360 Visibility Software » Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Of Postal Strikes and Progress

Lynn Cooke — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:02:30 +0000

So Canada Post employees have gone on strike. Having failed to reach a deal with the crown corporation, the postal union workers have elected to walk off the job in a revolving series of walkouts that began midnight Thursday in Winnipeg.

Big fat, hairy deal.

Without meaning to sound cavalier, the fact of the matter is that the reality of a postal strike in 2011 is a far cry from the reality of a postal strike in, say, 1991. Back then, such an event would have been cause for genuine concern, as a whole host of integral business functions would grind to an unavoidable halt.

Business Impact of Postal Strike Minimal at Best

Today, the net impact of such an event is considerably less worrisome. Indeed, the loudest buzz around this development might just be a sense of relief with the break from junk mail Canadians will enjoy for the next week or two.

In the information age, the participation of Canada Post in a company’s various fiduciary responsibilities is negligible. Sophisticated, on-the-ball corporate players long ago instituted systems whereby their invoices and statements are delivered by e-mail, their bills are paid electronically, their payroll is deposited directly. These business folks’ interactions with the antiquated likes of stamps, envelopes and post offices are minimal, at best.

Granted, the Canadian corporate landscape is not so advanced on this front as is Europe’s. European corporations have been treading more progressive paths for some time.

Indeed, they laugh at the very notion of a chequebook overseas, and express sincere confusion about the need to have cheque-printing as a core function in an ERP system. Everything is performed via electronic funds transfer (EFT) across the pond, and the B2B environment that has long propagated this reality is better for it.

Payment Means Continue to Progress

Here in Canada, we’re getting there. At 360, a handful of our customers pay us via EFT. For the rest, who continue to wrestle with the old-fashioned burden of having to print, sign, stuff and mail cheques, progress is theirs for the taking. Because the fact is that a better, more efficient way to do things perches on their doorsteps, awaiting the corporate epiphanies that will eventually lead an entire population of managers to reach for them.

And the simple truth is that, if your ERP system doesn’t have the ability to e-mail invoices and statements? Then, well, it’s time to get yourself a new ERP system, like Microsoft Dynamics GP or Microsoft Dynamics NAV. (And if you’re currently running GP or NAV and are not e-mailing your invoices, give us a call and we’ll get you straightened away.)

At 360, we’re in the business of automating every last function of the corporate existence that we can. And if it takes a nationwide postal strike to alert our fellow citizens to the alternatives available to them, so be it. Certainly its appearance on the scene has prompted my own attention to this subject internally: I’d better instruct our accounting department to modify the company’s “electronic” invoices so that they advise customers that they can still pay via credit card or EFT.

Cloud Cover Thickens with Microsoft Announcement

Lynn Cooke — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:00:52 +0000

After much terrestrial dithering, Microsoft has at last elected to put its head in the clouds.

Such was the announcement delivered last week at Convergence 2011, a big-ass annual event in Atlanta where the Microsoft Dynamics customer and partner business communities share the rarified air of a common convention centre.

Dynamics ERP Programs Coming to Azure in 2012

There, the host company gave voice to its plans to offer its Dynamics ERP solution in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) format. Accordingly, the next major releases of its Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL ERP products will be available on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-development platform that’s been available for a year.

It will debut its on-demand ERP application delivery program with its next version of Dynamics NAV 7, slated for release in 2012. The balance of the Dynamics lineup will presumably follow, and it could be several years before the lot has made its way to Azure.

Microsoft says it will deliver its ERP application via this method more cheaply than its competitors (NetSuite most prominent among them), thanks in part to a multi-tenancy architecture that will enable multiple users to share the same instance of an application. This approach is also attractive for the ease with which it can be upgraded.

About-Face About Choice

Microsoft already offers Dynamics CRM as a cloud-carried product (it’s been available in the States since 2008; it went global in February). This latest move is actually a delayed response, on the company’s part, to a prevailing trend in the ERP market. Namely, solution providers to mid-market and SMB customers are increasingly reaching for the clouds.

