Sneak Peek at Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013

I was impressed by how many customers packed into the highly anticipated townhall session I hosted at our JustFoodERP User Event 2012, where Brett Johnson, the NAV Technology Adoption Manager for North America and Asia Pacific, gave us all a sneak peak at the functionality within Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013.

Even though the latest version of NAV won’t be released to the public until this fall, we got quite an eyeful of the enhancements – and there are lots! The big ticket items include Microsoft Azure deployment, a new Web Client, and full .NET runtime.

At the 45-minute in-depth discussion, “What’s Next with NAV 2013,” Brett did demos for JustFoodERP customers on: 

• NAV 2013 Clients
  • New changes to the RTC Role Tailored Client including improved charts, copy/paste lines, and keyboard enhancements.
• A hot-looking web client, based on Microsoft Windows Azure, that will provide a zero-footprint and zero-deployment option for our customers, on-premise or hosted.
• SharePoint Client – NAV Portal Framework.
• A NAV Cloud option that involves hosting from Microsoft facilities.
• NAV 2013 Query using Odata & Excel, taking advantage of PowerPivot and other new Excel 2010 features.

There is also a pile of new application enhancements that will be meaningful to our customers, including changes to Dimensions, Costing, Supply Planning, and Warehouse.    

In his discussion of the Dynamics NAV roadmap, Brett said that Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 will kick in next year, with a NAV 2014 release coming on quickly after. “We are moving to a yearly release cycle,” Brett said. “We will maintain the simplicity and elegance of NAV, while leveraging other Microsoft technologies.”

He also demonstrated the display of actual production planning data via the cool use of Windows 8 on a tablet to our audience, the kind of innovation Microsoft is looking at with NAV 2013 and beyond.

Brett has been with Microsoft for about 8 years working with .NET technologies and their largest enterprise customers and partners. He joined the Dynamics world in 2007 to lead the creation of the first ever Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for NAV.

We were thrilled to have Brent give us this preview of NAV 2013 – a real game changer for our customers when it comes to their JustFoodERP systems!

Marc DiGiorgio

Marc DiGiorgio, VP, JustFoodERP, is part tech geek, part business guy. He has had the opportunity to manage the JustFoodERP team since helping conceive the product in 2004. Marc has a variety of experiences in the past 15 years including software implementation, sales, marketing, and product management. He is an avid runner, cyclist, and triathlete, and father of two boys and a girl. He can be reached at marc.digiorgio@justfooderp.com.