Business Process Evaluation for Dynamics NAV Users Moving to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Planning your move from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central would not be complete without evaluating your current business processes. These processes include all tasks that are completed to accomplish your business goals. Each department from sales and marketing to finance and human resources, to operations and management should be included in your process documentation.
Such processes may include, but are not limited to:
- Current account structure
- Cash and banking processes for payables and receivables
- Month-end closing
- Financial reports
- Asset depreciation
- Time entry
- Employee records
- Customer quotes, orders, invoices, collections, and onboarding
- Revenue recognition
- Vendor quotes, orders, invoices, and payments
- Warehouse shipment processes
- Job estimates
- Marketing automation
Your list of current business processes is an important asset to your upgrade efforts. From this base list, you are able to identify any issues with business processes that your team feels could be improved.
Inefficiencies in your processes could be negatively impacting your business
- Are your employees spending time on manual entry or shuffling data between disparate systems?
- Are there processes that are simply taking too much time to perform?
Unmet business needs can slow down processes
- Where are processes lacking or underserving your needs?
Communication breakdowns can lead to time loss and quality issues
- Is there miscommunication when handing off processes between departments?
- Are all employees giving visibility to the information they need?
Inconsistencies in process can lead to confusion and future rework
- Are all employees following the same steps to complete a process? Or are there inconsistencies?
While Dynamics 365 out of the box fits the majority of business needs and processes, there are specific industry requirements or unique business processes that may not be covered. Along with your software partner, you should cross-reference your business processes and unmet needs with capabilities built into Dynamics 365 to identify any lean areas. Those areas can be resolved through process change, custom extension development, or an ISV solution.
ISV (Independent Software Vendor) solutions have long been a core component of every Microsoft Dynamics product. These solutions are met to fit specific needs, alleviating the requirement to develop custom code or extensions. A few of the most popular ISV solutions address tax compliance, payroll processing, electronic payments, document management, and more. You likely are using ISV solutions in your current NAV environment.
Your software partner will have a list of trusted and reputable ISV solutions and can recommend the most beneficial add-on for your needs when necessary.
You may have current business processes that were put in place specifically due to the design of Dynamics NAV. By upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you have an opportunity to reimagine and reinvent your processes to better fit your business needs now and into the future.
If you haven’t yet, make sure to read through the rest of our series on how to move from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central.
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