axapta v/s navision

nrapendra

hi all,

one of my prospective client is hanging between axapta and navision.
he simply wants to know about the points for whome he should take decisions whether he should choose ax or nav.i have suggested him to choose nav but he wants to take the opinion of experts.
and as i think that all persons here are ax and nav experts.

pls suggest some points in which ax is richer than nav.
and some points where nav is richeer than ax

so that i may convince him


thanks.

Miklos_Hollender

It's mainly the philosophy.

Axapta has the "MSDN philosophy" - always using the latest and coolest available technology. It as built-in OLAP and whatnot. Really amazing at a demo. But for this reason last time I checked it it (2.5) it was fragile and unreliable.

Navision on the technology part has the "use what's proven to work" philosophy. From a technical viewpoint it's quite solid, but it also means it's backwards - f.e. no standard RichEdit textboxes or no drag and drop. Of course there can be bugs in the applicaiton logic layer but that's a different thing - technical errors like crashes are rare.

But I think the most important thing is to use whatever you can find the most experienced consultants for. Even though I'm pro-Nav I'd rather have Axapta implemented with someone with 5 years of experience than Nav with someone of 1 year.

p.willemse6

that's a pretty technical answer.

What we see in the Netherlands, especially with NAV 5.1 coming (big technical refresh), that customers as well as microsoft tend to basically look at the functional demands. Is an add-on available, or is heavy customization to be done? How does the partner support the whole thing?

Customers tend to look further that the current technical side of the solution...

Alex_Chow

nrapendra wrote:

hi all,

one of my prospective client is hanging between axapta and navision.
he simply wants to know about the points for whome he should take decisions whether he should choose ax or nav.i have suggested him to choose nav but he wants to take the opinion of experts.
and as i think that all persons here are ax and nav experts.

pls suggest some points in which ax is richer than nav.
and some points where nav is richeer than ax

so that i may convince him


thanks.

The more important question is what kinds of problem is your client trying to solve by switching to ether NAV or AX?

We can argue all day on which is better, but in the end, it's what business problem you're trying to solve.

If you can provide that, then you will definately get better responses to your question.

nrapendra

Alex Chow wrote:

nrapendra wrote:

hi all,

one of my prospective client is hanging between axapta and navision.
he simply wants to know about the points for whome he should take decisions whether he should choose ax or nav.i have suggested him to choose nav but he wants to take the opinion of experts.
and as i think that all persons here are ax and nav experts.

pls suggest some points in which ax is richer than nav.
and some points where nav is richeer than ax

so that i may convince him


thanks.

I would like mention few details about prospects. They are basically a mid size manufacturing based at Central UP in india, where resources & man power is not easily available to run the show whether its AX or NAV. Client want to go for NAV but he is impressed with the Demo of AX. Now guide us what we should promote to close the deal.

The more important question is what kinds of problem is your client trying to solve by switching to ether NAV or AX?

We can argue all day on which is better, but in the end, it's what business problem you're trying to solve.

If you can provide that, then you will definately get better responses to your question.

kuju

I agree with Alex Chow.

You have to look into the business model.
Often there is a very thin line between AX and NAV.

-AX is more production focused while NAV is starting more from a financial perspective.
- NAV has also a production module but this is more an 'assembling' production there where AX has more advanced production features.
- It maybe is correct that AX is technically a bit more advanced at this point in time.
but nav is more flexible to build customer specific development.
And maybe next year NAV is probably in the lead with its new client...
- If your client is active in more than 1 country and several localisations are important than AX has a central codebase while with nav you must implement several seperate database or merge it yourself...
- pricing is also a difference... AX is considered to be a bit more expensive.
- AX can also handle more larger implementations up to a 1000 concurrent users.


But this is a very general view there are hundreds of exceptions on each topic i mentioned and because it's such a thin line and because there are so many exceptions you have to look into this case by case.
You will never see a magic formula available from Microsoft for this question

Alex_Chow

What kind of manufacturing company?
What do they make? Chemicals? Cars? Widgets?
Why are they looking into a new system?
What other softwares have they looked at?
How many Employees?
What's their budget?
How many locations?
Where is the companying going in terms of growth?
What's the CEO's long term vision for the company?

List goes on and on. I don't see how you can properly recommend a product if you don't understand their business and their goals...