Microsoft is currently going through a period of tremendous growth. The choice made 8 years ago to fully invest in cloud solutions and cloud infrastructure turned out to be the right one. Mike Morton is Microsoft’s general manager for Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central. Together with his team he is busy developing and expanding Business Central. And also to provide existing Dynamics NAV users with an attractive and comfortable migration path to Business Central. Here are some interesting ideas and statements from a recent interview with him.
Instead of looking at the next version, Mike was asked to explain the medium-term vision for Dynamics 365 Business Central – Microsoft’s successful ERP cloud offering for small and medium sized businesses.
Morton: “The future for Business Central is bright. We want this product to be seamless and delightful for all stakeholders. Think for the Microsoft partners about the skills they need for delivering large numbers of good implementations. For the customers to make it simpler to get up and running. And for the end-user making the product easier to use. Or one step further – fun to work with!”.
The second pillar is all about integration. “You will going to see us continue to work across with Microsoft Office365 and Microsoft Teams. Across Power Platform and the other Dynamics apps. We want to bring all the individual pieces together ‘end-to-end’ to ensure that our customers create seamless experiences for their customers. And this is all part of the unique value proposition that only Microsoft is able to bring”.
The third part of the Business Central vision has to do with data. “The way people think about data and intelligence is changing quickly these days. At Microsoft, we foresee a much more automated world. But today, there is still a lot of manual data entry. Think about basic activities like sending out quotes and receiving invoices. So how can we automate the gathering of data – for example by using sensors? How can we then analyze that data and create new and better insights? And how can Business Central finally come up with actions and suggestions? For example to avoid mistakes in order processing.”
On this last topic, Morton expects that the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business software will become more important shortly. “Benefiting from the advantages of AI will no longer be reserved for enterprise companies only, but certainly also for small and medium sized businesses. Microsoft has the ambition to bring AI to the masses. And to achieve that goal, we must make these tools easier to use”.
If you already are a Business Central user today, this sound vision combined with Microsoft’s financial strengths and huge innovative power should give you confidence for the near future.
If you’re not using Business Central today, we’d like to invite you for a first introduction short-term.