Adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better

[Audio] Centaure Information Technology Services presents Microsoft Business Central: Adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better..

[Audio] In the 2020's, disruption is the new normal. Disruptions are reshaping business, requiring businesses to move at an even faster speed. The only constant is change. What began as accelerating and converging technologies has become accelerating and converging markets. The business model changes of the last decade are nowhere near the changes that are coming. Game changing innovation begins in the business model, not the product. Coupled with this is the fact that market volatility is turning "business as usual" into "business UN-usual." Since the global pandemic there simply is no steadfast norm. SMB leaders are facing labor shortages, rising wage growth, multi-generational workforce challenges, along with a mindset shift, where people are fundamentally thinking differently about how, when, and where they work. People want transparency, accountability, and connection across their business. If a company fails to innovate and adapt, they will be overtaken by more forward-thinking competitors. Now more than ever, leaders of small and midsized businesses (SMBs) need to ensure their people are enabled to deliver on customer expectations, no matter where they are or what comes next..

[Audio] Traditional SMB financial management systems don't allow for rapid change. 20% of SMBs will cease operations by 2025 because they cannot pivot fast enough to digitize their operations to meet customer demands.1 73% of employees want flexible hybrid work options to stay post-pandemic.2 76% of CFOs are dissatisfied with cross-functional collaboration to bridge the gap between operational and financial planning.3.

[Audio] Traditional small business accounting systems inhibit growth and make it difficult to adapt to disruptions and rapid change. They're manual, inefficient and error-prone, and they bog down employees, hindering their operational effectiveness and preventing them from focusing on more strategic work that could help your business grow and expand. This often leads to frustrated employees, low profit margins, higher employee turnover, and increased costs..

[Audio] Many businesses remain limited by systems that simply don't allow for change. Here are some specific challenges and needs that a few customers we've worked with were experiencing with their existing platforms. Design Offices needed a finance and customer engagement platform for its sales and accounting departments to accommodate rapid and anticipated business growth. CURRAX wanted to run its business from anywhere and have all the advantages a cloud solution could bring. Call2Recycle needed to find a unified ERP and CRM tool to tightly manage and track all aspects of its operations. We'll revisit these businesses later to see how Business Central helped them meet these needs..

[Audio] To request a Business Central demonstration, please visit our website at centaure-its.com.

[Audio] To help SMBs overcome these challenges and make their visions a reality, Microsoft offers Dynamics 365 Business Central, is a connected business management solution that enables you to adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. Connected means you can bring together your finance, sales, services, and operations teams within a single, easy-to-use application to get the insights needed to drive your business forward and be prepared for what's next. Dynamics 365 Business Central was named the "Best ERP System" in 2023 by Forbes Advisor - Best ERP Systems Of 2023 – Forbes Advisor.

[Audio] Here's a list of Business Central capabilities. Note that Service Management and Manufacturing are only available in Dynamic 365 Business Central Premium. This is the full list of capabilities. Finance covers: General Ledger Dimensions Multiple currencies Budgets Accounts schedules Consolidation Intercompany postings Cash flow forecast Fixed assets Cost accounting Deferrals Bank account management Electronic payments and direct debits Customer payment process Reconciliation of bank transactions Bank account reconciliation Check writing XBLR Sales and marketing covers: Contact management Campaign management Interaction and document management Email logging Opportunity management Dynamics 365 Sales integration Sales and delivery covers: Sales invoicing Sales order management Sales line pricing and discounting Campaign pricing Sales invoice discounts Alternative shipping addresses Sales return order management Bulk invoicing from Microsoft bookings Purchasing and payables covers: Purchase invoicing Purchase order management Purchase return order management Alternative order addresses Purchase invoice discounts Purchase invoice discounts Alternative vendors Vendor catalog items Inventory covers: Basic inventory Item categories Item attributes Item tracking Multiple locations Location transfers Shipping agents Item charges Item cross-references Item substitutions Item budgets Analysis reports Cycle counting Supply planning and availability covers: Supply planning Demand forecasting Sales and inventory forecasting Order promising Calendars Drop shipments Order planning Project management covers: Basic resources Capacity management Multiple costs Jobs Time sheets Service management covers: Planning and dispatching Service contract management Service item management Service order management Service price management Warehouse management covers: Bin Bin setup Inventory picks and put-aways Warehouse receipt Warehouse shipment Picks and put-aways Warehouse management systems Manufacturing covers: Assembly management Standard cost worksheet Production bill of materials Basic capacity planning Machine centers Version management Production orders Finite loading.

