Navision Advanced Distribution is a distribution and business management solution for mid-sized businesses, designed to optimize the management of physical inventory for companies that require a greater level of inventory control than found in most financial systems. Navision Advanced Distribution is fully integrated with all Navision Financials granules and has the same capabilities: client/server, ODBC compliance, industry-standard reporting and analysis tools. While Navision Advanced Distribution uses the same proven set of transactions that Navision Financials has always used, it adds a higher level of distribution functionality that today's distribution organizations require.

Navision Advanced Distribution addresses three main business issues:

• Customer Service
• Procurement Planning
• Distribution Operations (Logistics)

Customer Service

There are five Navision Advanced Distribution features that can be used to improve the service to your customer:

Item Substitutions

Manufacturers and distributors often offer products of similar quality and function as substitutes for one another. The purpose for this is twofold. First, a company can offer a variety of styles, brands, and prices of goods. This allows customers to tailor purchases to best suit their individual needs and budgets. Second, by allowing customers to purchase in-stock items of comparable quality, function and price, item substitution can help to maintain customer satisfaction in the face of a stock shortage.

Item Substitutions supports:

• Unlimited substitution capability
• One way substitutions
• Two way substitutions
• Gross margin analysis for each substitution
• Demand tracking of the originally ordered item
  

Item Cross Reference

Item Cross-Reference is designed to assist the supply chain in situations where the methods used to identify items vary from company to company. This places special burden upon distributors, who serve as a liaison between manufacturers and/or suppliers and customers.

Suppliers and customers may identify the same item in different ways. To smoothly maintain the flow of inventory, a distributor must be able to translate these differences. This can become even more difficult when the distributor's system of item identification adds to the confusion. Cross-referencing functionality then becomes essential to the distributor's business operations. Using the Item Cross-Reference feature, a distributor can enter another company's item number (used by the customer, vendor, manufacturer, etc.) and get their own internal item number displayed. In addition to filling in the distributor's item number, a price based on the external number can also be automatically input.

Item Cross Reference supports:

• Vendor references
• Customer references
• Manufacturer references
• Generic references
• Bar Coding
• Alternate units of measure
• Alternate descriptions
• Item variants

Non-Stock Item Processing

Distribution companies frequently will offer items that are not a part of the distributor's regular inventory. Sporadic or infrequent flow of such inventory may make the cost of warehousing those items prohibitive; however, demand for those items may justify the distributor offering them.

Selling Non-Stock items provides increased levels of service to customers, who may be more inclined to purchase from a single source. Also, these sales are typically made with no inventory carrying costs, so they can be very profitable.
Non-Stock Item Processing supports:

• Full Navision financial accounting
• Separate tracking of non-stock items
• Easy conversion to stocked status
• Importation of Vendor catalogs for non-stock creation
• Ad Hoc creation of non-stocks from sales orders

Contract Pricing

Within Navision, a contract is simply a tool to fine-tune pricing representing either sales or purchase orders. A Contract's terms may apply to a specific Customer or Customer Group, Vendor or Vendor Group, or Item Group.

The Contract may provide special pricing terms based on the quantity of an item ordered or the date range the item is ordered in. Any sales or purchases that fall within the contract terms will receive the benefits of the contract agreements.

Contract Pricing supports:

• Specific Customer, Customer Groups, or global Customer contracts
• Specific Vendor or Vendor Group contracts
• Item specific or multi-item contracts
• Fixed or floating pricing
• Cost plus, discount, or set pricing
• Seasonal contracts
• Fixed or multiple units of measure
• Effectivity dates
• Quantity discounts
• Customer/Item discounts
• Invoice discounts

Customer Returns Authorization

As a rule, the Return process does not generate revenues. Most Returns are, in fact, the result of a mistake on someone's part. Regardless of fault, how a company corrects that mistake is very important. It reflects upon the value a company adds to the business process. It also determines the level of customer satisfaction. From this standpoint, proper handling of the Returns process is invaluable.

Microsoft Navision's Customer Returns Authorization handles all aspects of the Returns process; that is, the issue, tracking and resolution of all aspects of the return process. And, as in all of Navision's solutions, easy access to all related documents (the original sales order, for example) is provided for.

