Microsoft Dynamics Navision for Inventory Management: Hit Or Flop?

Multi-faceted, multi-functional, agile, highly diverse, quick to install and easy to use are some of the adjectives associated with Microsoft Dynamics Navision. It has been a revelation in the ERP domain helping hundreds of thousands of small and mid-segment businesses across the world in setting up base and grow.

Inventory Management is another functional domain in which the Navision has several benefits to offer.

1. The premier Microsoft Dynamics ERP for Small Business owners helps cut down on purchase and inventory costs. It helps connect inventory control with purchasing, sales order processing and demand planning in order to improve cash flow and help ensure availability of the most appropriate stock.

2. The solution helps gain comprehensive visibility into the inventory process. Companies with a substantial inventory get to nicely balance availability of items and other factors such as their demand in the market along with their expiration dates throughout the supply chain. This in turn helps minimize on-hand inventory, maximize replenishment and increase warehouse efficiency.

3. Microsoft Dynamics Navision helps deliver better service to customers as the solution helps promise orders that can actually be delivered and also handle those awkward last minute exceptions through readily available inventory data. Companies get to respond quickly to queries by customers and deliver better service.

4. Less time is spent on manual tasks. Thanks to the ERP and its functionalities, lesser time is spent on manual data entries and tracking items.

5. The operational efficacy of the business goes up invariably as the inventory management process gets tightened further. Distribution costs come down as well.

6. An organization’s inventory accuracy goes up by many notches thanks to automation and the item tracking capabilities offered by the solution.

There are a lot of other areas in Inventory Management where this remarkable Microsoft Dynamics ERP for Small Business owners helps make successful inroads.

1. It helps understand the costs of items better throughout the warehouse and production processes. A few other processes that can be added to this are inventory, work-in-process and costs of goods sold. This helps efficiently manage sales and purchase prices along with line discounts with vendors and customers. The software further helps break down costs category wise such as materials, capacity, subcontracting and overheads. NAV helps tighten control of closing processes, helps improve batch-job costing and further streamline reconciliation with general ledger.

2. It helps enhance the accuracy of a company’s warehouse management, which includes picking and putting away of items, physical inventory counts and moving items from bin to bin.

3. Order processing of an organization becomes better as customers are provided with accurate item availability and deliveries too can be done on time.

4. NAV enables the processing of returned inventory and also accounts for additional costs. It helps organize credit memos, replacement goods, returns to vendors and combined return of shipments and receipts.

5. Companies get to track and substitute items, trace serial numbers to determine the location of item purchase and selling, offer alternative items to customers when the ones they seek are not in stock and see if the substitute items being sold can help deliver some sort of profit.

6. Navision also helps identify what customers seek by cross-referring customer code, internal code and vendor code.

7. NAV enables companies to handle inventory across multiple sites and locations through a single database for a complete overview and eventually create profit centers.

8. The software also helps deal with customers who demand non-stock items and generate quotes accordingly.

9. The solution helps determine the counting frequency per item unit in order to increase the accuracy in inventory and accordingly meet shipping deadlines.

10. It helps generate e-mail messages so that personnel, suppliers and partners can be alerted for a change in inventory levels, order status and replenishment needs.