Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 at Directions 2014

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 – We’ve seen some sizzle, where’s the beef?

I’m writing this after day 2 of the Dynamics NAV 2015 Directions conference. As you might expect, the sizzle came out on day 1 and day 2 began to fill in the details. I was able to attend some sessions on sales and marketing and was able to gather some interesting insights that I thought I’d share.

The new importable Word templates in Microsoft Dynamics NAV are even more impressive in detail than shown in the introduction on day 1. There are some applications requiring complex invoices where this may not be applicable and a SQL RDLC report may be more applicable. For the vast majority of customers, this feature will be extremely useful and save significant effort and dollars from customizing invoice formats while putting this control in the hands of the users. Users can select the correct format at the time of running the report.

I was able to attend a thought-provoking marketing session based on the premise of generating 1 lead per day, refusing to do demo’s, and avoiding RFP’s (Request for Punishment) like the plague. An important supposition was the shift of importance from Sales to Marketing. A comment was made that you can get four marketing people for the price of one salesperson. Keep in mind that the sales quota for a salesperson in this environment is around $4,000,000 per year. Salespeople become highly efficient processing of qualified leads delivered by an integrated and automated marketing system.

There is now a Mini App option included in Dynamics NAV that is intended to replace the C5 product in Denmark, a solution with 85,000 customers and targeted towards the lower end of the market. While the screens have been “dumbed down” for entry level customers, that is only one component. The system also provides enhanced tool tips, embedded instructions, dismissible dialog, etc. Very promising for anyone looking to move new customers from entry level systems such as QuickBooks and Simply.

There continues to be emphasis on the Cloud and Microsoft Azure. It seems that Cloud partners are coming out of the woodwork, each striving to come up with a unique value proposition. There are some excellent technical classes that others in our firm were able to attend and I will share more information from their experiences as we share notes.

Read here for my notes on Day 1 of Directions 2014 and the exciting release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015.