• Illustration: An Outlook-Style UI for Navision

A new Outlook-style user interface (UI) helps workers better organize and navigate tasks in the latest version of Navision, one of Microsoft’s four business management packages for mid-size companies. Navision’s new UI, coupled with improved business analytics and event notification via integration with SQL Server, continues Microsoft’s efforts to better integrate Microsoft Business Solutions’ (MBS) products and interfaces with other Microsoft products. Navision 4.0 also refines existing features, although the current portal, built for an earlier version of Navision, will not be updated until the second quarter of 2005.

Navision’s Niche

The Navision product, acquired in Microsoft’s July 2002 purchase of Danish software company Navision, is an accounting and business management package for mid-size businesses. The product is sold through a network of channel partners, mostly in Europe. As of the fourth quarter of 2004, Navision has garnered about 45,000 customers (netting over 6,000 new customers in fiscal year 2004), most of which are manufacturing or distribution companies with fewer than 50 employees.

The product consists of a broad array of applications and features (referred to as "granules" and functionally similar to Great Plains "modules") that support a variety of business areas. For example, Navision’s financial management area contains granules for managing a company’s fixed assets and its general ledger. Customers license these granules independently or in bundles; for example, the "Manufacturing Foundation" contains a bundle of granules that provide basic production planning features for small manufacturers.

Look and Feel, Analytics Lead Improvements

With Navision 4.0, Microsoft has continued its effort to make MBS products look and feel like traditional Microsoft products, such as Outlook and Office, and improve integration between MBS products and those traditional products, such as SQL Server and BizTalk Server. Doing so gives Microsoft a relatively low-cost way to enhance MBS products while creating sales opportunities for other Microsoft products in MBS accounts.

Navision 4.0 both improves usability through a new Outlook-style UI and improves integration with SQL Server to deliver new business analytics and alerting capabilities.

A new UI modeled on Outlook. A new UI helps users better organize and navigate Navision applications. Along with many MBS products (including Great Plains 8.0, Microsoft Customer Relationship Management, and the forthcoming Small Business Accounting), the Navision 4.0 UI borrows its navigation paradigm from the nearly ubiquitous Outlook—for example, a persistent menu bar shows users where they are within the Navision application hierarchy and allows them to quickly find and navigate to other screens. In addition, users can personalize menus; for example, a user could configure menus to display only the application areas and screens they work with regularly. (For a screen shot of Navision 4.0’s new UI, see the illustration "An Outlook-Style UI for Navision".)

Previous versions of the product presented users with a two-pane main menu screen that listed the application areas (for example, general ledger) available to a user and the screens within those areas (a chart of accounts within the general ledger, for instance). Bringing up these screens could obscure the main menu and also result in a proliferation of windows on the desktop, making it difficult for users to find or access other applications or screens.

Advanced business analytics and notification, courtesy of SQL Server integration. Although previous versions of the product included some basic business and financial analysis and reporting capabilities, these features are strengthened in Navision 4.0 through integration with SQL Server. Utilities in SQL Server can extract data from Navision’s operational databases and populate special data stores (called "cubes"), which are optimized to create on-the-fly charts and reports for business analysis. For example, a corporate manager could generate graphs of new customer acquisitions and sales by subsidiary from Navision data in a cube. Users can analyze Navision cubes using either Excel or graphical tools in the Navision client.

Navision 4.0 also takes advantage of SQL Server Notification Services to alert users to important business conditions or events. For example, an administrator could configure Navision to notify a manager via e-mail if warehouse inventory on a popular item fell below a certain level.

Commerce Gateway uses BizTalk Server 2004. Navision includes an application called the Commerce Gateway, built atop BizTalk Server, that allows users to exchange information or business documents (product catalogs, product quotes, or purchase orders, for example) with trading partners. Previous versions of the Commerce Gateway worked with BizTalk Server 2000 and BizTalk Server 2002; Navision 4.0 adds support for BizTalk Server 2004 and thus inherits the expanded capabilities and performance and programmability advantages of that release.

Steady Feature Improvements

Navision 4.0 offers incremental improvements in many of the product’s functional areas, notably in the product’s core financial management and manufacturing areas. However, Navision 4.0 introduces no new features that are likely to attract significant customer interest outside of its core constituency of manufacturing and distribution companies (unlike the June 2004 Great Plains 8.0 release, which added new features for public sector accounting, a segment previously unsupported by the product).

For example, an intercompany posting feature in the financial management area allows businesses with multiple, distinct financial entities (a construction firm with multiple local subsidiaries, for instance) to formally track financial transactions among those entities via sales and purchase orders and general ledger entries. These capabilities are important for companies that try to control costs by centralizing purchase and warehousing of big-ticket capital items and supplies, and then charging out those items to local subsidiaries as they are needed.

Notable among enhancements to Navision’s manufacturing capabilities is a Gantt chart feature for modeling and tracking production or manufacturing processes. For example, sales personnel at a custom furniture manufacturer can use the feature to examine the status of production orders and quickly determine whether orders were at risk of delay.

New Portal Planned, More Integration Likely

Beyond Navision 4.0, Microsoft plans a new version of the Navision User Portal, which offers Web access to Navision applications and data. The new version will be based on Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft’s most recent portal platform. (The current Navision User Portal is based on an older Microsoft portal technology called the Digital Dashboard Resource Kit.) This new version will ship in an update to Navision 4.0 that is scheduled for the second quarter of 2005. In the meantime, customers and partners should note that the current version of the Navision User Portal is not compatible with Navision 4.0—thus, customers that have deployed the User Portal (with Navision 3.7, for example) should consider waiting until the second quarter update before upgrading to Navision 4.0.

Although no specific announcements have been made, further integration of Navision and other Microsoft products, particularly MBS products, seems likely. For instance, Navision is the only one of the four MBS enterprise resource planning products that does not work with FRx, the MBS financial reporting package. This will probably be rectified as sales of Navision increase in North America, where FRx is most widely deployed. Furthermore, as Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (MSCRM) gains in popularity, MBS will likely integrate it with Navision in an effort to generate cross-selling opportunities between the two products.

Availability and Resources

Navision 4.0 became available in Oct. 2004 in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Microsoft will make the product available in other countries in 2005. Navision 4.0 is free for existing customers with an active Navision maintenance agreement. New customers can purchase the product through select MBS resellers. Because some features depend on other Microsoft products, customers may require additional software licenses to take advantage of them. For example, Navision’s business notifications feature or its Commerce Gateway requires that customers also license SQL Server and BizTalk Server, respectively.

More information about Navision can be found at www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/Navision/default.mspx.

SQL Server Notification Services, which was released in Aug. 2002, is described in "New Notification Services to Enhance SQL Server 2000" on page 9 of the July 2002 Update.

An overview of BizTalk Server 2004's capabilities and logical architecture can be found in "BizTalk Server Engine Reworked" on page 3 of the Apr. 2004 Update.

Windows SharePoint Services is covered in "Windows SharePoint Services Supports Office Collaboration" on page 3 of the June 2003 Update.