Traditionally, ERP implementations are complex, risky, long-lasting and expensive. Transferring knowledge to customers depends on precious and scarce consultants who are not always immediately available and wee all known examples of projects in the past that took too long, cost too much or even failed. At the same time, this restricted consultancy capacity also limits the potential growth in the market. Microsoft wants to change this situation by offering onboarding guidance as an integral part of Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Today, most customers focus on a short ‘time to value their new implementation, upgrades or cloud migration. Modern customers want to use the knowledge of the consultants they hire for tangible value, like modernising their business processes and motivating their staff to change. Meanwhile, they are less willing to pay for basic consultancy activities.
Microsoft responds to this changing market demand by delivering so-called ‘onboarding guidance’ functionality built into her Business Central software. The company is investing in ‘getting started checklists’, a welcome banner and in-app contextual help with teaching tips to ensure that your teams can onboard quicker and cheaper and deliver results faster. It even allows you to do the basic setup yourself if you want! Everything to shorten your time to productivity.
Independent of the market demand, Microsoft itself also has a strong interest in accelerating implementations. After all, there is a vast market potential for Business Central cloud ERP solution for SMB companies. And in addition, there are over two hundred thousand customers of SMB on-premise solutions Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL. They want to migrate their solutions to the cloud shortly. This onboarding guidance initiative will free up implementation capacity for further growth.
As of the 2021 release wave 1, Microsoft includes a set of onboarding-related tools and mechanisms in Business Central that partners can use to build this experience. The company is also facilitating it’s implementation partners to use it’s ‘onboarding framework’ for the add-ons and components they deliver on top of Business Central.
This built-in implementation intelligence also helps you to get your newly hired colleagues up and running quickly, or direct the end-user to specific video content for tasks that you only perform occasionally, such as the year-end closing. This new initiative also fits in with Microsoft’s previous move to further standardise the product side with a wide range of add-ons on AppSource.
Suppose you are looking for the modernisation of your current ERP solution, and you search for a short path to productivity and value. In that case, you should consider Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central seriously.
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