[Audio] No other vendor offers the breadth of the Microsoft cloud, while continuing to be modular and extensible, so our customers can start with what they need today and adapt as they grow. Also, Business Central runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, which means you benefit from multi-layered, state-of-art security across physical datacenters, infrastructure, and operations, with security features like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, regulatory compliance, and more. You also benefit from a team of more than 3,500 global cybersecurity experts that work together to help safeguard your business assets and data in Azure..

[Audio] Business Central Differentiation is based on reliability, performance, security, compliance, and scalability..

[Audio] Business Central uses a layered approach to application security that includes authentication, authorization, and auditing, as well as data encryption and secure development practices. Authentication Before users can sign-in to the Business Central application, they must be authenticated as valid user in the system. Business Central On-Premises supports several authentication methods, such as Windows and Azure Active Directory. Business Central Online uses strictly Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Authorization Once authenticated, authorization determines which areas a user can access, such as the pages and reports that they can open, and the permissions that they have on associated data. Auditing Business Central includes several auditing features that help you track information about who is signing in, what their permissions are, what data have they changed, and more. Data Encryption You can encrypt data on the Business Central server by generating new or importing existing encryption keys that you enable on the Business Central server instance that connects to the database. Security Development Lifecycle Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is a software development process that helps developers build more secure software and address security compliance requirements while reducing development cost..

[Audio] Here are interesting figures like return on investment, savings, and productivity with some examples from companies..

[Audio] Here's how Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you address the challenges of disruption by enabling you to adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. Adapt faster: Be prepared for disruption with the insights needed to pivot quickly, shift business models, and cultivate strategic plans. Work smarter: Empower your people to confidently take action and get more done with AI-infused processes, automated workflows, and interoperability with Microsoft 365 + Teams. Perform better: Enable better business performance with continuous process improvements and responsiveness across your entire business—not just financials. Let's take a look at each of these in more detail..

[Audio] Adapt faster: Be prepared for disruption with the insights needed to pivot quickly, shift business models, and cultivate strategic plans. Innovate and adopt new business models faster with flexible deployment models, mobility, reliability, security, and adaptable Microsoft cloud solution that grows with your business. A dynamic ecosystem creates adaptable business and operating models. Deploy in the Microsoft cloud or on-premises Easily tailored and extendable solution – over 2,000 apps on AppSource, while the Power Platform allows low code/no code customization Can be used on any device, anywhere.

[Audio] Take your business on the go Take your business on the go: work wherever your business takes you, with full capabilities on desktop, tablet, or mobile, on premises or in the cloud, across Windows, Android and iOS devices. Get a consistent experience across all your devices and secure single sign on to calendar, email, files, collaboration tools, and business processes..

[Audio] Extend the solution with industry-specific apps built for Dynamics 365. Get purpose-driven extensions from Microsoft AppSource business applications marketplace with over 3,800 apps designed for Business Central to meet you unique vertical or business-specific requirements..

[Audio] Business Central was awarded Fastest Implementation for Mid-Market Distribution ERP in 2023 by G2..

