What I love about Business Central
I’m going to geek out a little bit in this blog. I’m going to talk about the features that I absolutely love about Business Central. These are the ones that make one’s life easier or save’s one hide in a pinch. Some of these are not strictly based on the software and extend beyond ones and zeros. Without further ado, here are my favorites!
1. Restoring environments - restoring sandbox environments from production data from a specific point in time. Sometimes, you have to recreate a problem in order to solve it and that problem often only is demonstrable in the production environment. By making a copy of production into a sandbox, one can typically debug the issue and resolve it. In the past, this could be a daunting task, but with Business Central cloud, it takes minutes.
2. Automatic updates - we often take automatic updates for granted as practically everything updates automatically these days - automobiles, phones, TV’s, smart devices of every sort, to name a few. Business Central automatically updates along with your extensions (customizations made for your business). This means you will not end up with aging software and outdated technologies faced with an expensive upgrade years down the line. You get two major releases every year and monthly minor updates.
3. Continual improvement - it’s quite a relief when something you found cumbersome, annoying or lacking is now resolved or available. It’s enough to let out an audible sigh of relief or perhaps a joyful expletive. Microsoft has listened to us and you can provide direct feedback to Microsoft on desired features and vote for them on Microsoft Dynamics Ideas website. Ideas (dynamics.com)
4. Peace of mind and lowered IT costs. Having your software hosted in the cloud by Microsoft takes out a great deal of complexity out of running an ERP system. No servers! No SQL server licenses. No security certificates. No remote desktop server. No Citrix server. And if you don’t know what any of that means - it means less headache and less cost and less things to worry about. Microsoft takes care of all of the backend and you are the consumer of the product and simply use a web browser to access the software. It couldn’t be simpler.
5. An active and thriving field. The Business Central field is huge and continually growing. Many ISV (independent software vendors) continually innovate and create solutions for industry specific needs or areas where a niche can be filled. Some examples are sales tax integrations, web portals, credit card processing and more. There is a strong community and user groups where you can network, receive or give training and exchange ideas.