We are living in a technology-driven and innovative era where all businesses, whether in manufacturing, services, or any other industry, try hard to stay competitive by using various tools or suites of tools for real-time analysis and data-driven recommendations for decisions. This has become a necessity, as businesses we must be smart in investing in the right applications to excel. These decisions should not be short-term, as businesses are likely to grow at a certain pace, and there is high probability that technology is going to advance much faster than we anticipate.
Keeping the above need in mind, in this blog I would like to share some insights about Dynamics 365 Business Central, and how it can help your business grow by streamlining operations, enhancing productivity, more stability with real-time reporting, and AI-driven competitive recommendations for quick decision-making.
Eliminating silos
Organisations without an integrated system usually lack integrity and work in silos. This is one of the major problems for the growth of any business, where one department does not share information with another, leading to operational delays such as stocking problems, payment delays, incorrect forecasting, wastage, and more.
Fact: 57% of businesses struggle with data silos, leading to inefficiencies and poor decision-making. Source: Harvard Business Review, “Breaking Down Data Silos” (2019)
Fact: 68% of customers leave due to poor service experiences. Source: Microsoft, “Global State of Customer Service” (2023)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses as it integrates all business departments, including finance, sales, service, manufacturing, and operations. It can bring a centralised approach to organisations, provide visibility across the business, help make quick and correct decisions, and bring control to processes.
Let’s discuss two scenarios for a manufacturing company that implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to integrate its finance, sales, and production departments, that previously operated independently, leading to inefficiencies and communication gaps.
Before D365 BC: The finance team struggles to perform reconciliations due to a lack of data availability and visibility. They manually collect and consolidate data from the sales, procurement, and production departments. Meanwhile, the sales department faces challenges in fulfilling customer orders, and the inventory team lacks stock visibility resulting in overstocking or delayed customer deliveries. The planning team can’t plan accurately or on time due to insufficient visibility into production capacity planning and historical sales data.
After they implemented Dynamics 365 Business Central, they have more control over the processes, the finance team has all the data visibility from sales and procurement departments they can reconcile the transaction, they can plan the cash flow of the company, with dimension-based financial reports they monitor and control every area of business. The planning team enjoys real-time data from sales, inventory, and procurement departments along with resource capacities, so they can efficiently and timely plan. Furthermore, with the automation of processes and their approvals, their manual effort is reduced. Every department enjoys a real-time role-based dashboard that provides tailored insights and KPIs for each department.
This integration of multiple departments led to improved business efficiency and more clarity between them. Now the sales team can respond swiftly to customer queries with more timely deliveries, optimise inventory levels reduce the stocking cost for the warehouse team, and dimension-based financial reporting equips top management with control and real-time analysis.
Cloud-based scalability
It has been a while since on-premises business systems were known for standardising business operations. However, in comparison with cloud technologies, they now come with significant drawbacks. Companies that are still relying on legacy on-premises applications often face challenges such as high upfront and ongoing costs, limited scalability and slow growth adaptability, complex and disruptive upgrades, and poor remote and mobile accessibility.
Fact: ‘Deloitte’s 2023 Cloud Security Report’ states that cloud providers reduce data loss incidents by 80-90% compared to legacy systems due to automated backups and geo-redundancy.
Nowadays businesses need agility, flexibility, and scalability because the markets are now global where opportunities are limitless. And to cater to these opportunities businesses need smart systems to match business needs and growth. Organisations can trust Dynamics 365 Business Central as a true cloud enterprise system that provides effortless scalability without the burden of traditional infrastructure-based on-premises systems. It offers different pricing models where businesses can decide to scale up or down at any time. It operates on the concept of zero downtime upgrades, meaning your system will always be up to date with the latest tech updates. Regarding expansion, it supports multiple currencies and local tax compliances.
Start with what you need (Modular approach)
Many businesses start with a monolithic implementation approach for ERP systems, which leads to expensive, time-consuming, or ultimately unsuccessful implementations. These approaches are obsolete and are not suitable for today’s world. However, Microsoft Business Central uses Cloud ERP business expansion and addresses these challenges with its purpose-built modular approach.
Businesses that are willing to start using Dynamics 365 Business Central can adopt to modular approach where they can start with core business modules like Finance, Sales, Procurement, and inventory. D365 Business Central comes with a flexible approach that business doesn’t need to start with everything from day one.
Even if the company is willing to migrate in phases from the legacy system to Dynamics 365 Business Central it is possible to do so. Let’s say they just need to start with financial modules initially and continue working on legacy systems for other modules it is possible to achieve. With this approach, they can get confidence in Business Central, allow them to resolve problems in current processes, and then get rest of the modules implemented.
To help businesses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also has Azure’s hybrid integration capabilities which allow businesses to keep some part of their legacy system works alongside D365 Business Central. This means Azure handles the data flow between the old system with D365 Business Central ensuring that everything works seamlessly together.
