When Should You Purchase The NAV License?
Microsoft Partners often postpone the actual purchase of the customer’s NAV license until the project is fairly close to go-live. In the meanwhile, they do the development and the testing on-site (or off-site) using their own partner license.
I’ve heard arguments (or better: excuses) to engage in this practice, and I have a very strong opinion on this. So, when is the right moment to actually purchase the NAV license for your customer?
Well, regardless of the fact that 1) you are contractually obliged to purchase the license for your customer at the first moment they get in touch with the solution (which is fairly early in the project), and the fact that 2) you are violating your licensing agreement with Microsoft if you deploy your partner license on third party’s infrastructure, there is 3) a fairly compelling technical reason why you might never want to even try doing any project work involving customer with your partner license.
It’s hardly any news for the lucky 21 countries which have had them by default for about two years, but for other 18 which haven’t, there is an alarmingly low awareness about three interesting NAV functionalities: Liquidity, Cost Accounting and Kitting.