MOBILE TECHNOLOGY AIDED FIELD SALES PROCESS MANAGEMENT WIYH DYNAMICS ANYWHERE FOR MICROSOFT DYNAMIC NAV

Abstract

The evolution of information society, globalisation, made great changes concerning the human-computer relationship. Mobile technology gives new perspectives for the administration of enterprises and decision making. Microsoft Dynamics NAV is not only a software capable to model the various activities of a firm through the desktop platform, but with a properly developed user interface which is optimised for a mobile device, the possibilities of the use of this ERP software can be broadened with workflows characterised with great distances. In this study I show how a field sales workflow can be modelled and managed by me with the software environment "NAV Anywhere Framework". The survey gives a closer look at both a suggestible administrative process for an imagined workflow and its technical management on a mobile device. For my development creates specialised and dynamic web pages for a mobile device, it can be accessible from a lot of types of smart phones and tablet computers.

Headnote

Abstract

The evolution of information society, globalisation, made great changes concerning the human-computer relationship. Mobile technology gives new perspectives for the administration of enterprises and decision making. Microsoft Dynamics NAV is not only a software capable to model the various activities of a firm through the desktop platform, but with a properly developed user interface which is optimised for a mobile device, the possibilities of the use of this ERP software can be broadened with workflows characterised with great distances. In this study I show how a field sales workflow can be modelled and managed by me with the software environment "NAV Anywhere Framework". The survey gives a closer look at both a suggestible administrative process for an imagined workflow and its technical management on a mobile device. For my development creates specialised and dynamic web pages for a mobile device, it can be accessible from a lot of types of smart phones and tablet computers.

Keywords: mobile device, field sales, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Dynamics Anywhere Framework

1. Introduction

Nowadays the importance of network-economy is becoming greater and greater. The cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems will also have a great influence on the management and administration of firms. The evolved organizational structures and business processes became so complicated, that management needs an effective help from information technology.

2. Problem Formulation

2.1. Importance of Business Process Management

A business process begins with the customers' needs and ends with the customers' needs fulfilled. A business process is a collection of interrelated or activities that require an input to create an output of a business requirement. An enterprise usually contains a great collection of business processes. Business processes can ultimately be performed by people, even in today's technology driven world, so it is not only necessary but also beneficial that technological assistance is utilized to complete the human activity. The needs of the customers and providing for these needs within the business model should be the goal of business process improvement. To achieve this, companies should review their business concepts, business strategy and business model. [7]

Business process management makes us to improve processes continuously. A business process is a network of value-added activities, performed by their relevant organizational units to achieve the common business goal. Business processes can also be viewed as a series of events that bring together people (labour), technology and information (processes) in ways that create value added outputs (products and or services). Processes therefore determine the effectiveness and efficiency of an organizations operations, the quality of service as well as its success in carrying out its mission and goals and achieving financial success. [1]

These are the organizations that are making major commitments to develop enterprise-level business process tools and management systems to assure that they have aligned all their business resources and functions to their value chains and can manage those processes in something close to real time. There has been significant work done to integrate business process modelling techniques with business rules technologies. New software tools have made it possible to automate the day-to-da y management of processes. [5] Creative organizations are more flexible, move much faster and are much more competitive. That requires stripping away bureaucracy so that decisions for action can be made at every level in the IT function.

As Bill Gates, the CEO of Microsoft wrote: "A rule of thumb is that a lousy process will consume ten times as many hours as the work itself requires." "A good process will eliminate the wasted time." [4] Bureaucracy happens not all at once, but incrementally over time. A business process can easily become bloated, leading to an ineffective, inefficient, and inflexible process.

2. 2 . The Shipping and Receiving Role Centre in NAV 2009

Generally ERP systems are considered to be complicated and difficult to use. This is that challenged Microsoft to create the "RoleTailored" user experience for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. [6] The software vendor firm created its "Customer Model", which was made from two parts: the Persona part and the Work part. Each persona is based on research results and their profiles have been developed so that detailed descriptions are available. The basic idea of Work Model is to show possible processes that might exist in an average company. Each process consists of several activities. The activities are further divided into tasks and separate task steps.

The RoleTailored user experience has a lot of goals. The most important of them are these: showing the relevant information to users, put the emphasis on most critical information and draw attention of users to important and relevant actions they might need to execute, make commonly used commands more visible and easier to access (just a click away), employ the existing user experience concepts seen in Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office System. [2]

Microsoft delivers the software with several role centres which cover the most important possible roles at a company. One of them, which has great commercial and logistical importance, is the "Shipping and Receiving" role centre. (Fig.1.)

