The Differences in Microsoft Dynamics Solutions

Today I am talking about the Microsoft Dynamics product family and the differences between the product lines. Specifically, Microsoft Dynamics separates products by adding an abbreviation after the word Dynamics.  Today I'm going to explain what that means and talk about the differences at a high level between these different products.

There are five products in the Dynamics product family today:

Dynamics AX – the former Axapta product that used to be owned by Navision

Dynamics NAV – the former Navision software owned by the company that was named the same; headquartered out of Copenhagen, Denmark

Dynamics GP – formerly Great Plains

Dynamics CRM – stands for customer relationship management; it's the only product made by Microsoft from the ground up to compete with companies like Salesforce

Dynamics SL – the old Solomon product line

I’ll now dig into a little more detail about the differences between these.

Dynamics AX

At the top end of the food chain is Dynamics AX, Axapta, which was formerly the name of the software before Microsoft's acquisition. It is the highest level product they have and regularly competes with the likes of SAP or Oracle. It's designed for multinational, large organizations with hundreds of users. The implementations typically start at five hundred thousand and go up from there. It will also require specific and dedicated project management from your team, so if you're a multinational and you're looking for software of that scope, Dynamics AX is one you should take a look at.

Dynamics SL

The next one is Dynamics SL, which is the former Solomon product. Today, Solomon is tailored specifically for professional services such as architects or engineers. It has strong integration with Microsoft Project, another product offered by Microsoft. If your organization needs integration with Project and you're in professional services, SL would be a good fit.

Dynamics GP & NAV

The next two we’ll compare are Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV. These two are very comparable and have a lot of overlap. They're both geared for the mid-market, which today is loosely defined as organizations up to 250 concurrent users and about a billion dollars in revenue. Both of these products serve many industries very well, but two to highlight are healthcare and manufacturing. They're very strong in both of those. The primary difference between GP and NAV is in their approach.

GP is a best-of-breed, off-the-shelf solution. It often includes ISV or third-party products to meet unique needs, and if you implement GP your organization needs to be ready to adapt to the way GP’s workflow works in the software. If you're willing to do that, GP is usually a little easier and quicker to install and a little more affordable to maintain.

NAV on the other hand is a very strong mid-market solution as well, but includes a great tool set to enable it to be tailored to unique needs of an organization. If you're a company who wants to do things your way and leverage a best practice or core competency--you have unique requirements or needs--NAV would be a great fit. The toolset enables it to act as if it's an open source ERP solution.

Dynamics CRM

And then finally there's Dynamics CRM. Again, CRM stands for customer relationship management, and this product was built from Microsoft from the ground up to compete with solutions like Salesforce or SugarCRM. CRM solutions don't track accounting data and financial reporting; they track sales management--things like leads and opportunities.  And today Dynamics CRM also has a service desk and can handle help desk support requests. Dynamics CRM also provides strong integration to all four of the other products in the Dynamics product family.

Well, there you have it: a high-level look at the differences between the different products in the Dynamics family. If you want more detail, we've got a couple of other videos in our library that dig into more of the details and compare them a little closer.

The Differences Between Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP & NAV

Microsoft Dynamics: GP versus NAV

If you have any additional questions or want to see the Dynamics products in action, drop us a note or give us a call at (859) 252-6225. Thanks for watching.

by TrinSoft, LLC a Microsoft Dynamics ERP Partner in Kentucky