Until this about-face, the company sold only on-premise versions of its flagship ERP products, and made no apology for the absence of a SaaS alternative. Indeed, it had sought to cover all bases with a so-called “software + services” ERP option. Through this, its channel partners invoked their service-provider license-agreement programs to independently deliver hosted versions of Dynamics ERP products to their customers.

With this announcement comes choice. Now, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in his keynote address at Convergence, customers will have the option of shifting their ERP application online, continuing to run it onsite or going with a hybrid deployment.

Microsoft Announcement Meets Skepticism & Optimism

Microsoft’s cloud ERP announcement, however, as posted through the IDG news service last week, has received mixed reviews. Users question the level of savings this switch actually represents to them and the degree to which they’ll lose flexibility by adopting this delivery mode.

They also express concerns about the potential for downtime if the cloud experiences a system failure. And certainly there will always be heel-diggers who reject the notion of releasing responsibilities they’ve always adequately overseen in house to a third party.

But this new option, say its most vocal proponents, is a serious step in the right direction for Microsoft, late in the game though it may be. And it’s a particularly attractive one they point out, for those Dynamics customers already using a hosting service. Adding an ERP product to the mix should be seamless, they enthuse, and the payback fairly immediate.

The Great Debate: ERP vs. Accounting Packages

Lynn Cooke — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:46:07 +0000

Aspirations of greatness notwithstanding, you’re still a fairly small organization at this point in your development. Your employee count is modest, your daily operations straightforward, your technical requirements few.

Only the big guys, surely, stand to benefit from the complex computerized infrastructures that come by way of installing sophisticated ERP systems. Or so you tell yourself as you start yet another day with the technical support of nothing grander than a basic accounting program.

SMEs Benefit From ERP

In fact, many small companies are surprisingly complex entities that may, in fact, stand to benefit greatly from an investment in ERP software. Increasingly, business leaders acknowledge the fallacy of the longstanding assumption that ERP systems are the province of larger organizations alone. Indeed, a company’s personnel tally is no more an indication of its technical requirements than the size of its lunchroom or the age of its chief executive.

Given that ERP software can be among the single largest IT investment a company makes, it behooves clever managers to determine their operation’s suitability for such a technological outlay (or to accept that a solid accounting package actually does the trick just fine, thank you very much).

Some considerations to undertake:

Bear in mind the inherent strengths of each system. An accounting package exists to sort through a company’s accounting and financial data. It tracks the financial activities of the firm, focusing particularly on accounts payable, accounts receivable and cashflow management.

An ERP system expands upon these functionalities, promising oversight of an organization’s entire oeuvre of business processes. In its rich database resides the great bulk of a company’s story — including its finance, manufacturing, supply-chain and HR activities — with different functions drawing from different elements thereof.

Does your organization regularly exchange large parcels of data with clients, or import in great volumes from overseas? You may find the sophisticated offerings of an ERP system more in line with its daily needs.

Consider your patronage of spreadsheets. If you use them sparingly and specifically, an accounting system will probably suffice. If, however, they genuinely dominate the ongoing operation of your business and provoke in-house contention about which spreadsheet version is the best, consider moving up to the more accommodating embrace of an ERP system.

Think carefully on the total cost of ownership associated with an ERP purchase. More than just up-front pricing and ongoing support fees, consider the fallout such a fundamental addition to your operation would have on the rest of your legacy systems, and its attendant costs. Critical here is the engagement of a vendor partner that can help an organization, new to the ERP space, to manage its purchase.

Look to the future with clear eyes. An organization with enough confidence in future expansion may well find that the installation of such enabling scaffold from which to grow — at a point, maybe, when it is yet to specifically require it — simply makes sense.

By contemplating plans for tomorrow seriously, managers of smaller businesses can position their technology to be a fundamental part of future growth, and sophisticated ERP software can play a big part in this.

360 Visibility Signs Kobo Books with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

360 Visibility — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:30:01 +0000

Kobo Books, a global eBook retailer back by large technology firms and retail companies, has chosen 360 Visibility to implement their new Microsoft Dynamics® NAV system.

