The future of ERP for businesses is SaaS
Reporting from Directions EMEA 2021
Directions, the independent conference for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partners, is finally back after a one-year break. Directions has become a must-visit event for anyone who wants to learn about what’s coming in Business Central (BC), share knowledge with other Dynamics experts and enthusiasts, build new partnerships, and find out the latest news directly from Microsoft staff.
Between October 26 and 29, thirty employees from the LS Retail team and 10 employees from TCOG were among the more than 1,400 developers, vendors and experts who gathered in Milan to meet new and old friends and colleagues (finally!) in person, and learn about the present and future of BC.
BC SaaS’s momentum continues
“Business Central has grown very quickly, far beyond our expectations,” said Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President Business Apps & Platform at Microsoft.
Since the last Directions EMEA in October 2019:
- the number of partners selling Business Central has more than doubled, from 1,400 to more than 3,300.
- there are four times as many business solutions available on AppSource. In 2019 there were 450, today there are more than 1,800 – and the number is growing by the day.
- the number of customers has increased tenfold, from 2,000 to more than 20,000.
- more and more companies are choosing BC as their ERP. Business Central SaaS is now a truly global solution, available in more than 70 countries on all continents.
Serving different businesses
The type of customers switching to Business Central SaaS is also becoming more varied, and now ranges from start-ups to enterprises in different industries in all regions of the world.
“Many companies have realized that Business Central online is the best place to run business applications.” – Mike Morton, General Manager for Dynamics 365 Business Central at Microsoft
Larger companies are also increasingly choosing Business Central as the central platform for their ERP.
Increasingly attractive to large companies
In the past, SaaS ERP was primarily for smaller companies. Today, thanks to consistent investments in performance improvements, Business Central is also suitable for larger installations.
During a session, Microsoft software engineer Rayner Vaz and architect Christian Heide Damm explained how Business Central SaaS now places no hard limit on the number of users, sessions, transactions or database size, making it an ideal ERP solution for companies with many users, large databases and a high number of input and sales orders.
“Today BC SaaS can handle more than 5,700 Web Service requests per minute, which is 5,100 requests higher than what they should be able to handle according to the official documentation (600 req/min),” says Dadi Karason, CTO at LS Retail. “It seems that Microsoft is on the right track – they have put a lot of time and effort into making BC SaaS a scalable and high-performing platform that should be able to handle all of our customers’ needs.”
Leading the way in security
Microsoft has invested heavily in security and compliance, optimizing its services in a variety of ways, from data encryption to automated threat detection, identity isolation and just-in-time access, to name a few.
“In the long run, the cloud will be the best solution for businesses because of its ability to keep businesses secure with best practices, the latest patches and top security management.” – Mike Morton, General Manager for Dynamics 365 Business Central at Microsoft
Automation for partners
In recent months, the Microsoft team has launched several enhancements to simplify partners’ work. The most interesting are:
- Faster technical validation for apps submitted to AppSource. Now an app can be automatically validated in all countries where BC is available, and in just five minutes – a few years ago this validation would have taken hours, if not days.
- Several tools for efficient troubleshooting. These include telemetry (which can be monitored to analyze operations that may affect performance and diagnose problems), page inspection (to learn the data model behind a page and troubleshoot), snapshot debugging (which allows you to record running code and debug it later) and the AL debugger, which allows users to do debugging in a sandbox.
- Improved cloud migration, regardless of client size. In the past, you could migrate up to 80 Gb to the cloud. Now there’s no limit on the amount of data, which means it’s much more attractive for businesses of all sizes.
- A new Business Central Partner sandbox will allow partners to buy users at a low price and use them for demo environments, development, and validation. This is in addition to internal user rights, which are already available to partners with specific competencies.
Easier onboarding
A new onboarding framework with quick views and a guided overview will simplify the experience for new Business Central users, help them understand key features at a glance and become productive faster.
“I am very pleased with the amount of tools Microsoft has created for partners to manage our SaaS customers. I see how the assisted onboarding setup will help with new customers, and the Partner Sandbox will make selling the solution much easier,” says Sigurdur Ari Sigurjonsson, Business Development Director at LS Retail.
A vision for the future
In Mike Morton’s vision, the future development of Business Central revolves around three core areas:
- Simplifying the user experience
- Increasing connections
- Stepping into the predictive era
Simplifying the user experience
The goal is to make Business Central the easiest-to-use business application. Boarding should be easy and response times should be super fast.
Although there is still a long way to go, the BC team has already launched the new onboarding framework, which helps ISVs reduce the time spent on each client, and a new accelerated data entry in the BC client, with a mechanism that gives a smooth typing experience no matter how fast users enter data. This change alone has led to time improvements of 12-23% in booking and creating sales and purchase orders.
Increasing Connections
Business Central is fully integrated with the entire 365 stack, from Teams, to OneDrive, to Outlook. As of Q1 2022, it will also be seamlessly integrated with e-commerce platform Shopify, providing seamless data sync between ERP and e-commerce store. When it was announced that Business Central would become the main ERP solution in Shopify’s global ERP program, Shopify shares rose 1.5%, demonstrating the markets’ confidence in Microsoft software.
Going forward, Microsoft plans to invest heavily in connectivity, with other software solutions inside and outside the Microsoft stack, and with new (but increasingly important) data sources such as sensors or IoT devices.
Entering the predictive era
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more powerful, and more affordable, than ever before. In the future, Microsoft wants to find new ways to use the data that businesses get – including big data from the outside world and information from customers – to make businesses more active, efficient and profitable, in a highly automated way. Tomorrow’s Business Central platform can become a proactive tool that encourages users to take action, telling them when to contact a specific customer, or making suggestions to optimize their supply chain to maximize revenue.
“There are exciting times ahead,” says Peter Vach, Vice President of Partner Operations at LS Retail.
Want to learn more about Business Central SaaS? Request a no-obligation consultation now!