[Audio] Here's a specific example of one of our customers, Design Offices, and how we helped them adapt faster. As we mentioned earlier, Design Offices needed a finance and customer engagement platform for its sales and accounting departments to accommodate rapid and anticipated business growth. By embracing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Design Offices has scaled up and optimized its sales and purchasing processes without having to operate an independent IT infrastructure. Streamlining customer and employee experiences Finance professionals at Design Offices use Dynamics 365 Business Central to optimize and digitize payment processes, while sales managers use Dynamics 365 Sales to track and qualify leads and manage contracts, especially those that may automatically recur. Expanding the scope of the solution Design Offices extended its Dynamics 365 environment to take advantage of Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Azure cloud resources, including Azure API Management and Azure Active Directory B2C. The company streamlines workflows using Power Automate, increases data visibility and delivers insights through Power BI, and empowers non-technical employees to quickly develop applications using Power Apps. It also uses Azure Logic Apps to build further integration into its workflows and optimize its operating models to help manage sales. Uniting data, achieving flexibility, and unlocking new customer insights By managing operations and sales processes on a single, centralized system, Design Offices now has the adaptable IT infrastructure it always dreamt of to proactively address ever-changing customer demands. -- Design Offices adapts business processes to support rapid growth with Dynamics 365 Business Central Florian Bauer, Project Manager quotes: "No other provider could offer us the potential to integrate our complete accounting department in just four months like Microsoft did." - "All of the data for our mobile Design Offices member app is collected in Dynamics 365, sent via custom APIs, and displayed in a customized native iOS and Android app. If we still had an on-premises system, we would never have had a chance to provide such an app." - Florian Bauer, Project Manager, Digital, Design Offices.

[Audio] Work smarter: Empower your people to confidently take action and get more done with actionable insights, AI-infused processes, automated workflows, and interoperability to Microsoft 365, including Teams, Word, Excel, and Outlook. Connectivity and data drive agile and productive experiences Predict sales using historical data Role-based workspaces and workflow guidance Improved productivity with embedded Microsoft 365.

[Audio] We have invested in fueling AI innovation for years. We've spent decades in research and development. We're committed to advancing the principles and practice of Responsible AI. We've built security and trust into our platform and all our solutions right from the start. We've created purpose-built AI infrastructure to deliver reliability and performance at scale, based on thousands of interconnected GPUs and Infiniband networking. And as a result, we are trusted by AI leaders like OpenAI and many others. In fact, OpenAI builds and trains all of their AI models and experiences using the unique AI infrastructure of Microsoft Azure. This innovation is exciting, but as AI is poised to transform our lives, we must collectively define new rules, norms, and practices for the use and impact of this technology. The Microsoft Cloud runs on trust. Trust has been a fundamental promise we have built into the Microsoft Cloud since the very beginning. Data is the fuel that powers AI technology – and you need to trust what your technology partners are doing with your data. ---- There are three fundamental promises we make with the Microsoft Cloud: First, your data is your data. It is not our data. It is your data. That means it is yours to own and control. Your data to choose how you want to leverage and monetize. Second, your data is not used to train or enrich the foundation AI models used by others. You don't have to worry about anyone other than your organization is benefiting from AI that is trained on your data. Only your organization benefits from your data and business processes. And third, your data and AI models – in fact, your entire organization – are protected at every step by the most comprehensive enterprise compliance and security controls in the industry. That is Microsoft's commitment to you..

[Audio] Demo video Auto-generate compelling, creative product descriptions - Save time and drive sales with engaging marketing text tailored to your product and brand Challenges Producing and publishing product descriptions is resource- and time-intensive Description copy is prone to erroneous product details Creating unique, original text for similar products can be challenging With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central Bring products to market faster with AI-generated product description suggestions Create copy ideas in seconds based on selected product attributes, tone and format Seamlessly publish to Shopify with just a few clicks.

