Microsoft Dynamics NAV, formerly known as Navision, has been a trusted ERP solution for businesses for decades, helping organisations manage everything from finance and purchasing to inventory and operations.
While NAV remains a powerful system, Microsoft has since introduced Dynamics 365 Business Central as its modern ERP platform, building on the core functionality of NAV whilst providing organisations with greater flexibility, real-time visibility, seamless collaboration, AI-powered capabilities, and the ability to support future growth.
In this blog, we’ll explore eight reasons why businesses are choosing to move from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central, which can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise, offering greater flexibility compared with the traditionally on-premise NAV platform.
1. Scale as your business grows
Many Dynamics NAV environments have evolved over time through customisations, bespoke developments, and third-party add-ons introduced to meet changing business requirements. While these modifications can provide flexibility, they can also make upgrades, ongoing maintenance, and future development more complex as organisations grow and their needs change.
Dynamics 365 Business Central is a modern ERP platform, available in the cloud or on-premise, designed to support changing business requirements and long-term growth. It provides a flexible foundation that is easier to maintain, update, and extend as organisations evolve. Whether you’re expanding into new locations, adding users, introducing new services, or managing increased demand, Dynamics 365 Business Central provides the flexibility and scalability needed to support long-term growth.
Beyond core financial management, Dynamics 365 Business Central includes functionality for sales, purchasing, inventory management, warehousing, manufacturing, project management, and service operations, enabling businesses to manage more of their processes within a single platform.
As new requirements emerge, organisations can further extend Dynamics 365 Business Central through industry-specific third-party applications and integrations. This allows businesses to evolve their ERP capabilities over time without replacing the underlying system, helping ensure technology remains an enabler of growth rather than a barrier to it.
2. Work from anywhere
The way we work has changed significantly in recent years. Whether employees are working from the office, from home, or on the move, they need secure access to key business information.
Traditionally, NAV has often been deployed on-premise, requiring businesses to manage their own infrastructure, upgrades, and system accessibility. Dynamics 365 Business Central’s cloud-based architecture removes many of these challenges, giving users secure access to business data wherever they are working.
Users can securely access the same live business information from any location, helping ensure teams are always working from the latest available data. Updates made in one area of the system are immediately reflected across the organisation, reducing delays and improving visibility across departments. By providing a single source of truth that can be accessed from anywhere, Dynamics 365 Business Central helps improve collaboration, support business continuity, and enable more informed decision-making across the organisation.
3. Improve visibility across your business
Many NAV users rely on a combination of reports, spreadsheets, and manual processes to bring business information together, often because reporting requirements have evolved over time and data sits across multiple systems.
Dynamics 365 Business Central helps overcome these challenges by centralising critical data within a single platform. This gives organisations a single source of truth and real-time visibility across key areas of the business, including financial performance, inventory levels, purchasing activity, sales pipelines, project profitability, and cash flow.
Built-in reporting, account schedules, Power BI integration, and interactive dashboards enable decision-makers to access insights quickly and respond proactively to changing business conditions. Instead of spending time gathering data from multiple systems or spreadsheets, users can focus on acting on the insights available to them.
4. Connect the Microsoft tools you already use
Whilst both NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central can integrate with other systems and applications, Business Central is designed to work as part of Microsoft’s wider ecosystem, creating a more connected experience across business applications and productivity tools. Users can connect Business Central with familiar tools such as Outlook, Excel, Teams, Power BI, and Power Platform.
For example, users can create sales quotes, customer orders, and invoices directly from Outlook, collaborate around Business Central records within Microsoft Teams, and analyse live Business Central data in Excel without manually exporting reports.
Businesses can also use Power Automate to streamline workflows and Power BI to create advanced reporting dashboards, extending the value of Dynamics 365 Business Central beyond traditional ERP functionality.
By bringing business data closer to the tools employees use every day, organisations can simplify processes and improve collaboration.
5. Reduce manual processes
As business requirements evolve, organisations may find that existing NAV processes require additional manual steps or workarounds to support new ways of working.
Dynamics 365 Business Central helps reduce this complexity through built-in workflow automation and process management capabilities. Organisations can automate approval processes, simplify sales and purchasing workflows, improve inventory replenishment planning, streamline bank reconciliation, and reduce duplicate data entry across departments.
By reducing manual data entry and eliminating duplicate effort, teams can spend less time on routine tasks and more time focusing on higher-value activities.
The result is improved efficiency, greater consistency, and a more productive workforce.
