Acora - What is Enterprise Resource Planning? Microsoft Dynamics NAV

1. What is Enterprise Resource Planning?
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business management software—typically a suite of
integrated applications—that a company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data
from many business activities, including:
 Product planning, cost
 Manufacturing or service delivery
 Marketing and sales
 Inventory management
 Shipping and payment

2. ERP provides an integrated view of core business processes, often in real-time, using common
databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business
resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments:
orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data
across the various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that
provide the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions, and manages
connections to outside stakeholders.
Enterprise system software is a multi-billion dollar industry that produces components that
support a variety of business functions. IT investments have become the largest category of
capital expenditure in United States-based businesses over the past decade. Though early ERP
systems focused on large enterprises, smaller enterprises increasingly use ERP systems.
The ERP system is considered a vital organizational tool because it integrates varied
organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and production. However, ERP
system development is different from traditional systems development. ERP systems run on a
variety of computer hardware and network configurations, typically using a database as an
information repository.
What is Microsoft Dynamics NAV?
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software product from
Microsoft.
The product is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family, and intended to assist with finance,
manufacturing, customer relationship management, supply chains, analytics and electronic
commerce for Small and Medium-sized Enterprise and local subsidiaries of large international
Groups. Value-added resellers (VAR)s can have full access to the business logic source code.
Features
Before NAV 2013, Microsoft Dynamics NAV gave administrators the option of using either a
native database server or Microsoft SQL Server, as the DBMS. SQL Server is now the exclusive
database option for NAV. Retiring the old "Native database" has given way to long awaited
improvements in reducing/eliminating database locking, which can occur when hundreds or
thousands of users are using the same data at once.
Document reporting in NAV 2013 is based on the RDLC 2008 format (RDLC 2010 in NAV 2013
R2). Reports are edited partly in the NAV Development Environment and Visual Studio. NAV
2013 R2 includes a free report editor. Any reports will render in either Screen preview, PDF,
Word or Excel formats, depending on the user’s needs.

3. NAV 2013 also supports the OData format. With OData support in NAV 2013, Excel pivoting can
now be done without knowledge to SQL specifics, limited to only those fields available for RTC
views.
Running NAV on SQL has made it possible to use MS Excel PowerPivot to access all data in NAV
via SQL login. But with OData support in NAV 2013, Excel pivoting can now be done without
knowledge of SQL specifics, thus giving 100% access to filter any data in NAV, with no
restrictions. (Versions 2009 R2 and later allow the default restriction of 5,000 records to be
changed via editing a config file.)
In first quarter of 2014 NAV reached 102.000 current customers. An increase of 8.000 in under
a year.
As a native international ERP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV is available with 43 official localizations
and several unofficial ones (provided by local partners).
The NAV solution is also compliant with IAS/IFRS.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV delivers integrated functionality to provide support for:
 Financial management
 Supply chain management
 Manufacturing
 Distribution
 Customer relationship management
 Sales and marketing
 Service management
 Human resource management
 Project & Resource management
Architecture
The Microsoft Dynamics NAV software is composed of three major components:
The Database Server, a database that stores the Microsoft Dynamics NAV data (as of NAV
2013 only Microsoft SQL Server)
The Application Server (starting from NAV 2009 RTC), a service that controls all aspects of
Microsoft Dynamics NAV's operation

4. The Client(s), the actual user interface into Microsoft Dynamics NAV. NAV 2013 includes three
clients:
 Windows client
 SharePoint client
 Web client
NAV Add-ons
In addition to the base product, Add-ons are sold by ISV's. Because the base program has to
focus on generic versions of business cases, software products supplementing/modifying NAV
functionality are required, sold and distributed as NAV Add-ons, to improve functionality of
NAV system or make it applicable in some business spheres.
There are vertical and horizontal add-on solutions. Horizontal add-on solutions supplement one
of the NAV functions or add new function (e.g. financial management, human resources
management etc.). Vertical (or industry-specific oriented) add-ons expand NAV functionality to
support some industry (e.g. health care, brewery, financial services etc.) The majority of add-on
solutions are multilingual with most supporting English.
Utilities are another form of add-on for Microsoft Dynamics NAV that make the resellers' jobs
simpler. Utilities are small software modules used by Microsoft Dynamics NAV programmers
and database administrators, to make their jobs more convenient and effective. Also it makes
program development and implementation processes faster and the cost lower for the
resellers.
NAV CfMD (Certified for Microsoft Dynamics)
With NAV 2013, producing and maintaining Add-on solutions for NAV has become more
expensive, since acquiring an exclusive NAV object number range is expensive, unless the
solution gets certified. Solutions will have to be certified with every non-minor release of NAV,
which happens once a year from NAV 2013 and onwards.
NAV CfMD is an exhausting quality check of the entire software solution. This helps ensures the
quality of the NAV Add-on solutions.
Click here to read about Acora’s Case Study: "Microsoft Dynamics NAV cuts costs: (Bravado:
delivering for the biggest names in music)"