Quick Answer: What is Microsoft Dynamics NAV and how does it help businesses?

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an on-premises ERP system for small and mid-sized businesses to manage finance, supply chain, projects, and operations. While still supported, it’s being phased into Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft’s cloud-based successor offering greater flexibility, real-time access, and seamless integration with modern Microsoft tools. 

Microsoft Dynamics has undergone a lot of changes over the years. Your company may still use legacy versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, or Microsoft Dynamics AX. Microsoft has gradually rolled functionality into newer platforms from these older versions, but many companies continue to rely on MS Dynamics NAV for their enterprise resource planning (ERP) needs. You can obtain functionality that provides your company with a full-scale customer relationship management (CRM) or an ERP solution.

Understanding the cost of Microsoft Dynamics NAV is crucial for businesses planning their IT budget. From licensing fees to implementation expenses, knowing the full scope of pricing can help you make the best decision for your organization. Let’s look at how the pricing works for various Dynamics products.

Most people don’t spare a second thought about how the food they purchase at a supermarket or restaurant makes its way in front of them. Moving items from farms and factories to someone’s table takes a lot of planning and logistics. Platforms like Microsoft Dynamics NAV help food manufacturers track each process step in an organized and efficient manner. The competitiveness of the food and beverage industry makes it essential that companies have software capable of handling issues like fluctuating profit margins, strict compliance regulations, and high demand for customer service.

The collection of sales taxes for goods and services sold to customers is essential to any company. If you don’t manage the process correctly, that could lead to major headaches. The way you calculate sales tax varies depending on the rules of different counties, states, and countries. In addition, businesses must account for updates whenever there are any changes to tax requirements.

Like every other industry, the needs of construction have shifted with the growth of the digital age. Project management means includes other responsibilities like resource and financial management. There can be multiple moving parts to any construction project at any moment. Your company must account for workers, contractors, supplies, and materials. Spreadsheets and simple budget software are no longer sufficient to handle these elements. Many firms have turned to Microsoft Dynamics NAV to address their construction needs.

The newest member of Microsoft Dynamics 365 family is called Dynamics 365 Business Central, which is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform designed for the small to mid-sized business. It can get confusing because Dynamics Business Central is essentially the successor of Dynamics NAV. Microsoft has also rebranded, tweaked, and issued new versions for their middle-market ERP platform, including:

Looking closely at Dynamics 365 vs. NAV 2017 yields some similarities and some differences.

Both software platforms provide excellent business solutions that Microsoft tailored to the small-to-midsized business market. The goal of both programs has been to streamline the efficiencies of business, allowing employees in any company to leverage the software to do more with less work.

But Dynamics 365 is a financial application that can be housed within Microsoft ERP Navision (NAV) - an ERP is enterprise resource planning software that holds multiple software applications under one business umbrella. There are differences in how you use both types of software. So the question isn’t really about Dynamics 265 vs. NAV 2017, because actually, it’s likely that your business could probably use both.

We know you’ve been thinking about it. You're a small to medium-sized business, and you've had an out-of-the-box QuickBooks solution for years. You also have one legacy system for inventory management, another one for payroll, something else for sales, and so on. You know there's a lot of duplication in these systems, and it takes some effort to integrate everything together.