Manufacturing and Distribution Data Warehousing with Dynamics NAV

This article will explore the impact of a data warehouse solution for manufacturing and distribution companies using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

When it comes to making decisions within a company, data rules all. Organizations use data to set and meet goals in order to stay on budget. Data warehousing is a powerful solution to organize and strengthen Business Intelligence (BI) analyses. A data warehouse is a multi-dimensional database that can store a large amount of data, accumulated from a wide range of sources within a company and used to guide management decisions. They are not live, real-time integrations; therefore, the information in data warehouses can be used for scheduled budgeting, reporting, and dashboards or higher level performance data questions. They structure around the subject, so they focus the interaction through organizing by topic, such as customer, sales, or product. As a manufacturing or distribution NAV user, you may want to know the impact a data warehouse solution has for your company. In this article, I’ll go about explaining this solution for these two industries using NAV for managing data and analytics.

Data warehousing with NAV is a powerful technology solution that gives manufacturers and distributors the resources they need to manage all aspects of their business, from production to procurement to warehouses and shipment management. Flexible processes and comprehensive information assists organizations to improve customer satisfaction, respond efficiently to last minute changes, and take advantage of new opportunities to help your organization stay ahead of the competition. We will look into data warehousing for manufacturing and distribution companies respectively.

Any size company can benefit from data warehouse manufacturing capabilities. Data warehouse vendors build the product so that it can house and integrate multiple data sources for a consolidated database. Data cleaning and data integration practices are specific to data warehouses, producing this core of consolidation. Your company can keep financial data, inventory data and other organizational data in one place. Data is replicated and transformed from its original space into this accessible data store. As mentioned in Data Warehouse and OLAP Cubes for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, “data warehouses only require two actions to access your data: the replication of the information and accessing it. “ Data warehouses are structured with the business end user in mind.

Growing companies can streamline their processes by taking advantage of a manufacturing foundation that includes rapid visibility into work-in-process (WIP), support for order-by-order workflow, and the ability to implement additional functionality as business needs become more complex. Manufacturers have always been challenged to reduce costs while improving quality, respond to customer needs and market demands, and make a profit.  With a data warehouse and the right tools, you can effectively manage production, improve operational efficiency, including production orders, bills of material, supply planning, and capacity requirements planning. The benefits that users receive from managing manufacturing processes in NAV are that it improves business performance from all areas of the user’s operations from order entry to production, warehouse management, delivery, providing customers with information they can rely on, responding rapidly to changing customer demands with agile manufacturing, and opening the users’ business to trading partners around the clock.

NAV allows users to respond quickly to customer needs, improve customer service, and reduce inventory and distribution costs.  NAV integrates inventory management, order entry, fulfillment, financial data, and shipping. It is designed to give more comprehensive information in one complete business management system, and it can link multiple spaces and warehouse facilities. Data warehousing also allows users to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the data warehouse. Features such as Automated Data Capture System (ADCS), item tracking, improved distribution processes from warehouse layout to selecting methods of shipping, organizations have accurate information on their inventory so goods can be found where expected and orders can be efficiently placed, packed, labelled, shipped and invoiced.

With a data warehouse solution for NAV, distributors can improve customer service, process orders faster, eliminate data re-entry to decrease manual processes and streamline operations, and get immediate feedback on business performance. The data warehousing tools help NAV users accurately forecast demand and balance inventory costs. They also simplify reporting with data access and interactive views. The information can often presented in a way that is familiar to Microsoft Outlook users, and it can be transferred to Microsoft Excel for analysis and visual presentation. It can also be customized in a way that helps your organization tailor the system to suit your organization’s requirements.

If you are not sure whether your company needs a data warehouse, consider the different types of data your company will have to manage. It may be challenging to manage all of your different information separately, especially in terms of consolidated analyses for a better understanding of the overall success of your company. Many organizations consolidate their information in Excel, but a data warehouse can get rid of errors, wasted money and time, and tedious manual documentation.

Data will always be a great importance to organizational decision-making, and data warehouses will also become more popular, mainly since businesses can consolidate multiple types of data into one high performing space without needing IT to manage the software.  Data warehouses can offer your manufacturing and/or distribution company exactly that. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

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