NAV 2015 is an integrated set of business applications designed to service a wide variety of business operations. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 is an ERP system. An ERP system integrates internal and external data across a variety of functional areas, including manufacturing, accounting, supply chain management, customer relationships, service operations, human resources management, as well as the management of other valued resources and activities. By having many related applications well integrated, a full featured ERP system provides an enter data once, use many ways information processing toolset.
NAV 2015 ERP addresses many functional areas. Some of them are listed as follows:
Basic accounting functions (for example, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable)
Order processing and inventory (for example, sales orders, purchase orders, shipping, inventory, receiving)
Relationship management (for example, vendors, customers, prospects, employees, contractors)
Planning (for example MRP, sales forecasting, production forecasting)
Other critical business areas (for example, manufacturing, warehouse management, marketing, cash management, fixed assets)
A good ERP system such as NAV 2015 is modular in design, which simplifies implementation, upgrading, modification, integration with third-party products, and expansion for different types of clients. All the modules in the system share a common database and, where appropriate, common data.
The groupings of individual NAV 2015 functions based on the department's menu structure is shown in the following figure. It is supplemented by information from Microsoft marketing materials and some of the groupings are a bit arbitrary. The important thing is to understand the overall components that make up the NAV 2015 ERP system.
NAV 2015 has two quite different styles of user interface (UI). One UI, the Development Environment, targets developers. The other UI style, the RoleTailored Client, targets end users. In NAV 2015, there are three instances of the RoleTailored Client – for Windows, for Web interaction, and for tablet use. The example images in the following module descriptions are from the RoleTailored Client Departments menu in the Windows Client.
Financial Management is the foundation of any ERP system. No matter what the business is, the money must be kept flowing, and the flow of money must be tracked. The tools which help to manage the capital resources of the business are part of NAV 2015's Financial Management module. These include all or part of the following application functions:
General Ledger: Manages overall finances of the firm
Cash Management and Banking: Manages inventory of money
Accounts Receivable: Tracks the incoming revenue
Accounts Payable: Tracks the outgoing funds
Analytical Accounting: Analyzes the various flows of funds
Inventory and Fixed Assets: Manages the inventories of goods and equipment
Multi-Currency and Multi-Language: Supports international business activities
The Financial Management section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
NAV 2015 Manufacturing is general purpose enough to be appropriate for Make to Stock (MTS), Make to Order (MTO), Assemble to Order (ATO), as well as various subsets and combinations of those. Although off-the-shelf NAV is not particularly suitable for most process manufacturing and some of the very high volume assembly line operations, there are third-party add-on and add-in enhancements available for these applications. As with most of the NAV application functions, Manufacturing can be implemented to be used in a basic mode or as a full featured system.
NAV Manufacturing includes the following functions:
Product Design (BOMs and Routings): Manages the structure of product components and the flow of manufacturing processes
Capacity and supply requirements planning: Tracks the intangible and tangible manufacturing resources
Production scheduling (infinite and finite): Execution and tracking quantities and costs, plus tracking the planned use of manufacturing resources, both on an unconstrained and constrained basis
The Manufacturing section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
Obviously, some of the functions categorized as part of NAV 2015 Supply Chain Management (SCM), for example sales and purchasing, are actively used in almost every NAV implementation. The supply chain applications in NAV include all or parts of the following applications:
Sales order processing and pricing: Supports the heart of every business
Purchasing (including requisitions): Includes planning, entering, pricing, and processing purchase orders
Inventory Management: Manages inventories of goods and materials
Warehouse management including receiving and shipping: Manages the receipt, storage, retrieval, and shipment of material and goods in warehouses
Even though we might consider Assembly to be part of Manufacturing, the standard NAV 2015 Departments menu includes it in the Warehouse section. The Supply Chain Management section of the Departments menu looks as follows:
As a whole, these functions constitute the base components of a system appropriate for distribution operations, including those which operate on an Assemble to Order basis.
Although Microsoft marketing materials identify Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting as though it were a separate module within NAV, it's difficult to physically identify it as such. Most of the components used for BI and reporting purposes are appropriately scattered throughout various application areas. In the words of one Microsoft document, "Business Intelligence is a strategy, not a product." Functions within NAV that support a BI strategy include the following:
Standard Reports: These are distributed ready-to-use by end users
Account schedules and analysis reports: These are a specialized report writer for General Ledger data
Query, XMLport, and Report Designers: These are developer tools to support the creation of a wide variety of report formats, charts, XML, and CSV files
Analysis by dimensions: This is a capability embedded in many of the other tools
Interfaces into Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office 365 including Excel: These support the communications of data either into NAV or out of NAV
RDLC report viewer: This provides the ability to present NAV data in a variety of textual and graphic formats; includes user interactive capabilities
Interface capabilities such as DotNet Interoperability and Web Services: These are the technologies to support interfaces between NAV 2015 and external software products
NAV's Relationship Management (RM) functionality is definitely the little sister (or, if you prefer, little brother) of the fully featured standalone Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The big advantage of the NAV RM is its tight integration with NAV customer and sales data. For those who need the full Microsoft CRM, prior versions of NAV have had a module connecting it to NAV. The same connector has been released for NAV 2015.
Also falling under the heading of CRM is the NAV Service Management (SM) functionality. While the RM component shows up in the menu as part of sales and marketing, the SM component is identified as an independent function in the menu structure.
NAV functions that support RM are as follows:
Marketing campaigns: Plans and manages promotions
Customer activity tracking: Analyzes customer orders
To do lists: Manages what is to be done and tracks what has been done
NAV functions that support SM are as follows:
Service contracts: Supports service operations
Labor and part consumption tracking: Tracks the resources consumed by the service business
Planning and dispatching: Manages service calls
NAV Human Resources (HR) is a very small module, but relates to a critical component of the business - employees. Basic employee data can be stored and reported via the master table (in fact, one can use HR to manage data about individual contractors in addition to employees). A wide variety of individual employee attributes can be tracked by the use of dimensions fields. NAV functions that support HR are as follows:
Employee tracking: Maintains basic employee description data
Skills inventory: Maintains an inventory of the capabilities of the employees
Absence tracking: Maintains basic attendance information
Employee statistics: Tracks government required employee attribute data such as age, gender, length of service, and so on
The NAV project management module consists of the jobs functionality supported by the resources functionality. Projects can be short or long term. They can be external (in other words - billable) or internal. This module is often used by third-parties as the base for vertical market add-ons (such as construction or job-oriented manufacturing). This application area includes parts or all of the following functions: