NAVUG Forum 2008-–Assessing Add-Ons and New Tools for Supply Chain and Costing Management

In a full day of technical and business presentations at NAVUG Forum 2008 in Las Vegas Tuesday, attendees participated in a forum on the benefits ofutilizing NAV Add-Ons, as well as talks on Supply Chain Management, Costing Management, and more.  Here are the high points of these sessions:

Filling in NAV gaps. Speakers John Stevens from SimCrest and Steve Quattry from ExpandIT described their own add-on solutions as well as the more general needs that drive the Dynamics ISV business.  ExpandIT was founded when NAV employees identified a set of feature gaps in NAV that wanted to address by breaking offto tackle the issues themselves. Several years later they now have a significant portfolio of add-ons.  The growth of the add-on market for the Dynamics product line has evolved in much the same way -features and tools that meet a market demand for some subset of customers but that are too far from the core Dynamics product for Microsoft to support directly.

SimCrest's Stevens reviewed their Credit Card Management and Product Configurator Solutions.  Automation of critical business functions like credit card transactions and sales configuration are capabilities that extend past standard NAV capabilities but provide an opportunity for another organization to step in with a powerful and integral solution.

ExpandIT's Quattry covered various solutions, including its Internet Shop and Sales offerings. ExpandIT Sales is a POS solution for mobile sales that can quickly show return on investment.  It is the ability to demonstrate this value that makes it a successful add-on, according to the Steve Quattry.  "In the mobile technology, it is one of the quickest returns on investment ...