Five years ago, the small water division of Canadian natural gas utility Terasen, based in Richmond, British Columbia, was weighing whether to deploy Dynamics GP or Dynamics NAV. "We didn't know what we wanted to be when we grew up," said Carol Vorster, director of infrastructure services at what became Corix Water Products. Dynamics NAV won out because the software offered more functionality specific to the utilities industry.
Corix has grown the number of its Dynamics GP concurrent users from 20 to a planned 250 by the end of this year. The company has aggressively increased in size through multiple acquisitions, with total headcount up from 150 to more than 1,000 staff. "We expect to triple in size over the next three years and have no plans to move away from NAV," Vorster said. "We know NAV could scale for us."
Corix is in the process of upgrading from C/SIDE, the proprietary database for the original Navision software on which Dynamics NAV is based, in favor of Microsoft's SQL Server. Moving to the Microsoft relational database will make it easier to scale Dynamics NAV in future.
Microsoft is definitely getting better about listening to Dynamics users, Vorster said. "As a customer, we very much have an open door to Microsoft in terms of our systems requirements," she added. Vorster is also the president-elect of the year-old Dynamics NAV User Group which currently numbers around 120 members.
As for Microsoft Dynamics partners, they have also sensed a change in their dealings with the software giant.
SimCrest, based in Richardson, Texas, is a 12-person consultancy specializing in implementations of Dynamics NAV. The company is both a reseller of the Microsoft software and an independent software vendor building add-ons for the ERP software. SimCrest is a Microsoft Gold Partner, status that gives the company an assigned technical services coordinator and access inside Microsoft all the way up to vice president level, according to Daniel Vinzant, an executive at SimCrest.
However, he knows not all partners have such access. "Microsoft is bigger than a third-world country," he said. "If you don't know someone there, then it's like dealing with a third-world tourist department. They can do better."
From what Vinzant is hearing from Microsoft, the company is now actively working to try and provide the same kind of benefits SimCrest enjoys to all of its partners regardless of their level of engagement with the company.
Microsoft has also improved its technical support capabilities. Two years ago, when SimCrest would call with questions, the company might be put through to Dynamics GP engineers who were very friendly, but not equipped to handle issues relating to Dynamics NAV. That's something that doesn't happen now, Vinzant said.