Customer Returns Authorization supports:

• Returns control documents
• Call Tags
• Returned inventory evaluation
• Customer credit memos
• Restocking charges
• Inventory replacement
• Returns to Vendor
• Vendor credit memos
• Freight claims

Procurement Planning

Navision offers a powerful solution to improve your procurement planning process:

Usage Based Procurement

In an attempt to maintain adequate customer service, many distributors will increase their on hand inventory. Of course, if sales increase, inventory usage does rise; and therefore, some increase in inventory may be justified. Many times however a significant amount of unnecessary or idle inventory is the result of this process. If this is the case, a tremendous amount of money could then be tied up in inventory. More warehouse capacity would be needed, costing the distributor even more money. Missed opportunity costs and perhaps eventual write-offs add to the severity of the problem.

To address this problem, Navision Advanced Distribution offers Usage-Based Procurement. This functionality is designed to assist wholesale distributors in determining overall inventory usage, based upon history, and provides suggestions for when to buy items and the appropriate quantities to order and maintain in stock.

To do this, the system considers desired service levels, desired turns rate, vendor purchase targets and the item's usage.

Usage Based Procurement supports:

• Parameterized decision rules
• Stratified ordering rules by volume
• New item controls
• Safety allowances
• Usage filtering and adjustments
• Usage review messaging
• Seasonal planning
• Multiple vendor targets
• Automatic suggested order creation

Distribution Operations

Navision also offers several features to assist you in your daily operations:

Extended Shipping and Receiving

A distribution business usually divides operational responsibility into several different functional areas:

• Sales has the responsibility of dealing with customers and taking orders
• Distribution is responsible for picking and shipping sales orders and for receiving vendor shipments or purchase orders
• Purchasing is responsible for maintaining the appropriate inventory levels to support Sales and Distribution
• Accounting is responsible for the financial operation of the company, and is sometimes also responsible for operational responsibilities such as invoicing

Extended Shipping and Receiving provides a seamless communication tool between these functional areas allowing for the orderly hand off of responsibilities as transactions flow throughout the company.

As an example, by using Extended Shipping and Receiving, Sales people will not be required to call the warehouse to provide additional instructions about the shipment of an order, and accounting or sales will not be required to post the warehouse activity.

Extended Shipping and receiving supports:

• Split shipments
• Drop shipments
• Special Orders
• Order releasing
• Order picking
• Order status tracking

Location Transfers

Navision also facilitates the movement of inventory in a multi-location environment. Upon the initiation of a transfer all the appropriate documents are generated and are used to track and control movement throughout the network. The ability to transfer inventory as well as the ownership of the inventory is assigned based on location level controls.

Location Transfers supports:

• Multiple location environments
• FOB shipping
• FOB receiving
• Inventory variance

Warehouse Management

Warehouse Management is used when there is a need for tighter levels of inventory control and tracking within one or more physical locations. Both for shipping and receiving functions this granule can be used to monitor and control movement with a user defined priority scheme within the warehouse. This is done through the use of documents that track tasks and steps as inventory is picked, shipped and received. These warehouse documents suggest to the warehouse personnel where to put-away and pick inventory. A zone/bin scheme can be used to segregate inventory based on movement status or inventory type. Using Warehouse Management will allow users to attain levels of inventory control and accuracy that might not otherwise be possible.

Warehouse Management supports:

• Directed Picks
• Directed Put Always
• Cross Docking Zones and Bins
• Pick to Order
• Pick to Tote
• Pick to Stage
• Wave Picking
• Containerization Fixed and floating bins
• Cycle counting

Bar Coding Devices

Navision also offers support for bar coding devices, both for shipping, receiving and inventory accounting. With these devices greater efficiencies and accuracy can be achieved, resulting in better inventory control and service.

Bar Coding Devices supports:

• Full picking and put away functionality
• Physical inventory and cycle counting
• Order packing
• Real time item inquiry

Check out the following information pages to review more information on the core Microsoft Navision Software Product:

• Navision Financials Fact Sheet
• Navision Financials Product Overview
• Navision Financials Functionality
• Navision System Wide Details