Based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Kobo Books chose 360 Visibility because of their depth of knowledge with Dynamics NAV and their excellent track record.

The Challenges

With Kobo’s rapid growth in the past year, they were searching for a solution that would solve their top three primary pain points:
• Reigning in the rapid growth of Kobo with an intelligent reporting system.
• Accessing daily revenue reports from their online sales system.
• Integrating with online Kobo eBook Sales System for seamless visibility.

The Solution = Microsoft Dynamics NAV

360 Visibility & the Microsoft® Corporation took these challenges into consideration when recommending Dynamics NAV as the right solution to fit Kobo’s needs. 360 Visibility, back by Microsoft, identified Dynamics NAV as the right solution for Kobo because of its perfect price/functionality, its breadth/depth as a solution, its well-known graphical user interface for easier training and adoption, as well as its financial capabilities that could address all of Kobo’s requirements out-of-the-box.

Moving Forward…

360 Visibility will be working with Kobo to customize and implement their Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution to fit their financial requirements while integrating with their online sales system as well as Outlook/Exchange.

VARs Deliver “The Cloud” for Microsoft

Marco D'Ercole — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:00:12 +0000

“Windows,” says the confident lady, peering into the television screen after adding the finishing touches to a flawless family photo, “gives me the family nature never could”.

The Wheel In The Sky Keep On Turning

It’s an extraordinary statement, but so too is the idea Microsoft is pitching. Cloud computing is nothing short of a revolution in the sky, and the company has taken it to the masses with a heavyweight of an advertising campaign designed to pique the interest of consumers and small business operators alike with its dead-simple promise of life-altering renewal.

But there is a middle step here, before the world at large can meaningfully occupy this cloud — and it’s got opportunity written all over it.

It is one thing, after all, to be intrigued by a catchy television ad in which good looking people make swift and effective use of some nifty new idea in their own edited-for-public-consumption lives. But it’s quite another to find practical application for the stuff in your own technologically beleaguered existence.

VARS are the Real Superheroes

Enter the clever VARs (Value-Added Resellers), with their hot air balloons, jet packs and telescopic ladders to bridge the gap; the knowledge and powers of explanation that will facilitate customers’ ascension to this next level of productivity and deliver to them the same ease of use their picture-perfect TV counterparts apparently enjoy.

With the suppliers having introduced the promise then, our job as VARs is to help the consumer realize its potential, to offer a hand up to the cloud and an introduction to the myriad possibilities that await her there.

Microsoft Has Their Head in The Cloud

Microsoft released another “To the Cloud” commercial last week, this one featuring a Christmas scenario in which a grandfather is allowed easy access to a video resident on his grandkids’ remote computer. This is the fourth such cozy, mass-media-powered assault in which Microsoft takes direct aim at a television audience that is presumably intrigued, but somewhat confused by what is apparently yet another layer of complexity requiring its mastery in this computer-driven world.

The software giant’s multipronged advertising campaign, which follows the introduction of its Office 365 service, also employs print, outdoor, online and radio initiatives. Throughout, the message sings of the triple threat that is public cloud, private cloud and cloud productivity.

VARs Take Flight to Deliver The Cloud

But the impressive and apparently expensive initiative (it’s expected to cost Microsoft several hundred million dollars), which will feature three of Microsoft’s core cloud computing technologies—Office 365, Windows Azure and Windows Server Hyper-V—hovers in a state of potential incompletion without VARs’ meaningful participation in driving the point home.

To these middle folks falls the job of exposition, explanation, erudition. Ever mindful of the kneejerk assumption of many consumers that “cloud computing” is just one more buzz phrase, VARS must take under wing these would-be customers with dedicated counsel on this notion of web-based computing that promises much to the enhancement of their lives.

In other words, without a flock of VARs taking committed flight now, on the downdraft of the advertising campaign Microsoft has so masterfully given wings, consumers will be denied full ascendency into the clouds.

