Microsoft Dynamics Profile: NAV MVP's Career Has Grown Alongside the Software

Two-time Microsoft Dynamics MVP Erik Hougaard got his start with Dynamics NAV programming in 1990, before the software was even called Navision.

Hougaard's journey to his current position as R&D Manager at the Canadian office of E Foqus Denmark A/S began when he was still a kid in Denmark, doing some after-school work programming in Pascal. 

Then thanks to a series of connections, Hougaard was hired by Bruhn Data A/S, a Danish company that was looking for a Pascal programmer. At that time the first version of Navision, known then as IBM-Navigator, was just about to be released by Danish software firm PC&C. And that's the product he was brought on board to work with. His job consisted of programming on POS systems and Navision.

"This was in connection with IBM's point of sales system," he says. "So I did integration between an IBM POS system to an IBM ERP system," being IBM-Navigator.

IBM wanted to introduce a multi-user rather than single-user system in Denmark so businesses could share information within their networks. So IBM contracted with PC&C to build a multi-user ERP system based on its PCPlus accounting system, which started as Navigator but was later renamed Navision and ultimately Dynamics NAV.

"So I've been there from the beginning," he says.

From Denmark to Canada

Hougaard spent a year at Bruhn Data and then worked at several other Danish companies from 1991 until 2000. Then he joined E Foqus Denmark A/S as the research and development manager of software ...