Microsoft launches Dynamics NAV 2009 at Convergence 2008

Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, says: “Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 allows us to squarely address the needs of midsize businesses in today’s economic climate, and to support our partners’ investments. “By using the role-specific user friendly ERP solution, [customers and partners] can boost productivity and work smarter, maximising their effectiveness in driving business impact.” In brief detail, Microsoft says its Personalised Role Centres correspond to the 21 key job functions it has identified – providing employees with tools and alerts tuned to their needs from within a single location, as well as links to other parts of the application. As for the business intelligence capabilities, those are based on the new Microsoft SQL Server database layer introduced in NAV 2009. Tatarinov says that employees will be able to drill into data, identify trends, generate business insights, and monitor how they’re tracking against KPIs. Finally, the .Net Web Services will allow Microsoft users and their trading partners to integrate data and business logic from NAV 2009 with other applications, such as credit check functionality, using web services. For existing users worrying about the job of upgrading, Microsoft also says that it’s delivering a suite of tools with NAV 9 to make the transfer process “to the new user experience” painless – and that they can phase any migration. Meanwhile, in other related news, at the Dynamics user conference Convergence 2008 in Copenhagen, Microsoft also launched: Integration Components Add-In for Windows Essential Business Server 2008; eService Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0; and Business networking for Microsoft Dynamics communities. The Add-In, for example, is a new administration console, aimed at midsize manufacturers running Microsoft Dynamics, that also covers other applications – cutting costs and reducing hassle in setup and ongoing IT management.