[Audio] Improve customer service with Sales and Inventory Forecasting In a highly competitive business landscape, effective inventory management can be the key differentiator between a successful business and one that struggles to retain customers and remain profitable. Inventory management is a trade-off between customer service and managing your costs. While low inventory requires less working capital, inventory shortages can lead to missed sales. Using AI, the Sales and Inventory Forecast extension predicts future sales using historical data to help you avoid stockouts. Based on the forecast and inventory levels, the extension helps create replenishment requests to your vendors, helping you save time and improve inventory availability to keep your customers happy. Anticipate business challenges with Late Payment Predictions Effectively managing receivables is critical to the overall financial health of a business. The Late Payment Prediction extension can help you reduce outstanding receivables and fine-tune your collections strategy by predicting whether sales invoices will be paid on time. For example, if a payment is predicted to be late, you might decide to adjust the terms of payment or the payment method for the customer. By anticipating late payments and making adjustments, you can better manage and ultimately reduce overdue receivables. Enhance decision-making with Cash Flow Analysis Azure AI in Business Central helps you create a comprehensive cash flow forecast with Cash Flow Analysis, enhancing decision-making so you can stay in control of your cash flow. A company's cash flow indicates its financial solvency and reveals whether the company can meet its financial obligations in a timely manner. To make sure that your company is solvent, a future-oriented planning instrument is necessary. With insights from AI, you can make proactive adjustments to ensure your company's fiscal health, such as reducing credit when you have a cash surplus or borrowing to mitigate a cash deficit..

[Audio] Collaborative applications like Dynamics 365 Business Central are transforming how people in organizations work together. They empower people to be more collaborative, more productive, and more impactful by: Making business data available to everybody, everywhere they interact in the digital space. Facilitating easy communication as part of any business process—from within any business application, you can connect with the right people without switching applications or losing focus. Enabling business applications to be multiplayer—allowing people to co-create Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, or Excel spreadsheets, collaborate on finance, sales, or service instances, or work on operations as a team..

[Audio] Go from quote to cash while checking your email in Outlook. Interact with customers and vendors directly from Outlook to accelerate transactions and business decisions. Promptly manage inquiries, service requests, or process payments to accelerate the sales cycle. Get insights into customer history, previous discounts, and more without leaving Outlook..

[Audio] Simplify daily tasks, creating more time for strategy using Dynamics 365 Business Central with Excel. Access Excel within Business Central to view data and create transactions such as general ledger journals. Export data from Business Central to Excel for efficient data entry and accuracy and publish data back to Business Central. Easily analyze transactions using familiar Excel functionality, add additional data, and publish..

[Audio] Connect Microsoft Teams to your business data in Business Central so you can quickly share details across team members, look up contacts, and respond faster to inquiries. Make faster decisions by sharing Business Central data within Microsoft Teams conversations and tabs. For example, paste a link to any Business Central record and it will expand into a compact card to share with coworkers. Pin a record or a curated list of records as a tab to focus your team on important datapoints. . Look up business contacts from Teams, along with insights, a history of interactions, and related records. Easily edit data and take action without switching apps..

[Audio] Access Business Central data with only a Microsoft 365 license at no additional cost Access Business Central cards and tables that have been shared with you in Teams. Unlock data, improve collaboration, and enhance decision making without purchasing additional Business Central licenses. Read-only access is granted through your Microsoft 365 license as configured by your admin..

[Audio] Here's another of our customers, CURRAX. As we mentioned earlier, the CURRAX team wanted to run their business from anywhere. Working smarter To help them work smarter on the go, CURRAX colleagues use the Microsoft ecosystem and leverage Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 Business Central collectively to collaborate. Performing better In addition, the Microsoft 365 environment enables CURRAX's subject matter experts to be able to focus on the core elements of their business. Adapting faster Business Central helped CURRAX adapt faster during the global pandemic. They had no operational issues due to the pandemic and were able to quickly adapted to the changing market environment. One manager was able to successfully work from the remote shores of Cameroon for several weeks. Working remotely was imperceptible to colleagues and clients. Extending capabilities that enable end-to-end visibility CURRAX can do its business anywhere. Now it wants to connect its ecosystem further and implement Dynamics 365 Customer Service to enable significant collaboration with key partners and customers. Turning ideas into action with Microsoft Power Platform, specifically Power Automate, is also on CURRAX's agenda. Jan Schmidt sees many opportunities in automating approval processes and finding new ways to increase the quality of customer interactions. -- Drive for digitization powered by Dynamics 365 Business Central keeps CURRAX fully focused on its winning ways Quote: "The streamlining of all our processes allows our company leader to manage the whole organization from his tablet or smartphone." - Jan Schmidt, Chief Digital Officer, CURRAX "With Dynamics 365 Business Central, we gain agility in a fast-moving world. Agility is the key to winning projects." - Jan Schmidt, Chief Digital Officer, CURRAX Link to story: Drive for digitization powered by Dynamics 365 Business Central keeps company fully focused on its winning ways.

