Hi
Hi
I have recently joined an organisation and have been told that there are multiple issues with the current version of Navision and the company would like to upgrade. However i’m not sure whether the problems are related to Navision or our architecture and how the app was setup. We are using SQL as the database. I have been given a list of issues being face and was wondering whether they seem to be more of a setup issue rather than a version issue. Refer below:
Background:
My company is a small group adventure holiday operator. With sales and marketing subsidiaries in 6 key source countries and tour operations companies in 12 countries, we have around 1,000 staff spanning the globe.
Our finance strategy is to develop an integrated plug and play solution for any future start ups or acquisitions combining Navision with other AR and AP applications. This solution set is critical for an efficient and effective integration of companies as the Group expands.
We are concerned that in its current state, Navision is not capable of supporting the company in its above goals. We’re getting to the point that the Navision set up is not sustainable in supporting our growth.
Major Issues:
- Performance
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The size of Navision will become unmanageable if more companies are added to the database. There a significant number of tables in each Intrepid Company of which only a handful are used. Nav live currently has more than 20,000 tables. In comparison, our AR application has less than 100.
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New hardware required and greater IT support to manage company databases, backups & log files
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The more companies that are added will result in a slower Navision. This will cause user frustrations and reduced efficiency.
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Drilling down on GL accounts at times can take a significant amount of time to get results. At times it can take several minutes.
- Security
Currently we use a Database Server Authentication to login into Navision. Permissions are allocated to roles which are then granted to users.
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Difficult to allow appropriate permissions without locking down either too much or not enough – if we are going to allow more people (from different companies) to post directly into nav then this can be an issue
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At times it is so much easier to go into Object Designer to complete ones work. This is a concern as it gives access to the data and tables in Navision.
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Cannot customise views based on permissions. A user maybe required to enter information but really should be able to view more than that.
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We do not run any reports related to security. Whether it be monitoring access or general roles and permissions. The more users we have the more we should be utilising Audit and security reports.
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Difficult to assign specific roles as users tend to be across all areas of finance. Therefore users tend to get more access than they should.
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Not sure if there is a history of changes made to structures. For example a GL Account has been blocked. The following week you find out that it is unblocked and entries have been posted to that account. No way of knowing who made the change. Ideally this can be fixed by having view only access for GL accounts, however this may stop the user from performing other functions.
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Ability to have multiple Administrators with different permissions. For example Administrators can give access to other Administrators (with lesser rights) which will allow them to set up users only in their company.
- Maintenance
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Maintenance difficult as there are a full set of databases for every new company. Maintaining them consistently is time consuming and prone to human error.
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A lot of the companies share common data. However they are all updated manually for each company.
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With companies having slightly different set ups, harder to make a generic change. E.g. different posting group names
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Any change in key set up information such as GL accounts and dimension causes problems with data feeds and reporting.
- Implementation and Local Requirements
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Strong bias to Australian requirements (for example the VAT report for UK (equivalent to BAS I believe) never worked). This may limit us if we are looking to roll out to more countries
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Each new Navision database is duplicated based off the AU model. Takes significant amount of time to get all the set ups correct. A lot of unnecessary tables are copied across. Continually have issues with local requirements and the time it takes to fix up the issues.
Can anyone help in guiding what direction I should be taking to addresses the above issues before the upgrade? Thanks for your help.
Cheers
Sami