Average Cost to Implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision)

First of all, there are no 2 businesses that are exactly the same. I don’t care if they’re in the same industry, if the owners are siblings, and/or if they live in the same household. Companies are as unique as the fingerprints of the owners that run them.

As such, no 2 implementations are exactly the same. This is because the people that work inside the companies are unique. They live the company culture that are defined by their managers. And the company culture are as unique as the personalities of the people setting them.

There has been countless times where I hear “we do everything like everyone else” or “can’t we take what you did for other customers and implement it here?”. No. You don’t do everything like everyone else and no, we will not take other implementations and apply it here. Unless we want to guarantee failure.

If you’re a robot and have no personalities, or you want to fit your business process to the software, then use Quickbooks. Any other unique data that you need to keep track of, use Excel. Don’t bother buying an expensive hard-to-modify software that you will have the same problems with if you were using Quickbooks.

For the record, Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) is an easy to modify software that fits your business like a glove. As such, there are setups that will be involved to fit the software to your business.

There are definately similarities that applies, however, the task is up to the implementor to make recommendations on how to implement these similarities without making too much distruptions to your business.

Having said that, making a post about the average cost to implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) will surely draw criticism. This post is about MY experiences implementing Navision. OUR Dynamics NAV (Navision) practice is DIFFERENT than other company’s practice. OUR company is unique, just every company out there is unique. So before you flame me, remember this is based on MY experience, NOT yours because you are not me and I am not you. You and I live in different areas, grew up with different environment, eat different foods, breathe different air, is allergic by different things. Did I get my point across? Good.

These numbers are based on the implementation using the Classic client. We find that the Role Tailor Client is more suitable for management for doing analysis and running reports, not for data entry. For order processing, manufacturing processing, etc. we find that using the Classic client is a lot more fitting and more user friendly.

The initial implementation is to always to replace their old system with NAVision. The new features and functionalities are nice and will definitely reduce the expenses for the company, but unless they’re mission critical, we usually recommenend holding off introducing new processes until NAV is up and running. The reason we do this is because we don’t want to overload end users with too much new information where they will feel overwhelmed. For example, if the companies uses 3rd party software to process EDI and the users are used to it, we would hold off integrating EDI into NAV on the next phase whenever the customer is ready.

As a rule, we always recommend the client purchase the base of any addons they may use in the future. For example, if the client plan to integrate EDI into NAV, we always recommend the client to buy Packing (the minimum requirement) and use Lanham’s E-Ship/EDI database from the beginning. This will reduce time to merge the objects when everything is up and running.

Ok, so here it goes.

Our typical new NAV client for us has the following traits:
– Users: 11 to 20 users
– Locations: 1-3 location
– A distrubtion based company. (They usually import goods from overseas, repackage it, and sell them in the US.)
– Sometimes with light manufacturing (at most, running production BOMs without using MRP)
– Light warehousing (maybe using warehouse receipt and warehouse shipments).
– Some EDI Trading Partners

The time spent on an implementation like this are, based on the quotes I’ve written, are between 120 – 200 hours.

Some of the basic time required are (NAV2009 and prior):
Initial Analysis and Writeup (30 – 40 hours)
Database installation and setup (10 hours)
Development (30 – 60 hours)
Training (30 – 50 hours)
Onsite after Live date (20 – 40 hours)

The development usually includes:
– Customer information Import
– Vendor information Import
– Item imformation Import
– A/R balance import
– A/P balance import
– G/L balance import
– Open Sales Orders import
– Open Purchase Orders import
– Inventory balance import
– Busines forms modification (SO, PO, customer statement, etc)
– Mission critical modifications that’s not in base NAV
– Misc. tweaks during user training
– Transfer of all data with dataports written on the day before live

The software price is set by Microsoft. There’s nothing we can do about that. The hourly rate are different by region, so do your homework and find what the hourly rate for your region is. Around my area, it’s about $150 – $200 an hour. But don’t print out my blog to use as a bargaining tool. It won’t work.