10 features to look forward to in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2

Microsoft took the wraps off its upcoming release of Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 recently at the Directions EMEA conference, September 2-4 in Vienna, Austria. Members of the Catapult team were fortunate to attend the event with about 850 members of the Dynamics NAV community, primarily from Western Europe. The event took place one month before the North American Directions, scheduled for early October in Nashville, TN.

The unveiling of NAV 2013 R2 was significant because it is the first major release since the NAV product team, based in Copenhagen Denmark, announced its intention to move to an annual release cycle for major versions. Annual releases make it easier for customers to keep their NAV systems current, making upgrades easier and providing greater access to platform integration capabilities.

While nowhere near as groundbreaking as the release of NAV 2013 last year, the new release, codenamed Sicily, brings some much anticipated capabilities and some exciting new possibilities with Azure and Office 365.  

Here's a breakdown of what's new in R2:

Cash Management

SEPA Direct Debit Collections - This feature provides an efficient way to handle customer's payment collections through a customer's preferred bank in the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) with less manual entry of data and effective mandate handling. By allowing users to collect money from their customers in a seamless connected way with the invoicing process, the order to cash lead time is minimized and cash management efficiency increased.

Export Payment Data - This feature that enables a user to export payment data to an electronic bank file in SEPA-compliant format. This lets the user integrate electronically with any bank ...