Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central – What to Expect on April 2nd

This awards season, Microsoft has presented the world with its new software: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Dynamics 365 Business Central has taken on about as many personalities as a comedian in a stand-up show: from Project Madeira to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Business Edition to the most recent “Project Tenerife.”

To simplify things, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central = Dynamics NAV in-the-Cloud.

In a bit more details, it is an ERP service targeted to small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with all the nuts and bolts and even whistled of NAV 2018, but rather than being an on-premise solution, Microsoft is hosting it on its own Azure Cloud at a much affordable price for their customers.

Here it is what improved for the last 12 months:

Sales, Purchase, and Item Budgets – Permissions and user Groups
Alternative Order Addresses
Pick Document
Purchase Return Order Management
Address updates from Sales and Purchase Documents
Intercompany: Automation of IC Outbox and IC Inbox
Manufacturing
Alternative Order Addresses
Reservations
Workspace Selector v1
Edit in Excel functionality added to journals
Improved error messaging in API endpoint
Line items are created automatically based on email content
Edit in Excel is now available on the Intrastat Journal
Ability to Pin the Outlook Add-In
Webhooks available in OData platform
Send Email Interactions from Contact Card in Outlook Add-In
Item API
Company API
Consolidating Business Units
3 Checks per Page
New MediaSet data type functions
Enable Reminders & Finance charge Memos
Enable Blanket Orders – Sales
Enable Blanket Orders – Purchasing
Item Tracking

The full break down of what we know about this SaaS ERP solution is as follows:

Pricing

There are two packages:

Business Central Essentials: from $70/user/month
Business Central Premium: from $100/user/month.

It also has your traditional Read-Only only type of user called Business Central Team Members for $8/user/month.

Features

As Business Central is essentially an evolution of NAV, it is said to work with the same plug-ins and customizations such as Office 365, Dynamics for Sales, Cognitive Services, PowerApps, Power BI and Microsoft Flow.

Beyond that, the Microsoft blog promises:

“Business without silos. Unify your business, and boost efficiency with automated tasks and workflows—all integrated within familiar Office tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.
Actionable insights. Achieve greater outcomes and gain a complete view of your business with connected data, business analytics, and guidance delivered by Microsoft’s leading intelligent technologies.
Solutions built to evolve. Start quickly, grow at your own pace and adapt in real time with a flexible platform that makes it easy to extend Business Central based on your changing business needs.”

These aren’t exactly new possibilities opened up to us by Business Central; the Microsoft Suite does a great job of providing as many of these functionalities, but with Business Central you can supercharge them in the most up-to-date Microsoft software that is also in the cloud, a prominent buzzword this this modern tech-centric business world.

Maintenance

The timetable has been proposed to contain monthly minor updates as well as major updates scheduled to take place every six months.

Release Dates

Starting April 2, 2018, the software is available in 14 countries, including the United States. Below is the full list:

April 2: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland
July 1: Australia and New Zealand

Here the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Roadmap going into some more details of what to expect in the near future from the Dynamics 365 Business Central world.

With over 160,000 companies and millions of users enjoying Dynamics NAV (now the cloud product to be known as Dynamics 365 Business Central) worldwide, you can rest assure this product is here to stay. There just might be some time for customers and partners like TMC alike to get used to the new naming convention.

If you would like to learn more about Dynamics 365 Business Central, connect with our Sales Team here.