Author: Rob Jolliffe

Robert has been a Dynamics 365 Business Central consultant since 2008 and a general manufacturing consultant for over 25 years. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto mechanical engineering program where he focused on production engineering. In addition to a deep knowledge of Manufacturing Robert holds a Microsoft Systems Engineer designation and is much less of an expert in Networking and IT infrastructure than he thinks, but is still pretty good. He also has applied his engineering skills to learning programming, and is warned frequently by the professional developers who work for him that he is pretty good, but don't write any code for customers without letting them check it.

Comparing Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Versions

There are two basic versions of Dynamics 365 Manufacturing ERP systems. Dynamics 365 is a brand rather than a product, and there are a number of different products under that brand. There are two basic ERP systems, each of which supports manufacturing and supply chain businesses.

Using OData with Business Central

Today people tend to report more often on a screen, whether it be a tablet, phone or PC. The typical end user wants to both see their data, but also do some slicing and dicing. Analysis of that information is very important.

If you want to pull data out of Business Central for analysis you should be looking at OData.

Cloud Based Manufacturing ERP Software

Microsoft has been one of the biggest players in the cloud over the last several years. The ERP Play from Microsoft started with their enterprise product, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (formerly Dynamics AX). With the introduction of their new offering, Dynamics 365 Business Central, in the spring of 2018 they began to move into the mid-market. It wasn’t until the fall of 2018 (almost 2 years ago as of the writing of this article) that they finalized the migration of their manufacturing suite of features into Business Central.

6 Product Configurator Benefits

A Product Configurator is an add-on for ERP used extensively in manufacturing where a company manufacturers a product and sells this through a catalog. Typically there are numerous options available to the buyer – sometimes called attributes. Another term for a product configurator is a CPQ – or Configure Price Quote. You can also find information under the description “guided selling.”