Stop running your floor on yesterday’s data

Navisiontech configures Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for mid-market manufacturers, so what the floor reports, what the warehouse counts, and what finance posts are the same numbers, updated in something close to real time.

We’re the right call when you’re too big for QuickBooks Manufacturing and too small to absorb an SAP implementation.

Speak to an expert

Free ERP assessment

Most manufacturing ERP failures aren’t technology failures. They’re data trust failures.

Production reports what it thinks happened. Inventory reports something different. Finance reconciles them three weeks later, when the variance is too big to investigate and too small to make a fuss about. The numbers in your ERP and the boxes in your warehouse stop agreeing.

That gap is what we close. Navisiontech configures Business Central so that what the floor reports, what the warehouse counts, and what finance posts are the same numbers, and they update in something close to real time.

Accept cards faster. Lower your rates. Get paid on time — right from Microsoft Business Central. So you can focus on growing your business.

The configuration that makes the difference

Business Central is a generic ERP out of the box. Manufacturing happens in six specific places. Here is how Navisiontech configures each one for mid-market plants.

Product data that doesn’t lie

If your BOM is wrong, everything downstream is wrong. Wrong picks. Wrong costs. Wrong promises to customers. Most mid-market plants we walk into have at least one BOM that nobody wants to touch, because the consequences of changing it are unpredictable.

We configure Business Central so BOMs are version-controlled, engineering changes flow through approval before they’re released, and the floor and the design team stop maintaining different versions of the same product.

Multi-level structures with version history

Attributes for configurable items

Routings linked to work centers and resources

Engineering change orders with approval routing

The floor that reports itself, not at end of shift

Shop floor reporting that happens at end of shift, or worse, end of week, isn’t wrong. It’s late. The data tells you what already happened, when there’s nothing left to do about it. Supervisors stop trusting reports because reports describe yesterday’s problems.

Navisiontech connects Business Central to your floor through Insight Works, MES integrations, and barcoded job tickets, so the question “where are we on order 4821?” has an answer that’s less than five minutes old.

Production order start/stop reporting from the floor

Scrap and yield logged where they happen

Labor time capture at the operation level

Machine status and downtime tracking

Inventory you can actually dispatch from

There’s accurate, and there’s accurate enough to dispatch a truck on. Most ERPs are the first kind. They look right at month-end. But during the day, the count on screen and the box on the rack disagree often enough that promises to customers become hedged.

We configure inventory with bin-level discipline, lot and serial where regulation demands it, and cycle counting that runs as part of the workflow, not as a project. Dispatch and customer service start quoting with confidence, not faith.

Multi-location and bin-level tracking

Cycle counting integrated with daily workflow

Lot, serial, and expiration when regulation demands

WIP visibility across the production line

Quality that holds up to an audit

Quality systems built on email threads and spreadsheets fail at the worst possible moment, when a regulator or a major customer asks for evidence. The information exists. It’s just scattered across a dozen places no one is responsible for keeping current.

We configure Business Central with inspection workflows at receiving, in-process, and at finish; nonconformance tracking with disposition routing; and an audit trail that doesn’t have to be reconstructed. The difference is between “we think it was caught” and “here is the record.”

Inspection at receipt, in-process, and final

Hold, release, and rework controls

Nonconformance reports with disposition workflow

Audit trail across receivers, NCRs, dispositions

Costs that are right today, not next month

Standard costing is useful only when actuals roll up fast enough to compare. Most of the variance pain we see at mid-market manufacturers comes from costs that aren’t computed until weeks after the fact: labor that wasn’t reconciled, scrap that wasn’t captured, overheads applied with a lag.

We configure Business Central so actual costs accumulate at the operation level as work happens. The variance you find at month-end becomes small enough to interrogate, not catastrophic enough to write off.

Standard cost rollups for material, labor, overhead

Variance analysis by material, labor, scrap

Actual cost capture at the operation level

Customer and product margin visibility

Costs that are right today, not next month

Standard cost rollups for material, labor, overhead

Variance analysis by material, labor, scrap

Actual cost capture at the operation level

Customer and product margin visibility

When production and finance share one database

These aren’t predictions. They’re outcomes we’ve watched repeat across mid-market manufacturing implementations.

Month-end close that doesn’t take a week

When the floor and finance share the same data, the close stops being a reconciliation exercise. Most plants we work with cut close time by roughly half.

