Dynamics Profile: Sharing NAV Knowledge Is Key to Success, Says New Microsoft MVP

Newly awarded Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Business Solutions) MVP Kai Kowalewski is a firm believer in the idea that sharing of knowledge is a critical to both an ERP solution's strength and the health of its professional community.

"The whole area of development has widened so much and we now have so many new things that we have to learn," says Kowalewski, who works as a software developer, at gbedv GmbH & Co. KG in northern Germany. "And the whole technical [landscape] is changing so swiftly that you can't really hold on to your job for the next decade if you don't have a community that's willing to help each other."

Sharing knowledge about Dynamics NAV also helps end users, says Kowalewski, who is mostly active on the German forum www.msdynamics.de, where he is also the moderator.

"If I were an end user looking for an ERP system, I would first go and look at forums and determine if there's an active community of reliable people who put their names out there using this product," he says. "If there isn't, I wouldn't buy the software."

Kowalewski, who received his Business Solutions (no longer classified specifically for Dynamics NAV) MVP award in July, started working with Dynamics NAV in 1999 when he was a salesperson for a large camera retailer. At the time the retailer was moving to Navision from a legacy database system that was totally hopeless.

"They didn't have an ERP system so they had to introduce something new," he says. "So I was ...