[Audio] Perform better: Enable better business performance with continuous process improvements and responsiveness across your entire business—not just financials. Enable high performance with guided workflows, governance, and real-time metrics that drive continuous process optimization, accelerates financial closes, and improves cycle times. Continuous optimization and agility provide sustained profitability and cash flow Faster reporting, cycle times, and financial closes Real-time data visualization across departments Built-in business intelligence and Power BI.

[Audio] Accelerate financial close, improve forecasting, and get real-time performance metrics while fostering compliance and security across subsidiaries. Take control of financial data Better manage your cash flow, bank reconciliations, fixed assets, budgeting, and project costing while shortening cycle times with the late payment–prediction extension. Accelerate financial closing and reporting Easily support multiple currencies, exchange rates, consolidations, intercompany transactions, and localized tax regulations. Maximize financial visibility Use built-in reports, Excel, or Microsoft Power BI and unlimited data dimensions to get real-time cash flow, identify financial patterns, analyze trends, and improve business planning. Better reporting for more profitable financial decisions Connect reports, charts, and Power BI data from across accounting, sales, purchasing, and inventory teams to get accurate insights and make financial decisions with confidence..

[Audio] Take better care of customers by managing the entire sales process from within Microsoft Outlook and deliver better outcomes with connected service operations. Prioritize leads based on revenue potential Keep track of customer interactions and get guidance on the best upsell, cross-sell, and renewal opportunities throughout your sales cycle. Offer flexible pricing and discounting Create flexible pricing and discount structures for individual customers and groups of customers. Deliver on promised customer outcomes Track customer agreements to quickly access details about prices, discounts, delivery dates, product availability, and fulfillment status. Ensure a smooth transition from sales to service Automatically register shipped goods as service items and keep the required details in one place so both sales and service teams can respond quickly to inquiries. Track customer returns and repairs Offer full replacements or simple repairs, with parts and labor charges in one service order. Boost loyalty by providing spare equipment to customers awaiting service. Live up to your service promises Effectively assign personnel to work orders and get an overview of service tasks and workloads. Keep track of service agreements to deliver reliable service to your customers..

[Audio] Ensure successful project execution and profitability with planning, resourcing, tracking, costing, billing, accounting, and real-time intelligence. Improve project costing and accounting Better manage projects using timesheets and advanced job costing and reporting. Develop and modify detailed budgets to help ensure project profitability. Optimize resource levels Manage resource utilization by planning capacity and sales. Track customer invoicing against planned or actual costs on orders and quotes. Drive profitability with project insights Get real-time business intelligence on project status, profitability, and resource utilization metrics..

[Audio] Deliver products on time and adapt to changing business models with visibility across purchasing, manufacturing, inventory, and warehouses. Improve supplier engagement Build better relationships with suppliers and convert the best offers to orders. Ensure compliance with policies, process, governance and approvals. Get a holistic view of your inventory Use the same costing method or different ones for inventory items, and easily move items between locations to control the quantity on hand using cycling counting. Predict stock replenishment Replenish inventory based on actuals, demand, and availability using built-in intelligence, sales forecasts, and expected stock-outs to automatically create purchase orders..

[Audio] Expand into global markets Support to scale business operations in over 130 countries. Easily support multiple currencies, exchange rates, consolidations, intercompany transactions, and localized tax regulations. Our global network of datacenters helps meet data residency and compliance requirements. Business Central provides localization for over 130 countries and translation for over 30 languages. This is extended by partners to even more countries and languages..

