Question for partners about their active customers

Alex_Chow

Just a general question because I'm curious. Read about my hypothesis here:
http://www.dynamicsnavconsultant.com/20 ... y-economy/

Basically, has any of your "active" customers that are using Dynamics NAV as their primary ERP software gone out of business or has been sold?

From the partners that I spoke with at Directions, all I got was "no.".

Has any partners encountered otherwise? Please share your stories.

matttrax

A company I used to do business with sold portions of its company that were on NAV, and the main business was eventually bought by another company.

[Edit] They were not sold because they were going out of business[/Edit]

DenSter

First of all, ALL of your customers use NAV, because that's what you do. Not just your 'active' customers use NAV, but all of your INactive customers ALSO use NAV. You could do exactly the same "research", look at all of your customers that went out of business, and using your logic, make the case that it was NAV that did them in. Or, there are equally successful businesses that DON'T use NAV, and you could make the same case that they are successful because they don't. Your logic is flawed, you are mixing cause and effect.

No ERP system is the cause of the success of any business, or for their failures. The fact that these successful businesses use NAV (or any other system for that matter) is a symptom, not the root cause.

The success of a business is related to its leadership having an adequate understanding of their business requirements, and taking the appropriate actions to meet those requirements. Using any particular software package is just one potential solution, and should never be mistaken for the requirement itself.

David_Singleton

DenSter wrote:

First of all, ALL of your customers use NAV, because that's what you do. Not just your 'active' customers use NAV, but all of your INactive customers ALSO use NAV. You could do exactly the same "research", look at all of your customers that went out of business, and using your logic, make the case that it was NAV that did them in. Or, there are equally successful businesses that DON'T use NAV, and you could make the same case that they are successful because they don't. Your logic is flawed, you are mixing cause and effect.

No ERP system is the cause of the success of any business, or for their failures. The fact that these successful businesses use NAV (or any other system for that matter) is a symptom, not the root cause.

The success of a business is related to its leadership having an adequate understanding of their business requirements, and taking the appropriate actions to meet those requirements. Using any particular software package is just one potential solution, and should never be mistaken for the requirement itself.

=D> =D> =D>

Miklos_Hollender

I've had the opposite experience - in my first projects in Hungary I joked that we are the kiss of death because we implement Navision and they go out of business. However it never happened later when I moved to the UK and later Austria. Must be a regional thing.

The reason was that we did not get paid and quite often the project not fully finished and / or our managers withdrew support because of not getting paid. Very often it was in a stage when not everything yet worked 100% well and it seriously interfered with the business processes. I don't think we really wrecked them, but probably more like they had an organizational problem and they tried to solve it through technology which of course never works (you know guys the usual "make it impossible that my people take orders from customers who owe too much!" a typical organizational problem that is NOT to be solved through technology), but if and when even the technology is unfinished then that is like the last straw.

BTW why didn't we get paid? Because these companies used small local accounting packages costing €5000 in total and customized for cheap + some logistics software as college student developed for €2000 and it was actually good, and a bunch of clever Excel macros. It actually did not work too bad. So when we went there and made an offer like €40 000 for licence and €40 000 for 100 days of implementation, they assumed they are going to get something 10x better for this price. But actually simply to replicate the functionality of their clever little accounting package, their custom logistics package and their Excel tables took like 70 days and then the rest hurriedly training the basics and shoveling in the data, and there was no time left to even tie down the basics properly, let alone to develop all the stuff that would be actually better than their former system! Very often at day 100 (120) and going live it took longer to issue invoices, took longer to do everything, worker efficiency dropped, and we got angry company owners threatening that they are not going to pay a cent until everything works perfectly. (We had fixed prices and payment after the work is done, nobody accepts monthly time-based billing there. No trust simply.) But then again our managers felt the work is done and threatened back not to provide any support until it is paid etc. etc. so they were left out hanging there with a not fully tied down system.

I meditated a lot over whose fault it is. Ultimately this was that made me leave the country. I still do not have the full answer. It probably was not ours because since I work in Western Europe I receive nothing but praise. And our customers probably felt legimitately screwed over for getting worse results for a lot of money. The best results I found Navision is like HACCP EU-regulation kitchens with their separate fridges and separate washing sinks that made many Eastern European restaurants go out of business: they are excellent when you have a good economy, plenty of customers, plenty of sales, can afford many employees so not to overwork them, they can be careful because they do not have to work hectic fast, and your major concern is making everything precise, safe and neat. You can use HACCP and you can use Navision. But when you have a hectic situation because bad economy, not enough business, can afford only a few workers, everybody is overworked and making mistakes, have to scratch out a piece of the market pie for you by any ways possible, then no HACCP and no Navision for you. Now that I am working on the end-user side at an international company, I cannot even describe the difference how different it is to sell electronic products in say Denmark and Bulgaria! One is like salespeople taking 10 large SOs a day, customers have no special requirements, easy to do, everybody taking things easy and can pay attention not to make mistakes. The other is like ekeing out a living taking 100 tiny sales order a day, hardly any margins, customers not paying, but each want their invoice a different way, and phone your workers 3 times a day to modify the invoice as they want it differently, and it is a huge horror story to try to support that. (This is why I rather decided to interface it with local software, but that is another story.)

Anyway. Be in a rich, content, precise country, do pay your consultants to implement the project fully, do invest into it occasionally later on, and even better be so clever like my bosses are and hire a full-time internal consultant armed with an Application Developer licence (except: no upgrades with that, that sucks...) and yes, it is quite likely others go out of business before you because you actually have information you need... example: every Sunday reports are automatically emailed showing all customers with outstanding balances or balances over credit limit. It is in Excel and stuff is red and yellow and bold and everything relative to the amounts and and nobody can plausibly deny if they forget to act upon it as it is about as conspicuous as Mr T from A-Team yelling numbers. I am kinda proud of it.