Microsoft Dynamics Business Ready Enhancement Plan Policy Change

360 Visibility — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:07:42 +0000

Announcement from Microsoft:

Your Microsoft Dynamics® solution is mission critical to the success of your business. Together with your Microsoft Dynamics partner, we understand this and want to help you ensure your solution runs smoothly and performing at its highest level. Enrollment in the Business Ready Enhancement plan is an essential part of providing your organization with the innovative upgrades to expand your functionality along with important updates to help ensure compliance and improved performance. On June 1, 2010, Microsoft will begin requiring a Business Ready Enhancement Plan when making additional license purchases on supported versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics AX. This policy change is designed to drive more customers to maximize their solution value and help protect future investments they make. As a value Microsoft Dynamics Customer, we look forward to your continued enrollment in a plan to ensure you have access to the support, training, tools, and solutions you need to expand your business and plan for future growth. Please contact your Microsoft Dynamics Partner if you have any questions regarding this change.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Danish Dreams

Lynn Cooke — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:47:49 +0000

“I want to be Denmark,” Steve Ballmer famously said, two years after his company acquired the Danish company Navision.

It was a curious stance to embrace, way back in 2004 at Microsoft’s worldwide partner conference, held that year in Toronto. But there was wisdom in Ballmer’s Danish declaration.

Specifically, the Microsoft Corporation CEO was expressing his high-flown opinion that, if Microsoft Business Solutions was as successful with Navision in other countries as it had been in this Viking motherland, this business unit would increase its revenue by a factor of 10.

“This is not rocket science anymore,” he said. “Rocket science is when you say, ‘Oh, it’s never been done before. We don’t know how to get there.’

“No. We just have to be as good as we are in Denmark in every other country.”

Fast forward six years, and find 360 leveraging Ballmer’s vision with the establishment of a NAV practice that could make Canada the first.

But exactly what is it that Denmark is doing that would compel Ballmer to give voice to such an extraordinary aspiration? Certainly the place has some clever windmill technology going on, and its pastries are always a delight. But is that the extent of it?

Not by a long shot.

Ballmer’s Denmark envy is not so much about the products on offer in that Scandinavian stronghold as it is about the people proffering them.

Certainly the conceit of working smarter, not harder, is the carrot at the end of every technological development-and-implementation stick. In Denmark—home, not uncoincidentally, to some of the world’s happiest souls—they seem to have figured out a way to grab it.

Almost from day one, Danish partners built industry solutions for NAV that ensured quick delivery without the imperative to constantly reinvent the wheel. More than that, the partners began trading these solutions inside their own circle, a munificent move that made the solutions available to all players equally. With one partner responsible for developing and maintaining the solution, more partners could focus on actually implementing it—and on creating real business value for customers.

Participating businesses welcomed the increased productivity and decreased administrative hassle this model promoted. Thanks to this generous and forward-thinking approach, the country as a whole made a pain-free transition into a digital business environment that supports mutual prosperity while releasing people from menial tasks in exchange for labours more creatively stimulating.

NAV has been in this country since 1997. That we have yet to complete the Danish transition is a function of the preponderance of Canadian companies running systems that don’t support a modern, optimized business model. It’s a scene fit for revision. There’s money to be made and savings to be exploited—but we need to move now, and put infrastructure in place to make the most of them.

360 does Denmark

Here at 360, we’re working on several solutions for just that. Take our set-to-launch and enormously effective property-management product—built in the latest version of NAV 2009—for one. Or the of-the-moment NAV-enabled solution we’re putting together for the professional services market.

What’s more, 360 is helping existing Canadian NAV customers get more from their investment—by evaluating the business impact of their current solutions and comparing them to the true potential that could be unleashed with some modification—to spectacular effect.

And if there’s still any doubt about our commitment to all things Danish, look no further than our recently installed vice-president of sales, Jens Baun, an import from the land of The Little Mermaid. Baun brings many years and many implementations to the table, to say nothing of his native gifts.

Thanks to him and our great wealth of Canadian NAV analysts and consultants, we can make good on the delivery of both genuine Danish experience and genuine Canadian smarts.

Watch the worldwide partner conference video here: