Pros and cons of Microsoft Dynamics NAV

poppins

Hi everyone,

I have been using Dynamics NAV for a few months and this is my first experience with business/enterprise solutions so I am not really able to evaluate it or to compare it to other ERPs...

Can anyone tell me what are the pros and cons of Microsoft Dynamics NAV ???

Alex_Chow

It's the best mid-market ERP software on the market today. No joke.

You will hear high level developer guys complain about things on this forum, but you can never do enough to satisfy high level developers with high expectations.

Selecting NAV, along with the right partner, will be one of the better investments you have for your company.

poppins

So, no negative aspects at all ???

karuchua

only one, sometimes when you want to develop certain out of box solutions,it can be rigid at times,but that not always the case

Miklos_Hollender

Alex Chow wrote:

It's the best mid-market ERP software on the market today.

I'd put it this way: it is the best mid-market ERP software if you need one of these big, international, brand-name stuff like Navision, SAP, Oracle, Baan and all that. Of these, the best.

However it may not mean it is overally the best solution as there could be some nifty local package developed by a small local company who can provide more flexibility, more of those features you need, and much cheaper hourly costs of customizaton, maybe even an architecture that allows customization without special training (like, business logic written in stored procedures, much more people can customize that than C/AL).

My recommendation is to decide if you are an entrepreneur or an enterprise.

An enterprise is who does this big enterprisey things, things are kinda official and a bit bureaucratic, there are clearly processes for everything which lend themselves for automation, for example having 2-3 levels of management and in-house IT and even an IT manager having a written IT strategy, if you are this kind of company, you need this big, brand-name, international software like Navision, and in this case Navision is the best.

However if you are more of an enterpreneur, where the company owners makes all decisions, and everybody is just a helper of the company owner and there are no layers of management and you always cut corners and the company is very flexible and the general spirit is that small company spirit that we will write whatever fsck the customers want on our invoices as long as they are paying cash, there is no internal IT just some young dude fixing jammed printers, in this case get some neat, flexible, and cheap local package instead.

You can use this as a go-no go question: do you feel comfortable not being able to modify invoices after they are first booked / printed. If your answer is "Yes because the generally accepted rules and laws of accounting are blah blah..." you are an enterprise, and welcome to Navision. If your answer is "Yes, customers want them modified all the time and we have 1 person for sending out 50 invoices a day, so no time for credit memos, we need flexibility." then are not an enterprise but an entrepreneur, you go find some small and flexible local package.

BTW in France I am much in favor in the development environments made by 4d.com, Laurent Ribardière is a clever fellow who knows what he is doing, I think software developed in 4D can't really be very bad either. But probably it will be small local packages not big brand name international stuff like Navision.