Our next spotlight is on Insight Works, an ISV specializing in a variety of apps for manufacturing and distribution—both free apps and via subscription. Insight Works reps will highlight apps to streamline your manufacturing process and warehouse operations while answering any questions you may have.

Manufacturers value efficiency, automation, and the ability to forecast orders, sales, inventory, and other important elements of their business. Considering these values, it’s perhaps a curious thing, or maybe not so curious, that many manufacturers use their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for customer relationships management (CRM) activities, or else they don’t use any solution for CRM at all. Considering the myriad benefits of CRM functionality—from lead and opportunity management, contact and account management, data analysis, automated marketing campaigns, event management, branded landing pages and forms, email creation, and so much more—it’s a wonder how a business could get by on the limited customer relationship functions a typical ERP provides.

Adding a CRM solution to your manufacturing business’ tech stack helps you better understand customer needs and gives you the tools and insight you need to reach them in the best way possible at every touchpoint, whether they’re at the very top of your sales funnel or about to place a repeat order. Dynamics 365 Marketing is a flexible CRM solution that helps businesses in any industry create, manage, and analyze the results of a wide variety of materials to help even marketing beginners create high-quality, engaging content that speaks to your prospects, leads, and longstanding clients. Here are some ways manufacturers can benefit from using Dynamics 365 Marketing to engage prospects and drive revenue.

This whitepaper is a brief and comprehensive guide to module capabilities, licensing, and other pertinent details of the ERP—such as machine and work centers, subcontracting, capacity planning, and more. Read about the differences between Business Central Manufacturing and Business Central Jobs, get a glimpse of the user interface, and check out other resources to help you narrow your ERP discovery.

As manufactures adapt to growing trends, changing needs, and accelerated demand, they need a business management solution that is as agile and responsive as their business operations. Dynamics 365 Business Central for Manufacturing is a leading midmarket manufacturing management solution that offers rich, industry-specific functionality to drive automation, cut down on overhead costs, and give your operations a cutting-edge advantage. Here are five ways manufacturers can benefit from upgrading to a cloud manufacturing ERP system like Business Central

The supply chain is a living, fluctuating entity that can be studied, its motions anticipated. Manufacturers of all types—whether they be agile, discrete, process, custom, etc.—require strong forecasting skills to stay on top of that entity and meet customer demand. The better a business can forecast and anticipate what is to come, the faster they can produce product and get it to their customer, the higher their customer satisfaction, and the more sales they are likely to make.

Business Central’s base functionality is well-equipped to handle core requirements of any business and offers a reliable solution to unify financial processes–regardless of industry. Plus, the application is highly customizable, scalable, and allows for multi-environment and multi-company use (and unlimited users).

Here are some of the industries that can benefit from built-in and add-on features of Business Central, demonstrating that it’s a cost-effective, reliable choice for just about anyone out there.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a no-nonsense mid-market ERP solution that provides essential features and functionalities to businesses across industries while boasting extensive customizability. So, any business can find value in Business Central for their general ERP needs and for more specific use cases.

Manufacturing is an expansive industry with a variety of niche and unique needs. Business Central for manufacturing includes a variety of features, some essential for all manufacturers, and some features that not every manufacturer is going to want to use. In this blog, we will discuss four niche Business Central features that, when used in the right scenarios, bring big value to the table.

Integrating Business Central with Dynamics 365 Sales unlocks a powerful range of abilities that lets you access Sales data in Business Central and the other way around as well. If you use Dynamics 365 Sales for customer engagement, you can enjoy seamless integration in the lead-to-cash process by using Business Central for backend activities such as processing orders, managing inventory, and doing your finances.

Throughout the entire manufacturing marketing and sales process—from initial contact, to lead, opportunity, and quoting—all the way to order processing, a manufacturer constantly strives to optimize their processes. This makes sense; the faster and better they do their job, the more competitive they are through lower prices and more customers with increased satisfaction. There are countless moments along the sales and production pipelines with the potential to increase efficiency, and utilizing premier business solutions is perhaps the largest area of opportunity. ERP and CRM solutions such as Dynamics 365 offer features and functionalities to optimize business processes and are highly customizable to meet the needs of any manufacturer.

Sellers often offer multiple inventory items together as bundles, products that otherwise require some assembly prior to being shipped to the customer, or items customized to-order. These typically don’t involve extensive production processes and can be accomplished by one or a few employees.

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, these types of items are created via assembly orders which can improve process efficiency and decrease manual labor. For inventory management and selling purposes, assembly policies can be set to either assemble-to-order and assemble-to-stock.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive ERP system featuring a wide range of capabilities including manufacturing management. This diversity in functions allows Business Central to cover virtually all business processes for manufacturers.

For manufacturers that sell items assembled or otherwise produced from component parts and resources, Bills of Material (BOMs) are likely to be an integral business function. Business Central allows BOMs to seamlessly connect with all related processes because it manages not just inventory but also inventory, employee and machine resources, and sales documents.

One of the most crucial parts of managing a business is balancing supply and demand. Without proper balance, supply may be insufficient to meet demand causing a drop in customer satisfaction, or there may be too much supply thereby hurting profits. Dynamics 365 Business Central includes robust planning functionality to give guidance on purchase and production orders to ensure items are in stock and available for customers.

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, there are multiple ways to conduct manufacturing processes depending on industry and process type. In this blog we’ll go through the difference between Jobs and Manufacturing capabilities in Business Central so manufacturers have a better understanding of what the differences are, which one makes the most sense for their business, and even if it makes more sense to implement a combination of the two.

Business Central may be new, but it has a long, storied past. From PC Plus to Dynamics NAV and NAV to Business Central, there is a whole lot to learn about the newest ERP solution on the market today.