On November 9-11, the 15th edition of Directions EMEA 2022 took place in Hamburg. This time, almost 3,000 people attended the event. During three days, as many as 250 different sessions were presented, during which it was possible to learn a lot about the future of Dynamics 365 Business Central. Directions EMEA, however, is not only knowledge, but also an opportunity to meet partners from around the world.
At this year’s edition, 20 people from EIP Dynamics participated in Directions EMEA 2022. Below we share some information obtained from the conference.
Basic information from the conference:
- The sessions were conducted by 55 speakers from Microsoft and 80 from Microsoft Partners community.
- The event is increasingly changing from a conference dedicated to Dynamics systems to conferences for the SMB sector, as it increasingly covers issues related to Power BI, Power Apps, DataFlow, Azure and other solutions that are part of the Microsoft ecosystem.
- New initiatives presented by Microsoft are Women in Dynamics and Young in Dynamics.
- Toby Bowers (General Manager, Product Marketing at Microsoft) informs that the SMB ERP customer base has been reduced by sixty percent over the past year.
Business Central
- This year marks the 20th anniversary since Microsoft acquired Navision.
- Business Central is one of the fastest growing products in the Microsoft Business App division. Business Central is available in over 100 countries. It has more partners than any other Microsoft product.
- The slogan “Do more with less” – in accordance with this slogan, a direction was set indicating more efficient implementations – lower and more predictable costs, automation of tasks and focus on scalability.
- Further development of Onboarding (functionality that serves as the so-called tutorial). You can read more about it here.
- Refreshed Action Bar. You can read more about it here.
- Built-in integration with Shopify.
- Switch between companies and environments.
- Financial Reports (before Account Schedules) with an API for integration with PowerBI.
- During the conference, you could get a lot of inspiration on how to use the entire Microsoft ecosystem (including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Dataverse, Power Platform, Azure tools)
- INTRASTAT reports have been updated.
- The ability to open data in MS Excel (not only classic Microsoft Excel, but also in the web version).
- Telemetry was the topic of many sessions. It can be expected that this area will be further intensively developed.
Local versions
- 102 local versions for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Available local versions cover 58% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s GDP.
- In the near future, a bigger focus on the African market is planned.
- The plan for the near future assumes enriching the base application.
Continia Document Capture
- Continia Document Capture is used by 8,000 users. On average, one customer handles 847 invoices per month, which together gives almost 7 million invoices per month. As a result, Continia is estimated to save approximately 90,000 working days for its customers.
- A new module in Continia Document Capture for contract management (e.g. telephone bills, insurance, etc.).