Building connected processes with Business Central

Piecing together fragmented processes is a great start for businesses looking to optimize the way their tech stack operates from day-to-day, and as tedious as it may seem to find technology solutions that keep your business running, implementing an all-in-one business management solution is one of the most effective tools you can deploy for your organization. Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-native ERP system made to address common business pain points to keep your day running smoothly, ensure cross-company teams stay in sync, and to promote visibility into key operations and workflows.

When it comes to building connected processes, the application can completely change the way your teams operate and work together. Here are six ways that using Business Central can bring your operations to the cutting edge of productivity, efficiency, and collaborative success.

Integration

First and foremost, Microsoft’s business applications were designed with seamless integration in mind, and being cloud-based means that these solutions work in constant sync with one another without any additional integration work or elbow grease on your part. Microsoft business solutions like Power BI, Power Automate, SharePoint, the stack of Microsoft 365 applications (Word, Office, Outlook, Excel), and the Dynamics 365 CRM solutions (Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service) are all connected to a singular database, meaning that any time you interact with an account or change data in Business Central, all that information is updated across the board – so nothing gets lost in the shuffle of moving from app to app, system to system. Users across your entire organization can easily communicate using built-in Teams chatting to stay in touch without leaving the Business Central workspace.

Automation

Reduce manual work and cut down on the time spent entering tedious, repetitive processes by hand, allowing users to easily free up time in their days so they can better work to meet the challenges facing your business. Business Central was built with efficiency and agility in mind, so many processes, daily tasks, and features are already set to automate. And an added bonus –  when things are automated it helps cut down on the natural human error that may occur. Business Central data can be used in automated workflows using Power Automate – common activities in Business Central can be configured as flow triggers (when a record is created/changed/modified, when a vendor approval is requested, when a general journal batch approval is requested), then pre-built Business Central templates can be connected to request approvals for sales orders, invoices, customers, purchase orders, items, vendors, and more.

Machine learning

Machine learning is using AI to make your system smarter the more you use it, as it gathers data and information from your day-to-day operations and creates valuable information with insights anchored in your actual sales numbers, expenses, budgets, etc. to create adaptive practices and recommended actions based on the tasks you complete most often across all leads, opportunities, accounts, and processes. Within Business Central, using dimensions helps guide the sorting, recognition, and analysis of data with tags that you custom define yourself. Applying dimensions tags input data with markers that sort data into similar categories – customers, regions, products, vendors, accounts, salespeople, and even reporting schedules – and you can then analyze data by dimensions so you have personalized visibility into your most important data. That means that your system keeps you up-to-date with the most accurate information available and provides AI-enabled insights for the best next steps.

Forecasting

Business Central uses your real sales data to create forecast budgets and financial plans that provide you with a realistic glimpse into your business growth and development by analyzing trends in your current data. When everyone is on the same page about the numbers that go into a forecast, it’s easier to create metric-based decisions as a team, and key decision-makers have the most up-to-date figures to work from when creating plans and budgets. You can also use sales data to create “what-if” scenarios so teams can better plan for a multitude of business possibilities and demands. That way, you can plan to scale up or scale back operations based on projections to make decisions that make the most sense for how your business actually operates – giving you better visibility into turnaround time based on demand, current inventory, projected delivery times, and delays as well as past sales scenarios, annual trends, year-end procedures, and more.

Reporting

In-app reporting means that your data doesn’t get lost in the shuffle when exporting from your database to your reporting software – and if you choose to have something more robust, Power BI has built-in connectors that pull directly from your Business Central data sources. Reports can be pulled directly from your workspace and things don’t fall between the cracks when transferring facts and figures from system to system. You can also import and export to Excel at multiple touchpoints while working within Business Central to create spreadsheets using continually updated and accurate data. Or, if you prefer to keep it all in the same workspace, generating analysis reports works similarly to creating a pivot table in Excel and allows you to build customized reports using a variety of source data right from within Business Central.

Personalization

Business Central is purposefully designed in a way that meets a variety of business needs, but it can be pared down to your exact business operations with configurations by providing a Unified Interface with a focused experience personalized per user – assisted setup guides are available in the Role Center that allow you to easily create, disable, and add features, permissions, and work scenarios to your workspace. In addition to a Unified Interface, users across your organization can work in the same application interface with the same data, procedures, and modules but with some abilities (like editing) disabled for security so everyone works with the same updated data but certain functionality is made unavailable to users with limited access needs.

If you’re ready for a solution that puts workflows in sync from the top down and bottom up, click the button below. Our skilled team of consultants can give you a free Business Central demo so you can see first-hand how it’ll improve your daily work operations and build connected processes.