5 Benefits of Integrating Microsoft Business Central with Office 365

What’s a better combination besides peanut butter and jelly? BC and Office 365.

In today’s fast-paced business world, it’s essential to have seamless integration between different software solutions to ensure efficient workflows and productivity. 

Microsoft Business Central and Office 365 are two powerful tools that can work together to provide several benefits for businesses. Integrating Microsoft Business Central with Office 365 provides a range of benefits for businesses that use both platforms.

Microsoft has designed its various products to best suit every industry with their unique industry needs. Being the most used software across the globe, Microsoft Dynamics 365 becomes much more powerful when connected to Microsoft Office tools.

Advantages of Integration

1) Improved Collaboration：

One of the most significant benefits of integrating Business Central with Office 365 is improved collaboration. With the integration, users can easily access and share data from Business Central within Office 365 applications like Excel, Word and PowerPoint. This makes it easier for teams to collaborate on projects, documents and other major business decisions. 

• Eg: One of your sales staff requires access customer data from Business Central to draft up a sales proposal in a Word document. Here, they can easily do so without having to switch between applications or manually enter data into the document, saving time and effort.

This integration can save time and improve the accuracy of the data being used.

2） Streamline workflows:

Increased productivity in the form of streamline workflows occurs when you reduce manual data entry with the integration of Business Central and Office 365. Eg: users can automatically generate invoices or purchase orders from Business Central data, decreasing the time and effort required to create these documents manually.

• This integration can also help users manage tasks more efficiently. Users can create alerts and notifications in Business Central to be sent to their Outlook inbox, reminding them of tasks that needs immediate action by a certain dateline.

This feature enables users to stay on top of their work and ensures no task gets left behind.

3） Enhanced efficiency:

Increased overall efficiency is a strong result of this integration. For example, users can access BC data directly from within Excel, allowing them to create reports and analyze data without having to export it to a separate file. 

• In addition, the integration can help businesses automate routine tasks, such as sending out customer invoices or processing payroll.

This automation can eliminate errors and save employees time to focus on other tasks. 

4）Improved Security:

Another key benefit of this integration is the capability to maximize the robust security features offered by both platforms.

• Office 365 provides advanced security features like multi-factor authentication and data encryption, while BC offers role-based security and data protection.

Together, these features strengthen and aid businesses to better protect their data from authorized access, cyber threats and scams. 

5） Greater mobility：

Integrating Microsoft Business Central with Office 365 also provides greater mobility. Office 365 includes a suite of collaboration tools, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, which allow users to collaborate on documents and projects in real-time. 

• By integrating Business Central with Office 365, employees can access and collaborate on financial and operational data, invoices, and other business documents on the go.

Disadvantages of Integration

Every good and fair analysis will come with both pros and cons. While integrating Business Central and Office 365 offers many benefits, we should also be fully aware of the potential disadvantages and weigh the costs and benefits before moving forward with an integration project.

Here are several of some common resistance factors you might face when considering the integration between Business Central and Office 365:

1. Additional cost: While Microsoft offers a variety of pricing options for Business Central and Office 365, integrating the 2 solutions may result in additional costs, such as for consulting services or custom development work. 

2. Increased complexity: Integrating Business Central and Office 365 can be complex especially for businesses with complicated workflows or customizations. Implementing the integration may require significant planning, testing and customization. 

3. 0 tolerance for low security: The integration of Business Central and Office 365 requires the exchange of data between the two systems, which can increase the risk of data breaches or other security issues. You’ll need to take steps to ensure that your data is properly secured and that access to sensitive information is restricted in a form of a trusted vendor (for example, like us at Aristou) or a powerful IT in-house team.

While there are some potential disadvantages, the benefits of integration far outweigh these drawbacks, making it a worthwhile investment for businesses looking to optimize their operations and achieve their goals.

In summary, integrating Microsoft Business Central with Office 365 that can help businesses such as: improved collaboration, streamline operations, increase productivity, improve communication and enhanced security.

Additionally, this integration allows businesses to leverage the power of data analysis to make more informed decisions and better impact their long term goals. By maximizing these benefits, your business can save time and focus on growing your bottom line.

If you want to learn more or are in search of a reliable IT partner to assist you with integrating your Office 365 with Business Central, our team at Aristou is here to help. Contact us here or call us at+65 69746863 today!