Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central recognized by IDC as Leader for Financial Management systems

IDC MarketScape Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Small Business ERP Applications 2024 Vendor Assessment recognizes over a dozen top vendors providing Cloud based ERP applications.  Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central is recognized by IDC in the Leaders category in their assessment.  You can view the report here.

IDC report highlights

• Businesses are navigating a chaotic environment in both business and technology, with economic stability from 2023 still being felt.
• AI capabilities are factoring into business decision making at an accelerated pace.
• The report includes considerations for companies looking to change their financial management platforms.
• IDC recognizes Microsoft’s strengths including familiarity, ease-of-use, embedded AI and ML capabilities and should be considered when a company is already running Microsoft 365 and those that embedding AI capabilities into business processes.

IDC recognizes Business Central is a leader in IDC’s 2024 Marketscape for ERP.

About Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Business Central, often referred to as BC, is Microsoft’s financial management and ERP platform for small business.  Small business really refers to any business that is not Fortune 1000.  In TekStack’s context, every company in the technology space save for the a few hundred of the largest would be considered a fit for Business Central.

Business Central’s origins are from the Danish product Navision, referred to as Dynamics NAV following Microsoft’s acquisition of Navision in 2004.  The development team is still largely based in Denmark supporting a large partner and customer network globally.

Business Central is part of Microsoft’s Business Applications group, often referred to as BizApps.  While it shares the Dynamics 365 moniker, it is a completely different code set and roadmap from Microsoft’s other Dynamics 365 products like CRM, Finance & Supply Chain, among others.

Business Central for Microsoft Partners

What makes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central a Leader

• It’s extensible.  It allows for an insane amount of customization which is great for companies that need it.
• It’s scalable.  It provides the transactional horsepower of the biggest ERP systems to every company, without the overhead.
• It’s secure.  As a Microsoft product that sits in your tenant, you can control security access with Microsoft Azure Entra.
• Copilot AI.  Microsoft is introducing Copilot AI capabilities into Business Central at an impressive rate.
• Microsoft 365 Integration.  Here we are talking about how Business Central naturally connects to Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, and other products in Microsoft 365.
• Reporting with Power BI.  For companies that need robust reporting, Business Central has native Power BI integration.  There are also some great third party tools from companies like Cosmos.
• Community & Ecosystem.  1000s of partners worldwide to aid implementation, 100s of software vendors providing powerful add-ons like integrations and capabilities make it a safe option.

How does Business Central compare to lightweight financial systems like QuickBooks Online or Xero?

These are great tools, but as a company grows, so grows their complexity.  Business Central offers much stronger security, inter-company, multi-currency, and integration capabilities than tools like QuickBooks Online.

How does TekStack integrate to Business Central?

TekStack’s Business Central extension ties key billing processes in with accounting.  Here is a typical flow of data between TekStack and Business Central:

• Seller works an opportunity with a prospective customer, closes the opportunity.  TekStack creates an order that includes key subscription information, and a software invoice.
• TekStack tells Business Central, “Hey, we have a new customer, make sure to set it up right with the correct tax groups, posting groups, etc.”
• Accounting team sets up the new customer, clicks a button which tells TekStack to send over all the invoice and software revenue deferral information.
• As the services team delivers work in the form of T&M billing, or billing milestones being released, these invoices go to Business Central automatically to be posted by the accounting team.  Posting the invoices applies the GL entries to all the right buckets based on the posting group information of the customer, of the products on the invoice, etc.
• As a customer pays the invoices, TekStack is updated with payment status information so that the entire customer and selling teams know what’s happening with the customer.   The advantage of this approach is that you don’t need sellers poking around the accounting system, or asking questions like, “Did they pay us?”
• Renewals are tracked automatically as opportunities, so you don’t have to rely on a ‘hope and prayer’ approach to renewal collection, or posting invoices that may never get paid.

So what’s the result? Faster, more accurate invoicing.  Imagine invoicing services the first day of the month, or as often as you like, and being able to close your month that much sooner.  Speeds up cash collection, eliminates error prone double entry, and makes sure you never miss a billing milestone again.

What does TekStack + Business Central compare to?

Most companies in our space have a collection of applications and processes supported by Excel.  CRM for opportunity management, spreadsheets for quoting and order form creation, rekeyed into accounting, time entry apps that need to rekey services invoices manually, spreadsheets to track billing milestones.

Some companies use products like OpenAir and NetSuite.  This is a higher level of automation, but very expensive tools for most technology companies, also based on dated technology that doesn’t integrate as well to productivity tools like Outlook, Excel, Word, SharePoint, and Teams.

Other companies may be on tools based on Salesforce and integrated with Sage Intacct.  But this platform needs a number of add-ons like a PSA such as Kimble, or Mavenlink, as well as Salesforce’s CPQ, and subscription management tool like Maxio.  All this tech adds up in costs and the integrations can pose reliability issues.

Conclusion

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is recognized as a leading Financial Management (ERP) platform by IDC.  Microsoft is making Business Central available to partners at near zero cost.  Read more about Microsoft benefits here.

TekStack’s integration to Business Central will automate every billing process a technology company relies on which will speed up cash collection, improve accuracy of billing, and eliminate revenue leakage.