The latest addition to enterprise resource planning (ERP) software Microsoft Dynamics NAV is the ability to support customer relationship management (CRM) products from Salesforce.com. According to the developer responsible for the integration, this is in response to an increased demand for cloud-based CRMs, which businesses want to be able to use in conjunction with Dynamics NAV.

"We have found that many of our customers and prospects are moving to Microsoft Dynamics NAV," said the CEO of DBSync, the integration developer, "and they have asked us to provide similar capabilities to integrate to it, as the ones we provide for Salesforce."

As he points out, use of Dynamics NAV as the preferred ERP solution is on the rise among companies of all sizes, as is the adoption of cloud-based CRMs. These provide a flexible means of keeping track of business-customer interactions from a variety of different platforms. With proper integration, they can in turn bring greater flexibility to ERP functions, including the gathering and interpretation of data on inventory, manufacturing, marketing, production costs, shipping and payments.

The integration will eliminate data duplication that could occur if the CRM and ERP data were combined manually, and update data on both platforms when it is entered into one of them. Account information, price lists and sales numbers will also be automatically synchronized between the software and the cloud.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV supports all of these features for small and medium-sized businesses, and is ideally suited for distribution and manufacturing companies to record and analyze all their information. Business management software can give an SMB a significant leg up on the competition by allowing managers and employees to easily access data which, when interpreted correctly, will lead them to identify consumer trends and target areas for internal improvement.