Pipol - Ask an expert

Business Transformation

Microsoft Business Central – a powerful ERP solution

Friday, October 14, 2022

Microsoft offers a wide range of global ERP solutions to fit a variety of industries and business sizes. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Microsoft Dynamic NAV) is a popular system known for its functionality and flexibility. It combines best-in-class ERP, CRM, and BI solutions via modular SaaS applications and services. The current version, BC 20.5 (also referred to as Business Central 2022 release wave 1) was released in September 2022.  

What is an ERP solution? 

Before we dig into Business Central and the benefits it can bring to your organization, we first need to understand what an ERP solution is. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. Designed to help organizations efficiently manage all their processes, these solutions offer a set of integrated business applications. They include a range of applications from manufacturing and distribution to sales, customer service, marketing, and business intelligence.  

ERP solutions help break down data silos and centralize data management by enabling the collection, storage, management, and interpretation of data across the business or enterprise. This means information is always available when and where it’s needed opening the door for more effective, efficient daily processes.  

Microsoft’s ERP solution 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a highly customizable business management solution designed to help you connect the individual parts of your business. It combines CRM and ERP capabilities, integrating your data, business logic, and processes and helping to break down siloed sales and marketing functions. This innovative solution offers automated, integrated, and intelligent sales and marketing capabilities that efficiently connect, prioritize, and convert leads into paying customers. It can help you digitally transform your organization with a single, centralized, end-to-end solution to manage your finances, operations, sales, and customer service.  

Dynamics 365 Business Central brings the full power of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to the cloud to ensure you have everything you need to deliver its full potential. With seamless integration, this versatile solution includes a wide range of separate modules for greater flexibility allowing you to fully customize your solution. For instance, Dynamics 365 CRM offers a full range of sales and customer management features. Used together with Dynamics 365 Business Central, it ensures seamless integration, so Business Central users have all the ERP functionality they need.

Built on a powerful platform

Dynamics 365 is built for, and on, Microsoft Azure. This trusted platform includes a broad ecosystem of services to help you get the most out of your CRM and ERP solutions. Compatible with open-source technologies, it’s natively integrated with Microsoft 365’s productivity apps, giving you a unified way to manage users and services. Together BC and Azure can help drive business growth by bringing together ERP, business intelligence, infrastructure, computing, and database services. 

Benefits of Business Central

So, why should you use Business Central as your ERP solution? Below we look at just some of the benefits of this powerful, innovative solution. 

  • Unify your business
    Dynamic 365 Business Central unifies your business by connecting everything in a single, centralized source. Thanks to automated tasks and workflows all integrated within familiar Office tools, this powerful solution helps improve operational efficiency and productivity. Using a common data model, it offers a clear, comprehensive overview of your entire organization with connected data and business analytics for everything from inventory management to supply chain and distribution.
     
  • Derive valuable insights
    With unified, centralized data, Business Central provides an easy way to improve your business insights and processes. Thanks to built-in intelligence, you can derive fast and actionable insights that can be optimized even further with additional AI services, both on Azure and by leveraging purpose-built AI insights apps. Plus, with informed, intelligent planning, you can fast-track your organization toward a more secure future.
     
  • Flexible hosting options
    Available as a cloud or on-premise, Business Central is ideal for organizations that have outgrown their entry-level accounting software. This powerful, robust solution also supports hybrid solutions combining on-premise and cloud deployment. This means it’s possible to adopt Dynamics 365 at your own pace and avoid making too many changes at once. For instance, your Dynamics 365 solution can be set up with an on-site database, while the rest of the CRM and ERP runs on the cloud.
     
  • Easy deployment and scalability 

Because your Business Central application and customer data are stored separately, it’s easy to deploy the same solution to different customers. So, if your solution has multiple companies, you can create separate databases to store each company’s business data, and then store information about the shared Business Central application in a dedicated application database. This makes it easy to manage and scale your system as your business needs change.
 

  • Easy access 

With easy access from any web browser, this smart solution is also available for phones and tablets—ideal for taking on the road with easy access to customer information including customer profiles and contact information. It helps empower teams by giving them instant access to all the information they need and allows them to efficiently perform business operations — anytime and anywhere. And, because Business Central runs natively on Azure, you’ll benefit from Microsoft’s expansive cloud fabric and data centers globally with services that run on a 99.9% level of availability.
 

  • Easy upgrade to Business Central
    It’s easy to upgrade to Business Central from basic accounting software and legacy ERP systems. And it can even be a smooth and cost-efficient process especially when you work with an experienced Microsoft partner. For instance, Pipol’s easy-to-execute upgrade assessment dives deep into your current solution and helps determine your ideal upgrade path that ensures your business aligns with the Microsoft roadmap.
     

Want to know more? 

 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is designed to enhance your operations and processes and align with your current working practices. However, understanding all the different Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications can be complicated especially as there are often overlapping features. So how do you find out which ones are right for your organization?  

 

At Pipol, we understand that your business is unique and we can help you adapt specific Dynamics 365 applications and services to your specific needs. We aim to take the complexity out of the business transformation process and help you make the right choices about business solutions, develop the processes that best support your goals, and roll out smoothly across your entire organization.  

Stay up-to-date 

Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with all the latest industry-specific news, trends, best practice tips from our team, and more. 

 

Your request has been successfully submitted and is being processed. Our team will reach out within 24 hours. Download whitepaper