Face the Challenges
How to get there safe?
Whether you are a Microsoft Dynamics Partner, ISV you must get ready for
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. You must understand the key selling points and
business benefits in order to enable your sales team to face customers.
If you have any vertical, horizontal or add-on solutions you should outline
a strategy for upgrade and transition projects.
To gain the necessary experience we highly recommend that you prioritize new
customer deployments before upgrading existing customers. This will help you
to gain the valuable knowledge that is needed to decrease the overall costs
of one of more upgrade projects.
Taking the Right Path
“The Role Tailored User
Experience is a way for partners to make more money!
- it is not a technical update”
For Partners and ISVs providing vertical or horizontal solutions to customers or reselling partners, there are two ways of transforming the solution into Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009.
The Technical Transformation
Process
Microsoft has provided some tools and guidelines to help Partners to transform existing solutions from the current “classic” versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV into the Role Tailored powered version, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. With the Transformation Input File Editor (TIF Editor) you can transform classic Forms to Task Pages. Classic reports can be transformed into RDLC (Report Definition Language Client) reports that can be shown in the new RoleTailored Client.
Using the provided tools is a great help but you will still have to define and build Roles and Role Centers including role specific Task Pages and List Places. The transformation tool will transform your solution to the new version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, but this pure technical transformation leaves a lot open. Not just the Role Centers but also includes defining and building of Web Services and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and so on.
The RoleTailored
Transformation Process
In order to obtain the benefit of the RoleTailored user experience and being able to provide this to your customers, it is important that you understand and define the roles or profiles using your solution today. Before starting the technical transition you should create your own Customer Model, which basically means defining the potential Personas or roles needed to identify your solution.
Understanding the personas or roles and their tasks will help you design the optimal flow in the User Interface and tailor this to fit the customer’s employees and their work routines
Finally you should identify where the technical transition process and tools can be leveraged – not before! We recommend that you face the challenges and plan the transition process in details focused on the RoleTailored transformation process.
If you are planning your investments in upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 you should exploit the benefit of using external resources. Roletailors.com is offering a number of services related to the RoleTailored user experience to both partner and ISVs. You can read more about our services here.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 is here to stay. Plan the
safe way moving forward – waiting is not an option!
Transformation Options
Tools provided by Microsoft will help the Technical Transformation of your solution. You will still have to define and build the roles for your solution and explore how you can leverage the new integration options and web services.
Understand and define the roles/profiles using your solution and start the transformation process here. Identifying where the technical transition process and tools can be leveraged will enable you to ensure the best result with less resources.