After the forced pivot to remote work due to the pandemic, companies have learned an important lesson: working from home can be effective and productive. Though the quick and easy option for a “return to work” plan might be reverting to business-as-usual pre-pandemic, innovative and growth-minded companies will want to embrace those lessons brought about by remote work. This means establishing hybrid workplace policies, which 80% of managers expect to implement and 70% of employees plan to use.

The process of upgrading Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central is one that many businesses have reservations about. At Syvantis, we have upgraded many clients from NAV to Business Central and are familiar with the common concerns and how to alleviate them. ERP systems are absolutely vital for the day-to-day operations of many employees within these companies.

Performing an ERP system upgrade can be daunting. Upgrades typically take extended periods of time and costs can balloon depending on server and customization needs. For years, Dynamics NAV has been a tried-and-true ERP system that most organizations deploy on-premises. Making the jump from Dynamics NAV to Business Central is indeed a big project., but this upgrade to the cloud eliminates the need for costly in-house servers and prepares staff and business processes for an eventual move to Business Central.

Digital marketing platforms typically focus on email marketing or social media marketing, while avoiding other important digital marketing aspects like landing pages, forms, and event management, Dynamics 365 Marketing differentiates itself by housing all of the features above in one place and integrating with the powerful contact and account management capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales.

For marketing forms specifically, the true benefit lies in embedding marketing forms on external websites and collecting contact information that can be used in email campaigns or tracked as leads in Dynamics 365 Sales.

Dynamics 365 Marketing comes out-of-the-box with a wide range of functionality. Customer journeys provide everything from quick, single-email blasts to much larger, dynamic, multi-step marketing automation processes. Content tiles within Customer Journeys allow users to drag and drop different marketing activities like emails, phone calls, appointments, workflows, and much more within a campaign.

In addition to these tiles, Custom Channels can be created to expand upon the base tool set. Custom channels can be things like social media platforms or SMS marketing that can be used within a customer journey just like the default tiles.

There are a lot of ERP solutions out there, however, many organizations require an ERP system that can handle their multitude of unique processes and needs. No ERP is going to come out-of-the-box and fit the exacting needs of every organization. Dynamics 365 Business Central, like the rest of the Dynamics 365 platform, is highly customizable to be molded for individual needs.

Any company that offers a product or service, collects data related to residents, or otherwise operates within the European Union must be sure it complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It can be a bit confusing to navigate at first, particularly for organizations in the U.S. or otherwise outside of the EU. Dynamics 365 Marketing is fully equipped and ready to easy the process of ensuring data collection procedures meet the requirements of the EU.

When it comes to creating consistent, high-quality digital marketing content, templates are key. Content templates ensure that brand standards are met by including default colors and logos that are consistent with the brand. Templates also provide management with a way to approve design elements without needed to approve each piece of content.

Dynamics 365 Marketing provides out-of-the-box templates for landing pages, forms, marketing emails, and more while giving managers the tools to create customized templates for digital marketers to use in day-to-day work.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is an enterprise feedback management application built into the ecosystem of Dynamics 365. Customer Voice enables organizations to take in feedback from their customer base and incorporate their voice into the decision making of business practices and processes.

Ensuring that every customer interaction adheres to brand standards should be the primary goal for all marketers and survey makers. New personalization features released in Dynamics 365 2021 release wave 1 give survey makers new ways to brand Customer Voice surveys and personalize the survey experience.

Setting goals is the best way to keep members of an organization focused on and working towards the same objective. The Microsoft Power BI team has announced the public preview of Goals in Power BI. This feature will help businesses to use the metric and data analysis capabilities of Power BI to create and adapt business objectives. With Goals, Power BI groups together the important, defined statistics to measure and predict progress.

Designing a SharePoint site requires knowledge of how SharePoint site structures work and a deep understanding of how you want SharePoint users to navigate and interact with the site. With new SharePoint site templates, Microsoft provides teams with a starting point to develop a customized site that fits the exact needs of your team. In this blog we’ll cover what a SharePoint site is and how to get started with site templates.

As part of Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1, Dynamics 365 Marketing received an overhaul of its email designer last month. The new designer gives a more modern look and feel in addition to new features. With the changes, users may find it a bit jarring when opening an email record for the first time. However the new layout should feel overall more streamlined after getting better acquainted.

Microsoft 365 contains a wide range of business productivity applications that are used on a daily basis by millions of users. With this array of applications, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s new for the suite and how users can make the most of them. April had several new features added with more coming up soon. In this blog we’ll cover some of highlights Microsoft 365 users can look forward to using.

Managing live events can be incredibly stressful and difficult for staff. From planning to taking money and managing registrations, it is imperative to have a set system and process for conducting live events. Systems like Dynamics 365 Marketing make it easier by managing registrations, logistics, and payment in one place.

But what about the check-in process? If the check-in process is mismanaged, the check-in desk can get backed up or post event reporting can be negatively affected. In this blog we’ll cover how organizations can utilize the Dynamics 365 mobile app and event registration QR codes to ensure the check-in process runs smoothly.

Many users prefer to use “Dark Mode” in their Office applications as it reduces the amount of bright white light on screen that can get quite uncomfortable after a while. Luckily, Microsoft Office has themes that can be used to change the color appearance of Office applications like Word and Outlook to be, for example, black.

In the past, the black Office theme has kept Word documents white while turning most of the user interface to the darker color. However, it seems that Word has recently started turning the documents of some users black as well.

Dynamics 365 Business Central utilizes a browser-based modern interface for all users to conduct their ERP processes in. With this modern interface comes personalization features for each user to update the interface to match their preferences and help them get their job done faster.

One such personalization feature that can make any job in Business Central easier is custom notifications. For example, an inventory manager can apply a notification to run when a specific item or item category is running low on availability.

Over two years ago, Microsoft announced that Skype for Business Online would be retired on July 31, 2021. Now that we are a mere three months from that date, Microsoft is providing more details and information for moving existing Skype for Business customers to Microsoft Teams. It’s important to note that the retirement of Skype for Business Online does not affect the Skype consumer service or Skype for Business Server. These services will continue to operate as normal.

At the Directions North America conference this past week, Microsoft announced a new Publisher program that is designed to overhaul the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) strategy for Dynamics 365 Business Central. The Directions conference is an event for Dynamics Partners to come together and collaborate to better service the small- and mid-sized business market.

For the people familiar with Microsoft Teams, it is known largely as collaboration tool for businesses to quickly communicate via text and audio/video calling along with group file management and editing capabilities. However, Teams can also be utilized to host live events. Live events like webinars are a great way to engage with audiences in an online setting.

These are events where the communication is largely conducted as one or more individuals presenting to a large group that viewing the presentation and interacting with chat, polls, or questions.

See first-hand how you can customize the new Dynamics 365 Unified Interface to implement unique apps for specific roles within your business processes.