New Products and Features for Cavallo customers running Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC
Last month, we shared information about new products and features from Cavallo, including New Analytics and Workflow for GP and New Custom Fields, Activity Logs, and more for BC.
In this month’s update, we covered features exclusively for Microsoft Business Central installations. Here’s a quick recap.
Distribution Cloud
- Inventory Allocations, addressing one of Business Central’s biggest pain points
- Integrated Payments, making payment processing seamless
Analytics Cloud
- Trend Monitor, which will provide real-time insights into key performance metrics, including:
- Orders: number and value of orders and average orders by value
- Shipments: number and value of shipments
- Margin for all shipped orders (%)
- Customers: number of unique, new, and repeat customers
Keep reading for all the details.
Important!
All BC features are available for VARs to use in their demo environment. If you have a demo environment, you will need to update the BC extension for the features to work. If you’d like to set up your own demo environment, follow this link for provisioning requirements.
New Features for Distribution Cloud
Payments and Wallet Management
A critical part of any sales process is collecting payment. For many businesses, it’s necessary to capture some or all of the payments needed for the document prior to invoicing.
To help with this need, in the new version of Distribution Cloud we’ve added support for taking Credit Card payments on orders via an integration with Nodus PayFabric. Users can take payments on any order using cards saved to that customer’s wallet or by entering a new card at the time of payment.
To support quick payment entry for repeat customers, we’ve made it easy to manage a customer’s wallet of saved cards. One of the cards in a customer’s wallet can be marked as the default card. Doing so allows it to be chosen by default when taking payment.
In the next few versions of Distribution Cloud, we’ll be expanding our workflow functionality around payments. These updates will allow credit card payments to be authorized or captured as a part of the order workflow.
Allocations and Backorders
When making a sale to a customer, it’s critical to know what’s available to be sold, as selling what’s not in stock could lead to delays and unhappy customers. Once a sale has been made, it’s also important to ensure the inventory for that order is not used elsewhere.
The newest version of Distribution Cloud makes these problems easier to avoid by building out concepts of Inventory Allocation and Backorders. It also allows tracking across items and warehouses to build a clear picture of inventory availability.
This information is visible anywhere in the app where product inventory is shown.
The true power of allocations comes when they’re automated. In workflow configuration, workflow actions can be configured to automatically allocate inventory whenever certain conditions are met, or whenever a document is moving to or from a certain queue. This allows admins to ensure that inventory is always being allocated according to process, and further routing can be done based on how allocated a doc was to inform purchasing decisions.
Another important concept related to allocations and availability is backorders. In Distribution Cloud, the quantity backordered for a line represents what couldn’t be allocated and is a signal for what may need to be purchased, redistributed, or otherwise replenished. The quantity backorder field is available on each line on orders and will be calculated at when allocations are set based on admin configured settings.
In the next release, we’ll be adding more robust visibility into quantity backordered across products and warehouses, in all the same places we show quantities allocated/available.
Trend Monitor for Analytics Cloud for BC
– COMING SOON!
Trend Monitor is already making money for SalesPad users running Microsoft GP.
Coming soon for Analytics Cloud customers running Business Central, Trend Monitor allows users to see trends in KPIs to help manage the way their business is functioning overall. Custom views provide very specific details and trends that can be used to gain insights that increase sales.
Users can see trends on a graph or by the numbers. KPIs such as orders by number and dollar amount, shipments, margin shipped, new and repeat customers and more are color-coded for an easy to read and understand display. Additional filtering by customer class, salesperson and more provides deeper insight into real business impact.
All of these tools are designed to make processes operate in smarter and more efficient ways that increase profitability. Want to learn more?