Variances small enough to investigate

Real-time labor and scrap reporting means month-end variances become diagnostic, not catastrophic. You learn things instead of writing them off.

Dispatch promises you can actually keep

When inventory is bin-accurate during the day, not just at month-end, customer service stops hedging and starts committing.

Fewer late-night calls about a missing part

Material availability checks at order release, in-transit visibility, and a working reorder point eliminate most of the 8 PM expedite scrambles.

Audit prep that takes hours, not weeks

Inspection records, NCR dispositions, lot trace, and ECO history live in one auditable place. Regulators ask, you click, they’re satisfied.

A finance team that trusts the floor

The most underrated outcome. When the numbers agree, finance and operations stop arguing about whose data is right and start solving problems together.

A Real Engagement

What this actually looks like in practice

Anonymized case study from a recent multi-site discrete manufacturing client. Numbers are real. The name isn’t.

Industrial parts manufacturer

Three plants. Two states. ~$52M revenue. Migrating off NAV 2013.

4 years post go-live

What changed

The situation in 2020

Finance was closing the books on the 8th business day of the month, and nobody trusted the numbers. Pricing for the largest automotive customer lived in a 14-tab Excel workbook that one person maintained. Quality data ran on a separate platform that didn’t talk to the ERP. EDI chargebacks averaged $2,400 per month. Inventory accuracy was 87% at month-end and lower during the day. Operations and finance had stopped arguing about whose numbers were right because they had both given up on agreement.

What we did

Navisiontech ran a four-week plant walk across all three sites and proposed a ten-month phased implementation. Finance and inventory went live in month four. Production and quality joined in month seven. Warehouse mobility and EDI followed in month ten. Each phase had a six-week stabilization window before the next one started.

The stack we deployed

Business Central Premium as the core. Insight Works for shop floor reporting and license plates. Tasklet Mobile WMS for receiving, picking, and counting. Lanham EDI for the automotive customer’s 850/855/856/810 documents. Power BI for finance and operations dashboards. EasyEFT for the small B2B card-not-present volume.

What changed

Month-end close

8 business days → 4 business days

—

Inventory accuracy

87% → 99.2%

—

EDI chargebacks (avg / month)

$2,400 → $520

—

Variance found before close

~15% of total → ~85% of total

—

Source-of-truth systems

4 disconnected → 1 unified

“The first month we closed in four days, the controller asked twice if something had been missed. By month three, the floor stopped arguing with finance about WIP value. That’s worth more than the cost of the implementation. “

VP of Operations, Industrial Parts Manufacturer

Where AI helps a manufacturer, and where it doesn’t

AI is currently being sold as a solution to every manufacturing problem. It isn’t. For a handful of specific, well-bounded problems, it’s genuinely useful, once your data is clean enough to feed it. Here’s how we sort that with clients.

Works today

Production problems where AI earns its keep right now

These use cases have a tight problem definition, a clean data source, and an action a human can take from the output. They’re operational at Navisiontech clients today.

• Demand forecasting at SKU and family level Pattern detection that beats moving averages, accounting for seasonality, customer shifts, and lead times.

• Material shortage warnings before the line stops Predictive alerts when forecast + on-order won’t cover production schedule, with enough lead time to expedite.

• Yield and scrap trend detection across batches Pattern recognition across production orders to flag conditions that correlate with quality drift.

• Anomaly detection in machine telemetry Where sensor data already exists, AI is reliable at spotting deviations long before mechanical failure.

• Natural-language queries against operational data “Show me orders running over standard labor by 15% in the last 30 days.” No report builder required.

Works today

Where we tell clients to slow down

These pitches are getting louder, but the underlying tech, data, or organizational readiness usually isn’t there yet. We’d rather under-promise.

• Fully autonomous scheduling

The math works. The operator and supervisor buy-in doesn’t yet. Decision-support, yes. Decision-replacement, no.

• Predictive maintenance without sensor data

It’s a sensor problem first, an AI problem second. Get telemetry flowing before buying anything labeled “predictive.”

• “AI-powered” quality vision without labeled training data

Computer vision needs thousands of labeled defect examples to be useful. Most plants don’t have that yet.

• Replacing experienced planners with optimization engines

Planning is partly math and largely judgment about which customer to disappoint. Tools assist; they don’t replace.

