Dynamics NAV has had an eventful journey since its inception in 1983 and subsequent takeover by Microsoft in 2002. Since Microsoft’s involvement there have been key and constant changes. The solution has become more versatile to businesses and more durable in terms of the software. There has been constant evolution of the user-interface and its ease of use. There can be no doubt that both the name ‘Microsoft’ and their bottomless marketing budgets have helped Dynamics NAV enormously over the past eleven years. Naturally here have also been some shortcomings, however over time these in the main have been plugged by independent companies developing Add-Ons for example in BI, Payroll, Reports, Retail and the Brewery trade to name just a few. Over the last couple of years we have seen the release of NAV 2013 and NAV 2013 R2 which has moved away from the native database onto SQL Server and moved completely away from the Classic Client of previous versions. It is now completely inline with Microsoft’s core products, for example Office. Microsoft has now developed a versatile and scalable ERP solution which can easily satisfy the needs of multinational corporations. So you would expect the next wave of implementations to be larger, record breaking solutions both in terms of licence fee revenue and size of deal for the partners. This fantastic solution, developed by Microsoft is increasingly at odds with the larger sibling; Dynamics AX. Microsoft has spent considerably more money developing Dynamics AX as their Oracle Financials and SAP competition. The powers that be have put their collective weight behind Dynamics AX and this is at times to the detriment of the NAV sales team. So while Microsoft technical team have developed a fantastic solution, Microsoft marketing and sales team are looking to push this solution to the smaller companies. They are looking for NAV to compete with the Sage Line 50s and smaller SMEs rather than AX in the larger implementations. For Microsoft it is all about the licence revenue and selling the product out of the box not about the solution sell and a bespoke solution tailored to fit each individual business. At Conspicuous, as Dynamics Recruitment Specialists, we see what is happening in the market and for any advice or information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.