Bangalore : Microsoft India has announced the general availability of Dynamics 365 Business Central, a comprehensive business management solution for small and medium-sized businesses. An all-in-one cloud solution, Dynamics 365 Business Central helps companies ensure business continuity by connecting sales, service, finance, and operations teams to help them transform faster and deliver better results. It brings the rich functionality and full flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics Navision, the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) app, to deploy in the cloud or on-premises. It can be accessed from any mobile device to conduct business on-the-go. Customized for India, the solution comes with inbuilt features that address local regulatory and market requirements for ease of business, including a tax engine comprising over 500+ pre-configured use cases and business scenarios for Goods and Services Tax (GST), Tax Deducted at Source (TDS), and Tax Collected at Source (TCS).

The availability of the new solution was announced at Building a Resilient Future, a summit organized to discuss building resilience among India’s small and medium businesses (SMBs). Shri Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport & Highways and the Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India, Rajiv Sodhi, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft India, Rekha Talluri, Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft India, Harish Vellat, Country Head – Small, Medium & Corporate Business, Microsoft India, Praveen Mellacheruvu, Lead – Business Applications, Microsoft India, and Mike Morton, General Manager, D365 Business Central, Microsoft, were some of the key speakers during the summit.

Speaking at the event, Shri Nitin Gadkari said that digitalization is of utmost importance in the development of MSMEs, and could make the system more transparent, time-bound, and result-oriented. He emphasized on the need for technical collaboration, cooperation, and guidance from technology organizations. He also stated that in future, this would create efficiencies, create more market, and would be important for the growth of MSMEs in the country.

SMBs are looking for simple, productive, secure, cost-effective solutions that can accelerate their digital transformation journey – business critical to be future proof.  Some of their major concerns include an unconnected set of on-premises ERP systems, manually updating and scaling current ERP tools, and lack of data protection. Dynamics 365 Business Central aims to address these with new modular applications, expanded analytics, and software improvements built on Microsoft’s secure and hybrid Azure platform.

Commenting on the announcement, Rajiv Sodhi, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft India,said, “SMBs are the backbone of the Indian economy and are driving the country’s digital transformation wave with rapid cloud adoption. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, we aim to empower and strengthen the SMB ecosystem in the country. It offers customers affordable and easily manageable tools that simplify and expedite everyday business processes. We believe it will help small and medium-sized organizations move to the cloud confidently and be future proof.”

Dynamics 365 Business Central automates and streamlines business processes including finance, manufacturing, sales, shipping, project management, services, and provides an opportunity for organizations to upgrade from their current accounting software and legacy ERP systems. Fast to implement, easy to configure, it fast-tracks innovations in product design, development, implementation, and usability. It integrates with other Microsoft cloud services including Microsoft 365 and can be customized or extended for specific industry needs with PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI. The solution also integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, and enables businesses to easily share information with team members and respond faster to inquiries. As a single, end-to-end application, Business Central enables

·         Business without silos. Organizations can unify its business processes, and boost efficiency with automated tasks and workflows – all integrated within familiar Microsoft 365 tools.

·         Derive actionable insights. Organizations can gain a holistic view of their business data, business analytics, and actionable insights delivered by Microsoft’s leading intelligent technologies, increasing agility. It empowers leaders and employees to react quickly to changing business needs with intelligent insights – anywhere and on any device. 

·         Solutions built to evolve. A business can start quickly, grow at its own pace, and adapt in real time with a flexible platform that makes it easy to extend Dynamics 365 Business Central based on its changing needs.

Dynamics 365 Business Central also provides frequent updates allowing ERP systems to stay on the latest version without additional cost. It can be customized to support organizations operating in highly specialized industries such as manufacturing, travel, and financial services.

Benefits across functions ·         Move faster to the cloud: Enables faster adoption of new business models with flexible deployment, reliability, security, and scalability. This also enables businesses to work from anywhere and on any device.·         Unlock productivity and business insights: Connects people, processes, and insights to facilitate, unified view, better and quicker decisions with embedded guidance, dashboards, and interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.·         Increase financial visibility and performance: Improves financial forecasting and provide real-time performance metrics while ensuring compliance and security.·         Boost sales and improve customer service: Manages the entire sales process for organizations from within Microsoft Outlook and delivers better outcomes.·         Finish projects on time and under budget: Ensures successful project execution and profitability with planning, resourcing, tracking, costing, billing, accounting, and real-time intelligence.·         Optimize inventory and supply chain management: Delivers products on time, minimizes wastage, and adapts to changing business models with visibility across purchasing, manufacturing, inventory, and warehouses.

Migrating Dynamics Navision customers

Microsoft is enabling SMBs transition seamlessly from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central with specially designed configuration packages and a simple process of extracting, importing, and updating their existing data to Dynamics 365 Business Central. In addition, Microsoft is helping customers familiarize themselves with the solution with ease through two simple steps:

1         Learning:  SMBs get access to Business Central Learning Catalog on Microsoft Learn, which provides SMBs with Business Process Walkthroughs such as Managing financials, setting up inventory & configuring reports.

2         Customization: SMBs can connect, extend or embed Dynamics 365 Business Central with applications & services such as Payroll, E-Shipping, Document Capture and more, from AppSource to meeting all their business requirements with a single solution.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is available through Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) in India.