Technologies to BOOM or BUST Your Supply Chain Strategy

Did you know that poor cash-flow management is causing nine out of ten SMBs to fail? Even a company that has secured an adequate amount of funding can face serious cash flow problems. To ensure that your business won’t become a number in the failure column, there are two things you need to do: 1) identify the factors affecting your cash flow; 2) find a way to better control your financial universe.

The most common causes of cash flow problems include excess or high-value inventory; poor inventory control and procurement planning resulting in inventory shortages and the inability to deliver on the promise; slow-moving inventory items leading to a low turnover rate; decreasing revenues due to inaccurate sales forecasts and/or inadequate goal setting; and the inability to identify the obstacles to increasing sales.

One way to overcome liquidity issues is to opt for an ERP solution that delivers comprehensive insights into business processes, including supply chain management, along with superior integration, analysis, monitoring, and control capabilities.

2.  Gaining Control over Business Operations

Microsoft’s commitment to providing the best supply chain management solution has resulted in continual advancements in ERP, culminating with the latest version of Dynamics NAV. Combining ERP with BI tools, Dynamics NAV 2015 allows SMBs to streamline day-to-day operations, enhance their supply chain strategies, and improve cash management along with profit margins.

To fully understand the benefits of using Dynamics NAV 2015, we’re going to analyze the capabilities of this supply chain management solution in relation to your management team, sales team, and finance team.  If not currently on Dynamics NAV 2015, read about the exciting new features.

In a nutshell, NAV 2015 will allow your management team to:

• gain a 360-degree, real-time view of business data, operations, and performance KPIs for better decision making with regard to budgets, costs, inventories, workflows, etc.;
• identify key decision makers and organize resources to respond quickly and efficiently to customer requests;
• use BI tools, such as PowerPivot and PowerView, to access, analyze, and compare information by specific criteria, measures, dimensions (e.g. projects, products, departments, etc.);
• accurately forecast customer demands to avoid the shortage and excess of items in inventory;
• transfer forecasts automatically to the production manager so that he knows exactly what and when to order;
• track profit-and-loss performance by company and/or subsidiary;
• request, plan, and implement changes in a controlled way, irrespective of the production schedule, and liquidate specific items in the inventory before they become obsolete;
• capture all the suggestions, comments, and issues pertaining to products and services and use them to drive continuous improvement;
• get clear status overviews of all projects to accurately track scheduling, supply, and budget deviations;
• improve customer satisfaction levels by monitoring supply chain management, forecasting demands, and planning accordingly;
• integrate Dynamics NAV with custom applications for more versatile, robust ERP functionality.

With Dynamics NAV, your sales team will be able to:

• create role-based dashboards (e.g. sales representative, sales account executive, sales engineer, sales manager, etc.);
• access Report Player to get quick overviews of stocks, orders, and customer profiles;
• forecast sales based on historical data;
• monitor the activity of each client to identify your top customers and build strong relationships with them to encourage loyalty and increase sales;
• analyze drivers of profitability to find new sales opportunities;
• use KPIs, charts, graphs, cues, and advanced visualization capabilities to alter business data interactively, in real time, and across the entire system; visualize, analyze, and compare potential consequences of different actions relating to the sales process; build product sheets based on up-to-date pricing and specifications; keep track of pending tasks; and review and process orders remotely. Furthermore, your sales team can use the Table Builder to access different sources of information and answer any ad-hoc queries potential customers may ask.

With Dynamics NAV 2015, your finance team can:

• integrate Dynamics NAV with Office 365 for better decision making with regard to costs and financial returns;
• use General Ledger, Jet Reports Express, and other features to aggregate data into meaningful sets of financial statements, streamline accounting processes, create self-service reports based on custom formulas in Excel, etc.;
• use KPIs to control, monitor, and analyze collection performance, currency conversion, bank reconciliation, resource allocation, etc.;
• create various “what-if” scenarios and assess their impact on your company’s expense profile;
• get up-to-date, accurate overviews of the General Ledger accounts to identify potential issues and implement corrective actions to minimize cash flow problems.  

Streamlining inventory operations can be a logistical challenge without the BI capabilities of a modern and dynamic ERP solution. Fortunately, Dynamics NAV 2015 delivers all the features you need to effectively control your entire business, improve procurement methodologies, and reduce inventory carrying costs, with a positive impact on your cash flow and bottom line. 

Join the other 110,000 Dynamics NAV customers and counting to make your work life easier. Let us add your company to our reference list.  Contact our sales team today!  Sales@clientsfirst-tx.com or call us at 800.331.8382.