All of the Inventory in your store can be thought of as tied up capital. Its money spent for a future sale that hasn’t happened yet. Managing your inventory is a delicate balance because you must ensure

1. that you do not have excess inventory you cannot sell and

2. that you have enough stock to satisfy customer demands.

From the perspective of someone outside of the retail space, a sold-out item on the surface may seem like a success; a business was successfully able to sell 100% of its stock. They can simply order a higher quantity next time and the cycle will continue. A customer could even buy a substitute item if something is out of stock.

Although this this type of inventory control might appear as a successful business model, it has a drastic effect on customer loyalty. If you don’t have a product that the customer wants, they will eventually move on to a store that has what they want and never look back. Amazon, with its many options and suppliers, has become a catalyst for this kind of consumer behavior. According to the Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2004/05/stock-outs-cause-walkouts), up to 43% will go to another store to buy the item (Note: this was published in 2004, you can imagine what the rate is now). The importance of keeping inventory at a safe level, both not holding up unnecessary capital, and ensuring you do not sell-out is paramount in today’s environment. But how do you determine the optimal amounts of products to keep on hand and when to reorder stock?

Luckily, LS Central has a robust replenishment module that tracks previous sales and can automatically create purchase orders based on previous sales or trends which are all recorded within LS Central. This is a very powerful tool within LS Central and can be customized for every item within your business or from a group of products.

Sandham Adams has extensive knowledge of LS Central which can be used to overcome this inventory control balancing act and help solve many other business issues. We’d love to tell you more. To book a demo of LS Central, please contact us at 416-225-2265.

Graham Sandham

Many years ago, a colleague reminded me that everything in a business either flows into or out of the business’s accounting system.

I think something that has been lost in the glitz and spectacular functionality of Business Central is the fact that it is a robust accounting system. Reporting and ultimately government related filing like tax returns are generated based on the information created and stored in Business Central.

It has a Chart of Accounts and a G/L (General Ledger) Entry table that stores transactions for those G/L Accounts. It generates a Balance Sheet and an Income Statement.

It also handles and stores the complicated transactions related to inventory costing for distributors and manufacturers.
When dealing with multiple currencies, Microsoft Business Dynamics 365 Business Central keeps track of the realized and unrealized gains and losses related to those transactions in different transactions.

It keeps track of banking transactions and allows bank reconciliation.

In most businesses, there are five main business activities to lesser or greater degrees:

• Invoices go out (Sales Invoices)
• Invoices come in (Purchase Invoices)
• Payments come in (Cash Receipts)
• Payments go out (Payments or Disbursements)
• Payroll (employees need to get paid)

These are all represented by transactions that flow into the Business Central financial functionality.

Fixed assets need to be tracked, with purchasing and depreciation recorded.

Budgets and revised budgets need to be tracked against actual transactions.

At its core, Business Central is an accounting system. Its not an afterthought or add-on functionality, and as an accounting system, can be an essential part of any business.

Sandham Adams’ team of experts can help with your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Microsoft Dynamics NAV) installation or migration. Contact us for more information.

“Big data” is one of the most popular business buzzwords of the recent decade. Until fairly recently, the benefits of analyzing an organization’s data, be that data big or small, was only available to very large organizations who could hire specialized external resources to sift through this data and apply specifically tuned data mining algorithms and statistical analysis techniques to the data. Not only was this time consuming and extremely costly, the results of that analysis were often inconclusive, making decisions from that analysis risky or at least not done with confidence. 

Times have changed. Data about your business and customers is now considered one of the most important assets a business can have. Modern business intelligence tools can analyze your ERP system data easily with predefined and proven data mining algorithms. Chances are your organization is sitting on a gold-mine of data that, with the right analysis, could yield huge benefits. 

What Can Business Intelligence Tools Do For My Business

So, what can you do with this data gathered from your ERP solution and how exactly do you find meaningful metrics from it? How can you better understand your customer base, increase retention, and manage your prices to drive more profit?

Nowadays, there are plenty of solutions that can pull data directly from your ERP or business management solution and utilize built-in Business Intelligence Reporting tools that run Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. One great example is Power BI.

Power BI

Power BI can pull data directly from Business Central. From there, it has the ability to predict table relationships. With that capability out-of-the box, you’re already well on your way to having a meaningful dataset. Within minutes from beginning the analysis, an end-user can create a dynamic report which allows you to have real-time insights into your business. 

The dynamic reports and dashboard layout are powerful tools that allow you to create reports depending on the user’s needs or role. For example, if an executive wants to track current sales on their phone, you can quickly develop a Power BI report which will provide them with real-time metrics, allowing key decision-makers to stay ahead of the game. These dashboards can also be integrated directly into Business Central’s role centers.

In a retail environment, leveraging feedback from business intelligence tools can be an incredibly powerful resource to help with day to day decisions, keeping your business running as smoothly and optimally as possible. An easy example of this is the ability to track unit sales by territory, seasonal performance, and variance.  This kind of data is all within your organizations data inside business central. With the many online tutorials, you can quickly learn to reshape the data you have available to get the metrics you need for success. 

Another exciting new feature is the Power BI Artificial Intelligence Module which can analyze rich text data from customer reviews, or employee satisfaction reports. You can also combine multiple datasets, providing you with a better picture of how market trends affect your business. 

Reap the Benefits For Your Organization

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg – a wealth of information from these business intelligence tools provide a true decision support system that organizations have been trying to implement for decades. The technology is here at your fingertips. The time to give it a try is now!

Sandham Adams specializes in implementation and training of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI, which can help your organization benefit from these results. Contact us for a quote to help install or expand and upgrade your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central solution.