Dynamics F/SCM Customer Experience (CRM) Dynamics GP Dynamics Business Central (NAV) Dynamics SL Power Platform Fabric Copilot

[Sara Sharkey]

Hello–

Next year (date TBD) our manufacturing company plans on transitioning from NAV 2016 to Business Central.  For those who have experienced transitioning to BC in the past, how time-consuming and difficult is the change?  We would like to get some kind of idea of what to expect and try to mitigate any problems that others have experienced.  

We are also using JET reports, as some of our reports are tailored to our needs and there is not a way to tweak the general reports available in NAV.  How do the reports and report-building options in NAV compare to BC?  

Thanks–

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Sara Sharkey
Accountant
Compax
Salt Lake City UT
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[Robb Delprado]

Hello Sara,
The biggest factor on how long your conversion will take is how many modifications you currently have and how many modifications are you bringing forward.  Another point to consider since NAV is in C/AL code and current versions of Business Central are in AL code, does your partner plan to stop at BC 14 before moving you to the current version of BC?  Since you are using external reporting, you will have a lot of time during the testing and then training phase to re-build your Jet reports.  But you should take a look at utilizing Power BI to build the new reports.
Regarding the User’s experience with the change in the interface, if they practice during the testing and training phase, they should not have difficulty.  The “Tell Me” function in BC is easier to use the “Search” function in NAV and the personalization in BC is more efficient than the customization in NAV.  Perhaps the best follow-up to verify Users have practiced with BC, was the company who scheduled Teams meetings with various groups two weeks before the cutover and everyone in the meeting had to take turns walking through their functional responsibilities.  Every User was scheduled for at least one Teams meeting and every User was expected to successfully complete their tasks in front of their peers.  The expectations, from the Teams meetings, were set before the meetings were scheduled and this was one of the smoothest cutovers I have ever participated in.

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Robb Delprado
Senior Trainer and Consultant
New View Strategies
robb@newviewstrategies.com
860.558.8032
Houston, TX
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[Jimmy Yu]

Hi Sara,

 

We’re making the move from NAV 2015 to BC as well next year.  Like you, timing is TBD.  I’m wondering what everyone else did for timing?  Is it best to cut-over at quarter-end, month-end, long weekend that does not fall on an accounting period?

 

Robb, thanks for the input about the company that scheduled Teams meeting where someone had to walk through the entire process in front of their peers.  I will definitely be stealing this practice.  Out of curiosity, why would Jet Reports need to be rebuilt?  There’s no major change in table structure right?

 

Thanks

Jimmy Yu, CPA, CGA

Enterprise Architect

 

 

m: 403-457-2747 ext. 2365

d:  587-393-8765 

Bow Valley Square II

1200, 205-5^th Ave SW

Calgary, Alberta T2P 2V7

Website | LinkedIn | Facebook

 

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[Gregory Alford]

As always, it depends on how much custom code you have. We had a lot and our original conversion was awful. Too many extensions, and each one modified both the Sales Header and Sales Lines. This resulted in frequent record locks and dead locks. We have merged all our extensions into one massive extension that works extremely well. My suggestion would be to have as few extensions as possible and only one if you can get away with it. We also have several ISV extensions, but they do not seem to be causing us any problems. We also use JET for our reports and It seems to work the same in BC.

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Gregory Alford
Director of Technical Resources
Tri Star Metals LLC
Aurora IL
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[Kris Ruyeras]

As everyone noted on here, it really depends. It depends if you want to upgrade or re-implement. It is also a great time to do a discovery or schedule discovery sessions to determine if your process still make sense or does it need to be adjusted going into BC. It also gives you an opportunity if you should bring some of those mods to BC or adjust your business process/workflow.
As for Jet, there is a slight change due to table/database schema changes, extensions, etc.

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Kristoffer Ruyeras
VP of Operations
Tigunia
Seattle, WA
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