TVision Technology Limited
Navision to NAV - What’s in a name?
In 2006, Microsoft re-branded its Business Solutions offerings. Now five years on, the old names remain more popular than the new. Dynamics NAV has had name issues three times since Navision was first launched in the mid 1980s; fortunately this has not prevented it remaining the most popular of the Dynamics ERP offerings.
The Birth of Navision Financials
Microsoft Dynamics NAV began life as Navision Financials. In 1995 the Danish software company, Navision a/s launched the first version of its true Microsoft Windows accounting package as the successor to the highly successful DOS package, also called Navision. Navision Financials was the first accounting package to be awarded the “Made for Windows 95” logo. Version 1 formed the basis for the solution we see today.
Navision Financials was highly popular in Europe and the US (where it was briefly marketed as Avista before it was decided to market globally under the same name). As the users and partner numbers grew, so did the product. Navision a/s was renowned for high level investment in R&D (a trait we’re pleased to see Microsoft continue). Functionality was added that met the needs of distribution, manufacturing and project processes as well as HR and CRM. As we entered the 21st Century, for the first time in its history, Navision’s name was causing a problem. Whilst Navision was well known it was as an accounting package, the “Financials” excluded it from consideration as the full ERP solution it had become.
In recognition that the product now met more requirements than purely accounting, Navision was re-christened Navision Solutions. This was fine whilst the product had no siblings. However, shortly after this rebrand, Navision a/s merged with Damgaard and became a multi-product company. Naturally it would be difficult to have one product called “Solution” without that casting a shadow over its stable mates and so Navision Solutions became Navision Attain while the company, still Navision a/s, also continued to develop the Damgaard product, Axapta, re-named Navision Axapta. (Axapta, now Dynamics AX, is an ERP solution aimed at the corporate level. For more information on the differences, see the White Paper, Which Dynamics Solution is for me?)
The Microsoft Effect
Later that year, Microsoft acquired Navision a/s; the biggest acquisition in Microsoft’s history. They wisely decided that there was little brand value in the name Attain and renamed again to Microsoft Business Solutions Navision Edition (Axapta dropped the Navision tag to become Microsoft Business Solutions Axapta Edition). These new names felt more like descriptions than a brand and so it is not surprising that in 2006, Microsoft re-branded again, uniting the family of Business Solutions under the name “Dynamics”. The individual products were then differentiated by a truncation of their original names and so Navision became Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
An educated guess as to why the names were constructed in this manner would be to speculate that in the future they would be united as one product, marketed as Microsoft Dynamics ERP to go alongside Microsoft Dynamics CRM (developed from scratch by Microsoft it is the sole CRM solution offered, its naming has been a lot more straight-forward). The development of the Dynamics ERP offerings is bringing them closer together; however, it is likely there will always be a need for different mid-market and corporate solutions.
The assumption that the current name is a stepping stone makes it more forgiveable that Microsoft saddled the solutions with such poor names. Nowadays most people search for information on the internet; NAV is problematic although not nearly as bad as AX or GP (Great Plains, the American accounting solution that Microsoft acquired the year before the Navision acquisition), at least with NAV Google suggests you may want to search for “Dynamics NAV”.
Dynamics NAV continues from strength to strength
From a marketing point of view, the messing about with the Navision brand has been detrimental. There was value in the name “Navision”. With the Windows version in its fifth generation and the product a mature 16 years old, it was no longer some funny Danish software and has become a successfully recognised global solution. Today we see twice as many searches for Navision than for NAV. This is why our website, like so many NAV partners, is littered with the phrase “formerly Navision”. The marketing may not be the greatest success; thankfully the product itself proves the Shakespeare, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”: Navision or NAV, it is world-class software.
