What’s Next for Your Dynamics ERP | Dynamics NAV (Video)

TRANSCRIPT

Tracy: Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today, Encore and Tracy today, for our What’s Next for Dynamics ERP, Dynamics NAV. And how is everyone today? I hope everyone’s having an awesome, awesome day. Beautiful day here. I’m working in our Vancouver office today and it’s a lovely day out. And today we’re gonna be talking about the new name for Dynamics NAV, but we’re gonna start off talking a little bit about technology and trends. So let’s get started.

This has been a theme for Encore for quite a few years now as this whole digital disruption. And it’s forcing every company and industry to re-imagine themselves. You know, we’re a technology company but we typically say to all our clients, you are all technology companies. So a huge part of this transition is about reinventing how businesses engage with our customers, their business processes and how they take advantage of data and intelligence. Let me begin by pointing out that digital has become the number one priority for CEOs. And if you look at the numbers, we’re talking in the billions of people that are using social media, smart devices and the expectation is that it will only continue. Of course it’s gonna grow exponentially. If you look at some of those metrics, those numbers, how many smart devices there are and how many devices are connected to the internet, it’s quite amazing. And that collects a lot of data. So to disrupt and innovate, industries must take on a strategy that connects their customers, employees, products and operations as effectively as possible. Streamlining their businesses to respond to customer demands and pooling data across the organization so that analytics can hunt for those opportunities. A concrete connected business application strategy and implementation can support industries that are looking to disrupt. I got to remember to click the button to show my animation.

The framework we use to highlight how digital transformation is enabled is what we call digital feedback loop and at the center is data. Data is coming out of everything, every single product at this point is being wired up with telemetry and the ability to connect data. Sorry, not connect, collect data. For example, my thermostat at my house knows when I’m changing my temperature. Or your Fitbit. I’ve got a Fitbit, every morning I get up, tells me all types of information. How good was my sleep, what’s my heart rate, how many steps have I taken. And you can imagine across the globe how many people have Fitbit and all that data is being collected. And again, we’re seeing that data collected and improvements. So, for example, you can recommend, hey, I’d like to see this on the Fitbit or I’d like to have that feature or that functionality. So all that data is collected across the globe. Something more that we use every day, motors. So motors are manufactured and they’re also emitting telemetry. Every time I browse the web, there’s telemetry being created. And so this torrent of information allows us to better understand our customers, our operations, the use of our products and services is fuel for this transformation. So again, those, you know, whether it be a dump truck or some type of heavy equipment, again, it’s providing information back about when it needs to be serviced or when it needs a new part. So, again, that information is being sent to us from gathering all of that information.

Microsoft is leading the digital revolution through Microsoft Azure, which is a premier enterprise cloud offering and its global trusted hybrid secure platform for businesses. Azure helps you gain unmatched security. Microsoft invests more than a billion dollars a year and employs more than 3,500 security experts to protect your information. I was actually just on a call today with one of our clients who has highly sensitive information and we were walking through explaining that whole security model and that security layer that Microsoft offers through Microsoft 365. Your data is more secure in that data center than your company’s server room. Microsoft 365 adds the extensive productivity tools like Excel, Outlook and SharePoint, and all of those apps in Office 365, that customers use across the globe, working smarter, faster and more effectively. And connecting the data and users of these products is Dynamics 365, the set of turnkey solutions positioned to unlock next for any business. I’ll go on to our next slide.

So, many of you might have seen this name, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, or D365 BC, has many different acronyms, all mean the same thing. They are the new name for NAV. So in our NAV world, the latest release was Dynamics NAV 2018 R2. And again, many of you might be on that version or you might be on a previous version of Dynamics NAV. And that is the last release under that NAV name. And if you wanted to go and move from 2018 R2 to the next version, it would now be called D365 Business Central. So just wanna make sure everyone understands that component of it. So, Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s next generation of intelligent business applications in the cloud. It not only includes accounting and financial management capabilities, but also sales, service, project management, supply chain, inventory, and operations. What makes Dynamics 365 Business Central unique is that it harnesses the power of one Microsoft, brings together the two worlds of business process and personal productivity. We surface familiar tools like Excel and Word within the context of business processes, significantly increasing productivity and decreasing context switching. Power BI and Cortana Intelligence are natively embedded in Dynamics 365 Business Central, business applications for predictive insight, prescriptive advice, and actionable next steps. Additionally, Azure IoT, the Internet of Things, brings device data and enables pre-emptive action in business functions like field services. Businesses can also adapt an innovative real-time with a common data model and extensible business application platform, including PowerApps, Flow, and Power BI embedded.

So for any of you in the audience that have been participating in our Office Hour. So we do demonstrations on the different applications within Office 365, including Flow, and PowerApps, and Power BI, as well as there are various recorded webinars that we’ve done on those applications available up on our channel. And you can always check out our blog, we typically post all of our recorded webinars if you’ve missed them in the past. You can get caught up or if you’d like to see some of those apps as well, you can reach out to one of our team members and we’d be happy to walk you through some of that functionality. Microsoft has also introduced Microsoft AppSource, so business users can easily find and evaluate line of business SaaS applications from Microsoft and our partners across the Dynamics 365, Office 365, Cortana Intelligence, and Azure platform. So in a traditional sense, when we looked at Dynamics NAV, you might have an add-on product. If you were going to go to D365 BC, in a SaaS, model you would have an app that would allow you to have that extensibility in that particular functionality that you required, and it would be an app that we could add on to the core Business Central. I want to highlight that NAV is not Dynamics 365 Business Central, it is built on the same code base as NAV. So yes, it has a new name but it is a natural separate product. But again, that user interface is gonna be very familiar to you and I’m gonna show you that coming up a little bit later.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is available as a both a cloud-based SaaS solution or perpetual hosted solution. While Dynamics NAV offers the option to use the solution on a private data center or on your own server, but not pure cloud. So that’s just the differentiation, NAV isn’t offered in a SaaS model. And here we can see that product evolution as it’s been moving along.

So let me take a few minutes to talk about the three options in front of you. Option number one, with a migration or transition to Dynamics 365 Business Central in the cloud, you’ll be able to increase the return you’re getting from your Microsoft investment, control your cost and complexity, and improve your IT teams’ productivity, along with a whole host of other benefits. I want to help make this transition as smooth as possible for you. We have resources and tools available to help you and I’ll be here with you through the entire process. In our next webinar, we’re actually gonna go through some of the cost comparison calculators, as well as walking through the steps of no matter what decision you make, whether it’s option one, two, or three. What does that look like for you? What are the steps? What’s gonna happen? And kind of go through the licensing as well. So, again, Encore as your partner, we’ve spent so much…we’ve really put a lot of resourcing, many, many hours attended many, many webinars, and seminars, and meetings with Microsoft to go over and say, great, you know, we wanna make sure that our clients are feeling supported and that you make that move when it’s right for you and your business.

So option number two, so this is kind of a hybrid, upgrading to Dynamics Business Central on-prem, your current while allowing your option of getting some limited benefits of cloud. So, you’re not really…you could stay on-premise so you could stay…or transition to Dynamics 365 Business Central and stay on-prem, but also be able to use the intelligent cloud to get to see what the look and feel of it would be to be up in the SaaS model of D365 BC. You could also go to upgrade to NAV 2018 R2 and be able to have that cloud sync. So there’s that option as well. You don’t have to fully move over to D365 Business Central, you could stay on NAV 2018 R2. If you were on a version prior to that, you wouldn’t be able to do that cloud sync to be able to have that kind of trial. It’s a read-only environment, so let’s say you’re on 2018 R2 and you go, “Yeah, I’d like to go and turn that on, that cloud sync,” go ahead and do that and you’d be able to access that environment, it would replicate your data, so it would be a read-only environment of D365 Business Central and you’d be able to go in and use all of the features and functions there in that read-only, but it’s your data. And there’s a minimal cost to that and you can turn it off and on anytime you like.

So option number three is you can… I’ve gotten all mixed up. I’m so sorry. Option number three, and finally I’d like to remind you about the several benefits of renewing your BREP. So your annual maintenance in case you choose to remain where you are. And we’ll go ahead and talk about those options. And option number one.

So migrating to Dynamics 365 Business Central cloud gives you the full functionality of Microsoft services, enable your company’s digital transformation. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can grow beyond the limits of your basic accounting software. Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution that’s easy to use and adapt, helping you connect your business and make smarter decisions. This all-in-one business management solution meets the needs of growing businesses, automatically pull systems and processes together to manage financial sales service and operations. Connect with third-party applications like payroll, banking, CRM or industry specific systems. Manage access to confidential data, keeps your information secure, and customize extend and build all the apps that you need. So again, using PowerApps you could build some of your own apps that would work with Dynamics 365 BC. So let’s go have a look at what the user interface is.

So I’m gonna walk you through, this is an environment where I’m the accountant and I’m gonna show you how to connect to the business, make better decisions, and start and grow easily. So we’re actually in the application, what Business Central looks like. And again, if you were using Dynamics NAV, some of these items or the interface might look very familiar to you. So again, that learning curve will definitely be shortened and people’s productivity should not be impacted because their user interface is very familiar for them. So we’re gonna go ahead and scroll down page and we can see some more metrics and information that I have personalized my home page to surface up the information that I want to see most. And I’m looking here at my aged accounts receivable and I do see some of the aged accounts receivable looks a little bit interesting there. We’ve got 10 weeks overdue on a particular area, so I wanna go ahead and have a look at that, so I’m gonna go ahead and click on that, and it shows exactly which invoice it is and gives me the ledger entry details, and I could actually go and email that customer if I wanted to or bring up that document. So I need to go and call them to find out what’s going on.

I’m gonna go back to my home page and I wanna be able to have a quick access to my chart of accounts and balances for those accounts. So I’m gonna click on select chart of accounts. And I really enjoy working in Excel, so I’m actually gonna go and select all these accounts, copy them, and then go ahead and open up Excel. And I’m gonna go ahead and paste those, and I get to see my trial balance there with that information. Go back to my home page. So while most key tasks are surfaced on the roll tailored home page, the accountant is interested in a specific report immediately on display. To quickly and easily access the report, you open the trial balance. So again, those…my action area up at the top, I see trial balance so I can go ahead and select that trial balance. And in trial balance I have a variety of reports, so I actually would like to go and look at trial balance summary and that will surface up that report for me. I also have a variety of other reports, and they are standard financial reports, and they are in many different formats, so I can go ahead and look at that. And I think, mmh, I think I’m gonna go look at a refreshable excel report. And I have variety them here saved on my row tailored client homepage and I’d like to go ahead and review that balance sheet. And up it pops in Excel, again, very nicely formatted with the information that I’d like to look at and connected directly to my data source. So there was a bit of that navigation. Now we’re gonna go and add a new account to the general ledger. So again, that often happens, got to have new accounts.

So I’m gonna go in here and I’m going to open the chart of accounts. And then maybe there’s… You know, I’m gonna make this travel account and maybe there’s already a travel account, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna select that three key to go and do a search and I’m gonna type in travel. And when I do that, no, nothing comes up, that’s trouble so I’m gonna go ahead and do a new account. So I can go ahead and select new, and I can enter the new general ledger number, and then I can enter a name, and then an account category, and I’m gonna select expense. And I also have a subcategory, so I’m gonna go ahead and choose that, and it’s travel expense. And I can go ahead and close that and I’ve made my new account, there it is. So adding an account is simple and easy and this experience empowers the users to control the information they want and need for reporting. And again, you could limit that. I was the accountant role, so I was able to do that. Somebody in accounts payable might not be able to do that.

Now we’re gonna go ahead and look at how easy it is to enter a journal entry, and this is manually. So I’m gonna go back to my home page and look up the journals, and I’m gonna select my general journals, and I’m gonna select the default batch that comes up, and select the account number, and I wanna do this travel expense that I just added this account for, and I can enter the amount. So we can post this transaction without any additional steps. However, the company is needing to track certain expenses by department. This isn’t always as simple in other accounting systems. However, with dynamics 365 Business Central, it’s an option available from within the ribbon, so allows me to make better decisions. Using Dimensions, the accountant can assign attributes and values that categorize entries in order to track them and analyze them. So Dimensions are extremely important feature which can expose the depth of Dynamics 365 Business Central. And Dimensions allow you to assign an expense to your department and product. So again, we’re all using NAV, has dimensions, you are gonna find the same functionality in D365 Business Central. So I can go ahead and choose my dimensions. Close that and I can go ahead and post. And okay. Now I’m gonna go ahead and look at the detailed trial balance, open the trial balance and there’s the results of that transaction. And back at my home page.

Now we’re gonna have a look at it via Excel, so I’ll quickly go through this because we’ve already seen the journal entry, but again, that ability to go ahead and select my journal, my default batch, and I can go ahead and say edit in Excel, and my calendar for my date, and I have my details, I enter my data. We’re gonna go ahead and you’ll see that new icon there, publish. And it’ll say do you want to continue, we’re gonna minimize Excel and we’re gonna come back to our general journal and there’s the data. So just a different way of approaching that data entry. Now we wanna go ahead and analyze an account. As controls are essential to accounting, I want to ensure I keep track of miscellaneous expense account. Occasionally, someone will accidentally code an expense to miscellaneous. Then I go back to my home page. And I’ve got a favorite or key accounts that can be added right on my home page. So again, there’s something that I really want to look at, I can see that information there. So I’ve actually put that account there for me to look at. I’ve got my accounts payable, and I wanna go ahead and look at the ledger entries. And I can go ahead and analyze and look at that information. I’m gonna look at the GL balance, and I can quickly see the supporting ledger entries for that account. So again, very easy to navigate and get to the information very quickly and it’s very visually…it’s visually, I don’t wanna say appealing, because I do find it very visually appealing, but again, when we’re examining it our eyes are drawn directly to the information that we need to be seeing. Instead of searching and hunting for it, it’s readily available and surfaced up into a way that we’re consuming that, which is really really important. Especially as we get more and more information, more and more data, we want to be alerted to the things we should be looking at not reviewing, excuse me, every single thing in the day-to-day work of our transactions.

So that was a quick look at D365 Business Central. You’re gonna have a link that you can actually go… Excuse me. You can go and sign up yourself for a free trial for 30 days. I’m just gonna mute myself so I have a drink of water just a second.

There, I’m unmuted now. So you’ll to be able to try that out for yourself. As well, we talked about before kind of that interim solution is, if you’re on 2018 R2 or higher, so any of the D365 models, even if you were on-prem, you can sync your data up into the SaaS model and be able to access that and have a look at that. So you can try it out. But please feel free to…that free trial for 30 days, just put in your email address and you’ll be able to access that.

There we go. So option two. So again, this is what we’re talking about is option two. We understand we’re not all ready to transition to the cloud, so Microsoft is offering an option to stay on-prem while getting limited benefits of cloud when you upgrade to Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise or 2018 R2. Customers can deploy this service locally to their own choice of hardware while having a replicated tenant in a cloud to enable cloud powered solutions such as Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and machine learning capabilities that can help them run their businesses more efficiently. The customer’s informed of their cloud ready status, so when they’re ready to transition to the cloud, completely it’s a simple step. Intelligent cloud insights are currently available through an add-on SKU. And what typically happens, so if in NAV right now, let’s say you have 20 concurrent users, when you’re doing this intelligent cloud syncing or replication, I was making a joke yesterday, syncing doesn’t sound very positive but it’s not that kind of thinking, its replication. It’s about $25 for the first user per month, and it’s about 250 for every subsequent user. So just because you have 20, or 15, or 10 people in NAV right now under your licensing model, you could just buy, or rent, or subscribe to two of these cloud sync users. It doesn’t have to be equal. So you might pick people in your organization that you want them to try it out, see if it makes sense for you. And what’s the user interface space like, and what is the reporting like, and what is the analytics. And using all of the add-on or the power pack components like PowerApps, and Flow, and Power BI. So, you could just for, you know, $25, $30 bucks a month, you could have three people in there testing it out and trying it out and see how that works.

All right. So again, there’s lots and lots of benefits from having that interim solution and trying it out. So, again, if you were in that environment and you were still on-prem, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna automatically upgrade your on-prem deployment. And again, you schedule how often you want the data to sync. It could be once a day, it could be once a week, that’s entirely up to you, you make those choices. And we’re gonna send out… Yesterday, actually, we were talking with another group, the Dynamics GP customer base, and we were showing the video of the intelligent cloud sync. The sound wasn’t very good, so when we send out the information from today’s webinar, there’ll be a link in there so you can actually go up and watch the video and actually hear what the fellow’s saying, on the video and you can see the kinds of things you could do with that.

So, finally, know that it’s okay you’re not ready to make a change in transitioning NAV this year. You’ll renew your annual maintenance just like you always do and then you get continued benefits from that investment for the day that you do want to transition to D365 Business Central. So again, you can stay there. Some of the things that, you know, if you’re going to…you’ve got choices even if you decide to go to BC, Business Central, you might want to stay on-prem. So we’ve already done that with quite a few clients already. What happens is it’s a different licensing model in the sense that it’s named users. So if you had 10 users on NAV, they were concurrent, when you transition, they’ll be named. But the promo right now is you actually get three users for every one concurrent, and that’s for your on-premise deployment. If you decide to go SaaS, it’s basically because you’re current on your annual maintenance, you get a 40% discount off of what the normal SKU would be on a per user per month basis. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit more in our next session, but if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to have that conversation with you.

To stay on-premise, lots of benefits for that knowing that, you know, Dynamics NAV 2018 R2 is supported until 2028 from a Microsoft perspective. So again, we have the first five years as mainstream support, the second five years is non-mainstream support. So again, it’s okay if you’re not ready to make that transition. We’re supporting you regardless of whatever your choice is and we you just want to have those conversations and make sure that you’re looking forward to say, you know what do you want to do this year or in 2020, what does it look like, too. So again, Microsoft’s committed to making significant investments in the cloud and to help customers maintain their leadership and era of digital transformation. Again we’ve got this road map to help you connect your business for driving productivity, make smarter decisions using analytics and AI, start and grow easily with your business needs. So again, if you do go to that SaaS model, you might have a season where you’ve got to hire five more people, but they’re only gonna be there for three months. So on that per user per month basis, you can go up to 25 users one month and then go back to 10 the next month. So again, hat’s your choice for that. And business central continues to release improvements. And again, in that SaaS model there, they’re deployed.

And another area, not to get too technical, but Dynamics NAV 2010 R2 and prior used CIL codebase development language, and now we’re gonna this AL development language, and that makes sure that… So for example, I had a question with a client yesterday, we were going through this process talking about the future and they do have some customizations. We’ve done development projects with them and he’s like, “Well, what happens to that? Because we’re in the SaaS model and they keep pushing new feature and functionality. What’s gonna happen?” All of those developments that you do to configure and personalize the application through development sits outside of the core business central. So you don’t have to worry about that from a upgrade perspective or adding new…or taking the new improvements that come out as they were released.

