Industry Insights

On the Leading Edge: NAV 2017 Q&A with Enervex

As a participant in this year’s Microsoft TAP program, Lanham Associates had the pleasure of working with Enervex, Inc. (in conjunction with our reselling partner, Amalfi) on one of the first NAV 2017 “go-lives” in the world.

We recently conducted a Q&A session with Steen Hagensen, president of Enervex, which specializes in sophisticated exhaust systems for the HVAC industry, and for boilers. Their products are used in places like hotels, famous buildings, sports facilities, and stadiums.

We met with Steen at Enervex’s Alpharetta, GA headquarters, where the firm stocks products and does quite a bit of manufacturing. It is also their distribution center for the North American and Middle Eastern markets.

Q. What Lanham products do you use?

We’ve been using Lanham’s E-Ship software for a few years. Enervex ships all over the US and Canada, where we see most of the benefits from E-Ship. We ship to the Middle East as well. E-Ship makes it very easy for us, especially when it comes to rate shopping. As a distribution and manufacturing company it’s been a great solution for us. Most of our shipments are going through UPS and FedEx.

Q. How long have you used Microsoft® Dynamics^TM NAV?

Well, we’ve actually been using Microsoft Dynamics NAV since the early 90s.

Q. I understand you were also first in the world to implement NAV 2009. Can you talk a little bit about being on the leading edge and why you choose to do that?

We choose to be on the leading edge, because first and foremost, I think it is very important to take advantage of the latest and the greatest when it comes to technology. Also, if you don’t follow the upgrade process, eventually it becomes too expensive for you when you have to upgrade over more than a single, or maybe two, versions. It made total sense for us to do that.

Going live for us in this particular case means that we are moving from our regular servers up to a cloud-based server. We have seen the speed pick up actually. I think everybody here has really liked the new system a lot more than the old one, which, I guess, is the way it should be.

Q. What would you say is your biggest benefit from using Microsoft Dynamics NAV?

One of the greatest benefits we have right now is that we can run our entire company — from manufacturing to inventory to warehousing to AP to General Ledger to our Bill of Materials that we use — everything is in one package.

Another big benefit we have today is the fact that it’s cloud-based. We don’t have to maintain servers. This is a decision that we have made in our company that we are going to have as much here that is cloud-based as possible. With NAV 2017, you’ve also got the integration with Office 365, which everybody here is using. That’s going to be a huge benefit for us as well.

Q. What advice do you have for other customers who are considering moving to NAV 2017?

Well, moving to NAV 2017 obviously comes with a set of challenges. For starters, I would recommend to others that they concentrate on just upgrading from their current NAV version to NAV 2017. Then, after that upgrade has been performed successfully, they can take advantage of some of the other tools that are available – for instance, the integration with Office 365. Don’t do it all at the same time. Take it in steps and make sure that you finish part of the upgrade before you continue with all the other benefits that may come with it.

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Editor’s note: In addition to E-Ship, Lanham’s entire solution portfolio is now available in NAV 2017. Contact your reseller today to explore your upgrade options, and be sure to join us at the Lanham Supply Chain Summit, April 3-5 in Atlanta for more in-depth sessions on Lanham EDI, E-Ship and ACE Warehousing.