Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central presents a broad range of capabilities in supply chain management, helping organizations effectively manage their inventory, distribution, and procurement processes. Here are some key capabilities in supply chain management:
- Inventory Management: Business Central can be used as equipment for stock control, allowing you to track inventory levels, manipulate more than one warehouse, and optimize reorder points.
Key Features:
- Real-Time Stock Tracking: Business Central helps businesses monitor and manage stock levels across multiple locations and warehouses. This ensures that stock is readily available to meet customer demand, reducing the chances of stockouts or overstock situations.
- Multiple Warehouse Management: Manage inventory in different warehouse locations with ease. Business Central enables businesses to track stock movement between warehouses and warehouses’ performance to ensure seamless distribution across locations.
- Reorder Points and Stock Alerts: Set automated reorder points for each inventory item based on consumption rates, minimizing the chances of running out of stock while also avoiding excess inventory. Alerts notify relevant teams when stock levels are low, so timely action can be taken.
- Stock Valuation Methods: Business Central supports various stock valuation methods, including FIFO (First In, First Out), LIFO (Last In, First Out), and average costing. This flexibility enables businesses to choose the best method for their accounting and reporting needs.
- Item Tracking: Track products by serial numbers, lot numbers, or batch numbers, enhancing traceability and ensuring that you can monitor the movement and condition of goods in real time.
- Purchase Order Management: Easily create, track, and manipulate buy orders for items and services, streamlining the procurement process.
Key Features:
- Purchase Order Creation: Quickly create purchase orders based on demand, inventory levels, and supplier lead times. With Business Central, you can automate the order creation process, reducing administrative effort and improving accuracy.
- Supplier Management: Track supplier performance, terms, pricing, and lead times in a centralized system. This information enables purchasing teams to make more informed decisions, optimizing supplier relationships.
- Order Tracking: Monitor the status of orders in real time. Business Central provides visibility into pending orders, receipts, and expected delivery dates, ensuring that teams are always aware of the procurement process.
- Purchase Invoices and Returns: Automate the creation of purchase invoices and facilitate returns management. Any discrepancies or issues with delivered goods can be easily managed through the system.
- Supplier Performance Analysis: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as on-time delivery rates and product quality, helping businesses to identify the best-performing suppliers and make data-driven decisions for future procurements.
- Sales Order Management: Efficiently manipulate sales orders, which includes order creation, order fulfilment, and order tracking, making sure of on-time deliveries to customers.
Key Features:
- Order Creation and Tracking: Create sales orders directly within the system, providing visibility into customer demand and inventory levels. The system automatically checks stock availability and ensures that orders are only placed if inventory can fulfill them.
- Order Fulfillment: From order creation to delivery, Business Central allows you to track the progress of sales orders through each step of fulfillment. The system helps manage picking, packing, and shipping, ensuring timely and accurate deliveries.
- Delivery Tracking: Monitor order delivery progress, from dispatch to final customer receipt. You can easily track shipments and provide customers with real-time updates on the status of their orders.
- Automated Invoicing: Once a sale is completed and an order is fulfilled, Business Central automatically generates invoices, reducing manual work and ensuring accuracy in billing.
- Returns Management: Handle customer returns efficiently by tracking returns from initiation through resolution, maintaining inventory integrity, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
- Demand Forecasting: Utilize statistics analytics and historical sales statistics to forecast demand, helping you make informed choices about stocking and replenishment.
Key Features:
- Data-Driven Insights: Utilize historical sales data, seasonal trends, and other relevant factors to predict future demand. Business Central applies sophisticated forecasting models to improve the accuracy of demand predictions.
- Automated Forecasting: Generate automated forecasts based on predefined criteria such as lead times, sales trends, and seasonal fluctuations. This helps organizations plan for fluctuations in demand and optimize stock levels.
- Capacity Planning: Understand the capacity constraints and resources required to meet forecasted demand, whether it be for warehousing, logistics, or labor. This ensures businesses can align their operations with expected demand fluctuations.
