Business Central is an integrated set of business applications designed to service a wide variety of business operations. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 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, and human resource management, as well as the management of other valued resources and activities. By having many related applications well integrated, a fully-featured ERP system provides an enter data once, use many ways information processing toolset.
Business Central ERP addresses the following functional areas (and more):
- Basic accounting functions (for example, general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable)
- Order processing and inventory (for example, sales orders, purchase orders, shipping, inventory, and receiving)
- Relationship management (for example, vendors, customers, prospects, employees, and contractors)
- Planning (for example, MRP, sales forecasting, and production forecasting)
- Other critical business areas (for example, manufacturing, warehouse management, marketing, cash management, and fixed assets)
A good ERP system, such as Business Central, 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 following groupings of individual Business Central functions are based on the Search menu structure, which is supplemented by information from Microsoft marketing materials. The important thing is to understand the overall components that make up the Business Central ERP system:
Business Central has a role tailored User Interface (UI). In Business Central, there are four instances of the role tailored client (RTC)—one each for Windows, web interaction, tablet use, and as a phone client. Generally the various clients are referred to for the most part based on where and how they are displayed (Windows, web, tablet, and so on).