What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central? All you need to know !!

Dynamics 365 Business Central brings the full power of Dynamics NAV to the cloud.

With 160,000+ customers, more than 2.7 million users, and 3500 partners worldwide, Dynamics NAV has sold in 195 countries – that’s pretty much every country in the world.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-based, all-in-one business management solution which enables customers to upgrade from their entry-level accounting software or legacy ERP system to one single, comprehensive solution to manage finances, operations, sales and customer service.

Business Central has been called "NAV in the cloud", but there are differences from Dynamics NAV. Therefore, there may also be a good reason for choosing one solution rather than another.

Business Central is built around the following three business benefits:

• No silos(allows to share info's between departments) - The close integration between business applications in Dynamics 365 ensures a business without data silos where you can share updated data and not least work smarter and more efficiently.

• Built for development - Dynamics 365 is a flexible business platform that can be scaled to suit and meet your business needs in terms of size and complexity.

• Business insight - The integration to Power BI and the ability to utilize the Azure Intelligence tools (for example Cortana for forecasts), provide increased insight into your company and business.

The differences between D365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV

Functionality

As with Dynamics NAV, the functionality of the D365 Business Central is divided into two so-called 'packages', Essentials and Premium. The functionality of 'Essentials' corresponds to NAV's 'Starter Pack' and the functionality of 'Premium' corresponds to NAV's 'Extended Pack'.

HOW MUCH WILL MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 BUSINESS CENTRAL COST?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will be available at two price points: 

Essentials and Premium Licenses for Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials will be £52.79 GBP per user/month and Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium will stand at £75.40 GBP per user/month. All users in a tenancy must have the same license type, businesses will not be able to mix and match Essentials and Premium licenses.

The following table is an overview of high-level functional areas addressed in D365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV.

D365 Business Central Essentials / Dynamics NAV Starter Pack	D365 Business Central Premium / Dynamics NAV Extended
Financial Management General Ledger Cash Management Fixed Assets Currencies Consolidation	Financial Management udvidet Inter-Company (Essentals) Cost Accounting (Essentials)
Supply Chain Management Sales Order processing Purchase and procurement Item management Locations Basic Warehousing	Supply Chain Management udvidet Advanced Warehousing (Essentials)
Jobs and Resources Job Planning, Budgets and Invoicing Resource allocations Timesheets
Contact ManagementContacts Campaigns Opportunity Management D365 Sales Integration	Service Management Service Contracts Service Items Service Order Management
Assembly Assembly Bill of Materials	Manufacturing Production BOMs Works order management Capacity and Demand planning

• Team Member licenses will be available at £6 GBP per user/month and will allow users to:

Read all tables across the application

• Approve workflow instances
• Edit purchase and sales quotes
• Edit timesheets and personal information
• Update existing financial entries

It is important to note that all Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central licenses will be named user licenses. This means that businesses must purchase a license for each user they wish to access the software.

Access the solution

On a computer, Business Central is accessed via a web client through a browser, on mobile devices, you acces the Business Central via an application you download. Therefore, you can only access and use Business Central on your computer via the browser you prefer and not, as you are used to from Dynamics NAV, via a local desktop client.

On the other hand, you can use Dynamics NAV both with a local client installed on the computer, but also access the solution online via a browser. If you are using a mobile or tablet, there are also apps for Dynamics NAV.

Licensing

Business Central is licensed as a per month subscription, where you only pay per named user. This means, among other things, that there will be no opportunity for simultaneous users, prior purchases, annual maintenance agreements, etc.

This new licensing model will probably be problematic for some of the NAV users who are used to the payment model we know from there. On the other hand, Office 365 users who already know this licensing model, will probably find it easier to adapt.

Hosting options

Business Central is a SaaS solution and is therefore hosted exclusively in the cloud on Azure by Microsoft.

With Dynamics NAV, you have both the options to implement the solution on Azure, in a private data center or locally on your own server.

Changes

As mentioned above, the two solutions are very similar, but Business Central has minor functionality changes, which have been required to take, as certain security considerations must be taken when running an application as a SaaS solution. The changes in Business Central imply, among other things, that access to some files on the servers as well as access to some of the system tables has been blocked for developers.

Extended functionality

Business Central allows you to install extensions developed by ISV (Independent software vendor) partners directly from Microsoft AppSource. That way you can expand the application's functionality and quickly test and try out the new options and then quickly uninstall the add-on if it does not meet the needs you expected.

This option is not available with Dynamics NAV. On the other hand, with NAV you can customize the solution's functionality so it is tailored to the individual company and develop add-on modules that extend the functionality of the solution. However, everything indicates that these opportunities will at some point be transferred to Business Central.

Updates

Business Central is constantly updated, so rather than waiting for the annual version release, as we know it from Dynamics NAV, Business Central is updated on a monthly basis.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR DYNAMICS 365 FOR FINANCE AND OPERATIONS, BUSINESS EDITION CUSTOMERS?

Existing Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business edition customers will be automatically upgraded to Dynamics 365 Business Central with access to new functionality and an all-new user interface. There are also a number of discounted transition pricing options for existing Microsoft Dynamics customers, available through Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Providers (CSP).

Our favourite capabilities in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Because Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV run the same application code base, this empowers us to smoothly transition all our Dynamics NAV partners and customers into Dynamics 365 Business Central. Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud first solution, designed for the age of digital transformation powered by the cloud. 

But it will not be a cloud only solution. In the fall it will be available for self-deployment on premise and in the intelligent edge for customers that prefer that option. 

For the existing partners and customers, this will be just another upgrade, like they would do for Dynamics NAV, with a name change. 

For customers interested in the cloud, starting today, Dynamics 365 Business Central offers unprecedented opportunities to drive transformation of the customers’ businesses, increasing their business performance through the power of Microsoft cloud technologies and services.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 BUSINESS CENTRAL?

In terms of the future of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, we are expecting it to follow the course of the original roadmap shared by Microsoft in October 2017. This would position it alongside the release of Dynamics NAV 2018 R2 before the two solutions share one name in the subsequent release and run in parallel as cloud and on-premises solutions.