Buying the right kind of license can often be a matter of confusion for most businesses. The same can happen when it comes to choosing between Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials and the Premium License.
We know that the Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium license comes with enhanced manufacturing and service management functionalities but is that all?
In this blog, we shall discuss the differences between the prices and functionality in Essentials and Premium, the specific manufacturing and service capabilities that Premium comes with, and what makes Business Central Premium or Essentials the right choice for your business.
Essential Vs Premium: The Pricing
Getting a Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials or Premium license is a decision you would be making for everyone in your business since all the users need to have the same license type. While it costs $70/user/month USD for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials license, the Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium would cost $100/user/month USD.
Comparison of Functionality Between Business Central Essentials and Premium
Most businesses can use Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials, which has core features like financial management, supply chain management, human resources management, project management, and warehouse management. Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium, on the other hand, comes with all the core functionalities of Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials, along with additional functionalities for manufacturing and service management.
Business Central Premium vs Essentials: Manufacturing
The Essentials license also comes with lighter manufacturing capabilities, which include assembly order functionality, whereby BOMs can include multi-level BOMs of components and resources/effort. The premium license comes with the functionality of production BOMs and routings for more complex manufacturing processes.
Business Central Premium: Benefits of Manufacturing Module
- Bill of Materials with detailed structures of products with exact costing and material planning.
- Production orders allow easy production management with tracking of labour and material consumption.
- Capacity planning for resource optimization without bottleneck situations.
- Agile manufacturing provides flexibility due to changing market demand.
- Real-time visibility provides accurate quantities, location, lot, and serial number tracking.
- Demand forecasting helps businesses plan and optimize inventory to meet the needs of their customers.
- Lot and Serial Number Tracking to help develop a trail of back-to-basic record keeping for compliance.
- Accurately calculate product costs for pricing and profitability analysis.
- Pinpoint cost deviations and correct them.
- Integration with Other Modules for seamless workflow by combining manufacturing operations with sales, purchasing, and finance and other functional areas of the business organization.
- Data consistency for accuracy of information across the enterprise.
Business Central Premium: Service Management
Business Central Premium has a Service Management module with tools for managing service operations, service contracts and service orders. Its integration with resource management, invoicing, and other key functions makes service management easier than ever.
Business Central Premium: Benefits of Service Management
Business Central Premium helps organizations respond faster and manage service requests effectively, including dispatching technicians and makes communication with customers easier at every stage.
Businesses get empowered with predictable scenarios, which helps in resolving possible problems before they even raise a disturbance. It even helps schedule technicians with workload management and streamlining processes to ensure a much shorter service call duration.
With Business Central Premium, businesses can track service parts and supplies effectively and, at the same time, get insight into service performance metrics with proper analytics and find opportunities for improvement.
Optimizing maintenance schedules for equipment, finding other service needs, effectively managing service contracts and generating invoices quickly and accurately becomes swift with Business Central Premium.
Which one, Business Central Essential or Premium, is for your business?
The Business Central Essentials license would probably fit your firm if it does a little manufacturing and service management. On the other hand, the Business Central Premium license is for more complex manufacturing or runs services in a more professional way, requiring service contracts, service orders, and warranty management.
Conclusion
While both licenses come with their own benefits, it is always better to consult a Microsoft Dynamics Partner like Business Experts Gulf LLC to determine your needs.