A Real Engagement

Six manufacturing shapes we know how to set up

These are the actual profiles of mid-market manufacturers we’ve implemented Business Central for. If one looks like the mirror, the conversation gets specific quickly.

Profile 01

Month-end close that doesn’t take a week

When the floor and finance share the same data, the close stops being a reconciliation exercise. Most plants we work with cut close time by roughly half.

Typical setup BC + Insight Works + Tasklet WMS + Power BI

Profile 02

Batch process: food, supplement, cosmetic

Formula-driven production. Yield variance is a fact of life. Expiration management, lot trace, and recall readiness are non-negotiable. Often catch-weight on outputs.

Typical setup BC + advanced manufacturing + lot trace + Insight Works

Profile 03

Engineer-to-order machine builder

Long lead times. Customer-specific engineering. Project-style cost accounting. The same machine never gets built twice exactly, but 70% of the BOM repeats. Field service after delivery.

Typical setup BC + Jobs/Projects + configurator + service module

Profile 04

High-mix, low-volume job shop

Custom routings per order. Estimating that needs to be fast. Quoting that needs to be accurate. Setup time eats margin on small runs. Tooling and operator skill are real constraints.

Typical setup BC + quoting + capacity scheduling + shop floor reporting

Profile 05

Regulated parts: aerospace, defense, medical

Traceability isn’t a feature, it’s the product. AS9100, FDA, ITAR considerations. Document control. Approved supplier lists. Customer audits that will read your records.

Typical setup BC + lot/serial trace + quality module + document control

Profile 06

High-mix electronics & high-tech

Short product lifecycles. Serial tracking. Component lead time volatility. Revision control where last week’s part is already obsolete. EOL management on legacy products.

Typical setup C + serial trace + ECO workflow + supply chain visibility

The Integration Ecosystem

What BC reads from and writes to in your stack

Business Central rarely runs alone. It connects to the engineering, warehouse, sales, and finance tools your team already uses. Every integration on this page is one Navisiontech has deployed at least once. None of it is theoretical.

Engineering & Design

PLM, CAD, and product data systems

SolidWorks • SolidWorks PDM • Autodesk Inventor • Autodesk Vault • PTC Windchill • AutoCAD • Fusion 360

BOMs, drawings, revisions, and engineering changes flow between PLM/CAD and BC’s item master. ECOs raised in PLM update item revisions in BC. Engineers stop maintaining two sources of truth.

Engineering & Design

MES, WMS, and quality platforms

Insight Works • Tasklet WMS • Aegis MES • iBASEt • ETQ • MasterControl • QT9

Production reporting, label printing, and quality records read and write to BC in real time. License plates and lot trace follow material from receipt through finished goods.

Engineering & Design

PLM, CAD, and product data systems

Lanham EDI • TrueCommerce • UPS • FedEx • USPS • LTL carriers • Avalara • Vertex

Documents 850, 855, 856, 810, 940, 945, 997 to and from major customers. Shipment confirmations to carriers. Sales tax engines. Automated routing-guide compliance.

Engineering & Design

PLM, CAD, and product data systems

Dynamics 365 Sales • Salesforce • HubSpot • Shopify • BigCommerce • Magento • Configure One • DealHub

Customer accounts, opportunities, quotes, configurator output, and e-commerce orders all flow into BC sales orders. One customer file across the business.

Engineering & Design

PLM, CAD, and product data systems

Outlook • Teams • SharePoint • OneDrive • ADP • Paychex • Kronos • iSolved

Email integration, document storage, calendar booking, and Teams approvals. Time and attendance feeds labor capture for actual cost. Approvals route through Outlook and Teams natively.

Engineering & Design

PLM, CAD, and product data systems

EasyEFT • ChargeLogic • Authorize.Net • ACH bank feeds • Azure IoT • OPC-UA • MTConnect

Card-not-present and ACH payments inside BC. Bank reconciliation via direct feed. Machine data flowing into BC for OEE, downtime, and predictive maintenance signals.

How we actually build the connections

Microsoft Power Platform (Power Automate, Dataverse) for low-code connections. BC’s REST API and webhooks for moderate complexity. Custom AL extensions inside BC for deep functional integration. We pick the right approach per connection, not a single framework forced on everything.

What does this typically cost?

These are the actual profiles of mid-market manufacturers we’ve implemented Business Central for. If one looks like the mirror, the conversation gets specific quickly.