6. Unlock AI and Copilot capabilities
When NAV was originally developed, technologies such as artificial intelligence simply weren’t part of the ERP landscape. Today, businesses are increasingly looking for ways to use AI to improve productivity, automate repetitive tasks, and access information more quickly.
Dynamics 365 Business Central includes Microsoft Copilot capabilities designed to help users work more effectively. Unlike NAV, Business Central is continually evolving with new AI-powered capabilities, including:
- Summarising and analysing business data.
- Generating product descriptions and marketing content.
- Assisting with bank account reconciliations.
- Suggesting customer payment predictions and cash flow insights.
- Helping users find information and complete tasks more quickly using natural language prompts.
Microsoft is also introducing AI-powered agents across Dynamics 365 applications, creating new opportunities for organisations to automate tasks and improve productivity whilst maintaining control and oversight. As Microsoft continues to invest heavily in AI across its business applications, organisations using Dynamics 365 Business Central are well positioned to take advantage of future innovations.
7. Future-proof your business
While NAV has been a trusted solution for many years, Microsoft’s ongoing ERP investment is now focused on Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s strategic ERP platform, receiving regular updates, new features, and ongoing innovation. Organisations that upgrade can benefit from continual innovation and new functionality, rather than remaining on a platform with a more limited future development roadmap.
Microsoft releases two major Business Central updates each year, introducing new functionality across finance, reporting, supply chain management, manufacturing, AI, and user productivity. This means businesses can continually benefit from new capabilities without needing to invest in entirely new systems. By upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central, businesses can ensure they’re investing in a platform designed for the future, not just maintaining one built for the past.
8. Strengthen security and compliance
Protecting business data has never been more important. For organisations running older on-premise NAV environments, maintaining security, updates, and infrastructure can become increasingly complex and resource intensive.
Built on Microsoft’s trusted cloud platform, Dynamics 365 Business Central benefits from enterprise-grade security, ongoing security updates, and Microsoft’s continued investment in protecting customer data.
Role-based permissions help organisations control access to sensitive business information, whilst automatic updates ensure security improvements are applied regularly without requiring significant internal effort. This helps organisations reduce risk, support compliance requirements, and gain confidence that their critical business information is secure.
Thinking about making the switch?
Moving from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central is about far more than replacing an existing system. It’s an opportunity to modernise processes, improve visibility, increase efficiency, and take advantage of the latest innovations from Microsoft.
From cloud accessibility and real-time reporting to AI-powered productivity and seamless Microsoft integration, Dynamics 365 Business Central provides the tools organisations need to adapt, grow, and remain competitive in an increasingly digital world.
For businesses still running NAV, now could be the ideal time to explore what the next step looks like.
If you’d like to explore how upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central could benefit your organisation, get in touch with the Techsol team and speak to one of our experts on 03300 245447 or email us at info@techsol.co.uk.
Moving from NAV to Business Central
common questions
Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision) is Microsoft’s legacy ERP solution, while Dynamics 365 Business Central is its modern cloud-based successor. Business Central builds on the core functionality of NAV but introduces enhanced reporting, Microsoft 365 integration, workflow automation, AI-powered capabilities through Copilot, and regular feature updates.
Upgrading from NAV to Business Central gives organisations access to modern ERP capabilities designed to improve efficiency, visibility, and collaboration. Benefits include cloud accessibility, real-time reporting, deeper integration with Microsoft applications, automation tools, and ongoing innovation from Microsoft.
Many NAV customisations can be recreated or replaced in Business Central. In some cases, functionality that previously required bespoke development in NAV is now available as standard within Business Central or through extensions. An assessment of your current environment can help determine the best migration approach.
No. While most organisations choose the cloud version of Business Central to benefit from automatic updates and reduced infrastructure requirements, on-premise deployment options are also available. This provides flexibility for organisations with specific operational or regulatory requirements.
Business Central integrates with a range of Microsoft applications, including Outlook, Excel, Teams, Power BI, Power Automate, and other Dynamics 365 solutions. This enables users to access business data, collaborate more effectively, automate processes, and generate insights without switching between multiple systems.
Yes. Business Central includes Microsoft Copilot, which can help users analyse data, streamline tasks, generate content, and access information more efficiently. Microsoft continues to expand AI capabilities within Business Central, helping organisations take advantage of the latest innovations.
The complexity of an upgrade depends on factors such as your NAV version, customisations, integrations, and data requirements. However, with the right planning and support, organisations can successfully transition to Business Central while minimising disruption and ensuring they gain maximum value from the new platform.
