The ERP landscape of yesterday is long gone. We are switching to an IT landscape where multiple business applications form one entity. Is your organization up-to-date with today's processes, is yesterday's ERP implementation ready for the technology of tomorrow? At Directions EMEA 2018, we welcomed the future together. Are you on board?
Written by Benny Dor, Schouw Informatisering.
Directions EMEA is an annual recurring event for Dynamics 365 partners from Europe, the Middle East and Africa where partners meet and share experiences. In addition to the presence of partners, Microsoft sets its platform forward to share their vision, to keep the partners up-to-date about new features and feedback.
The changing world dynamic is confirmed by Marko Perisic, the General Manager for Dynamics 365 at Microsoft. He opens the keynote of Directions EMEA with a description of Dynamics 365 Business Central in 4 keywords: Modern, Uniform, Intelligent and Adaptable. The user experience has been further optimized with a modern interface. The uniformity in the entire Microsoft stack creates a rich platform with productivity & business apps, such as Outlook, Word and Excel, but also PowerApps, PowerBI and Flow. With the addition of intelligence, all data becomes more transparent; With tools like Machine Learning, decision makers are helped to make the right decisions at the right time. Business Central, but also the entire Dynamics 365 platform, is configurable so that it fully matches the organizational needs and processes of tomorrow.
With the complete Microsoft platform, the organization is brought to "the next level", but how exactly? Guus Krabbenborg indicates that it is no longer about the features, an RFI with questions about the support of an invoicing process or the recording of customer addresses is the long gone method of yesterday. Too often we are implementing the business processes from yesterday in a new ERP solution. The question must be: what is my business goal and what are the processes of tomorrow to which the ERP solution must contribute. The world is changing, and so is the way we have to look at implementations.
With Business Central and the integration in the Microsoft platform, the user and the optimization of productivity are more central than ever. Examples include the integration with Outlook, customer data in real-time, in addition to automatically received emails. In Outlook, with the press of a button, information about outstanding balance and invoices can be viewed in one go and a new order can be created from the same screen. Extensive integration can be achieved with Artificial Intelligence, as non-automated activities are a thing of the past, giving the user more time for the challenges of tomorrow and the full focus can be set on working on the business goals.
With Foodware 365 on the Microsoft platform your organization will be brought into the present, looking towards the future. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the solution that unites people and processes in an unprecedented way, from PowerApps at the production worker's terminal, Insights on the smartphone from the quality employee to PowerBI on the manager's smartwatch. Everything in one complete platform; modern, uniform, intelligent and adaptable.
The key message during Directions EMEA was clear; we are faced with a new beginning. With Business Central as part of the entire Microsoft platform, we are taking a new approach. This new road requires adaptation by implementation partners, organizations and Dynamics 365 users in their view of the business processes and everything around it. The solution of tomorrow supports and sustains further optimizations, in a continuously changing world so let's get ready!