From Vedbæk
to the cloud

In the early 1980s, three young men from DTU (the Technical University of Denmark), Jesper Balser, Peter Bang and Torben Wind, sat planning the future. First they wanted to build an ironing robot. That project ended up in the bin, but the entrepreneurial drive was intact.

In 1983 they founded PC&C A/S (Personal Computing & Consulting) in a flat in Vedbæk, north of Copenhagen. The philosophy was “Beauty of Simplicity”: software a bookkeeper could use without reading a manual.

In 1984 they launched PCPlus: a character-based, single-user accounting program that looked like the ledgers, cash journals and calculators bookkeepers knew. Users could see what they were looking at, and the program sold well in Denmark and Norway.

In 1987 came Navigator 1.0, a multi-user client/server solution, and with it SIFT (Sum Index Field Technology). The principle behind SIFT still lives in Business Central: it is why the balance of an account with millions of entries appears instantly.

While PC&C was working in Vedbæk, Erik and Preben Damgaard were building a parallel universe in Birkerød. In 1984 they founded Damgaard Data ApS with the accounting product DANMAX — DKK 12,600 and running on CP/M.

In 1986 Concorde arrived for Novell Netware, and Damgaard found its niche: resellers got the source code and could customise the system themselves. That gave it a large and loyal reseller network.

In 1991 came Concorde XAL with its own programming language (eXtended Application Language). It reached 29 countries and more than 75,000 installations. In 1998 Damgaard and IBM launched AXAPTA, an object-oriented ERP for larger international companies. Damgaard was listed on the stock exchange in 1999.

When PC&C tried to expand into North America, “Navision” sounded too much like “No-Vision” to English-speaking ears. The solution: in the US the product was temporarily called Avista.

IBM salesman Erik Seifert was turned down by the big distributors, but called Bill Goodhew at Peachtree. In August 1992 they signed a distribution agreement with USD 5 million in guaranteed royalties.

In 1995 Microsoft launched Windows 95, and Navision Financials became the first Win95-certified ERP. The company changed its name to Navision Software A/S, and the product was sold in more than 40 countries.

In 2000 the two rivals, Navision Software A/S and Damgaard Data A/S, merged into NavisionDamgaard A/S, one of Europe's largest ERP companies for small and medium-sized businesses.

The products complemented each other: Navision for SMEs, Axapta for larger companies. In 2001 Damgaard disappeared from the name, and the company was called Navision A/S.

The same year saw Navision Attain 3.0, the first version after the merger, with a particular focus on Germany and the US.

In May 2002 Microsoft announces that it is buying Navision A/S, and on 11 July 2002 the deal is done. The price is around USD 1.45 billion, just under DKK 11 billion, and one of the largest acquisitions of Danish software. Navision becomes part of Microsoft Business Solutions.

At the time of the acquisition, Navision has DKK 2 billion in revenue, a 23% EBITA margin and 50,000+ customers in 27 countries. Development stays in Denmark, in what becomes Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen, and much of Business Central is still developed there.

In 2003 Project Green is announced: a plan to merge Microsoft's ERP systems (Navision, Axapta, Great Plains and Solomon) into one. The plan is abandoned, and the products carry on separately.

In September 2005 the whole Dynamics family is rebranded: Navision becomes Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Axapta becomes AX, Great Plains becomes GP, Solomon becomes SL.

The biggest technical leap comes with Dynamics NAV 2009: 3-tier architecture, the RoleTailored Client and web services. It is the transition from classic Navision to modern Microsoft architecture. NAV 2009 R2, incidentally, is one of the versions we still see at companies that need to move on to Business Central.

NAV 2013 can run on Azure and in the browser. NAV 2015 gets mobile apps and Power BI. NAV 2018, the last NAV, gets Cognitive Services and extensions v2, which become the foundation of Business Central.

On 2 April 2018 Microsoft launches Dynamics 365 Business Central. Functionally it builds on NAV, but running it is a completely different matter: Microsoft runs it, and you subscribe.

Subscription per user, two major updates a year with smaller updates in between, and a web client hosted on Microsoft Azure. AppSource gives access to thousands of apps, and extensions mean that customisations survive the updates.

Development moves from C/SIDE to AL in Visual Studio Code. This is where we build our own apps. Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Dynamics 365 Sales and Teams connect Business Central with the rest of Microsoft 365.

In 2021 the analyst firm Nucleus Research names Business Central the #1 ERP solution, ahead of SAP and Oracle. The system has more than 1 million users in 170+ countries, from companies with five employees to groups with companies in several countries.

From 2023 Copilot comes into Business Central: item descriptions, bank reconciliation suggestions, chatting with your data in plain language and suggested sales lines. Then come the agents, which process customer orders and vendor invoices from a mailbox on their own.

From an accounting program in a flat in Vedbæk to one of the world's most widely used ERP systems for SMEs, and still with a large share of the development in Denmark. We have worked with the platform for most of the journey, from C/AL and NAV to AL and Business Central online.