Insight eNews

A Monthly Newsletter from AVF Consulting, Inc.

Microsoft Navision Solution Center &

 Microsoft Certified Partner

December 2004

In this edition:

From the President:  Top Ten reasons to upgrade to Navision 4.0

AVF News:  AVF Events and Training Classes

Tip or Trick:  Viewing Records in a Quick Reference Format

 

Print Friendly Version

 

 

 

 

 

From the President-- Andrew Fass

Better than Ever: Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision 4.0

As you set your goals for 2005, consider how the newest version of Navision can help your organization grow.  Here are the TOP TEN reasons to upgrade to Navision 4.0.  

1. Powerful analytics tools help give you targeted insight into your business.
   By helping business decision-makers quickly gain access to relevant information, Business Analytics for Microsoft Navision helps businesses respond quickly to changing situations and make faster, more confident business decisions. Built to meet a wide range of analysis and reporting needs, Business Analytics utilizes OLAP to deliver targeted information directly to user’s desktops, and offers both a base and an advanced solution. Smaller businesses can reap the advantages of a solution that lets them easily configure information and work within Microsoft Office Excel®, with the freedom to add capabilities when the time is right. 
    

2. Efficiently exchange information and transactions across companies.
   Simplify complex financial processes with the ability to create and distribute inter-company transactions—including sales and purchase documents, general ledger entries, and more, with support for different charts of accounts, multiple databases, multiple currencies, and multiple languages.
    

3. Take the pain out of routine accounting processes.
   Make your system work for you with the ability to quickly reverse journal postings and changes for manual entries in General Ledger journals—including related entries such as customer, vendor, and VAT entries—with full audit support.  You can also now define and apply partial payments, including selecting specific amounts to be applied to documents and viewing information about entries and applications prior to General Ledger posting. Plus, new consolidation features help enable global businesses to choose their preferred method for translating the General Ledger account from a foreign entity.
    

4. Empower employees with a solution they’ll want to use.
   With Microsoft Navision 4.0, employees work with a familiar, Microsoft Office Outlook® navigation menu that can be tailored to the way your business works. Employees can also personalize menus themselves to meet their specific productivity needs. And with an enhanced sales documents interface that speeds ordering processes, along with easy desktop access to simple reporting functionality, you’ll help give your staff the power to perform key tasks more efficiently and effectively.
    

5. Sharpen your competitive edge with Business Notifications.
   Gain more controlled awareness of changing conditions and ensure that operations track to plan. With Microsoft Navision Business Notifications, easy-to-use functionality helps you automatically generate and send e-mail messages to employees, suppliers, industry partners, and customers to keep them informed about mission-critical business issues and help enable your organization to prevent, rather than react to, potential show-stoppers in your processes. Designed to map to your business requirements, Business Notifications offers a wide range of predefined templates, as well as the ability to define rules that meet specific needs.
    

6. Make Decision Support part of your everyday business operations.
   New pre-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help give you fast insight into business health across your organization—including financial management, supply chain management, and customer relationship management. KPIs can easily be viewed in graphical displays, with easy drill-down into Microsoft Navision applications. With Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partner assistance, views can be customized to meet precise needs.
    
7. Produce key reports easily and efficiently.
   Microsoft Navision 4.0 offers new reporting features—Analysis Budgets, Sales and Purchase Reports, and Analysis Views by Dimension—that are ideal for smaller companies that work with straightforward data. Easy-to-use functionality enables employees to create reports directly from within Microsoft Navision, giving them the insight they need without adding complexity to the way they work.
    
8. Manage manufacturing processes to keep pace in a competitive marketplace.
   Inspired by the day-to-day needs of smaller manufacturers, Microsoft Navision Manufacturing Foundation provides the core planning and process management capabilities you need to help your company produce high-quality products, provide more responsive customer service, and improve business performance. This streamlined foundation offers deep visibility into work-in-process and support for order-by-order planning workflow, manual planning, a graphical production schedule, Gantt charts and easy production reporting. Along with an attractive entry price point, this flexible solution supports a phased implementation that enables businesses to purchase additional modules when the time is right.
    

9. Work seamlessly with Microsoft applications and technologies.
   We’re better together with Microsoft Office®—Microsoft Navision 4.0 offers the look and feel of Microsoft Outlook, along with improved integrations with Office applications that help you make full use of the productivity applications you already know and use. Just as important, Microsoft technologies fuel processes and performance for your solution. Microsoft SQL Server_™ 2004 analysis capabilities and notification services are fully utilized for Microsoft Navision Business Analytics and Notifications and Alerts applications, while Microsoft BizTalk Server® 2004 helps improve performance for Microsoft Navision Commerce Gateway 2004.
    

10. Rest assured that upgrades and customizations don’t have to be painful, costly processes.

With an improved upgrade toolkit, AVF can help streamline the process of upgrading to Microsoft Navision 4.0, saving you both time and money. Microsoft Navision 4.0 also offers an XML Port feature that makes it easier for Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partners to customize your solution, implement and manage XML documents, and enable customers to easily manage data exchange of business documents. In addition, the new Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Driver in Microsoft Navision enables Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partners to better work with cross-platform communication.

AVF News & Events

2005 Training Classes:  The 2005 AVF training schedule is available on our website.  Visit www.avfconsulting.com to get details on our classes.

January 2005
•   Super User 1/20/05

February 2005
•   Purchases & Payables 2/10/05
•   Sales & Receivables 2/24/05

March 2005
•   Jet Reports I 3/14/05 - 3/15/05

April 2005
•   General Ledger 4/7/05
•   Jet Reports II 4/18/05 - 4/19/05

May 2005
•   Object Designer/Report Writer I  5/12/05
•   Object Designer/Report Writer II  5/24/05

June 2005
•   Fixed Assets 6/9/05
•   HR/Payroll 6/23/05
 

January User Group Meeting:   AVF Navision customers can attend this bi-monthly meeting to meet with other Navision users, learn new skills, see new features and developments and more.  Register today at http://www.avfconsulting.com/news_events.asp. 

Get discounts on AVF Consulting rates--become a CCP member! Members of AVF's Customer Care Plus program receive a discount of $15/hour on consulting rates. Join today and save hundreds, even thousands of dollars.  Other advantages include discounts on training classes, free attendance to AVF's User Group meetings, free support and more.  Contact Gregory James at 443-279-1022 to sign up today.

Tip or Trick

Viewing Records in a Quick Reference Format

When viewing records, the list is not always in a quick reference format.  You can easily remedy this by changing the way that the records are sorted.  In this example we are viewing a Vendor’s Ledger entries.  Select the Sort button from the toolbar. 

After selecting the Sort button, the Sort window appears.  Different “keys” are available depending on the screen you want sorted.  These entries are sorted by posting date, but perhaps I need to view them by the status of open and due date.  Scroll to the sort key that you would like to use and then mark to view ascending or descending.  Then select OK.

The entries are now arranged by open and due date, sorted ascending.

Note that like a field filter or table filter, when I leave this screen, the sort will revert back to the default layout.