Hidded costs Dynamics NAV upgrade

Hidden costs in a Dynamics NAV upgrade

With the launch of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Centralthere are many customers who, after many years in old versions of Dynamics NAV, consider upgrading to Business Central.

When we propose a version migration, we must be aware of the factors that will influence the success of the migration and also what are the potential “hidden risks”. You may have more than one migration budget on the table. Following, we will discuss the “hidden risks” that you must ensure you have covered in your future migration to Business Central. As if it were an iceberg, you must visualize what are the risk factors that you can see reflected in the budget and which are those that are under the sea but that can constitute a serious budgetary problem.

Working for a future migration: customizations and integrations

Even if you are in the process of evaluating a migration, Microsoft’s intention in the short term is that the entire base of customers who use your product is always up-to-date.

How are we going to get it? For several years now, Microsoft has been providing new development tools for partners to separate the standard code of their own modifications through Events. If you manage to separate your customized code, you will get any future migration faster and less expensive. You must make sure that your current migration budget includes the transfer of your modifications to EVENTS. Thus, the current investment will contribute to lower the cost of future migrations.

You should also be careful with third-party applications that you currently have integrated into Dynamics NAV. Your partner will advise you on which is the best option to maintain them.

Cost of licenses

Dynamics 365 Business Central is licensed on a per-user basis, that is, the concurrency of users of the On-Premise licenses is lost. Microsoft proposes a conversion of 1 to 2, that is, for each user of your current Dynamics NAV license, it gives you 2 of Business Central, as long as you have your BREP active. For most companies, this change will be more than enough, but it may not be for yours. Keep this factor in mind when calculating the budget to invest in migration.

If you are interested in knowing the license conversion factors from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central, search for the corresponding article in our blog.

Hardware investment

If you are working in your own facilities and are not yet ready to make the leap to the cloud, you must foresee if a new investment in hardware compatible with Business Central On-Premise will be necessary.

If you already work in the cloud or you are going to take advantage of the migration to make the change, you should not worry. The price of your license includes license and hosting. And remember that you are also covered in terms of maintenance and security.

Little availability of time

If you are in a very old version of Dynamics NAV, a migration should help you analyze the status of your implementation and decide if you should make changes.

Depending on the migration approach you choose, you can decide how you want to work with the tool and leave behind modifications that you no longer use or that already exist in the standard of the new version of Dynamics 365 Business Central. In this way, you will have the flexibility to work only with the desired functionality.

This type of approach requires the client to be more actively involved in the project, since it will be a key element in the definition and supply of the project, workshops, verifications, testing … If you have little time to devote to the migration project , you may not get the results you want.

Training

Let’s not fool ourselves. Although you are currently working with Dynamics NAV, there are many different aspects regarding Business Central, especially in terms of navigation and appearance. But this does not mean that the training session should be underestimated. A good training on the new version of your ERP will be key to defining the success or failure of the project.

In addition, if you find yourself in very old versions you have to bear in mind that there is a lot of functionality that you probably had as your own developments or add-ons that will now be covered by the product standard, such as bank reconciliation. All that new functionality of the product standard that you start using for the first time, you must have your own training in this regard.

Take advantage of this training to make a brief recycling to NAV users and those new signings of the company that have not received direct training from the partner.

Whether you are considering a migration of Dynamics NAV or have already gone through one, we want to know your experience. Leave us a comment!