MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 BUSINESS CENTRAL
Connect your operations with Dynamics 365 Business Central.
When finance, inventory, purchasing, and operations rely on disconnected systems, getting a clear picture of your business becomes difficult.
PrenticeWorx combines Microsoft expertise with real-world business experience to help you implement and improve Business Central around your processes, priorities, and goals.
What Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you do.
Financial management
Manage general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, cash flow, budgeting, and financial reporting. Give your finance team a clearer view of the transactions and activities affecting your business.
Inventory and warehouse management
Track inventory across locations, coordinate replenishment, and connect inventory transactions with purchasing and sales. Build workflows around how materials and products actually move through your operation.
Purchasing and supply chain
Manage vendors, purchasing, receipts, and inventory availability. Help purchasing and operations teams work from consistent information when planning for demand and fulfilling orders.
Manufacturing and production
Plan production using bills of materials, routings, capacity, and production orders. Connect production activity with materials, inventory, and financial information. Available with Business Central Premium.
Service management
Manage service items, service orders, contracts, and related service activities. Coordinate service work with supporting business processes. Available with Business Central Premium.
Reporting and business visibility
Use financial reports, operational data, and supported analytics to understand performance. Extend reporting with Power BI where your requirements call for additional analysis or visualization.
WORK SMARTER EVERY DAY.
Your industry changes what you need from ERP.
Your business processes determine how your ERP should be configured. Manufacturing, rental, and consumer products businesses face different operational challenges, and those differences matter when choosing the right combination of Microsoft functionality, integrations, and specialized applications.
Engineer-to-Order Manufacturing
Connect engineering decisions with production and financial visibility.
When products are engineered to customer specifications, changes can affect material requirements, purchasing, production schedules, and project costs.
Business Central Premium provides manufacturing capabilities, including production bills of materials, routings, and production orders. The right solution also requires understanding how your business handles engineering revisions, project costing, and changes after production planning begins.
Specialized engineering integrations or extensions may be needed for more complex requirements.
Equipment Rental
Connect rental activity with the rest of your business.
Managing rental equipment involves more than tracking inventory. Availability, rental contracts, dispatch, returns, maintenance, and billing all influence your operation.
Business Central provides a financial and operational foundation. Specialized rental applications or custom integrations can add the rental-specific functionality your business needs.
Understanding how equipment moves between rental, sales, and service is essential when evaluating the right approach.
Consumer Packaged Goods
Connect demand, inventory, and fulfillment.
Selling across multiple channels creates challenges for inventory visibility, purchasing, order management, and fulfillment.
Business Central connects core financial and supply chain processes. Microsoft’s Shopify Connector can support integration with Shopify stores, while other commerce channels, EDI requirements, and specialized warehouse workflows may require additional integrations or extensions.
The objective is to establish reliable information and processes as orders move through your business.
THE PRENTICEWORX APPROACH
Business Central should fit your business, not the other way around.
Before configuring your ERP, we work to understand the processes behind your business.
Where does information get disconnected? Which processes create unnecessary work? What needs to happen when an exception occurs? Which existing systems should stay, and which processes need to change?
Those answers help us evaluate standard Microsoft functionality, appropriate third-party applications, and custom development.
The objective isn’t to customize everything. It’s to make informed technology decisions based on your operational requirements.
Understand the operation. Build what makes sense.
AI + COPILOT IN BUSINESS CENTRAL
Put AI to work in your everyday operations.
Business Central offers Copilot and AI-powered capabilities designed to help people find information, analyze business data, and complete selected tasks.
The right starting point depends on your processes, data quality, and the features available in your environment.
Find information with natural language
Chat with Copilot can help users locate Business Central records and find guidance about supported tasks. Its availability and functionality depend on the current release, configuration, and supported preview conditions.
Explore business data
Copilot-assisted list analysis can help users create analysis views using natural-language instructions, making it easier to filter, summarize, and examine information within supported Business Central lists.
Support financial processes
Copilot can assist with bank reconciliation by suggesting matches for transactions and proposing accounts for selected unmatched items. Your finance team reviews the results before accepting them.
Explore AI agents for specific business processes.
Microsoft also offers Business Central agents for selected tasks, including sales order intake and accounts payable processing.
These capabilities have additional configuration, availability, and consumption requirements. Evaluate them separately from the Copilot assistance included with Business Central.
FROM AI ASSISTANCE TO AI-DRIVEN OPERATIONS
AI that can do more than answer questions.
Copilot
Helps your people work
Find, summarize, analyze, suggest, and assist with everyday Business Central tasks.