Estimated Investment Ranges

How Pricing Works

① Discovery Assessment ($20,000 Fixed Fee) → ② Fixed-Price Proposal → ③ Foundation | Connected | Complex

Foundation

Single site. Standard discrete or process manufacturing. No major integrations beyond the core platform.

Implementation Investment

$120k to $220k

Fixed-scope implementation

Timeline 4 to 6 months

Business Central Premium setup and configuration

Manufacturing module with BOM, routing, and capacity planning

Inventory and warehouse basics

Power BI starter dashboards

End-user and administrator training

Ninety days of post go-live support

Connected

Two or three sites. Or moderate integration complexity. Or engineer-to-order operations. Most mid-market manufacturers land here.

Implementation Investment

$220k to $500k

Scope-banded implementation

Timeline 6 to 10 months

Everything in Foundation

Phased multi-site rollout with site templating

Lanham EDI trading partners setup

Tasklet Mobile WMS for receiving, picking, packing

Insight Works for shop floor, Graphical scheduler, MxAPS, setup

Custom Power BI suite (ten to fifteen reports)

Project accounting setup if ETO is in scope

Extended training including supervisor and floor lead programs

Complex

Single site. Standard discrete or process manufacturing. No major integrations beyond the core platform.

Implementation Investment

$500k to $1M+

Implementation with contingency

Timeline 10 to 18 months

Everything in Connected

PLM and CAD integration (SolidWorks PDM, Inventor, Vault)

Full quality module with NCR, CAPA, document control

Regulatory documentation (21 CFR Part 11, AS9100, ITAR readiness)

Multiple EDI trading partners (three or more)

Formal project governance with PMO cadence

Change management and adoption program

Dedicated implementation lead and ongoing success manager

How an Engagement Runs

Specific about timeline. Specific about cost

Most ERP partner pages are vague about phasing because vagueness keeps options open. We’d rather be specific and lose the engagements that aren’t a fit. Here is how a typical manufacturing project runs at Navisiontech.

Phase One

Walk the plant. Document what’s actually happening.

We sit with operations, finance, and the floor for two to four weeks. We watch a real workday. We document the gap between the process map and the reality. We don’t try to fix what’s already working.

Typical duration 2-4 weeks

Phase Two

Design the solution. Phase the rollout. Quote honestly.

We propose what to keep, what to replace, what to integrate, and in what order. We give you an honest cost and timeline estimate. If we don’t think Business Central is the right answer, we’ll say so. We’ve turned engagements away when the math didn’t favor the client.

Typical duration 3-6 weeks

Phase Three

Build in phases. Never big-bang.

Typically finance and inventory first, then production, then warehouse mobility and integrations. Each phase has its own go-live and stabilization window. The floor never has to learn three new things on the same Monday.

Typical duration 4-10 months

Phase Four

Train the people who will actually use it.

Not just key users. Operators, supervisors, planners, and finance staff who’ll live with the system day to day. Training is built into the build phase, not bolted on at the end as an afterthought.

Embedded in build Ongoing

Phase Five

Stay. Most clients keep us on for years.

Prepaid 100-hour support blocks with rollover. A dedicated success manager. Quarterly optimization reviews. The relationship doesn’t end at go-live. That’s actually when the value compounds.

Engagement model Indefinite

Who you’ll actually work with

ERP implementations are people projects with software underneath. Here is the structure of the team you’d meet on a Navisiontech engagement, and what each role is accountable for from day one through the years after go-live.

Role 01

Implementation Lead

The person who answers your CEO’s emails about progress. Owns project outcomes, scope management, and escalation. Typically the senior consultant your team spends the most time with during discovery and design.

Dynamics experience 10+ years

Background Former plant or ops leadership

On your account Discovery through go-live

Role 02

Senior Functional Consultant

Owns configuration design, process mapping, and training delivery. The person who translates how your factory actually runs into how BC needs to be configured. Multiple functional consultants typically work in parallel during the build phase.

Dynamics experience 5 to 15 years

Certifications BC, Supply Chain, Manufacturing

Background Ex-controller, ex-finance, ex-ops

Role 03

Developer

Builds customizations, integrations, extensions, and performance tuning. Writes AL code inside BC and the connectors that talk to your PLM, MES, EDI provider, and bank feeds. Multiple developers staff complex engagements.