Dynamics 365 Business Central offers industry-specific functionality through Microsoft AppSource, with over 1,800 pre-built extensions for retail, manufacturing, professional services, and more. Additionally, it has native integrations with Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Azure services, enabling seamless automation.
Work smart with Copilot
During years of my experience with ERP users what they like from business applications is that it should work in a way that the user can focus on his core job responsibilities not only on recording transactions in the system. This is where artificial intelligence is taking care of users now and it is transforming the way we work now, and the impact is undeniable. By taking over tedious, repetitive tasks, AI lets people focus on more meaningful work, whether it’s creative problem-solving, strategic thinking, or tasks that require a human touch. This shift isn’t just about efficiency, but it is making work more participative. Nearly 9 out of 10 employees who use AI and automation say they feel more satisfied in their jobs because they can spend time on work that truly matters.
Fact: Business Central users report 30% faster financial processes with AI-powered automation – Microsoft.
Fact: Copilot supports multilingual interactions, making it accessible for global teams. (Source: Microsoft Business Central Documentation)
Fact: Business Central Copilot uses Azure OpenAI to automate tasks like drafting customer emails, generating product descriptions, and summarising financial data. (Source: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog, 2024)
By using Microsoft Copilot business scaling, users can automate repetitive tasks with Copilot. Product managers can save time and drive sales with engaging AI-generated product descriptions, product variants, and other features by simply uploading a picture of an item. Inventory management plays a vital role in maintaining high customer service levels and cost-effectiveness for organisations. Excess inventory can lead to higher costs, while inventory shortages can result in missed sales. By using Dynamics 365 Business Central, the Sales and Inventory Forecast extension predicts future sales using historical data, helping businesses maintain accurate inventory levels. The extension can also create replenishment requests to approved vendors, saving users ample time and significantly increasing productivity.
Cash management is critical for any business’s financial health. With the use of the Late Payment Prediction extension, businesses receive assistance from D365 Business Central in fine-tuning their collection strategy with customers. For example, if a payment is predicted to be late, a business might decide to adjust the terms of payment or the payment method for the customer. By anticipating late payments and adjusting, businesses can better manage and ultimately reduce overdue receivables.
Let’s take the example of a sales manager using Business Central to forecast sales trends for the next quarter. By analysing historical data and current order volumes, the system predicts a spike in demand, allowing him and the company to adjust marketing campaigns and inventory levels proactively.
An account payable clerk who processes numerous invoices every month. Business central can assist him by identifying the repetitive task and application of workflow automation. Once configured invoices will be matched automatically with purchase orders and routed to correct line of approvals.
For department managers they would like to get real time updates regarding the progress of the different areas of business, like a sales manager he needs progress of on hand orders, future demand and completed order on his fingertips. Real-time analytics can be a game changer for him to analyse over all progress, help him track sales performance and customer satisfaction anywhere anytime.
Integration with Microsoft 365 & Azure
Dynamics 365 Business Central integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Azure, creating a unified platform that enhances productivity, scalability, and security.
Built on Microsoft Azure as a cloud-based solution, Dynamics 365 Business Central provides reliability and security. It helps mitigate risks such as system downtime, data breaches, compliance gaps, and costly hardware upgrades. With Azure’s robust infrastructure, the platform ensures 99.9% uptime with automatic failover, while Azure Active Directory enhances security through multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls.
Fact: Security is reinforced through Azure Active Directory, which enforces mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) and granular role-based access controls (RBAC) as part of Microsoft’s Zero Trust framework (Microsoft Security Blog, 2023). The platform complies with over 100 international standards, including GDPR, ISO 27001, and HIPAA (Microsoft Compliance Offerings, 2024).
Its integration with other Microsoft applications like Outlook, Excel, Teams, and SharePoint allows users to work within familiar Microsoft 365 apps while working with real-time ERP data. Let’s take an example of an organisation where different teams are utilising integrated applications, sales teams can view customer invoices in Outlook, finance teams can edit and update financial data in Excel, and managers can approve purchase orders directly using Teams.
Companies expanding globally benefit from multi-currency and multi-language support, eliminating the need for manual reconciliation, and geo-redundant backups to prevent data loss.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, staying competitive means embracing technology that grows with you, and Dynamics 365 Business Central is that solution. By breaking down silos, offering cloud-powered scalability, and enabling a modular adoption approach, it empowers businesses to streamline operations, make data-driven decisions, and respond swiftly to market demands.
To Scale business with Business Central some partners are continuously progressing towards quick implementation strategies and a return on investment approach. Intelisense is one of the top names that lead the market with high success rates and experience.
The future belongs to agile, intelligent businesses. Are you ready to scale faster with Dynamics 365 Business Central?
