Today, more than ever, business managers realize the importance of understanding their customers in order to serve them better and remain competitive in a dynamic market. Many companies use a CRM system to manage their customers, contacts, and sales order information, and an ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV to manage their back office operations. However, they are not always able to synchronize the information in their CRM system with the information in their ERP system. At the end of the day, companies lose time, data, and valuable customer knowledge and insight trying to keep information up to date in both systems.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 delivers integration with Microsoft CRM enabling companies to increase productivity across the organisation. The integration is enabled using the Connector for Microsoft Dynamics, which utilizes Web Services to retrieve data in Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft CRM and synchronize the data between the two systems.

Customers have the flexibility to choose between integration to hosted or on-premises Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with the option to migrate to either option over time. If you would like to discuss using Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Dynamics NAV then please contact us on 08000 195101.

A key goal for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 is finding cost-effective ways to increase productivity for more people across you company. One way to do this is by extending the value of the RoleTailored Client to more users, including remote or roaming users.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 supports direct access from the Microsoft Dynamics RoleTailored experience over the Internet. This enables remote or roaming users to take advantage of the richness of the RoleTailored interface and the many integration features connected to local resources, such as printers, the operating system, and Microsoft Office. It is possible to export Microsoft Dynamics NAV data to Microsoft Office applications without having to add the cost of a terminal server.

This new feature in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 includes an authentication dialogue box that will prompt for user credentials and the ability to add a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate to the NAV Server. If you would like to discuss how R2 and the Remote and Roaming Client access could work for your company, please call us on 08000 195101.

The saying "A picture speaks a thousand words" may be the best way to explain the new business data visualization capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2. In a dynamic business environment, you as managers must make business-critical decisions quickly and without hesitation. You may turn to the wealth of data in your business system for answers but struggle to absorb and understand the large amounts of data quickly. Furthermore, when it is time to make a decision, you may not have a complete picture of all the options available to them as well as the consequences of those options.

Building on the client extensibility capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1, the new business data visualization capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 include Treemap and Timeline business data visualizations. These are RoleTailored client control add-ins that provide a unique way to view and analyze business data in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This capability gives companies a powerful way to make informed and more accurate decisions by enabling managers to:

• Picture the business (delivers mental models).
  Visualizations provide a mental model for business data and data dependencies. By seeing a visual representation of data and data dependencies, even non-expert users can more easily understand business data.

• Understand the business; know state and trends, provided by insight.
  Visualizations are an entry point for understanding the current state of a business and trends. Users can drill down and filter data to provide intuitive, ad hoc analysis.

• Know how to act; identifying actionable items and tasks.
  Users can use business data to find items of interest and outliers that are based on certain objectives or measures. Those outliers can be converted into high-priority actionable tasks and possible actions.

• Act wisely; it provides decision support, problem solvers, and optimization.
  Problem solvers and optimizers help users decide on a strategy. They can provide suggestions for an action strategy that can lead to an optimal result for one or more objectives.

• Understand consequences; allowing you to visualize consequences before acting.
  Visualizations help users understand the impact of actions before they are committed. Visualizers can account for dependencies, predict the outcome of actions, and provide visualizations to users.

Your users will be able to do their work with the help of visualizations based on inventory data, sales orders, production orders, and other manufacturing-related data, and drill down into the details of the data from the actual visualization, to understand the reasons why and determine the best course of action. For example, if a user needs to understand why there is a decrease in the company's overall profit margin, the user will be able to visualize the trend, identify the item or items contributing to the loss, and create scenarios with various information and dimensions to determine what action or actions to take.

If you would like to discuss how the Treemap Analysis and Timeline Visualization feature could work for your company please contact us on 08000 195101.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 will support the usability and visual improvements in Windows 7. These deliver significant productivity benefits by making it easier to access and see frequently used programs, documents, links, and more.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 users will be able to take advantage of familiar Windows 7 features such as Jump Lists, Taskbar Preview, Thumbnail Preview and Icon Overlay functionality from the Role Center.

In Windows 7, Jump Lists take you right to the documents, photos or websites you use each day. In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2, Jump Lists will take you to your preferred Microsoft Dynamics NAV actions, tasks and pages such as contacts, vendors, invoices, sales orders, sales quotes, and more. It will also be able to configure the Jump Lists according to the user's role to gain a RoleTailored experience.

This release will also support icon overlay for warnings, errors and progress information, which gives the user immediate status information on programs and activities from the Windows 7 taskbar. The user will also be able to place their mouse over the Microsoft Dynamics NAV icon on the task bar to see a thumbnail preview of each open window including company name for quickly identification of the company. All of these usability enhancements help improve navigation and minimize the number of clicks required to reach the information you need.

In addition to the Windows 7 user experience improvements, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 will include other enhancements that improve the way users interact with the application. For example, the Filter on Subforms feature makes it easier for your users to get to the information they need faster. It can sometimes be difficult to find specific information, like a certain item number, on a large purchase order containing many lines of information. Since there is no search option available, the user must scroll through the entire order to find the information they need. This slows productivity. In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2, it is possible to find specific information by applying the filter to specific items on an order or across all orders.

It will also be possible to set up printer selection for reports from the RoleTailored Client. This means that a specific report will always print to a specific printer so the user does not have to select the correct printer every time.