How ERP buyers will approach Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central - and what it means for resellers

"Finally!" was one of the reactions I heard stated by one of the QBS partners  during the latest QBShare event in Denmark when Microsoft launched Dynamics 365 Business Central. Not only was the launch long anticipated, it's taken us on a twisting, turning journey with more than a few bumps along the way.

It started with the launch of an unfinished  first version of Dynamics 365 Business Edition in most European countries, leading to a discussion anticipating how we might position the NAV platform vs. Dynamics 365 for current NAV customers. In the early days, that path was unclear at best.

With the latest announcement, we are now looking forward to working with the new platform that Business Central represents, now knowing that it is not just cloud enabled, it is actually developed from the ground up to be the SaaS platform for Dynamics in small and medium businesses. Microsoft will keep a dual strategy, allowing the partner and customer to choose respectively on-premises (Dynamics NAV 2018) or a cloud deployment.

Now that the product has become available, the question is how fast will customers adopt Dynamics 365 Business Central? I would argue that a few basic rules of the business application market haven't changed, even when an ERP solution is developed and deployed for cloud.

My first reason  is that existing customers have customizations on their current ERP platforms. Migrating these capabilities will take time and investment by capable partners.

Secondly, customers want to work with an ERP solution that has industry capabilities  and they need to mirror business processes that reflect the specifics of their industry.

Last but not least, selling, configuring, deploying, ...