- Scenario Planning: Run “what-if” scenarios to evaluate the impact of changes in demand or supply. This helps businesses proactively address potential disruptions and optimize their inventory management strategy.
- Supplier Relationship Management: Maintain a comprehensive view of dealer information, display dealer performance, and set up sturdy relationships with key suppliers.
Key Features:
- Supplier Data Management: Maintain a comprehensive database of suppliers, including contact details, performance metrics, and contract terms. This ensures that businesses can quickly access relevant supplier information when needed.
- Performance Monitoring: Track supplier performance against key metrics such as lead times, quality, pricing, and order fulfillment. This enables businesses to identify top-performing suppliers and address issues with underperforming ones.
- Collaborative Tools: Share order forecasts, inventory levels, and other key data with suppliers to improve communication and collaboration. This helps ensure that both parties are aligned on delivery expectations and product availability.
- Supplier Audits and Compliance: Conduct supplier audits and ensure that suppliers meet the necessary quality and regulatory standards. Business Central supports compliance tracking, ensuring that suppliers adhere to industry regulations.
- Warehousing: Optimize warehouse operations with the aid of correctly managing bin locations, picking, packing, and shipping, while maintaining real-time stock accuracy.
Key Features:
- Bin Location Management: Organize warehouse operations by defining bin locations for each product. This helps ensure that inventory is stored efficiently and can be picked quickly for order fulfillment.
- Picking and Packing Optimization: Automate picking and packing processes to ensure that orders are fulfilled accurately and efficiently. Business Central helps reduce errors by matching orders with inventory locations in real time.
- Shipping and Distribution: Business Central integrates with logistics and shipping providers to optimize shipping processes. It enables businesses to manage the dispatch process, including labels, shipment tracking, and carrier coordination.
- Real-Time Inventory Updates: Maintain real-time inventory accuracy across multiple locations. Any change in inventory (e.g., incoming stock, returns, or transfers) is immediately updated, ensuring accurate stock counts at all times.
- Multi-location Management: Business Central 365 Seamlessly handles inventory throughout more than one location, helping businesses increase and manipulate their operations efficiently.
Key Features:
- Multi-Site Inventory Control: Seamlessly track inventory levels across multiple locations, ensuring that stock levels are accurate at every site. This enables businesses to distribute products effectively and optimize stock across warehouses.
- Interlocation Transfers: Easily transfer inventory between locations, ensuring that stock is readily available where it’s needed. Business Central provides the tools to manage and document interlocation transfers.
- Centralized Data: With all supply chain data centralized in Business Central, businesses can maintain consistent and accurate records, improving visibility and decision-making across multiple locations.
- Replenishment and Order Optimization: Business Central 365 Utilizes algorithms and data-driven insights to optimize inventory replenishment and automate reorder points.
- Supply Chain Analytics: Leverage analytics and reporting abilities to reap insights into furnish chain overall performance and make data-driven decisions.
Key Features:
- Data-Driven Insights: Access detailed reports and dashboards that provide visibility into key supply chain metrics, such as inventory turnover, lead times, order fulfilment rates, and procurement performance.
- Performance Monitoring: Monitor the performance of key supply chain operations and suppliers, identifying areas for improvement and optimizing processes.
- Custom Reporting: Generate custom reports based on specific supply chain needs, such as sales order trends, inventory forecasts, and procurement cycles.
- Integration with Third-party Systems: Business Central permits integration with external systems, such as logistics and shipping providers, to decorate the efficiency and accuracy of provide chain operations.
Key Features:
- Logistics Integration: Integrate seamlessly with shipping carriers and logistics providers to streamline delivery scheduling, tracking, and reporting.
- Third-Party Systems: Integrate with other business applications such as e-commerce platforms, ERP systems, and CRM tools to ensure data flows smoothly across all areas of the business.