If you are part of a multi-site and international organization (MIO), find out how your company can benefit from integrating Microsoft Dynamics NAV with another enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution at the parent company—in these six common scenarios. On This PageScenario 1: Consolidating financial dataTo run your business and meet increasingly demanding international standards, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and International Accounting Standards (IAS) 2005, parent organizations must get a consolidated view of finances from local sites. At the same time, the sites may have to answer to local financial standards and reporting requirements. These diverse reporting needs often result in an inefficient and error-prone workflow. Sites must take financial information out of the local system and reenter it into a spreadsheet or system provided by the parent organization. In addition, this workflow must be repeated by each site before the parent company can consolidate it into one financial report. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help save time and effort by enabling you to consolidate financial statements for a series of business units. You can transfer from different accounting structures, including financial statements in different currencies. Microsoft Dynamics NAV can also help you reduce errors and streamline financial reporting by consolidating the general ledger from the sites to the parent with Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL 2.0), an XML-based specification. With XBRL, you enter information once, and the same information can then easily be produced as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for a Web site, a raw XML file, or in a specialized reporting format. With increased visibility into site financial performance at the parent level, the parent organization can understand each business unit and make confident, informed decisions. If both your sites and parent company use Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you can create the necessary documents (including sales and purchase documents and general ledger entries) for the entire workflow of intercompany transactions, making it easy to consolidate and roll up financial information for the entire organization. Scenario 2: Gaining business insightTo maintain control over your entire organization, managers at the parent level need access to data located in individual site systems. This information may range from sales reports to inventory figures. And you need to receive information in a format that is easy to understand, analyze, and share. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
With Business Analytics in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, site employees can create online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes based on full access to stored local data—without the need for extensive IT support. A Data Transformation Services (DTS) package pulls data from Microsoft Dynamics NAV into SQL tables. From there, other DTS packages transform and structure these tables into multidimensional cubes processed in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. Controllers at the parent office can access reports using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office Excel, or other familiar tools. The result is clear visibility into the entire organization with faster and more efficient reporting.  click to enlarge
Business Analytics functionality has an intuitive, familiar Microsoft Office Outlook–style interface that can help reduce training time.
Business intelligence has become a strategic tool used by organizations to gain and sustain a competitive advantage in their market space. Microsoft Dynamics NAV offers integration with other Microsoft products to assist companies in gaining business intelligence data—no matter how complex their needs. Business intelligence tools and applications take the data residing in a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution and group it into reports that enable a company to make better-informed operational, tactical, or strategic decisions.  click to enlarge
Organizations can add the business intelligence functionality they need to help employees make informed decisions.
Scenario 3: Sharing master dataYour parent company and sites may share certain critical business information, such as vendor records, price lists, and customer data. However, this information is often maintained in different systems that may use different formats, which can lead to inconsistencies and wasted time. If your parent company wants to share master data with sites that use a different ERP system, you have to connect the systems. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
Microsoft tools for electronic data exchange enable the entire organization to share master data. One such tool is XMLport, which is used to create XML documents that can easily be read by multiple applications. For example, you can create an XMLport containing your product catalog and price list and exchange the data between your parent company, which uses one enterprise mangement system, and sites that use Microsoft Dynamics NAV. To exchange more complex information, you can augment XMLports with an electronic data exchange solution based on Microsoft BizTalk Server and Commerce Gateway in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This combination enables MIOs to use a standard method of exchanging master data with their sites while providing them with a flexible business management solution. Scenario 4: Sharing responsibility for servicesMIOs may decide to share services with local sites; customers may wish to receive consolidated invoices reflecting interactions with multiple sites; you may need to divide tasks based on specific competencies at site levels; or, you may want to centralize payroll or procurement to obtain efficiencies or bulk discounts. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you can facilitate shared services through electronic exchange of data based on BizTalk Server or functionality for intercompany postings. BizTalk Server and Commerce Gateway can enable mapping between the parent and site IT systems, making adjustments for differences in currency. So, for example, reviewing a purchase order would be the same regardless of whether it originated at the parent or a site. However, if your parent company and sites work on a closed network, such as a virtual private network (VPN), and are controlled by the same legal entity but do not need to map data that originates in the sites' systems, you might want to use the Intercompany Postings module in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Intercompany Postings can help you create all necessary documents (including sales and purchase documents and general ledger entries) for the entire workflow, for more than one company or site at a time. Scenario 5: Enabling interdivisional transactionsSites sometimes need to interact with one another to redistribute inventory or complete workflows. For example, one site may act as distributor of another site's product. Or, divisions of a government agency may need to interact to complete a workflow. Interdivisional transactions that must be handled outside of ordinary sales and purchase interactions can create added work and accounting headaches. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
You can set up Microsoft Dynamics NAV to treat interdivisional transactions as normal sales and purchase transactions. The sites can interact among themselves using either a BizTalk Server and Commerce Gateway or the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Intercompany Postings solution. For transactions between two sites, you can set up a customer account for each relevant entity, and then treat transactions between them as you would any external customer and vendor. The transactions occur within Microsoft Dynamics NAV, saving time by eliminating redundant data entry and reducing the need to print, send, and receive paper documents Scenario 6: Responding proactively to business eventsYour parent organization and sites comprise a supply chain, and although the role of each may be quite varied, all are interdependent. When a manufacturer relies on another site to deliver raw goods, delays can affect the entire supply chain. The parent must react appropriately and quickly to prevent the delay from creating negative impacts downstream. How Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help
Companies can set up alerts using the Business Notification feature in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which will automatically generate e-mail messages about critical business conditions at their various sites, divisions, or supply chain partners. Business Notifications can help you improve management's control of the business and the effectiveness of business processes by keeping you aware of changing conditions and keeping operations on track. Business Notifications includes templates that make it easier to configure alerts, or you can set up your own based on the way you like to do business. Next stepsRead about the top seven benefits of Microsoft Dynamics NAV for MIOs.
Find out how MIOs are using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
See what's involved in putting Microsoft Dynamics NAV in place for your company: How to buy.
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