping you:

• Gain a comprehensive overview of your service tasks and workloads to effectively assign personnel to work orders. Keep track of service agreements to deliver reliable service to your customers.

• Ensure smooth transition from sales to after-sales by automatically registering shipped goods as service items. Keep the required details in one place for optimal service.

• Manage after-sales issues, irrespective of whether adjustments require a full replacement or a simple repair.

• Track repair details, including used service items, spare parts, and labour charges in one service order. Boost customer loyalty by providing spare equipment to customers while their equipment is under maintenance.

  

As you can see, there is a lot Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has to offer.

How long does Microsoft Dynamics Business Central take to implement?

Implementing a new ERP such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will be dependent upon a number of different factors:

• The number of modules that need to be implemented
• The number, and the extent, of required customizations
• The number, and the extent, of required integrations

All the above factors can increase the timeline of an implementation project. Other factors that also need to be considered are:

• Business processes
• Change management
• Data migration
• Reporting
• Available resources

All said and done, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can be implemented in as little as two months. We find that most new ERP projects take between three to nine months to complete.

Why should I choose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Choosing the right ERP solution is not easy given the varying options that are available to you as a decision maker.

We believe the right ERP solution—such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central—should consist of having:

• The right functionality
• A well-thought out roadmap
• A commensurate price
• A fool-proof implementation plan
• The ability to integrate with other applications
• Anytime, anywhere accessibility
• The ability to update itself regularly
• The ability to extend the product through low code/ no code applications

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central delivers all the above and more. If you want to organize a demo or would like a no-cost trial, click on the link below to contact us.