Dynamics NAV for Automotive Industry (Standard versus Third Party)

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Posted on by Ahmad_Safadi

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Dears,

We have an automotive company (vehicles, tiers, spare parts ...etc.), and we have seen several partners to implement Dynamics NAV. My questions and concerns are:

1- To which degree can the standard implementation fulfill the requirements of an automotive company ? we have huge after sales services to manage the service calls, maintenance, warranty, contracts ...etc.

2- Some partners suggested to go with third party products such as Incadea, which seems to be a fully customized system built on Dynamics NAV for automotive industry. How valid is this suggestions, taking into consideration that purchasing a third party product will change the whole spirit of the standard Dynamics NAV.

3- Can you suggest any success stories for automotive dealers who run on standard Dynamics NAV with minor modifications to reflect specific business needs, because this seems to be our tendency, in order not to stick with third party companies, but rather stay with Microsoft with a minimum customizations.

Thanks in Advance,

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Alex A 2,902 on at

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Hello A. Saf. Is your company manufacturing cars or manufacturing car parts at all? Or are you only buying and selling cars with a heavy service/maintenance tail on that?

We manufacture high performance auto parts and standard NAV works well for us - though we do use some third party modules. We use NAV to run all our departments - purchasing, manufacturing, warehousing, and all financial aspects. We produce, catalog, and sell aftermarket auto parts for all makes and models of cars and trucks.

There is a Service module in standard NAV that you can use for the maintenance side, but we don't use it. I am not personally aware of any car dealerships that use NAV... but with a few third party options you may do well. We use a third party option for EDI, Shipping/Receiving, Production-Planning, and Warehousing. Let me know if there are any specific questions I can help answer.

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Ahmad_Safadi 373 on at

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Thank you for the reply. Allow me to explain in more details, we don't manufacture cars, we import vehicles, spare parts, car oil ...etc. and sell to local customers. We have heavy after-sale services which includes; warranty for the sold items, maintenance and preventive maintenance, service calls ...etc.

Therefore, I am asking whether the standard NAV would be able to cover since some partners suggested third party products.

Thanks in advance

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Alexander Ermakov 28,096 on at

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The processes that you had mentioned certainly can be covered by standard NAV to some extent, as NAV has purchasing and service modules, allowing to track items and warranties, maintenance, etc.

It depends on your processes and requires fit-gap analysis, to which extent the standard configuration covers your requirements. Normally, each similar NAV implementation anyway requires modifications and customizations to fit your needs. How big it would be, depends on many factors.

From my experience, most of the processes can be in this way or another covered by standard functionality, but not always it could be convenient for the end-user without modifications. Thus, in the end it is always a trade-off between fulfilling all requirements with maximization of user satisfaction and the implementation cost.

There are certainly vertical solutions of other partners, but most likely they will also not fit you 100% and anyway need to be modified.

I would recommend to select a reliable partner that can perform a fit-gap analysis and provide you with a report that would in details describe:

- your requirement to the processes

- how it is covered by standard functionality

- how critical is the requirement

- what would it take to implement your requirement if it is not covered by standard functionality

Such activity would allow you to:

- get the understanding on the project budget

- address specific requirements, not covered by standard functionality, to partners with verticals, to learn how those are covered in third party solutions

- alternatively, you can address the same questions to other platform solution providers, as in some cases it might be so that the other non-NAV solution might be more efficient

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Ahmad_Safadi 373 on at

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Alexander

I greatly appreciate your answer, it is quite satisfying.

We are going to definitely start with the analysis phase as an initial step in order to go through all the details you address above.

Although, can you think of any car dealer (regardless of the fact that they might have different processes), as a success story with Standard Dynamics NAV with minimum customizations ?

I have seen ISV who have modified more than 70% of Dynamics NAV in order to cover dealer requirements such as Incadea.

I appreciate your response,

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keoma 32,729 on at

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with the nav service module you can cover most of your processes as you describe.

but it depends on your additional topics: EDI, machine management and maintanence, industrial data capture, complex claim management, ...

for some of your additional topics you may need a specific addin or a customization. it's a matter of money and time.

so as alexander suggested contact an experienced nav partner in your region who maybe also provides some addins for that branche.

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Alexander Ermakov 28,096 on at

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Incadea itself is a difficult reference case, because of the following reasons (ok, I di not know exactly how they are doing now - I refer to older versions):

- It has been designed with a reference to requirements of car manufacturers themselves, who wanted their car dealers to have specific processes covered; this required modifications - not sure if you need any.

- It has been designed initially based on quite old functionality, and now some of that is available out-of-the-box in standard NAV.

- It has been made by several people, sometimes without a reference to the standard functionality that could basically allow similar features.

- The implementation in the car dealer shops was, eh, not smooth (quite often it has been made by good consultants, but who had no time or docs to learn what Incadea offers, thus many things were just re-developed on-spot). By a lucky coincidence, I missed that wave of implementations being busy with other projects, but if you are interested, I can drop you couple of contacts of people who were implementing Incadea functionality years ago.

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Ahmad_Safadi 373 on at

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Thank you very much guys, this is so much appreciated.

I will have to come back here many times once the requirements are more clear.

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keoma 32,729 on at

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you are welcome.

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Hello Saf,

to 1: Without an Make specific adoption, incadea calls it Make Layer concept, you can hardly do any Business with the OEM connected to this dealer just with Standard.

to 2: Yes, incadea DMS is a tailor made product for the Dealerships providing all the functions a OEM-Car Dealer expects, including Multi Make capability and having Interfaces to all OEM specific Software, ready for cloud and Mobile Apps.

to 3: There are no minor modifications coming along with this Industrie. Keep all Interfaces for specific Makes in mind, the huge power of Service Modul which is expected, reporting, monitoring, CRM, aso...

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