Navision Report Licence

Kaetchen

In fact I think MS should make sure that the Navision Partners meet the
requirements for providing the appropriate support to customers because the reputation of a software product is on the line.

We might consider getting support from elsewhere if this is only a domestic problem.

Miklos_Hollender

Actually... I've seen many more really bad solution centers than good ones. The reasons are manyfold. First, if you want to work as a Navision Consultant, you can't be, like, in SAP a FI/CO, a consultant in just Finances. You need to understand the great majority of Navision because it's really tightly integrated, there are no clear interface between modules, actually, there are no modules. Second, you need to become at least somwhat a developer because the only real documentation is the source and the only fast way to figure out the reason of an error message is the Debugger. But that's only the beginning. Navision needs a lot more involvement to get it right.

My experience is the following. In the first year of working as a Navision consultant/developer I wished all the Vedbaek developers tortured, maimed, killed, have their soul devoured by a demon and then really hurt

The second year I started to enjoy it and feel the productivity boost.

The third year I was sure that I would develop a vertical add-on faster in Navision than others would just write the specs for SAP/Oracle Fin/JDE/whatever developers.

It's a kind of magic: strange and alien at first, extremely powerful later. And when I say magic, it's not a metaphor, it was really feeling like a wizard, at my last go-live, I had users standing in a queue before my door and they came in, did a request, I told them to tell the next one to wait for five minutes and when the next one came in it was done... and it's not me, it's C/SIDE magic. However, it needs quite a lot of time.

The productivity graph is kinda like very low for long and then just suddenly start to rise amazingly fast...

Many solution centers don't have the experience or the dedication to go deep enough into Navision.

I have two suggestions. Go for small solution centers. They are flexible and good. I can even recommend one here in Hungary. I mean why not, answering questions in e-mail and doing setup and development over a Terminal Server can happen from everywhere, not? And our rates are half what you are used to. Just drop me a private message, if you want good solutions fast instead of big brand names and big references.

The other one is to buy the development tools and hire a clever programmer, with background in business systems IDE's like Visual FoxPro, or PowerBuilder. It's big investment, but very profitable in the long, 2-3 years run.

Miklos_Hollender

Actually, I have an even better idea Check out your private messages please.

themave

Miklos Hollender wrote:

Actually, I have an even better idea Check out your private messages please.

I didn't get a private message, rather then leave a posting to check private message, just leave the message, the system sends an email notifying the person they have a private message waiting, that way the other people (like me) following this thread don't get an update tellings us there is a new post only to find it is pointless

Alex_Chow

Kaetchen wrote:

In fact I think MS should make sure that the Navision Partners meet the
requirements for providing the appropriate support to customers because the reputation of a software product is on the line.

We might consider getting support from elsewhere if this is only a domestic problem.

Navision A/S (before it was purchase by Microsoft) had a program where they made sure the solution provider meets certain requirements. However, after it was purchase by MS, there has been little follow up on the skills of the VARs.

Like I said, smaller solution centers may provide better service than your typical large solution centers. Larger solution centers tend to focus more on how much money they can make, while smaller solution centers will service almost any customers they come across.

ara3n

deadlizard wrote:

Like I said, smaller solution centers may provide better service than your typical large solution centers. Larger solution centers tend to focus more on how much money they can make, while smaller solution centers will service almost any customers they come across.

I totally disagree on this. Small or large solution centers have different people with different skills. From customer perspective, what they should do is find within the solution cetner the person with most skills and ask for their service. Ofcourse that person might be more busy than others, but at least you'll get value of the NSC. If you don't find them then find another NSC.
Whether the NSC is small or large, they all cre about their customers and want them to be happy.

Miklos_Hollender

Well, I think large solution centers tend to get people specialised in different fields, tend to have slow, stiff procedures and tend to waste time on writing thousand pages of meaningless documentation to cover up their asses. Sorry for being rude, but it's my experience from cooperation on international projects with the big-name boys.

Now, if you look at an implementation project, it can be broken down to individual tasks and almost each of them needs a bit of accounting knowledge, a bit of business operations knowledge, a bit of development knowledge and a good knowledge of most standard granules. From the clients viewpoint it's always better if he can got someone who knows all these and can solve problems on the fly - in the testing database of course - than having to pay and wait for different specialists to communicate with each other by writing long specs and docs.

And this usually tends to happen at small companies. I think large companies naturally get people specialized because they focus on add-on development.

Fun story: at my first project we had so many problems managing a private bonded warehouse both from an operations and accounting viewpoint that half year after the start of the project, I was in a pizzeria. I asked for salt. I was told the they've totally ran out of salt. And then the routine kicked in within me and I instictively asked: "And why don't you replenish the stock from the bonded wareh.... AW,sorry!" So if companies concentrate on a few given verticals for years they can grow one-sided I think.

Alex_Chow

ara3n wrote:

deadlizard wrote:

Like I said, smaller solution centers may provide better service than your typical large solution centers. Larger solution centers tend to focus more on how much money they can make, while smaller solution centers will service almost any customers they come across.

I totally disagree on this. Small or large solution centers have different people with different skills. From customer perspective, what they should do is find within the solution cetner the person with most skills and ask for their service. Ofcourse that person might be more busy than others, but at least you'll get value of the NSC. If you don't find them then find another NSC.
Whether the NSC is small or large, they all cre about their customers and want them to be happy.

From personal experience and having worked with larger solution centers, I'm sticking to my statement.

The larger solution centers that I've worked for and worked with, hire professional managers that have their priority on profitability and sales. Not necessarily on the customer's best interest.

The reason I believe (not based on actual fact since I'm not in management) is that they need to boost sales to justify the increased overhead and their own pay.