Microsoft Dynamics NAV - system for business automation

Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Microsoft Navision) - ERP planning and accounting system for all enterprise resources. It integrates financial asset management modules, design and production activities, trading, distribution and logistics, customer service and customer relationship management. This system is a part of Dynamics business decisions from Microsoft.

Developer: Microsoft® Corporation is the world's leading software developer. Microsoft® structure comprises a separate area for the development and support of Dynamics business applications - Microsoft Business Solutions. Representative of this trend in Russia is directly responsible for the system localization in Russia and customers support in the region.

Distinguishing characteristics: rapid implementation, low operating system support cost, possibility of quick adaptation to the individual business processes characteristics and enterprise standards. Microsoft Dynamics NAV has a pre-configured accounting model that can be used as a basis. 

Customers: small and medium-sized organizations, branches and autonomous departments of large companies. The system is designed for the user based on a single database with a total amount of up to one thousand users. In this case, the solutions to Microsoft Dynamics NAV appear to be most effective in terms of price/quality and providing the required performance.

Integrated management: the system automates the activities of all company departments from the financial management and production to the human resources department and marketing department. This ERP-system gives a possibility of a phased implementation, starting with the most important processes and departments. Business automation greatly increases its efficiency.

Pass-through processes: every business process is the primary pass-through chain of accounting in the architecture of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Every operation accounted in the system updates the related information data of all NAV subsystems and modules. For example, the account of the end product output creates all necessary accounting entries in the financial accounting and updates the information on goods balance for the sales department.

Familiar interface: menu, screen forms and access to Dynamics NAV functions are developed in the traditional style of Microsoft Office applications ensuring a convenient user experience.

A comprehensive business analysis: presentation of the system information for the analysis is based on Dynamics NAV matrix forms which provide the ability to sort, filter, and group the data according to various analytical characteristics (dimensions). The system has more than 300 kinds of financial, warehouse, production and commercial reports, more than 20 customized analytical cubes. It is possible to export data to Microsoft Office Excel or configure other required export format.

Integrated development tools: NAV features and possibilities can be modified and extended through existing development tools of the system. Development tools are focused on the standard engineering and technical level of support specialists for software applications. This is typical for all Microsoft Dynamics products.

Technological environment: Microsoft SQL database, three-tiered architecture: the customer – the applications server - the database server, possible use of WEB-services. 

Licensing: Navision licensing model is based on the principle of competitive (concurrent) users in the system without a rigid connection to specific jobs. The total number of users is unlimited! Users have the opportunity to scale the system. The number of the system users can be increased at any time. The functionality of Dynamics NAV can be extended as well when required. 

Technical support:

  • Microsoft provides a 10-year support for each version of the product: 5 years of substantive support and 5 years of additional support.
  • Microsoft provides information support to users and partners of Dynamics NAV on the system development prospects. New releases are planned every 2 - 3 years. Regular updates are released between major versions releases.
  • Center for support and development of Microsoft Dynamics in Russia is constantly developing Russian product functionality and monitors the product compliance with the legislation changes.
  • Microsoft provides customers with access to the system support web-portal with an access to the released versions and updates, tutorials, technical and methodological materials on Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

All key functions of the system can be pre-examined. For this purpose Microsoft provides a sample of Microsoft Dynamics Demo database and a series of video training courses for the product.