Improve Business Decisions With Salesforce NAV Integration — AppShark

Dynamics NAV (formerly known as Navision) known as Dynamics 365 Business Central (deployed on the cloud) since 2016 is an easily adaptable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution suitable for all small and medium-sized businesses. It helps automate operations while connecting sales, purchasing, operations, accounting, and stock management functions of the business. Dynamics NAV also helps handling areas such as business intelligence, warehouse and inventory management, financial management, retail and e-commerce, project and service management, human resources, manufacturing, and distribution. The application however lacks the complete functionality of robust CRM but is equipped with some skeletal capabilities of sales and marketing.

Managing operations on a single platform help organizations get a better overview of their business while getting rid of departmental silos of important data that do not get communicated effectively when necessary. Having all relevant business data in one place helps users locate information faster as well as automate processes reducing repetitive jobs.

The simplicity and user-friendly interface of Dynamics NAV coupled with cost-effectiveness and scalability have made it enormously popular in the business community over the past two decades. While at the most basic level, this intelligent ERP improves record accuracy, and ensures every user has access to the right information the first time.

Further having a single repository for operational data allows businesses get a clear, complete picture of production costs and expenses so that budgets can be assessed and re-evaluated from time to time to keep spending low. Real-time analytics enable businesses to spot critical trends in their data, allowing them to quickly respond to changes in the market, and generate forecasts that equip them to handle demand on time. Is the role of an ERP limited to all that has been discussed all along or can its extensibility be put to more use for a business?

Also Read: Improve Operations with Salesforce Dynamics GP Integration

Optimize finance, sales, and marketing process to facilitate better decision making-

The marketing and sales functions on one side and finance on the other can no more be seen as adversaries pulling in different directions; collaborative relationships focused on delivering a shared vision for success have however become imperative. Marketers and sales teams, therefore, are compelled to also focus on awareness of business outcomes such as increasing revenue, customer acquisition, and value, cash flows, etc. Sales resources and marketers require skills, the right information, and perspective to indulge in collaborative efforts of customer acquisition.

Finance on the other hand has conventionally focused on revenue, expenses, profit, and shareholder value and mostly fails to link brand image and loyalty to cash flow. The same holds good with other ancillary functions of warehouse management, inventory management, mobile sales and service, and other aspects of financial management. The ability to articulate cross-functional data sharing determines the sustainability of positive numbers in sales, churn, acquisition costs, and ultimately the company’s cash flow.

Go through the following instance:

A certain European marketing software solution provider sold their applications to over 50 countries throughout Europe and Asia. While the brand and its subsidiaries functioned with the Dynamics NAV to fulfill their ERP requirements; the sales figures were fast-growing and hence Salesforce came into effect. They were quick to realize that valuable information was not being entered in both systems and the two did not communicate with each other- manually or otherwise. Customer records ( which had payment/credit history too ) were not replicated in the ERP and the sales teams found themselves working with conflicting data regarding outstanding, returns, order fulfillment, etc. This diverted their focus and teams often found themselves entangled in data reconciliation. What they needed was a Salesforce-Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration that ensured the transfer of relevant updated information about customers, products, and prices. Linking the two systems would help save the time and energy spent on manual work processes previously required to enter the same data several times. Ultimately, this shared and updated information on connected sales figures will allow them to make faster, better-informed decisions about the customer as well as the business in the long-term.

Benefits of integrating Salesforce and Dynamics NAV

The bi-directional sync between Salesforce and Dynamics NAV brings together some data critical data exchange between the two systems that add further to the mentioned benefit above-

1. Reduced manual entry between the systems that diverts focus to tasks that value-add.

For businesses that are customer-centric as well as aggressive on growth- the customer remains at the pivotal point of all efforts. While Salesforce helps enhance customer service and Dynamics NAV managing backend operations, access to timely and accurate customer data is that which would drive better customer service. Salesforce-Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration solution will help enable real-time synchronization and streamline sales and related support operations which in-turn frees up the bandwidth of resources involved in recording transactions. By providing their field teams with timely relevant data with the possibility of beefing up the freed-up resources, the business can direct time and efforts on activities that bring real value to customers.

2. Optimize and automate sales processes to expand further.

The Salesforce environment helps businesses handle their dealer network, support customer relations, and actively help dealers rope in more numbers. With Salesforce, dealers can enter new opportunities, convert them into orders, see order status, invoices, and open entries. Dynamics NAV sits at the backend recording sales-related data into relevant fields as and when applicable. When Salesforce is integrated with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, new orders are automatically created in Dynamics NAV, and payments are posted back in Salesforce. Delivery date and status information are automatically transferred back into Salesforce, giving the dealers always up-to-date information to use.

3. Improved customer service

Both Salesforce and Dynamics NAV are used to record various aspects of a selling transaction- businesses usually use Microsoft Dynamics NAV for order registration, invoicing, production, and all the administrative work, and Salesforce for sales teams the world over. Integrating these two systems helps sales teams to easily and rapidly enter new customer information, create and update orders. This data can access it from anywhere and whenever lending support teams much higher work flexibility and helps them stay very well prepared before handling customers, which naturally translates into better customer service.

Decisions made are made across all arterial functions of a business, be it sales, marketing, service, finances, revenue, or resource management. An integrated environment brings together and helps make sense of crucial information gathered in both Salesforce and Dynamics NAV thus allowing the business to arrive at data-backed decisions. The right Salesforce integration expert would help such businesses discover the complete potential of what both these applications can offer together.

Why Appshark?

With over 500 projects completed and a 97% client satisfaction rate, our team of Salesforce certified professionals focuses on business deadlines, budget, and the long-term goals of the business. With a global team of professionals available across time-zones access to top talent at reasonable prices is effortless. We are both a Gold Consulting Partner and a Product Development Partner- a powerful combination that defines our expertise and experience with Salesforce.

Reach out to us at sales@appshark.com or contact us here for your Salesforce Integration and Implementation requirements.

Originally published at https://www.appshark.com on March 10, 2021.