As with all industries, the distribution sector has been making a great synergy with upcoming technological trends. The power of automation, analytics, cloud computing, business intelligence, seamless integration, and enhanced visibility come to fruition with the advanced software solutions in the market today. Download the white paper to understand how the IT advancements are revolutionizing the way distribution business is conducted.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV Suite has been a popular choice for many distributors due to its vast spectrum and flexibility of offerings. In its latest avatar, the Dynamics NAV solution has re-invented itself with better features than before. These can empower your business for increased efficiency, reduced costs and better insights.
Particularly, the following additions have evolved in 2017:
- Seamless Office 365 Integration
Office 365 is the preferred suite for internal communication and management of various functions of distribution companies. NAV 2017 can access the 365 applications directly so that data can be shared, analyzed and reviewed smoothly across NAV and Office tools. This includes Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, OneNote, Excel, Bookings, Word, etc.
- Power BI
This is indeed a powerful facility as it engages embedded BI capabilities to help business leaders get useful charts and reports from the smart data analytics. Power BI from Microsoft is a cutting-edge BI tool and now NAV can seamlessly integrate with this system.
- Enhanced UX
The success of UX borders on simplicity and ease of use. NAV 2017 scores high on both counts with browser-based navigation that lets your users switch views and identify the list of records. There are additional thumbnails in picture format for having more views in reduced formats on a small screen. A new Web Client has popular shortcuts to improve the convenience.
- Support for finance
Finance is an important department of a distribution company with so many vendors, suppliers, and customers contributing to the business. NAV 2017 empowers finance functions through intuitive reports for their performance monitoring. These enable access to deeper insights with a better view of the overall financial state of the business. A chart of accounts supported by Account Categories is also quite helpful.
- Auto Job and Staff Management
There is a new Jobs Wizard that allows a company to manage jobs, staffing, timesheets, and other resources aspects of multiple projects from within the NAV system. Task allocation and Project Management activities become streamlined with a holistic view aided by graphical chart representations as needed.
- Better CRM incorporation
The CRM experience becomes even more streamlined with NAV 2017. The new setup wizard auto-couples the synergy between Dynamics CRM and NAV counterparts with auto-populating of shared records across both systems.
- Itemized catalog
A handy feature is the item catalog which allows a business to define customized self-classification of the products for better organization of the items. Each item can be given attributes that can aid in advanced searches for listing out the desired items with the desired details. Filtering items based on custom attributes is very useful for various views.
- Cortana Intelligence
For a sensible predictive model on sales and forecasting, this feature allows you to use insights from your historical data. Thus, stock management can be made more dynamic based on expected customer demands. The technology uses advanced machine learning algorithms to compare results and make realistic predictions for your benefit.
- Auto payment links
The NAV has auto hyperlinks to popular payment gateways such as PayPal in the invoices so that your customers and business partners can make payments directly. Multiple payment modes are supported for flexibility. This data is populated into finance and payment reports automatically to give you an updated status on completed and pending payments.
- Extensions
If you have an earlier version of the Dynamics NAV, the 2017 extensions do not need you to dismantle everything. Rather, the installation setup upgrades the NAV system without changing your existing resources, via few simple clicks. The extensions are marked clearly for smooth visibility and can easily be uninstalled if you would like to restore/ rollback to the original system.
These innovations are instinctive and intuitive to the business processes for an enterprise engaged in the distribution sector. With increased integration comes the ease and flexibility of use. With increased intelligence, workflows across the various systems and departments in an organization come to a central and up-to-date repository of information pumping data across interacting software components. This gives greater flexibility in automating the actions, based on defined triggers, with least manual interventions.
Dynamics NAV is the backbone that can every aspect of your distribution systems, working in tandem with legacy software and processes as well. The white paper explains in detail the digital transformation journey of a distribution company. Of course, it does require expertise to be able to map generic solutions from Microsoft to your business scenarios. This is where we, at Techminds, can assist you. We can assess your needs, suggest the possible adoptions for you, propose alternatives, help you select the right options, and customize the solutions for you. So, you can leverage the power of Dynamics to boost your growth.