[Robert Jolliffe]

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I think you’re conflating end product and BOM.

If you need 3.125″ of tube to make the 3″ part – your BOM needs to be 3.125″

Your drawing and description of the part will say it’s a 3″ part – but it needs more than 3″ of tube to make a 3″ part. You are trying to show the size of the finished part in your BOM – but the BOM is intended to be the amount of raw material you need.

EG: You need a bracket that is made out of a 3″x12″ piece of flat 1/4″ plate purchased in sheets. Your BOM would not be “1 x 6INx6INx3IN bracket with 90deg Bend” nor would be it “1 x 3INx12IN Flat bar” it would be 36 x SQ IN 1/4″ Plate.

EG: I need to cut a circle out of 1/4″ CRS plate. That is a 6″ DIA circle. Assuming I can’t nest it for some reason and my laser cuts width is .125″ – I need 6.125×6.125 = 37.6 sq inches of plate to make that part. That’s the BOM.

The part will be 28.3 Sq Inches (3^2 x Pi) but that is the finished part – not the BOM.

Does that make sense?

[Robert Jolliffe]

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Hi Mark,

Good question.

If you are moving from Dynamics NAV or BC on-prem then I answered a lot of this in a YouTube video – https://youtu.be/m9XqvNOrsrM?si=JTqGHdhQlz7M216w.

If you are moving from a non-Dynamics ERP on-prem to the cloud then the answer isn’t quite as concise.

First – you can’t really move history into the LIVE data tables in your target ERP (I don’t really care what ERP – none of them can do this with any ease). I explain why in depth here – https://youtu.be/G3p6TIMHJWg?si=f74F7u-Avhhnm0lt

If you do move from a legacy ERP to BC probably the biggest pressure will be change management, and that manifests when you have the wrong people on your team. Yes – I have a video about that too – https://youtu.be/9SBjz73ePVI?si=H8i-RkeOkzhThnjs

With the wrong team there will be a lot of pushback that “BC can’t do what we want” because people try and force it to run the workflows the way the OLD ERP DID IT. This can create a conflict.

Eg: In the old ERP I couldn’t track inventory accurately, so now I use BC and I need to start recording BINS and LOCATIONS correctly, but this makes people’s jobs harder so they try and push back and customize the system to somehow allow it to work the old way (when I did not track inventory) but expect it to magically track inventory. Ends up becoming a disaster. Most of the time people are too close to see this happen if they have the wrong team.

I won’t post another video but if you search YouTube you should find several that talk about ERP implementation mistakes with BC.

Here is what I tell customers:

1) Start with the out of the box features and try and use them where practical (the word practical is intentional – possible isn’t always practical).

2) Failing 1 – Move to an ISV Addon from AppSource (I tell customers to avoid Addons that are not in AppSource).

3) Failing 2 – See if you can change the business process

4) Failing 3 – Customize the change without changing the way Microsoft does whatever it does – streamline but do not rewrite.

5) Failing 4 – Really think out all the permutations and repercussions of some new and weird customization before you do it.

If you follow this pattern you’ll be fine. AppSource is there to be used – don’t be afraid of it. Trust your partner too (although some partners are a lot better than others so make sure they’ve done what you need with a customer more or less like you before).

Hope that helps,

[Robert Jolliffe]

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I would also recommend Tasklet as a choice.

Not sure if Tasklet has a rate shopping/parcel management capability. I don’t see it on their website.

Lanham has a long history back to the NAV days – so they definitely support On-Prem.

You could look at 9Altitudes also (European – relatively new in North America)

Question – are you unhappy with something about InsightWorks or is this to ensure you get competitive quotes?

[Robert Jolliffe]

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Hi Mark,

This is a very subjective question so it’s a bit difficult to answer without more context. I’ll say this about BC:

1) It is a mid market ERP – so it won’t handle the level of complexity that SAP would (at a minimum of $10M for a project) and might run into trouble in more than the most simple customer where D365 F&SC would be required ($1M minimum project).

My largest customer who is happy with BC is a >300 employee aircraft manufacturer (they manufacture and sell private 1-5 seat aircraft). This is an incredibly complex business.

My smallest customer who is happy with BC is a 13 employee manufacturer who has one stamping press and makes aftermarket car parts for the classic car hobby market. This is an incredibly simple business.

That’s a broad range of complexity.

2) Compared to competitors, Microsoft leaves more of the peripheral functionality (Mobile WMS, Payroll, Credit Card processing, eCommerce, Finite Capacity Planning, MES) to 3rd party vendors on the AppSource.

Eg: some people look at BC vs Epicor (picking it as an example) and Epicor has a branded WMS, Payroll, Credit Card, EDI etc… “Out of the Box.” It might be called “Epicor EDI” but really it was a 3rd party that built an addon and Epicor has purchased it to add a “checkbox” to the sales teams PowerPoint. It might be good. It might be terrible. It is likely the only choice – but the VIBE is it’s more embedded.

It is a different license (costs more) and is implemented by a different team. Microsoft bypasses that and lets anyone who wants write an EDI addon. So you can choose SBS Commerce, TruCommerce, Lanham, Golden etc…

It is also a different license (costs more) and is implemented by a different team. But it doesn’t say “Microsoft” so it must be worse. Not the case. I’d be pretty comfortable with the largest EDI vendor on the planet implementing their EDI solution that’s published in the Microsoft certified AppSource list vs Epicor (no offence to the Epicor EDI folks, I know them and they’re good).

3) BC implementation market varied. It is sold by a massive variety of partners with different industry expertise, price points, capabilities etc. Microsoft benefits from many partners with many skills from anywhere. Microsoft suffers from many partners with many different levels of skills with many different approaches. Sometimes the challenges with BC are more with a partner that isn’t very strong in a particular industry vs the BC product.

If you can add more context to what you mean by “Complex” that would help as this is a pretty generic answer.