Insight eNews

A Monthly Newsletter from AVF Consulting, Inc.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Solution Center &

 Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

July 2007

In this edition:

From the President: Microsoft Announces Kirill Tatarinov as Corporate VP for Microsoft Dynamics

AVF News & Events: AVF Welcomes New Clients and Serenic Explorations Registration is OPEN

Product Focus, AR Cash Flow Management: Collections Management is a NAV Add-On That Can Help

From the President: Andrew Fass

Microsoft Announces New Leader for Microsoft Dynamics

It's not unusual for Microsoft to reorganize and restructure its management team on a yearly basis.  Since Microsoft's year ends in June, this is the time that they appoint new leaders and shuffle the deck of management throughout.  On June 28th, they announced that Kirill Tatarinov, who was the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Management and Solutions group, would take on the role of Corporate Vice President for Microsoft's Dynamics division.  Besides holding high level management positions within Microsoft, Kirill was the Sr. VP and CTO for BMC as well as the founder and owner of  Patrol Software.

So how do we expect this new leadership to affect us and more importantly, our customers?

Frankly, we don't expect to see or feel any immediate changes.  Microsoft is world renowned for its technology and continued product development, so we know that won't change.  Microsoft Dynamics NAV is the leading product for Microsoft's Dynamics division and surpassed the millionth user milestone last year, and we don't see any slowdowns in the strength or sales of NAV.  Microsoft has shown strong support of NAV and we expect that only positive things can evolve as new leaders become more familiar with NAV and its users. 

AVF will attend the annual NAV Partner Conference for the third year in a row in November.  Each year, the Corporate Vice President attends and provides a keynote session with Q&A.  We are looking forward to hearing Kirill's vision at this year's NAV Partner Conference and we will share his insights with you then. 

AVF News and Events

AVF Welcomes New Clients: AVF would like to welcome several new customers who purchased Microsoft Dynamics NAV within the last month.  Fairview School District www.fairviewschools.org is a Pennsylvania School District located on the shores of Lake Erie in northwestern PA.  Fairview is AVF's fourth PA school district client.  The Carnegie Institution of Washington www.carnegieinstitution.org is a not-for-profit organization for scientific discovery and was founded in 1902 by Andrew Carnegie.  Calvert Retail www.calvertretail.com offers kitchen and dining supplies via their stores Kitchen & Company and Reading China & Glass.  They have eight stores in five different states on the East Coast.  Bath Saver, Inc. is a home remodeling company that provides Bath Fitter products primarily to residential properties. Snyder Home Services, Inc. is also a home remodeling company providing Bath Fitter products to residential properties.  Visit www.bathfitters.com for information on the products provided by both Bath Saver, Inc. and Snyder Home Services, Inc.  M+R Strategic Services, www.mrss.com, is a national full-service campaign firm that provides tailored strategies in online fundraising and advocacy, lobbying, grassroots organizing, media relations, and strategic consulting to clients working in human rights, public health, education, and the environment. 

Serenic Explorations Conference for Not-for-Profits!  Join AVF Consulting and Serenic for their annual user conference in Long Beach, California, October 1-3.  There will be four tracks:  Core Users, Advanced Users, Technical Track and Partner Track.  Register by August 31st to get the discount rate of $650. Visit the website for more information or to register: http://www.serenic.com/SerenicCorp/events/Explorations-text.html

Product Focus: AR Cash Flow Management

Manage your Cash Flow with the Collections Management Solution for Dynamics NAV

In this ever more competitive economic environment, cash flow management is becoming critical to success. Your single most important cash investment is your receivables and yet in the past all you have had to manage this critical asset is an Aging Report. Not anymore!

This highly specialized contact manager will allow you to eliminate all non-productive collections activities, systematize your collections process, reduce your receivables significantly, and therefore generate what could prove to be a substantial cash flow.

• Your payback can be measured in terms of a few short months. Run the numbers yourself. What cash flow would be generated if you reduced your receivables by a very modest 5% ($20,000 - $30,000 - $50,000)?

• You define who is going to be responsible for collections and when overdue invoices are passed to the application (no more waiting for the Aging Report to be printed, determining who needs to be called, researching invoice or sales order information and maintaining highly inefficient manual notes).

• The application supports an unlimited number of collections reps as well as an organizational hierarchy that allows you to share collections responsibility and manage this critical business process.

• You will be able to access real-time customer/invoice intelligence. This highly specialized contact manager will give you one-click access to all of the information you need to discuss overdue invoices or chargebacks with your customers.

• You can maintain a detailed contact history (who you talked to, what they said, when they promise to pay and when you should call them again).

• If you need to you can collaborate with other people in the organization to collect this account. You can even involve your sales reps in the process by letting them see if any of their customers have collections issues.

• If you have to deal with customer chargebacks you can manage them more effectively using the Collections Management Solution.

• The Collections Management Solution integrates with all versions of Dynamics NAV and can be tailored to meet your organization’s specific business processes.

Virtually every firm should be using some form of software driven collections process. Depending on the current status of your outstanding accounts you could reduce your receivables by 5% or more. While this may not sound like a significant amount, multiply your current receivables balance by 5% and consider the resulting cash flow.

The Collections Management Solution is an extremely versatile system that is not at all complicated, but can become very sophisticated if required. Otherwise, the system can literally be set up in less than an hour with an initial set of target invoices and customers identified.

For more information about collections management, or to schedule a product demonstration, contact Jeremy Fass at 443-279-1019 or jfass@avfconsulting.com.