Start Your Digital Transformation With “Business Central” Technology

Did you know 86% of CEOs believe the success of their companies’ digital investments depends on developing a clear vision of how digital technologies can deliver a competitive advantage?[1]

In this information age, businesses no longer have to guess what their customers will buy or how they’ll react. With technology bringing in mountains of data, they can predict what customers will want before those customers even know they want it. But gaining this ability requires businesses to first embrace digital transformation.

Digital transformation is a strategy where leaders re-envision existing business models and adopt a different way of utilizing people, data and processes. This allows them to create greater value for customers and capture new opportunities for their organization.

Attaining digital transformation and the resulting competitive advantage requires the right tools. Today, we’re going to discuss how you can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to simplify processes, integrate applications, empower your employees and make more informed business decisions.

The All-in-One Business Management Solution

Business Central was built to be modern, intelligent, adaptable and unified. By connecting people and processes in efficient ways, the application saves time, allows employees to focus on core responsibilities and increases productivity. Business Central not only integrates with Office 365 — including Outlook and Excel — but also offers the same functionality on mobile devices as on a desktop, meaning you can run your business from any platform, anywhere. It’s also cloud-based, meaning all data is real-time and up to date.

To see how your business can benefit from using Business Central, let’s look at two roles: the business owner and an accountant.

The Owner

From sales to inventory, and margins to project overrun, owners must understand every aspect of their business to make the best, most informed decisions. Using Business Central, owners can review a wide range of reports and analytics, identify trends and opportunities, review customer histories and overall better understand the health of their business.

For example, identifying trends can be frustrating and time-consuming. Owners often have to deal with manual processes to manipulate underlying data. With Business Central — and added integration with other cloud applications such as Power BI — owners gain rich reports, forecasts and visualizations that help them understand where they need to focus their attention. They can export data to Excel, or even export reports straight into PowerPoint, where they can easily and professionally present them to other stakeholders.

Using Business Central, owners can spend less time searching for and compiling data and more time analyzing it. They’ll find many benefits in being able to quickly identify trends and access relevant information such as key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to make better business decisions.

The Accountant

Business Central provides accountants with a lot of functionality to help save time, limit errors and improve their control of data. The homepage, which can be personalized with the actions accountants need and use most, displays quick links to information such as accounting periods, cash flow forecasts, trial balances and the chart of accounts.

This streamlines access to key information and allows accountants to focus on strategic tasks such as analyzing data and making informed decisions. By integrating with Excel, Outlook and other Microsoft applications, Business Central helps ensure correct data entry via fewer clicks or jumping between applications.

For example, in Outlook, there is a button in the top ribbon called “Contact Insights,” which integrates with Business Central. Clicking it lets you perform a variety of important actions, including viewing stats on vendors (e.g., balances and outstanding orders), drilling into charts and metrics, and automating the creation and posting of invoices. Accountants will find many benefits in cutting data entry process time, limiting errors and reducing the time needed to learn a new system.

Jumpstart Your Business’s Digital Transformation

Organizations that are efficient and able to utilize their data to make crucial decisions are primed for success in this digital age. Business Central provides streamlined processes, improved forecasting and analytics and management capabilities across departments, from sales to operations to finance.

As a cloud solution provider (CSP) in the Microsoft partner network, Wipfli has the knowledge, experience and capabilities to determine if Business Central is right for your business. Contact us to learn more about its features and benefits, or for a complimentary demonstration. You can also view the webinar on this topic by clicking here.