ERP for any organization is a significant investment in IT resources, be it large organization or a SME. Microsoft Dynamics NAV is one of the most popular ERP system for SME segment. Though it is much less costly compared to Dynamics AX or SAP ECC ERP system as example which are mostly used in very large enterprises, but still to a SME, getting NAV Licenses and implementing it is quite costly.
So when a NAV customer wishes to spend this amount to centralize the business processes into a single system, it is highly required that they reap all the benefits that NAV can provide. In this blog we will discuss about the important Microsoft Dynamics features you might not be using within your own ERP implementation and thus missing out one benefit or other.
Business Intelligence and Analytics
Business Intelligence and Analytics offers advanced forecasting features and real-time tracking of all your financial data. Use it to:
• Customize reporting
• Automate report delivery
• Monitor finances to spot trends
• Integrate with Sharepoint
• Optimize cash flow by improving A/R.
• Offer multiple-currency/language flexibility
• Complete bank reconciliation and cost accounting
Financial Management
Automation in Accounting and Sales Forecasting are one of the key advantages of NAV ERP. Against each Sales and Purchase process/document, G/L Entry will happen in fully automatic manner. And in this way NAV can generate some most important financial report on a time based manner or YTD, like Balance Sheet, P/L Statement, etc. Similar Sales Forecasting allows an overall understanding of what can be the possible Item Wise, Sales Employee Wise, Customer Wise sales figure in coming months.
HR & Payroll Management
HR & Payroll management are the key requirement from any organization that they want automated. Complex calculation in Payroll processing of wages, defining and changing Income and Expense heads within the Payroll process time to time based on the changes in compliance are very necessary. NAV provides excellent features towards Payroll management.
Inventory Management
Raw Materials and Finished Goods and in some cases Intermediate Items as well need to be held in Warehouse/s. Batch Number and Serial Number management on the finished goods is also a key requirement. Stock of the items need complex calculation keeping in record of Items Ordered from Vendors but not received yet and Items sold to Customers but not delivered yet, in the available stock, NAV ERP does all these tasks flawlessly.
Manufacturing
Defining Bill of Materials and using that Production Planning for Items need to be managed properly. Machinery and other resources at Production Unit, Labor and their wages, Raw Material Management all these are necessary if you are a manufacturer. Use NAV features to support your manufacturing process properly.
Point of Sale
Though NAV is an ERP system and POS is altogether a separate thing, but if you are running Physical Store, then you can have POS systems like Lightspeed Retail which provides a default integration with Dynamics NAV.
Sales & Marketing
The complete sales cycle from generating Quotation to Sales Order to Delivery to Invoice is easily available in NAV and all documents generated in the process are interlinked and can be converted from One Document to next according to the need.
Marketing on the other hand is not a strong point of ERP, but you can have a cutting edge CRM system in place like Zoho CRM or Salesforce CRM where you can manage Lead to Customer cycle, sales activities recorded by your Sales Employees and other Marketing Campaign and planning on different segment of leads/customers. These CRMs can be connected to NAV and operations can be streamlined.
Service Management
After Sales Service is very important for certain industries, like Electronics, Mobile Phones, etc. Service Contracts need to be created with timestamp, Service Call booking, Service Call status update, etc. are efficiently managed using NAV ERP.
Warehouse Management
Organizations store both raw materials and finished goods in warehouse/s. Warehouse management is a very important activity for Purchase Planning. Receiving Raw Materials from closest vendors and lowest possible shipping cost and similarly finished goods need to be delivered to customers from closest warehouse at lowest cost. If planned properly, organizations can save a lot from Warehouse Management and planning. Use NAV for these activities.
eCommerce
eCommerce is an excellent medium for selling online 24X7 and to a wide area, both can’t be covered through a Physical Store. With NAV you can use popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify or Magento . eCommerce Platforms can be easily connected to NAV so that eCommerce Orders can be processed through NAV ERP, on the other hand Stock and Item updates in NAV can reach to eCommerce and update eCommerce Product catalog.
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