An ERP business system such as Business Central can offer many benefits to businesses. To try and decipher what the best Business Central features are, we asked each of our ERP experts for their favourites they have encountered over their years working with the software.
Martin Roberts, Managing Director
“What’s really great is being able to unify these separate, disparate systems. By bringing them together under one roof, as Business Central does, we can really speed up and increase business’ productivity. By automating processes, rather than unnecessarily keeping them manual, it opens up the potential for that workforce to do more and add more to their employer’s operations.
“That’s the benefit that a wider ERP system, such as Business Central, can bring to a business. Sure, it’ll bring a lot of change to a business during the implementation phase and for some time afterwards, but it is important that companies understand that this change is absolute necessary if they wish to move forwards towards achieving their business goals and objectives.”
Mike Scammells, Senior Business Technology Consultant
“One of the best Business Central features, in my opinion, is the familiarity it gives to the entire business system. Whether you’re looking at products or creating sales/purchase orders, the way in which the system works is the same. So, if you understand one area of Business Central, then you’re able to work in another area of it with ease.
“It can be quite straightforward in the views it gives you and the way in which you add or remove things, but it’s the same across the entire system. An ERP system, as we know, holds all of a business’ information. It’s easy to jump between different types of information and different types of processes, because it’s all in the same “box”. The user doesn’t have to go somewhere else and look for information they require – especially when multi-site locations and warehouses are involved.
“In theory, all ERP systems are like that. But not a lot of the older ERP systems are as developed as Business Central – which makes the ease of use a highlight for me.”
Georgi Nastev, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Consultant
“I don’t have a best feature! But, what makes an ERP system like Business Central special, is the ability it has to change a business’ Finance set-up. Within the financial matrix of Business Central, you can split all sales and purchase transactions into different accounts. Once this is set up, from a Finance point of view, the system is automatically making account postings in the background of the system – making manual inputting less important.
“Within the different modules, such as Sales, Purchasing, Manufacturing and Warehouse, the transactions made by users are feeding back to the main Finance module – which makes it very special. Everything is linked together and designed to speak to one another. It means that companies will be less likely to make any errors, with financial information being fed into the centralised unit of the Finance team from different corners of the business.
“Previously, this information could prove difficult for the Finance team to get hold of in a timely and, sometimes, correct manner – but Business Central means it is automatically transferred and guaranteed to be accurate.”
Michael Lee, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Consultant
“In Business Central, you have the ability to set payment terms. What we have found with some customers, is that they get offered early types of discounts if they automate payments, which wasn’t possible with older systems. Previously it would have been a manual operation, whereas in Business Central, you can basically set up the correct options up front and it then calculates everything flowing through the ERP system.
“Then, when you need to do your payment run, you tick a little box during the setup and everything is calculated and run for you – so there’s less chance of anything going awry. It completely takes the manual working and, in turn, potential for error out. We have a few customers that it has worked for, and it has been one of those ‘wow’ moments for them.
“The fact it saves the user money too, is even better!”
