"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." | ||
--Galileo Galilei |
"Everything really interesting that happens in software projects eventually comes down to people." | ||
--James Bach |
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has one of the largest installed user bases of any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system serving over 100,000 companies and one million plus individual users. The community of supporting organizations, consultants, implementers, and developers continues to grow and prosper. The capabilities of the off-the-shelf product increase with every release. The selection of the add-on products and services expands both in variety and depth.
The release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 continues its 20 plus year history of continuous product improvement. It provides more user options for access and output formatting. For new installations, NAV 2015 includes tools for rapid implementation. For all installations, it provides enhanced business functionality and more support for ERP computing in the cloud, including integration with Office 365. In addition, a new approach to upgrading that comes with NAV 2015 promises to lower the cost of ownership in the future.
Our goal in this chapter is to gain a big picture understanding of NAV 2015. You will be able to envision how NAV can be used by the managers (or owners) of an organization to help manage activities and the resources, whether the organization is for-profit or not-for-profit. You will also be introduced to the technical side of NAV from a developer's point of view.
In this chapter, we will take a look at NAV 2015, including the following:
NAV 2015 is an integrated set of business applications designed to service a wide variety of business operations. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 is an ERP system. An ERP system integrates internal and external data across a variety of functional areas, including manufacturing, accounting, supply chain management, customer relationships, service operations, human resources management, as well as the management of other valued resources and activities. By having many related applications well integrated, a full featured ERP system provides an enter data once, use many ways information processing toolset.
NAV 2015 ERP addresses many functional areas. Some of them are listed as follows:
A good ERP system such as NAV 2015 is modular in design, which simplifies implementation, upgrading, modification, integration with third-party products, and expansion for different types of clients. All the modules in the system share a common database and, where appropriate, common data.
The groupings of individual NAV 2015 functions based on the department's menu structure is shown in the following figure. It is supplemented by information from Microsoft marketing materials and some of the groupings are a bit arbitrary. The important thing is to understand the overall components that make up the NAV 2015 ERP system.
NAV 2015 has two quite different styles of user interface (UI). One UI, the Development Environment, targets developers. The other UI style, the RoleTailored Client, targets end users. In NAV 2015, there are three instances of the RoleTailored Client – for Windows, for Web interaction, and for tablet use. The example images in the following module descriptions are from the RoleTailored Client Departments menu in the Windows Client.
Financial Management is the foundation of any ERP system. No matter what the business is, the money must be kept flowing, and the flow of money must be tracked. The tools which help to manage the capital resources of the business are part of NAV 2015's Financial Management module. These include all or part of the following application functions:
The Financial Management section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
NAV 2015 Manufacturing is general purpose enough to be appropriate for Make to Stock (MTS), Make to Order (MTO), Assemble to Order (ATO), as well as various subsets and combinations of those. Although off-the-shelf NAV is not particularly suitable for most process manufacturing and some of the very high volume assembly line operations, there are third-party add-on and add-in enhancements available for these applications. As with most of the NAV application functions, Manufacturing can be implemented to be used in a basic mode or as a full featured system.
NAV Manufacturing includes the following functions:
The Manufacturing section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
Obviously, some of the functions categorized as part of NAV 2015 Supply Chain Management (SCM), for example sales and purchasing, are actively used in almost every NAV implementation. The supply chain applications in NAV include all or parts of the following applications:
Even though we might consider Assembly to be part of Manufacturing, the standard NAV 2015 Departments menu includes it in the Warehouse section. The Supply Chain Management section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
As a whole, these functions constitute the base components of a system appropriate for distribution operations, including those which operate on an Assemble to Order basis.
Although Microsoft marketing materials identify Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting as though it were a separate module within NAV, it's difficult to physically identify it as such. Most of the components used for BI and reporting purposes are appropriately scattered throughout various application areas. In the words of one Microsoft document, "Business Intelligence is a strategy, not a product." Functions within NAV that support a BI strategy include the following:
NAV's Relationship Management (RM) functionality is definitely the little sister (or, if you prefer, little brother) of the fully featured standalone Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The big advantage of the NAV RM is its tight integration with NAV customer and sales data. For those who need the full Microsoft CRM, prior versions of NAV have had a module connecting it to NAV. The same connector has been released for NAV 2015.
Also falling under the heading of CRM is the NAV Service Management (SM) functionality. While the RM component shows up in the menu as part of sales and marketing, the SM component is identified as an independent function in the menu structure.
NAV Human Resources (HR) is a very small module, but relates to a critical component of the business - employees. Basic employee data can be stored and reported via the master table (in fact, one can use HR to manage data about individual contractors in addition to employees). A wide variety of individual employee attributes can be tracked by the use of dimensions fields. NAV functions that support HR are as follows:
The NAV project management module consists of the jobs functionality supported by the resources functionality. Projects can be short or long term. They can be external (in other words - billable) or internal. This module is often used by third-parties as the base for vertical market add-ons (such as construction or job-oriented manufacturing). This application area includes parts or all of the following functions: