Microsoft Dynamics NAV solutions for wholesale distributors
Published: April 26, 2006
Wholesale distributors often find themselves squeezed between increasing customer demands, competitive pressures, and the accelerating spread of manufacturers across the globe. Tight margins and the high cost of excess inventory make cost control and efficiency critical, especially for small to midsize companies that can't afford to make mistakes. But these changes and challenges can create new opportunities to increase operational efficiency across your business, fill orders faster, and reduce inventory and distribution costs.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Microsoft Navision) is an integrated business management solution especially designed for growing small and midsize companies. It is ideal for companies looking for a solution they can implement rapidly, learn and use easily, and customize and maintain with minimal disruption to their businesses.
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Optimize inventory and processes for greater success
A flexible, attractively priced business solution, Microsoft Dynamics NAV integrates all your order entry, inventory management, fulfillment, shipping, and financial data so you can get information and goods where they are needed—fast. With a comprehensive Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution, you can get immediate feedback about business performance, automate manual procedures, reduce rekeying data, improve replenishment decisions, process orders more quickly, improve fill rates and customer satisfaction, and get better returns on inventory investment.
With its open development environment and feature-rich application areas, Microsoft Dynamics NAV is easy to customize. Supported by a global network of Microsoft Certified Partners who specialize in developing and implementing wholesale distribution solutions for businesses like yours, your company can tailor an application to suit your unique requirements. Easy to implement, learn, and customize, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution can help you:
| • | Monitor and evaluate your 'company's current performance and opportunities |
| • | Take control of your inventory to maximize value |
| • | Reduce manual processes and streamline warehouse operations for faster, more accurate fulfillment that avoids costly noncompliance penalties |
| • | Integrate labeling and shipping into pick/pack and invoicing processes, even with multiple warehouses |
| • | Empower your workforce to save time, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction |
| • | Gain visibility into your most profitable products, customers, and opportunities |
Integrate distribution operations for end-to-end efficiency
Designed to deliver more comprehensive information in one business management system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV can help you link your office and multiple warehouse facilities. This gives you one set of dependable data so you can make reliable promises to customers, fulfill orders more quickly and accurately, and boost customer satisfaction. This robust management solution can also empower you to streamline warehouse processes, more efficiently handle long lead-time items, and select the optimal forecasting formula based on past sales to yield maximum profitability.
Maximize your inventory investment
A Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution helps to reduce inventory headaches while giving you the insight to boost the earning power of your most valuable asset—inventory. Robust tools for inventory planning and replenishment can help you accurately forecast demand, make better decisions, and balance inventory costs against fill rates and customer satisfaction levels. When you fully understand individual product profitability, seasonality, and trends, you gain negotiation power with suppliers and the insight to enhance your customers' success.
Streamline warehouse operations for faster order fulfillment
With a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution for wholesale distribution, the data your business depends on can reside in a single database and can be accessed and updated any time, from anywhere, by anyone who needs it. This means more timely information, greater accuracy, and better warehouse management, so stock can be promised with confidence, goods can be found where expected, inventories remain accurate, and orders can be efficiently picked, packed, labeled, shipped, and invoiced.
Manage inventory on the fly
With automatic data capture system (ADCS/RF) capabilities, your employees can use handheld computers in the warehouse to dynamically generate pick, put-away, movement, and physical inventory documents on the fly. These capabilities also help to streamline shipment packing right from the picking process. They do this by capturing package or pallet details during the pick and by yielding tremendous efficiency as the details proceed through packing, labeling, and the generation of carrier manifests.
Automate processes painlessly
If your company is moving toward an automated warehouse, you can gradually increase the extent of your automation painlessly over time—even if you don’t have bar-coded items yet. As new items are received and brought into the warehouse, you can assign barcodes easily as well as identify bin locations, lot numbers, physical attributes, and weights in item records.
Empower your team for business improvement and growth
With a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution, you can create a highly productive work environment where sales, customer relationship management (CRM), order fulfillment, shipping, and accounting processes share information. With centralized data, you can reduce redundant data entry and help realize greater accuracy and timeliness. Easy drill-down capabilities help to ensure that details stay just a few clicks away, even when working in other Microsoft Office system programs such as the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client, Microsoft Office Word 2003, and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 spreadsheet software.
Enable electronic data interchange (EDI) or give customers and suppliers self-service capabilities through the Internet without compromising information security enhancements. Self-service options can help trim the cost of transactions and free employees for more complex tasks while streamlining customer support, billing, and replenishment activities. By defining roles and access rights for employees and supply chain partners, you can control access to sensitive business information while helping to ensure that nobody wastes time hunting for the data they need.
Gain insight to add value and seize opportunities
In addition to providing a clear understanding of inventory movement and margins, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution can help you:
| • | Identify new ways to add value |
| • | Manage repackaging or remanufacturing activities |
| • | Balance workloads |
| • | Track warranty or service options |
| • | Provide data for building new partnerships with your customers |
A Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution simplifies reporting with intuitive data access and interactive views. Information is presented in a way that is familiar to users of Microsoft Outlook, and it can be smoothly transferred to Microsoft Excel for additional manipulation, analysis, and graphical presentation. Support for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) services makes it easy to quickly extract the data you want to analyze. With a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution, you can spend less time scrambling and more time managing your operations to outclass the competition, to spot opportunities, and to grow.
Build a competitive advantage with a knowledgeable business partner
With partner support, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution is quick and cost-effective to implement. You 'won't get bogged down in complicated configurations or an overbuilt installation. And Microsoft Dynamics NAV solutions are easy to use, maintain, and upgrade, so your management system can grow with the success of your business.
Working closely with a Microsoft Certified Partner, you can implement the solution you need to fit your specific operational requirements. The global network of Microsoft partners includes experts who specialize in solutions for wholesale distributors and who speak your language. Based on long-term experience, these experts understand your concerns as well as the open development environment, toolkits, industry templates, and scalability of Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
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