Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution that helps businesses streamline their processes, make smarter decisions, and accelerate growth. It integrates finance, sales, service, and operations to connect your business.
Implementing a new ERP like Business Central should be no light decision. The best way to decide? Learn about its features and benefits. Here's what Business Central's core features actually do – so you can truly get to know the ERP system.
Overview of Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Central is an application designed and optimised for small to medium-sized businesses. It is currently trusted by over 30,000 small and medium-sized businesses and was named the best ERP system of 2023 by Forbes Advisor.
Key Objectives and Goals of Business Central
Streamline Business Processes: Business Central streamlines processes within businesses to provide efficiencies and a more structured way to deliver goals. It offers end-to-end solutions for financials, sales, operations, and service.
Global Availability and Localisation: Business Central is available with localisation in 160 countries and supported in 47 languages, making it a versatile solution for international businesses.
Comprehensive Licensing: It offers all-in-one licences encompassing Finance, Sales, Service Management, Program Management, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and much more in one price, providing cost certainty and complete functionality in the subscription fee.
Who is Business Central Best Suited for?
Business Central is designed to help SMBs and is most suitable for businesses that require a comprehensive solution to manage finance, sales, service management, and supply chain operations.
Target Industries for Business Central:
- Finance: Business Central offers robust financial management capabilities, making it ideal for businesses in the finance sector.
- Sales and Customer Service: The solution includes tools for sales and customer service management, catering to industries that rely heavily on customer interactions and sales processes.
- Manufacturing: Business Central supports manufacturing operations, including production planning and inventory management, making it suitable for manufacturing industries.
- Supply Chain Management: The solution provides comprehensive supply chain management features, beneficial for industries involved in logistics and distribution.
- Program Management: It includes tools for managing projects and programs, which is useful for industries that require detailed project management capabilities.
Exploring Business Central's Core Features
Financial Management
Business Central's financial management features will improve efficiency, enhance your decision-making, give you scalability, and optimise costs. But how?
Financial management capabilities:
- Accounts Receivables: Manage customer invoices, payments, and collections efficiently.
- Bank Account Management: Handle bank transactions, reconciliations, and cash management.
- General Ledger Process: Maintain a comprehensive general ledger for financial reporting and analysis.
- Budgets: Create and manage budgets to track financial performance against targets.
- Cash Flow Forecasting: Predict future cash flow to ensure liquidity and financial stability.
- Fixed Assets: Track and manage fixed assets, including depreciation and asset lifecycle.
- Month/Year-End Closing: Streamline the closing process to ensure accurate financial statements.
- Multiple Currencies: Support transactions in multiple currencies, facilitating international business operations.
Supply Chain Management
Control your supply chain with inventory and purchasing control, sales shipments, returns and cancellations, procurement, and vendor management.
Key features include:
- Inventory Management: Business Central allows more than one user to post inventory at a time, although two people cannot post to the same inventory item simultaneously. This helps avoid duplication.
- Supply Chain Expansion: The latest version includes enhancements to streamline supply chain processes and improve efficiency.
- Warehouse Management: Comprehensive tools for item and movements tracking, planning, forecasting, and optimisation.
Sales and Service Management
These features make Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central a powerful tool for managing sales and service operations efficiently.
Sales Management:
- End-to-End Solutions: Business Central offers comprehensive solutions for managing financials, sales, operations, and service, providing efficiencies and a structured way to deliver business goals.
- Customer Insights: The platform includes tools for Sales and Customer Insights, helping businesses understand and engage with their customers effectively.
Service Management:
- Omnichannel Engagement: Supports communication through voice, chat, email, SMS, and social media, ensuring consistent customer experiences across all channels.
- AI-Powered Self-Service: Utilises generative AI to deliver personalised self-service options, including chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, enabling customers to resolve issues independently.
- Intelligent Routing: Employs AI to direct customer inquiries to the most appropriate agent, improving response times and customer satisfaction.
- Agent Assistance with Copilot: Provides agents with AI-driven tools for real-time sentiment analysis, conversation summaries, and suggested responses, enhancing productivity and service quality.
- Operational Analytics: Offers real-time reporting and analytics to monitor performance metrics, enabling informed decision-making and operational efficiency.
Project Management
- Role Management: Business Central allows for detailed role management, ensuring that employees have access to the tools and information they need based on their roles.
