It is time to move – Dynamics 365 Business Central Online

In the text below Todor Kanchev – Product Manager, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, FTS Group answers questions related to Dynamics 365 Business Central Online:

1. Why should customers choose a cloud system to manage their business? What are the advantages of Dynamics 365 Business Central Online?

The digital world we live in gives us a new way of communication and access to information. This is particularly relevant to business products we use in our daily work, such as MS Office or Dynamics 365. When we talk about the advantages of the on-line version of Dynamics 365 Business Central, I’d suggest looking at them from three different perspectives – that of the end user, business management and IT management.

As users, we want to use things around us quickly and easily. In Dynamics 365 Business Central we have direct access to the application via a web browser from anywhere and on any device – laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Microsoft provides the online version as a service where you can set up your workplace in the system in just a few steps, including the connection to Office 365 applications. Furthermore, you have access also to the applications in Microsoft AppSource that are specially developed as additions to Business Central.

From a business perspective, the online solution offers flexibility in terms of using and paying for licenses. You can increase the number of users or reduce it if required.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Online will make it very easy for you in terms of IT support too. The product is hosted оn MS Azure, which means that you do not need to set aside funds for servers, operating system or MS SQL licenses. The highest level of security is maintained in terms of archiving and recovery from disasters, as well as in terms of hacking.

2. And what can Dynamics 365 Business Central Online offer us with regard to integration with other Microsoft products?

Since all Microsoft 365 products are in the cloud, with Business Central Online you also get direct integration with a number of them. For example, reports that you run in Business Central can be easily linked and upgraded with Power BI. This means that in Business Central Online you actually have BI reports and you do not have to get into Power BI in order to generate them. An interesting and promising link is the link that Microsoft has been building between MS Teams and Business Central. In the last year we have seen several additions in this direction. The MS Teams communication app is becoming an essential part of the overall business process in companies which, in fact, would imply a wider exchange of data with regard to contacts and tasks between Teams and Business Central.

Of course, there is an integration available with other Microsoft 365 products as well, such as Office 365 (Word, Excel, Outlook), SharePoint, OneDrive. The integration with Power Platform and Customer Engagement takes place through the common platform for communication between Dynamics 365 products – Dataverse.

3. We all know that cloud systems go hand-in-hand with regular automatic updates. Can you tell us more about this process in Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Many customers choose Dynamics 365 Business Central Online precisely because of the possibility to have the latest version of the product. But for that to happen, efforts and control are needed on the part of both Microsoft and Microsoft partners. Microsoft sets a release schedule and takes care of the automatic upgrade. You have 2 major updates of Business Central that are released annually in April and October, and monthly minor updates.

Each partner, such as FTS, having own Business Central applications in the AppSource, is obliged to ensure compatibility of their applications with the main versions of the product. This means that we are responsible for making ourselves familiar with the changes in the program code in advance, to modify, if necessary, our application and to provide the necessary tests to ensure its operability after the update of Business Central.

Thanks to the tools provided by Microsoft, some of these activities are automated, but it is  always advisable to have a specialist at hand. On balance, we make all these efforts in order to achieve greater security and satisfaction with the result that our customers always have access to the latest business functionalities of Business Central.

The series of articles on the advantages of Dynamics 365 Business Central Online can be viewed HERE: https://bit.ly/3nwcjGF

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