WHY business owners and finance professionals should care about the new release of Dynamics 365 Business Central

There’s been a new release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The 2019 Release Wave 2, if you’re interested.

But why should you be interested? What’s in it for you?

A year ago, at Directions EMEA 2018 we heard Marko Perisic say that Microsoft wanted to “earn the right” to remove the desktop client. It’s fair to say this announcement was met with a lot of scepticism from some partners. After all, haven’t customers always used desktop software? Don’t they expect something installed on their PC? How will I be able to do [insert ‘little used but heaven help the person who removes it’ function here] in a browser? 

And while we try not to be in the sceptical camp (a few partners fill that role already), it was hard to see how a browser would be able to do the same as installed software. 

Fast forward almost exactly 1 year to Directions EMEA 2019.

The new release has earned that right. We’re now web browser and mobile app only, no clunky desktop software. 

I’d happily talk through all the new features and functions, but plenty of other blogs and articles have done that. Suffice to say it’s full of some neat new stuff.  

To me though, the more interesting part to all this cool stuff is what it lets you do as a business owner or finance user. It’s not there for the sake of it. What does it enable for your business, that you couldn’t do before? 

” Well, the main thing is, now that we’re browser only, all users have complete freedom, and flexibility. ” 

If you’re using something like Sage 50, or Dynamics NAV, it’ll blow your mind. You can sign on from any device, anywhere using your Office 365 sign in, and pick up where you left off. There’s literally no reason to not be on the cloud version of Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

Your customisations and preferences, down even to your saved views, and column widths (both new features!), will be picked up from any browser, anywhere. 

You can have multiple localisations of the software in a single environment, so your French, German and UK companies all sit in the same tenant. Way easier than 3 separate installs, or 3 sets of usernames and passwords. 

And, if you’re thinking about changing your finance system, you can now get rid of that dusty old server that you’ve got in the corner. Or, stop paying your AWS or Azure hosting fees for your Dynamics NAV on-premise installation. The cloud version of Dynamics 365 Business Central is as good, dare we say it even better, than any on premise equivalent. 

At Bam Boom Cloud, we’ve got a couple of ways you can get started. If you’re coming from something small like Sage 50 or Xero, our KickStart product can get you live in a week. If you’re using NAV already, we can migrate you up to the cloud faster than ever before. New tools in this release let us get from NAV 2018 on premise into the cloud, without complex development. 

Get in touch with any of us here to find out more. The new functionality is great but what’s even better is how it’ll change your business. 

Oh, and here’s a link to all the cool new stuff. I couldn’t resist: