How Existing Customers Can Upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Ever since the launch of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central in April 2018, existing customers seemed quite concerned and asked whether their current ERP solution will become obsolete, whether they should upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and when should they go for upgrade. Microsoft has provided clear direction with the fall roadmap and has made significant investments to help clients make the move. Let’s take a look.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC) is a powerful and customizable cloud-based software that offers all the functionalities and capabilities that are available in Dynamics NAV. Since its launch, Microsoft is putting great resources behind D365 BC and have already plotted out a roadmap for future development and augmentations to become as an end-to-end solution for all aspects of business operations and processes. This includes –

• Accounting and financial management
• Supply chain and inventory management
• Sales management
• Manufacturing
• Project management
• Operations management
• Human resource management
• Service management

In addition, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is integrated with features to provide rock-solid data security and outstanding support for mobile devices, which are quite imperative for all types of businesses today.

The biggest advantage of upgrading to cloud-based D365 BC over On-premise NAV is the automated updates rolled out by Microsoft for hotfixes and security patches. Other factors that contribute towards the advantages are –

• Exceptional autonomy & flexibility
• Built-in intelligent business apps
• Direct connection with Decision makers
• Focus on Specific industry
• Better Compliance

Should Existing Customers Upgrade to D365 Business Central?

D365 BC is integrated with Artificial Intelligence that analyzes the connected data, drive insights, and provide foretelling analytics to enable customers to make informed decisions about their business. All this interconnectivity makes it a unified and intelligent solution. With features and capabilities that can be customized as per the needs of a business, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution by integrating accounting, sales, supply chain, reporting, operations, and project management in one single dashboard.

After seeing so much of efforts by Microsoft in taking the full NAV functionality to the cloud with D365 Business Central, it does make sense to upgrade and reap the benefits of your own investment in terms of licenses and annual BREP. For existing customers, it does not mean that Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business edition are obsolete. They can continue to use it, however, there will be no new versions released past the end of 2018. If not upgrading now, the existing customers may have to pay more in the future for upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Tips for Business Central upgrade:

• If you have .NET variables in NAV than business central does not support .NET if it needs to be deployed on Cloud. However it can be deployed on Azure ( On Premise )
• You will have to convert your .fob files to .al using TextTOAL.
• Regarding data migration, you should use Configuration Packages (RapidStart), exporting data from NAV and importing into D365 BC via XLS. In some scenarios where the data load has a very high volume, you can use different ways such as loading data using web services or APIs.

When Existing Customers Can Upgrade to D365 BC?

Microsoft has done all the legwork. For existing Dynamics users, the upgrade can be done until June 30, 2020. Microsoft is even offering discounted pricing to those going for the upgrade. Post June 30, 2020, an existing customer has to pay the full price just like a new customer for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central licenses.

DynamicsSmartz is one of the leading partners helping existing NAV clients and NAV partners in the digital transformation to D365 BC. Contact us if you are planning to upgrade from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central.