I am curious as to the types of customer installations being done worldwide as well as those in the US. In the US, the focus seems to be on manufacturers and distributors with sales of greater than US$10 Million. I remember reading on one of the Navision related web sites (I don’t recall if it was this one or another web site) that Navision was the software of choice for Soccer (or Football!) clubs in Europe. I am thinking that this type of customer does not approach the revenue range that is the target for installations in the USA. What other types of organizations or “industries” favor Navision worldwide that may not approach the targeted revenue range for the US market? Do other countries have different target customer sizes? Are other customer types targeted? What about number of users accessing Navision? What seems to be an average user count for your sites? I would be interested in hearing from NSCs and consultants worldwide. I also would be interested in hearing from some end users from non-manufacturing or non-distribution companies as to the reasons that they chose Navision. We were having discussions about this in my office the other day and now my curiousity about this topic is getting the best of me. Best regards, Mark. Mark Keener Automated Number Crunching Dayton, OH USA
Without even trying to be complete… In The Netherlands, the target area is the larger mid-sized companies, as well as the lower end of the big boys. But that doesn’t mean smaller sized business is left out, in contrary. I even know of a one-man business running on Navision for accounting, stock control, etc. Looking at the customers who are served by ourselves, there’s a wide variation present. By the nature of our activities, we are dealing with internationals and multi-nationals, whereby either the world-wide development is done by us, or the local implementation, or both. Local branch offices sometimes have a few employees only (but the parent company employs hundreds or thousands). Sometimes Navision is only for local accounting, sometimes Navision runs the whole business, inclusive manufacturing and distribution. Sometimes Navision is running stand-alone, but in most cases there’s some kind of interfacing to the central system. So speaking in general terms, there’s no restriction, or narrowing, to specific areas or target groups. In The Netherlands, many customers from many business areas are happy with their Navision. John
Mark, a simple answer from an end user: Navision is outstanding when you, as a “mid-sized” company do not have the resources to exactly analyze and define your ultimate needs. Because you always have the power to twist the software to handle your ideosyncracies. You don’t have to take the risk of purchasing an undersized, or for that matter, oversized program. For 4 years, I have never regretted aquiring it, though the demands have been tough; rolling out one common software solution handling accounting and logistics in six companies in five different countries. Pelle
From a Swiss point of view: We have to be careful with words like “mid-sized” as it means different numbers in different countries. In Switzerland “mid-sized” is typically around 50-500 employees. One might suspect that this is a “small” company according to US standards. In Switzerland I have seen Navision installations running form 3 - 30 users. I estimate that the typical NF customer has 12 clients connected and an average db size of 5 GBytes. With best regards from Switzerland Marcus Fabian
In Spain when we referred to mid-size companies or large size ones it was refering how much the companies billed and not how many employees they’ve got… 
Regards Alfonso Pertierra (Spain)apertierra@teleline.es
In Russia the target area are the mid-size and large size companies. Most of them are large enough for local and in-house developed systems, but sufficiently far from Axapta or SAP R/3. So, it’s typically around 200-1000 and more employees. They are chosen NA because of flexibility, good integration and accounting capabilities. In general Navision is used for local and GAAP accounting. Other activities like billing, pecuniary interests calculation, video-library maintenance and so on are automated by legacy systems. But sometimes Navision runs the whole business, inc. manufacturing, warehousing and distribution. Our customers belong to different types of industries. Some of them are TV channel, investment fund, telecom operator, large distributors, sport club (why not!) and manufacturing companies as well. Regards, Yuri Pokusaev IBS, Senior Consultant NCPS, NCSD ypokusaev@yahoo.com +7(095)987-8080
As interesting are the number of manufacturing companies using Navision but not the manufacturing modules - still another story for another time. I will not comment from a UK perspective, but our area within it, targeting companies with employees 10-99, but it is our own restriction not the softwares, this gives us a turnover range of £1-£100 million. Strangely sales have also come from companies with 5 employees who turnover £10 million. As for the type we do target manufacturing as we are accredited and experienced in this field, but with the growing distribution market in the UK we target these as well, that said many companies fall into these areas that you would not expect. As for the football (soccer) club mentioned in teh original posting I presume this to be Werder Bremen in Germany. As for football clubs not approaching this revenue range, I think more reasearch is required in this field. In the Premiership the lowest team will turnover in excess of £20 million with teams like Manchester United turning over £110 million, so many will fall into this bracket as football is currently a bit of a cash cow, again not quite the argument for this forum. Steve