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 we all know examples of projects that took too long and 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 are focussing on a short ‘time to value’ for their new implementation, their upgrades or their cloud migration. Modern customers want to use the knowledge of the consultants they hire for tangible value. Like modernizing 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 gives you the possibility to do the basic set-up 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 huge market potential for Business Central, her cloud ERP solution for SMB companies. And in addition, there are over two hundred thousand customers of her SMB on-premise solutions Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL who want to migrate their solutions to the cloud shortly. This onboarding guidance initiative will free-up implementation capacity for further growth.
As from the 2021 release wave 1, Microsoft includes a set of onboarding related tools and mechanisms in Business Central that her partners can use to build this experience. And the company is facilitating her implementation partners to also use her ‘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 very well with Microsoft’s previous move to further standardize the product side with a wide range of add-ons on AppSource.
If you are looking for a modernization of your current ERP solution and you search for a short path to productivity and value, you do well to seriously consider Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