Agents
Help move work forward
Execute defined business processes and bring people in when decisions or exceptions need attention.
Custom AI
Built around your business
Extend Business Central with Microsoft’s broader AI ecosystem to create AI-driven workflows around your needs.
HOW PRENTICEWORX HELPS.
Experienced people. An ERP built around your business.
Your ERP affects the people and processes responsible for keeping your business running.
PrenticeWorx combines hands-on business experience with Microsoft expertise to help you implement, improve, and extend Business Central around your requirements.
New implementation
Start by understanding your processes, requirements, existing systems, and operational priorities. Define an implementation approach that addresses your business needs, data migration, integrations, and user adoption.
Optimize what you already have
Review your existing configuration, workflows, reporting, integrations, and user adoption. Identify the changes that will address operational problems and help your team get more value from Business Central.
Integrations & custom development
Evaluate how Business Central should connect with the systems your business relies on. Consider standard Microsoft capabilities, established third-party applications, and custom development based on your requirements.
Project recovery
When an existing ERP project isn’t delivering what your business needs, begin with an assessment of the environment, outstanding problems, and implementation decisions. Establish priorities and develop a practical path forward.
THE BUSINESS CASE.
What’s the potential financial impact of Business Central?
A Microsoft-commissioned Forrester study found significant potential value from Business Central, including strong ROI, a fast payback period, and positive net present value.
209%
ROI over three years
<6 months
Potential payback period
$464K
Net present value over three years
Source: Forrester Consulting. The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, commissioned by Microsoft, 2023.
Results are based on a composite organization and may vay based on your specific business, industry, and implementation.
Business Central pricing & licensing
The right Business Central license depends on your operational requirements, the capabilities your business needs, and how your team will use the system.
Compare Microsoft’s licensing options below. PrenticeWorx can help you evaluate the requirements for your implementation.
Essentials
w/Annual Commitment & Upfront Payment
Premium
w/Annual Commitment & Upfront Payment
Team Member
w/Annual Commitment & Upfront Payment
Frequently Asked Questions
Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning application for small and midsize businesses. It connects core business processes, including financial management, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects, and operations.
Start by evaluating your operational requirements, existing systems, reporting needs, and plans for growth.
Consider which processes need to connect, where manual work is creating problems, and whether your business requires specialized industry functionality. These requirements will help determine whether Business Central is an appropriate fit.
Essentials includes core business management capabilities such as finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, and project management.
Premium includes Essentials functionality and adds manufacturing and service-management capabilities. Your operational requirements determine which license is appropriate.
Business Central Premium includes manufacturing capabilities such as production bills of materials, routings, and production orders.
Engineer-to-Order businesses may have additional requirements involving engineering revisions, complex project costing, product configuration, and connections to engineering systems.
The appropriate solution depends on which requirements can be met through standard functionality and which require additional applications or custom development.
Business Central provides financial, inventory, purchasing, and other core business capabilities.
Comprehensive rental management, including specialized rental contracts, asset availability, dispatch, returns, and rental billing, may require a rental-specific application or custom solution.
Your rental processes should be evaluated before selecting the appropriate technology.
Yes. Microsoft provides a Shopify Connector for Business Central, and the platform supports integration with other Microsoft applications and additional business systems.
Other commerce platforms, EDI requirements, specialized warehouse systems, and industry applications may require additional connectors or custom integrations.
PrenticeWorx provides Business Central implementation, optimization, integration, and project recovery services.
Reviewing your existing configuration, business processes, data, reporting, and integrations can help identify problems and establish priorities for improvement.
Implementation timelines vary according to your business requirements, existing systems, data migration, integrations, customization, and organizational complexity.
An initial assessment helps establish the appropriate project scope, implementation phases, and realistic timeline.
Business Central includes supported Copilot functionality, with feature availability depending on release status, configuration, and regional requirements.
Microsoft also offers separate AI agents for selected business processes. These agents may require additional setup and consumption-based licensing.
Go-live should be followed by user adoption, performance monitoring, and ongoing improvement.
As your organization changes, you may need to refine processes, update reporting, evaluate integrations, and introduce additional functionality.
Confirm your ongoing support requirements during implementation planning.
READY TO MOVE FORWARD?
Build an ERP around the way your business works.
Whether you’re implementing Business Central, improving an existing environment, or evaluating industry-specific requirements, start with a conversation about your business.
Talk with PrenticeWorx about your operational challenges, technology requirements, and what needs to happen next.