I’m excited to share a case study that really captures what I love about working with Business Central in high-volume manufacturing environments. World Emblem has been a Naviona client since 2017, and watching them grow from Dynamics NAV through multiple Business Central upgrades while quadrupling their revenue has taught me a lot about what it takes to scale an ERP system alongside a fast-moving business. The case study attached to this post tells their story, but I wanted to add some context about why their approach worked and what other BC users can learn from it. Because the real story here isn’t just about growth – it’s about how they used automation and smart customizations to grow without having to proportionally increase headcount.

The Problem with Tribal Knowledge at Scale

World Emblem processes 4,000 to 5,000 invoices a day. At that volume, you can’t afford to have critical business logic living in people’s heads or in spreadsheets scattered across the organization. They used to have one or two people manually determining which warehouse should receive each order based on the customer, location, and product type. Now Business Central applies those rules automatically, and those employees were able to take on other responsibilities and focus more of their time on their actual roles. This is a pattern I see repeatedly: companies grow, processes become more complex, and suddenly you have bottlenecks where only one or two people know how to make certain decisions. The problem isn’t the people – it’s that their knowledge isn’t codified in the system.

Configuration Over Customization (When Possible)

Here’s what I really like about how we approached the World Emblem customizations: Business Central automatically determines the appropriate turnaround time using a configuration table where they can maintain those rules, allowing them to quickly adapt it to changing needs without Naviona’s help. This is the difference between a customization that creates dependency and one that creates independence. We could have hard-coded all those turnaround time rules. It would have been faster to build initially. But every time their business rules changed, they’d need to call us, wait for development, test, and deploy. Instead, we built configuration tables that business users can maintain themselves. Even with more complex requirements, Naviona has been able to fulfill many of their requests in a week or two – but the day-to-day rule changes happen without us.

Moving Legacy Logic Into Business Central

The freight calculation migration is a great example of modernizing without disrupting operations. They used to receive freight-related support tickets quite often because the calculation logic was buried in code outside of Business Central, requiring support personnel and senior developers to investigate. Debugging the code or changing the calculations was difficult. The freight calculation logic was migrated into configuration tables in Business Central. Since then, it’s run smoothly, with rules that are much easier to manage and trace, letting them modify them as needed while freeing up support and development staff. This is something I encourage every BC client to think about: what business logic do you have living in external systems, custom code bases, or undocumented processes? Can you bring that into Business Central where it’s maintainable, traceable, and integrated with your data?

Why Adaptability Matters in Manufacturing

Bruce Ostrowsky, their Director of FP&A, notes: “One thing I really like about Dynamics NAV and now Business Central is that it is highly adaptable. World Emblem grows and evolves by changing the way we do things and thinking outside the box, so we need a system that can evolve with us.” This is especially true in made-to-order manufacturing. World Emblem manufactures and distributes embroidered and printed garment patches, custom emblems, name badges, stickers, and more, with a high-volume operation that supports complex, made-to-order products for customers across multiple locations. Every new product line, every new customer segment, every new location can bring new business rules. If your ERP can’t adapt quickly, you end up either forcing the business to work around system limitations or accumulating a backlog of “someday” improvements that never happen.

The Partnership Angle (And Why I’m Proud of This)

I’ll be honest – this part of the case study makes me really proud of the Naviona team. Gabriel Rodriguez says: “We bring them an idea, and they could easily quote us a lot of hours to build a customization. But if there’s already an existing third-party solution, they’ll tell us. They’re looking at what makes sense for World Emblem, not just what work they can sell us.” This is how I believe BC partnerships should work. Sometimes the best answer isn’t a custom solution – it’s an ISV app, a built-in feature they didn’t know about, or a process change. Our job is to recommend what’s best for the client, not what’s most profitable for us in the short term. We also look for opportunities to transfer knowledge: “If they see something we can handle ourselves, they’ll show us how to do it. We can record the session, learn the process, and take care of it internally the next time. They aren’t trying to make themselves the only ones who can administer the system.”

Automation as a Growth Strategy

Gabriel Rodriguez explains their philosophy: “We are heavily invested in technology. As the company grows, our goal is to make better use of the technology we have, and empower people with new technology, instead of simply hiring more people every time the workload increases.” This is the mindset that makes Business Central projects successful. Since 2018, their annual revenue has quadrupled. That doesn’t happen by accident – it happens when you systematically identify manual processes, quantify their cost, and automate them strategically. “Technology is one of the reasons we’ve been able to grow this way. If the system can make more routine decisions for us, our people can spend their time on work where they actually add value to our customers.”

What You Can Learn from This

If you’re running Business Central in a high-volume environment, here’s what I’d take away from the World Emblem story: 1. Identify your bottlenecks early Where do you have one or two people who are the only ones who know how to do something? Those are your automation candidates. 2. Build for maintainability Configuration tables beat hard-coded customizations every time, especially for business rules that change frequently. 3. Migrate legacy logic strategically If you have business logic buried in external systems or old code, consider whether bringing it into Business Central would make it more maintainable. 4. Choose partners who think long-term As Phil Jarvis, their CIO, puts it: “We don’t just call Naviona when something breaks. We also use them to augment our IT staff when the need arises. They have worked on a steady stream of projects with us since the beginning. We have a great long-term partnership with Naviona, and they are still helping us prepare for what’s next.” 5. Make your team self-sufficient The goal isn’t to need your partner for everything – it’s to empower your internal team to manage routine changes while leveraging partner expertise for complex projects.

The Finding-the-Right-Partner Story

I also want to highlight this because it’s a common scenario: World Emblem had already begun moving to Dynamics NAV but struggled to find the right partner to complete the project. “We worked with other partners that did not have the right industry experience. We found Naviona through references from other manufacturers, and they seemed to understand what we needed. Over time, their performance has proved that we made the right decision.” Industry experience matters. Not every BC partner understands made-to-order manufacturing, multi-warehouse routing, or the specific challenges of high-volume operations. If you’re in a specialized industry, find a partner who has worked with similar companies before.

My Take

What I love about this project is that it shows Business Central doing what it does best: adapting to complex, real-world business requirements without forcing the business to change how it operates. World Emblem built flexible solutions that converted tribal knowledge into standard processes, and that’s exactly the right approach. The system should work the way your business works – but it should also make your business better by eliminating manual decisions, reducing errors, and freeing up your people to focus on value-added work. These automations also make it easier to train new employees as World Emblem grows: “New people don’t have to learn every routing rule or turnaround time before they can enter orders correctly. Now, the knowledge is built into the system.” That’s the real ROI of automation: not just saving time on individual tasks, but creating a more scalable, trainable, and resilient operation.

Download the Full Case Study

The attached case study has more details about World Emblem’s journey, including specifics about the integrations they’re using (Avalara, Celigo, SPS Commerce, Versapay, and Naviona Mobile Solutions) and additional quotes from their team. If you’re running Business Central in manufacturing or distribution and you’re facing similar scaling challenges, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to reach out – I’m always interested in hearing how other companies are solving these problems.