AL / BC experience3 to 10 years

Background Software engineering, multi-language

On your account Build through stabilization

Role 04

Success Manager

The person who knows what’s happened on your account for the past two years. Owns the relationship after go-live: quarterly reviews, prepaid hour tracking, roadmap planning, change requests. Continuity, not just incident response.

Navisiontech tenure 3+ years

Background Consulting and account management

On your account Indefinite, post go-live

Questions Worth Asking

Things prospective clients ask us before signing anything

If you don’t see the question you have here, send us an email. We’d rather answer it honestly than have you guess.

What’s the right phasing for a multi-plant rollout?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T13:05:28+00:00

What’s the right phasing for a multi-plant rollout?

Almost always: configure once at a pilot plant, stabilize for three to six months, then template-roll to additional sites. The pilot plant should be the one where you have the strongest local team and the most representative operations, not the simplest plant and not the most complicated. The stabilization window is non-negotiable; rolling out to plant two before plant one is stable just multiplies the problems. After the pilot is solid, additional plants typically come online in two to four months each.

What’s the real cost of a mid-market manufacturing implementation?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T13:05:11+00:00

What’s the real cost of a mid-market manufacturing implementation?

We won’t give you a number on a webpage because every situation is different. But we will say this. The most common mistake mid-market manufacturers make is choosing the cheapest implementation partner, which usually means a generic configuration that doesn’t fit the plant. The savings on the implementation get spent in years one through three on workarounds, customizations, and rework. We’d rather give you an honest higher estimate up front and deliver something that actually fits. After discovery, we provide a fixed-price proposal with a contingency band. No surprises later.

Can Business Central handle our specific regulatory requirements: FDA, ITAR, AS9100?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T13:04:42+00:00

Can Business Central handle our specific regulatory requirements: FDA, ITAR, AS9100?

Yes, with proper configuration and the right extensions. BC’s lot and serial tracking, audit trail, and document control capabilities provide the foundation that regulated manufacturers need. We’ve configured BC for medical device manufacturers under FDA jurisdiction, defense suppliers under ITAR, and aerospace parts producers under AS9100. The specific work involves configuring quality workflows to match your QMS, locking down certain transactions, and setting up the reports your auditors will want. We can walk through your specific regulatory situation during discovery.

How do you handle our existing customizations from NAV?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T13:04:22+00:00

How do you handle our existing customizations from NAV?

We review each one before we touch it. Most NAV customizations fall into three categories: things that should be carried forward as Business Central extensions, things that became unnecessary because BC already does them natively, and things that were workarounds for problems that no longer exist. We tag each customization into one of those buckets during discovery, then quote the extensions phase based on what actually needs to be rebuilt, not on a wholesale port of every modification.

Do we need to standardize all our processes before we can implement Business Central?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T13:01:15+00:00

Do we need to standardize all our processes before we can implement Business Central?

No, but you should expect to standardize them as part of the project. One of the honest realities of ERP implementation is that it forces process decisions you’ve been deferring. We don’t recommend doing all that standardization work as a separate prerequisite. That project never finishes. Instead, we use the implementation as the forcing function: when we hit a step that requires a decision, we make it together, document it, and move on. By go-live, your processes are standardized because the system requires it.

We tried an ERP implementation before and it failed. What’s different about how Navisiontech approaches it?Andrew Fixara2026-06-22T12:30:55+00:00

We tried an ERP implementation before and it failed. What’s different about how Navisiontech approaches it?

A few things. First, we never do big-bang go-lives. Every implementation we do is phased, with one workstream stabilizing before the next begins. Second, we don’t quote a fixed scope based on a generic statement of work; we walk the plant first and quote what we actually see. Third, we don’t disappear after go-live. Most of our manufacturing clients have been with us for five-plus years on ongoing support. Failed implementations usually fail because of scope mismatch, change management, or a partner that left too soon. We try not to do any of those three.

REAL STORIES. REAL RESULTS. REAL GROWTH.

Trusted by distributors across the U.S.

Trusted by businesses across the U.S.

If any of this sounds like your factory. Let’s have a conversation.

Thirty minutes. No demo, no slide deck. A structured discussion about how your floor and your back office are currently agreeing or not, and whether Business Central plus Navisiontech is the right next step. If it isn’t, we’ll tell you what is.