Using this role centre it will be measurable and controllable the quality of customer service and the level of inventory. For this role has a lot of activities which are made often far away from the headquarters or warehouses, a mobile device aided process management can be extremely useful.

3. Problem Solution: Process Modelling with the NAV Anywhere Framework

The firm "Dynamics Anywhere" creates the widespread and well-known software, called "NAV Anywhere - Mobile Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics NAV". NAV Anywhere consists of the NAV Anywhere Framework and the NAV Anywhere Solutions (for the use with the framework).

The Dynamics Anywhere Framework (DAW) for Microsoft Dynamics© NAV provides an integrated and reliable framework for creating real-time Enterprise Mobile Applications. All Microsoft Dynamics NAV functions can easily made available on mobile devices. Recognizing the need for a solution that is fully integrated into Dynamics NAV, the Dynamics Anywhere Framework is designed as an integrated tool. Dynamics Anywhere applications are developed within the Dynamics NAV development environment. This means that no middleware is required, and no duplication of business logic should be needed. Key element of the Dynamics Anywhere Framework is the Dynamics Anywhere Portal. Utilizing the Dynamics NAV Connector technology to connect to Dynamics NAV, the Dynamics Anywhere Portal carries Dynamics NAV into the mobile world. The user interface is designed to make the most of the mobile device, providing a clutter free view of the application and making full use of additional resources like barcode scanners and RF tag readers to improve user productivity. [3]

The software aided process model developed by me could have a great importance in a field sales process e.g. for express agents, sales agents, travel agents, etc. The model can work on any mobile device, because only a browser is needed for the use. Dynamics Anywhere has created a development framework to Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Using it customers can modify the services given by the original Microsoft software. The point is not only to improve the user interface with a new menu item (Fig.2.), but the broadened flexibility penetrates the whole NAV instance.

My software model represents that process when an express agent faces the situation during the delivery in which customer does want to receive the product, but does not want or can not pay for that, although earlier the agreement was on the cash payment method.

In such a situation the agent can be granted the right to change the immediate cash payment (on delivery) method e.g. to a delayed bank transfer payment method after checking if the customer has debt owed to the seller. Of course this decision on changing the payment method for this customer should be administered and sent to the central database of the seller company during the oral agreement or immediately after that. Figure 2. shows the list of the activities of this process (which I named to "Customer Information") as it appears on the user interface of the Dynamics Anywhere Development Framework.

The expression "activity" means that workflow which can be shown and managed on the same screen of the mobile device. In Figure 3. we can find the codes of the first activity of the process. The name of this activity in my terms: "Get Customer". This activity is shown on the mobile device as the figure 5. represents it on the browser based user interface of the mobile device.

Figure 3. shows the codes of the "controls" of the "Get Customer" activity. Controls are labels and textboxes in this model. Figure 4. represents the codes of the "buttons" of the "Get Customer" activity. Tapping these buttons on the browser based user interface of the mobile device will close the actual activity.

On the figure 6. we can also see the browser based user interface of the mobile device. Here using the controls of the "Get Customer Payment Method" activity we can choose the "Bank transfer" value to replace the former value of "Cash" of the Payment Method Code field of the Customer card in the central database of Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

If the activity is closed by tapping the "OK" button, this step brings us back to the "Get Customer" activity. Tapping the "OK" button on that activity we can approve our intention for the change, and this step will make the modification in the record of the central database of NAV.

The real benefit of this process is, that a database managed and protected b y Microsoft Dynamics NAV and SQL Server can be modified safely from a big distance using the Internet, and this practice can strengthen even the customer relationships, and increase sales.

4. Conclusion

Although the previous description is only a short abridgement of the whole technical background, but it might have given a foretaste, that with the help of the add-on of Dynamics Anywhere how easy it is to modify and manage business processes in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009.

References

References

[1] Burton, Edward, Business Process Improvement The Essential Guide (The New Frontiers - Book Series) Edward Burton 2012

[2]Cipan, Vibor: What is RoleTailored User Experience in NAV? (http://uxpassion.com/blog/strategy-concepts/what-is-roletailored-user-experiencein-nav-2009-part-2 ) 28/04/2012

[3] Dynamics Anywhere, Dynamics Anywhere Framework for Microsoft Dynamics NAV Technical White Paper Dynamics Anywhere 2009

[4] Gates, Bill, Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy Business Plus, 2000

[5] Harmon, Paul, Business Process Change A Guide for Business managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals Second Edition Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann 2007

[6] Microsoft Corporation, The RoleTailored User Experience Microsoft Corporation 2009

[7] Sherry, Kenneth J., Insight into Business Processes A Guide to Understanding and Designing Business Processes Admaks Publishing 2011.