In April 2018, Microsoft had made its Dynamics 365 Business Central generally available. It is an end-to-end solution for organizations to manage operations, finances, sales and customer service.
Integrated with Microsoft cloud services, Business Central provides flexibility so that the enterprises can customize or extend it according to the business needs with PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI. It also brings the capabilities of Dynamics NAV to cloud.
Since its availability, the usage of Dynamics 365 Business Central is growing rapidly. In fact, the company says that the customer growth for this solution is exceeding the expectations.
In an interview with MSDW, Microsoft’s director of product marketing Errol Schoenfish said that the Business Central’s growth is driven by new customer acquisition.
“By our measures, Business Central is exceeding expectations for the fiscal year, largely due to new customer acquisition. And in North America it has a following that spans what you may have called more traditional GP partners,” Errol told MSDW.
“They’ve added Business Central to their practices and continue to serve a broader group of customers since, in many cases, they are already offering many Dynamics 365 workloads inclusive of Finance and Operations, Customer Engagement, and NAV on-premises before Business Central came out.”
Microsoft had also worked on expanding the solution to customers all around the world. When it was made generally available, it was accessible to customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland.
After a few months in July, the company expanded it to Australia and New Zealand.
The way Business Central is used among businesses is also changing. In the starting, customers mostly used the core capabilities, but now Microsoft is seeing wider usage and more counts in numbers of users.
“The average goes up every month, and we know as result that larger user counts bring in more complex capabilities in areas like manufacturing and operations. We also see in our telemetry where customers are spending time. Jobs capabilities have exploded as of late, and we can see that trajectory in more complex areas. Also, we’ve seen that additional users being added to existing customers, which took off in past three months as customers doing three to five user implementations add users. That’s been great to see,” added Errol.
Further, Microsoft is evolving its content portfolio to help partners encourage more customers to move to a managed-by-Microsoft ERP solution.
Why businesses choose Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Following are the main reasons why more and more businesses are choosing Dynamics 365 Business Central:
1. Flexibility and scalability
Since it is based on cloud, it is a flexible solution for enterprises, allowing them to expand the system whenever the needs arise. Unlike the server or database, they can store data whether it decreases or increases in volume.
2. Integration with familiar Office 365 services
With Business Central, Microsoft aims at unifying and automating the business tasks and workflows, by integrating them with familiar Office 365 services like Word, Excel and Outlook. The users can complete common tasks right from the Outlook, and get the same capabilities across iOS, Android and Windows.
In addition, the Business Central is also integrated with Microsoft’s intelligent technologies like business analytics and connected data services.
3. Data management
Business Central is an intuitive solution when it comes to data management, whether it is related to accounting or financial platforms. It helps businesses efficiently manage data and make data-driven decisions.
4. Automation
Dynamics 365 Business Central can automatically calculate stock levels, lead times, and reorder points, which helps businesses to maintain the right amount of inventory. When the requested items are out of stock, it can recommend substitutes to customers and avoid lost sales.
5. Maximize profitability
The solution prioritizes the sales leads on the basis of revenue potential. Businesses can keep a track on the customer interactions and get guidance on best upsell, cross-upsell, as well as renewal opportunities.
6. Compliance
There are built-in privacy-by-design and privacy-by-default configurations that can be used to remain compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR. Businesses can control access to personal data on various levels and enable audit trails.
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Undoubtedly, no business would deny using an ERP solution that is not only more efficient, but also helps them boost sales, serve customers better, stay compliant, manage everything from a single place.