- Timesheets: The system includes timesheet functionality to track employee hours and project time allocation.
- Capacity Management: Manage and monitor the capacity of resources to ensure optimal utilisation.
- Budgeting and Estimations: Business Central supports detailed budgeting and project estimation to help manage project costs and timelines effectively.
Human Resources Management
These features help businesses manage their workforce efficiently, ensuring compliance and enhancing employee satisfaction:
- Employee Management: Centralised platform to manage employee records, including personal information, job details, and employment history.
- Payroll Integration: Seamless integration with payroll systems to ensure accurate and timely salary processing.
- Time and Attendance: Tools to track employee working hours, leave, and attendance, ensuring compliance with labour regulations.
- Performance Management: Features to set goals, track performance, and conduct appraisals, helping to improve employee productivity and engagement.
- Training and Development: Modules to manage employee training programs, track progress, and ensure continuous professional development.
- Self-Service Portal: Allows employees to access and update their personal information, request leave, and view payslips, reducing administrative workload.
Reporting and Analytics
Business Central has built-in reporting tools and dashboards you can customise to your business needs. Advanced reporting features include:
Power BI Integration: Power BI connects directly to Business Central, providing near real-time, trusted data. This integration supports automated data pipelines, reducing human intervention and potential errors, and freeing up staff time. Power BI empowers users at all levels to access self-service insights and scales from operational reporting to strategic dashboards across the organisation.
Microsoft Fabric Integration: Microsoft Fabric unifies data across sources into OneLake, providing a single source of truth for your business. It supports self-service and enterprise-scale analytics on the same platform, fully governed, secure, and scalable.
Integration and Extensibility
Business Central's strength lies in its comprehensive integration capabilities and extensibility options.
Core Integration Features:
- Microsoft 365 Integration: Business Central natively connects with Microsoft 365, including Outlook, Excel, and Teams, allowing users to collaborate on business data and run end-to-end business processes like order-to-cash within Outlook. TeamsTeams’ users can read Business Central data using their Microsoft 365 licence without needing a separate Business Central licence.
- Process Automation: Native integration with Power Automate allows users to streamline repetitive tasks and business processes using over 1,000 connectors. This integration helps automate workflows and approvals tied to transaction definitions.
- API Technology: Utilises API technology for seamless integration with various services and applications, ensuring real-time data access and up-to-date information.
Extensibility Features:
- Power Apps Integration: Easy for customers to add Business Central tables as a data source in Power Apps, sync with Dataverse, or for developers to use industry-standard development tools, including VS Code and GitHub.
- AI-Powered Enhancements: Business Central includes unique AI functionality with Microsoft Copilot, such as auto-generation of compelling creative product descriptions and late payment predictions.
- Copilot Toolkit: Helps developers and partners deliver AI-powered extensions, enhancing the functionality of Business Central with generative AI features.
- Customisation Capabilities: Business Central offers rich user interface customisation capabilities, including WYSIWYG designer, role customisation, and personalisation. Users can easily add, hide, or rearrange data fields and actions per company, role, or user.
Security and Compliance
World-Class Security and Compliance
- Identity Protection: Business Central offers world-class identity protection to ensure that only authorised users can access the system.
- Role-Based Access: The platform uses role-based access control to restrict system access based on user roles, ensuring that users only have access to the information necessary for their job functions.
- Encryption: Business Central employs encryption to protect data both at rest and in transit, ensuring that sensitive information is secure from unauthorised access.
Compliance with Industry Regulations
- Regulatory Adherence: Business Central helps businesses comply with industry regulations and data protection laws by providing built-in mechanisms to enforce consistent processes and maintain compliance.
Cybersecurity Measures
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Requires users to provide multiple forms of authentication before gaining access to the system, adding an extra layer of security.
- Regular Patch Management: Ensures that all software updates and security patches are applied promptly to address vulnerabilities and enhance performance.
- Firewall and Anti-Virus: Monitors and regulates network traffic to protect against potential threats and prevents malicious software from compromising the system.
Final Thoughts on Business Central's Features
With its user-friendly interface and powerful functionalities, Business Central is an invaluable tool for any ambitious business. Business Central offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and drive business growth.
We encourage you to explore Business Central further to discover how it can transform your business. We have an extensive guide for all things Business Central: Everything You Need to Know About Business Central.
