Microsoft Dynamics NAV is ERP. It’s been ERP since around version 3. Before that it was Navision Financials and so not Enterprise Wide, unless you were a small enterprise (surely an oxymoron). Why am I shouting about this now? Because research on popular search terms suggests that we no longer need to be afraid of causing confusion when we use the acronym ERP.

In case I am already causing confusion, ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and is typically used to refer to software applications that offer functionality for all possible areas of a business (finance, inventory, projects, manufacturing, Human Resource etc). Although more properly it should be viewed as a strategy that then may involve multiple products joined up to deliver seamless processes.

The term ERP first appeared in the 1990s and is attributed to Gartner Group, initially to describe manufacturing products (MRP) that had extended beyond the pure making functions of the business.

In 1995 the term CRM was used to describe the Contact Management and Sales Force Automation systems that had been combined to move towards a full customer relationship management strategy. CRM has been embraced as a term, and frequently misused. “I need a CRM” is often as unhelpful as “I need an ERP”.

The terms should probably never be applied to products; they should be a strategy that products can support. If you have a strategic need to adopt an enterprise resource planning approach to the business then Dynamics NAV is the best and most popular mid-market ERP solution.