[Audio] Call2Recycle is the last of our customers that we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. As you'll recall, they needed to find a unified ERP and CRM tool to tightly manage and track all aspects of their operations. A comprehensive, connected solution Call2Recycle researched combined ERP and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. That search led to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, which is designed to provide small and midsize businesses with comprehensive capabilities and a lot of integration potential. To further boost its CRM capabilities, the organization adopted Dynamics 365 Sales to manage its end-to-end sales processes. The nonprofit also turned to Microsoft Power Platform to extend its Dynamics 365 environment. The organization uses Power BI to visualize data and gain advanced analytics, and it uses Power Automate and Power Apps to connect data sources and quickly build and automate workflows. Streamlined operations, reduced costs Call2Recycle improved efficiencies in many of its operations, such as invoicing and billing. For example, customer billing used to take several days to complete each month, but now the process has been automated. In addition to time savings, Call2Recycle also reduced costs. The organization also saves approximately $25,000 in annual fees, licenses, and hardware support that its previous systems required. Real-time, self-service data Call2Recycle's data used to be siloed, but now it's centralized and available in real time. That means data is democratized, and staff can respond more quickly to customer needs or operational hiccups. One reason that staff members now get data more easily is because they have more self-service options, which is especially important as the organization continues to grow and add more staff. -- Call2Recycle increases organizational efficiency, powers more data-driven operations with Business Central Quotes: "With real-time information in Dynamics 365, we immediately see trends with our revenue and customers, and we can act quickly if there is any kind of service disruption." - Linda Gabor, Executive Vice President of External Relations "By automating processes in Business Central, we save 10 hours per month on invoicing, 8 hours on banking activities like vendor payment uploads, and 12 hours on processing vendor invoice approvals." - David Ainsley: Director of IT, Call2Recycle.

[Audio] Forrester's analysis of five Microsoft customers found that Dynamics 365 Business Central enabled these organizations to bolster operational efficiency, avoid costs, and comfortably scale their deployments with growth while benefitting from the flexibility inherent in the cloud. An analysis based on a $15-million, 250-employee composite organization modeled after the five interviewees demonstrates benefits of $466K over three years versus costs of $178K, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $288K and an ROI of 162%. Quantified benefits included: Avoidance of one full-time equivalent (FTE) and one part-time equivalent finance and operations hires. The functionality, visibility, and access improvements for finance and operations staff allowed the interviewed organizations to continue their growth trajectory without the need to hire additional staff, reducing the need to hire by an average of 10%. Improved flow of operations by an average of 8%. Finance and operations professionals have better tools to execute their daily responsibilities, improving workflows throughout finance and operations. Staff use their reclaimed productivity to make other iterative improvements to operations. Elimination of more than $44K of third-party reporting spend over three years. After migration to Business Central, organizations can leverage additional functionality and Microsoft tools such as Power BI and eliminate reliance on externally generated reports for a more granular visibility into their business. Avoidance of more than $40K in costs pertaining to the previous solutions. Migrating from on-premises Microsoft and non-Microsoft ERP tools yields savings in the form of license fee and infrastructure reductions, as well as support personnel savings. Unquantified benefits included: Improved EX. On Dynamics 365 Business Central, employees are less burdened by some of the common frustrations around finance and operations exacerbated by a disparate set of ERP tools. Integration with other Microsoft products. Interviewees cited integration with their other Microsoft solutions such as SharePoint and Power BI as additional boons to their Business Central migrations. Increased confidence from real-time visibility. For the first time, for some organizations, decision makers could view key business data, reports, and metrics in real time. Beyond productivity, this real-time view into data fosters confidence in those who need to use it. Quotes: "We were looking for an upgraded ERP solution capable enough for our complicated operations, in the cloud. Business Central is that solution. We have everything we need in one tool." — CEO, specialty manufacturing "The move to Business Central has been especially helpful during the pandemic, as our users can access key business functions remotely." —Controller, specialty manufacturing.

[Audio] These are references to various companies in different industries that have successfully grown with Microsoft Business Central..

[Audio] Make your vision a reality with a connected business management solution that enables you to adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better..

[Audio] Thank You for attending this presentation of Microsoft Business Central..