Tech giant Microsoft is currently experiencing a period of enormous growth. The company largely owes this to its decision eight years ago to fully invest in cloud solutions and cloud infrastructure. Mike Morton, general manager for Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central, and his team are working on developing and further expanding Business Central. This allows the company to offer existing Dynamics NAV users an attractive and comfortable migration path to Business Central. Discover some interesting ideas and explanations from a recent interview with him here.
Mike didn't just look at the next version of Dynamics 365 Business Central, but explained the medium-term plans. Business Central is Microsoft's successful ERP cloud solution for small and medium-sized organizations.
Morton: “The future for Business Central is ready and clear. The product should be seamless and enchanting for all stakeholders. For Microsoft implementation partners, think about the skills they need to deliver large numbers of successful implementations. For customers, it's about being able to get started easily and quickly. End users especially want user-friendliness. And if we go one step further – it should simply be fun to work with!.
Microsoft's second pillar revolves around integration. “You will see that we will continue to invest in improved integration with Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Teams. With the Power Platform and with the other Dynamics apps. We want to bring all the individual parts together end-to-end to ensure that our customers create seamless experiences for their customers. And this is all part of the unique value proposition that only Microsoft can deliver.
Business Central Pillar 3 – it’s all about data. “The way people think about data and intelligence is changing rapidly. At Microsoft, we envision an automated world. But today, there's still a lot of manual data entry. Think of basic activities like sending quotes and receiving invoices. So how can we automate data collection – for example, using sensors? How can we then analyze that data and gather new, better insights? Plus, how can Business Central ultimately come up with actions and make concrete suggestions? For example, to prevent errors in order processing.”
Morton expects that for this last topic, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in business software will become more important. “The many benefits of AI will no longer be exclusive to large companies, but will certainly also be available to SMEs. Microsoft wants to ‘bring AI to the masses.’ And to achieve that goal, these powerful tools need to be more user-friendly.”
Are you a Business Central user? Then this clear vision, combined with Microsoft's financial strength and innovative power, should give you confidence for the foreseeable future.
Not yet a Business Central user? Then we would like to invite you for an initial introduction! Our Scaptans are ready for you!