Customization Alternatives

Hello All,

My company is constantly paying our NAV partner to make changes and customizations for things in NAV that to us should be part of an ERP system like this. Some simpler things like assigning lots and physical inventory count all seem to need special programming to get it to work for us.

There are some in my company that seem to think there are better alternatives. Some have suggested that there are companies that have these standard features already programmed and ready to be implemented. I am not incredibly familiar with NAV but it seems to me that any kind of pre-programmed setups like this wouldn’t work. The programming to integrate the change/customization into our NAV system still exists.

This probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but I hope you get the jist of it. We are mainly looking for a way to get what we need without spending $200/hr on it.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

“that should really be part of standard NAV” is a very common phrase. Unfortunately, what is ‘normal processing’ for you, which you would consider “industry standard”, is completely the opposite for the company down the street. No matter how you make a system work, there will always be companies for which it will not work. In my 13 years with NAV I have never seen an implementation without any custom development, and I’ve worked with hundreds of customers.

What it comes down to is whether you accept the way that standard NAV works or not. If you do, you will have to modify your business processes to match what the standard functionality provides, and you don’t need to have anyone program any modifications. This is probably a very unlikely scenario. If you don’t like the way that standard NAV works, then you might be able to find an add-on that does exactly what you need, exactly the way that you need it. You’d have to pay a license fee for the add-on, and pay your partner to integrate it into your system. If you can’t find such an add-on, then the only alternative is for NAV to be modified. Unless you can find someone who will do this modification for free, you’re always going to pay for that effort.

You could try and find a partner that has lower rates, but in general you get what you pay for, so I’d be cautious about selecting who does your programming only based on who has the lowest rates.