Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft’s popular business enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the cloud, is now known for being well suited for larger installations. At the last annual Directions conference, Microsoft software engineer Rayner Vaz and architect Christian Heide Damm explained to a packed room of attendees about Microsoft’s investments and improvements in performance. Today Business Central does not set any hard limit for number of users, sessions, transactions, or size of database, making it ideal for businesses of various sizes, including those with many users, large databases, and a high number of entries and sales orders.

Research backs up these claims. The Forrester report “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central” found that companies using Business Central successfully bolstered operational efficiency, avoided costs, and comfortably scaled their deployments. This growth was possible because of the flexibility the cloud gave them.

1. Reliable scalability

Microsoft has built Business Central for as many users as you need. There really is no limit to your growth.

Each BC cloud instance comes with 80 GB of database storage, which, as Microsoft says, is more than ample for most organizations. And if your company needs more storage capacity, you can add it.

To ensure Business Central remains robust and scalable enough for even the largest businesses, Microsoft has committed to making continual performance enhancements. Newer features such as SQL Compression – a technique also used across other Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud services – help to both reduce database size and improve performance. Service functionality keeps track of unexpected database growth, so that customers can catch issues early on and avoid unanticipated and unnecessary storage use. And Business Central admin dashboards help customers manage and plan their storage costs on an ongoing basis with total visibility of storage usage, so you can always see exactly what you’re using and how much it will cost.

In Forrester’s report, nearly every Business Central user mentioned the benefits of being able to scale users and license types for their current business needs. During periods of rapid growth, or through turbulent times like the pandemic, organizations said they were able to provision their ERP resources and save on cost.

2. Be productive on the go

Because Business Central is a cloud-first solution, it is built to give its users freedom of action. In the last couple of years, some larger businesses were caught short when they had to make rapid changes to their business – for example, facilitating a remote working strategy overnight. Those already running in the cloud were far better equipped to make the shift.

Forrester predicts that firms that invest in technologies that enable remote work and digital collaboration will ultimately gain a competitive edge via a more engaged workforce. In its report, Business Central users noted that being on SaaS, their transition to remote working was facilitated in ways that would have been impossible in their previous on-premise ERP deployments.

Business Central enables you to work securely on any device, from any location. Which means that large companies can also do what many of their smaller and sometimes more nimble counterparts have been doing for some time. They can use the SaaS solution to boost productivity while also offering their employees flexibility.

3. Protect your business with best-in-class security

Microsoft has made no secret of how seriously it takes cloud security and compliance. It invests about US$1 billion in cloud security each year and has continually improved its cloud security services in a variety of ways, from data encryption and automated threat detection, to identity isolation and just-in-time access.

“It was only a few years ago when most of my customer conversations started with, ‘I can’t go to the cloud because of security. It’s not possible,’” said Julia White, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Azure and security. “And now I have people, more often than not, saying, ‘I need to go to the cloud because of security.’”

With Business Central, you can take advantage of the full security infrastructure that the Microsoft cloud provides to all users, without having to front the cost and complexities yourself. Its built-in features ensure that all data is automatically backed up and securely stored, protected against all the latest and future threats by some of the best cybersecurity experts in the industry.

It’s for all of these reasons – and more – that thousands of retail and hospitality companies entrust their business to LS Central, the SaaS unified commerce solution that extends Business Central with retail and food service functionality.