Business Needs
Canari Cyclewear manufactures top-of-the-line cycling gear that is resold by independent bike shops and large sporting-goods retailers around the world. The company also sells custom gear to professional and semi-professional cycling teams. From 2005 to 2008, the company saw sustained double-digit growth in sales, which put pressure on the company to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its inventory management and reporting systems.

“We were using a DOS-based system and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to keep track of orders and roughly $5 million worth of inventory and to try and forecast demand,” explains Chris Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at Canari Cyclewear. “This method required us to manually collect and enter data. Overall, the process was tedious and prone to error, especially because some part numbers exceeded 50 characters.”

Read The Complete Canari Case Study

Provides Manufacturers with Integrated, End-to-End Automation for EDI Transactions

WESTBOROUGH, Mass., – April 23, 2010 – RedTail Solutions, Inc., which delivers managed services for electronic data interchange (EDI) and global data synchronization (GDS) to manufacturers and distributors, today released RedTail EDI managed services for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, a popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for mid-sized organizations from Microsoft Corporation.

RedTail EDI handles all order-to-cash transactions between suppliers and their trading partners. Complex EDI transactions are seamlessly processed, including sales and purchase orders, advanced ship notices (ASNs) and invoices. RedTail EDI is ideal for mid-sized companies selling to large trading partners like Wal-Mart and The Home Depot, particularly because they need to process large volumes of EDI transactions with the highest levels of automation and integration. RedTail, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for ISV/Software Solutions, also offers RedTail EDI integrated with the most current version of Microsoft Dynamics GP.

>> Read the rest of the press release:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV helps you win customer loyalty, increase responsiveness and increase productivity. Read the rest of this entry »

In its recent Statement of Direction (SOD) document for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the company lays out its plans for the product over the next few years.  Their strategy involves focusing on creating relevant core business functionality and by further developing the application to support current and emerging regulatory requirements. As Microsoft continues to add new functionality to Dynamics NAV, they will focus on five basic values:

• Simplicity
• Productivity
• Continuously take advantage of Microsoft Technology
• User Experience Leadership
• Rapid Time-to-Value

Microsoft continues to invest over $1 billion dollars annually in R&D to further advance Dynamics NAV and the entire family of Microsoft products.  This illustrates Microsoft’s commitment to its products and technologies.  Companies considering technology investments, should consider this factor when allocating capital resources and protection of investment. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing Microsoft wanted to make clear at Convergence 2008 is their commitment to continue all existing Dynamics products, including Dynamics NAV. They announced they are investing millions of dollars of R&D in the various product offerings and they committed to releasing a Statement of Direction for each product and keep it updated. One of the first Statements of Direction released by Microsoft was for their Dynamics NAV product.

Highlights from the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Statement of Direction include:

• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 to be released in Q2 of 2008
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, featuring a role tailored client to be released during 2008
• Project Code name Malta targeted for 2009, to include a Web -based client.
• Project Code name Mallorca targeted for 2010

Other information in the statement of direction:

• Integration between Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be released in early 2010.
• Mobile based applications API for Microsoft Dynamics NAV to be released in 2008
• Group Policy Enhancements for the Role Tailored Client.

REDMOND, Wash. – April 30, 2007 – Nixon Inc., a fast-growing maker of premium accessories based in the fashion and action-sports industry, has chosen Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV to manage the rapid growth, diverse product lines and other distinct challenges of its nontraditional wholesale distribution.

The Encinitas, Calif., company replaced its old enterprise resource planning (ERP) software with Microsoft Corp.’s premier ERP software when it could no longer handle the manufacturing and distribution challenges that came with the company’s 40 percent annual growth in revenues. Nixon selected Microsoft Dynamics NAV to help the company stay on top in an industry where fashions quickly emerge – and just as quickly disappear if companies can’t nurture nascent trends among style-conscious surfers, skateboarders and snowboarders.

OfficeOps LLC, a Microsoft Certified Partner, developed Microsoft Dynamics NAV add-ons that will address Nixon’s production, inventory and distribution needs. “Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a perfect fit for rapidly growing action-sports companies; the wealth of features, the ease of configuration and the speed of implementation allow us to provide our customers benefits very quickly,” said Jack Gentle, president of OfficeOps.

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Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV version 5.0, the latest version in the NAV line, was recently made available to partners from Microsoft. Erik P. Ernst over at DynamicsUser.net has kindly made the worldwide version available to download on the Dynamics User Group website. As Erik notes, you can use the demo license that comes bundled with the client to try it out for free.

If you haven’t stopped by already, give the Dynamics User Group a look. They offer a wealth of information along with some useful tools in their downloads section. You can also learn a lot from their active community forum.

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