So again, we’ve been on a very long journey. I think, I’m trying to remember when NAV came to Canada or to North America. I think it came to the U.S first and then it came to Canada, but we’ve come a long way together with Microsoft. And again, Microsoft appreciates that there are so many people around the globe that are loyal customers in this space. So again, there’s a lot of history there with a great, great application. And again, they’re only continuing to develop it and create improvements, and all around focusing on that multi-generational workforce where we’ve got the younger generation coming in and they’re completely plugged in, and they’re looking for those productivity apps, and we want to make sure that we release solutions that enable them in making that go forward. And that’s where you’re gonna see that whole, you know, Dynamics 365 Business Central and how it works with Teams, and Flow, and Power BI, and how that all kind of comes together. Always a question comes about security, again, if I’m feeling totally confident and I feel good being on-premise, can continue to do that regardless of which version of NAV or Business Central you happen to be interested in. Azure helps you gain unmatched security. Microsoft invests more than 1 billion, has 3,500 security experts. Again, they’re very aware and sensitive to the fact that they have to be…whatever standards are for security, that Microsoft must be above that and securing that foundation of Azure.

And Azure includes built-in security controls across a breadth of security services across identity, network, compute, data, and apps that enable comprehensive threat protection and security management. And there’s lots of great information on the Microsoft website about all of the protocols that they go through from a security perspective, and that’s part of that Microsoft 365 as well. You can get your security score off of that as well to make sure that you’re protecting your employees as well as your data and your customers.

So what happens next? We’ve got lots of great materials. Obviously have some conversations internally, you know, talk with your teams and saying, you know, sometimes they’re like, yeah, absolutely. We’re all over this. Technology, we’re all about that and we do wanna move forward in this. You know, we’re wanting to take advantage of that. And so having those internal conversations is great. Also, you know, there’s that free trial and definitely, you reach out to your account manager or anyone of us on the team here and we’d love to have those conversations. And start exploring all of those Office 365 apps, you know, the PowerApps, and Flow. Very, very interesting, just opens up a world of opportunity from that aspect, for sure.

And for those of you that are interested in that, there’s great…you can go and build apps that can interact with your ERP solutions and all of those Microsoft Office…Office 365 components. And so, again, there’s some really, really cool information on the Microsoft website about what companies are doing with these PowerApps and their ERP solutions. One thing I’d like to let you know too, we’re just about to wrap this up and we’ll open it up for Q&A. To be compliant with CASL and GDPR, we’ve basically shut off all of our communications to customers and we’ve asked them to opt in. So you might see on emails, a lot of us have on our signature, you know, please update your preferences. So if you’ve noticed that you’re not getting many emails about free training, and webinars, and our newsletter that we put out every month, it’s because you haven’t opted in and so we really need you to encourage your teammates to make sure that they do opt in because we cannot communicate with you unless you go and update that. And you know what, we have like kind of four streams of communication and you might go up on a Monday and say, yeah, I wanna get all this and, you know, maybe you’re not interested in something. You can go in and change your preferences any time, you’re totally in control of that. And we are really sensitive, like, we typically do try to only send out one or two emails a month because we know how much email everyone gets. So I just wanna remind you if you can connect with your team members and remind them to go and update their preferences, we really, really appreciate that.

And then one more thing I wanted to talk to you about is our Encore care. So, again, a lot of you use us for your support, we have different packages, ad hoc, people who have been using ad hoc for years. Sometimes they’re not aware of different packages that we do offer, especially maybe going into this new world of Business Central, you know, might be something you might be interested in. So, again, on our website, lots of great information and infographics about how we do care.

And I’ve got the reminder about the communication preferences and I just wanted to say thank you very much. And I will see if Melissa has any questions, if anyone has any questions. All the materials will be sent out to you and you can go ahead and share that with your team members as well.

Melisa: I don’t see any questions coming through just yet. Not sure if you just wanna give it a minute maybe.

Tracy: Sure, okay. Shall I tell jokes in the meantime?

Melisa: Yeah, do that.

Tracy: Melissa, we picked the dates for the next webinar for the [Inaudible 00:36:38]

Melisa: August 7th?

Tracy: August 7th. So everyone August 7th is the part two of D365 Business Central.

Melisa: I can include information about that in the next email as well. The follow up email.

Tracy: Great.

Melisa: Yeah. Okay, no questions for now.

Tracy: Perfect, all righty. Well, I’m giving everyone back half an hour of their day and thank you so much for participating, and we look forward to hearing from you.