Avoid migration projects when you upgrade

Upgrade to a standard solution and avoid migration projects

3 challenges when upgrading Dynamics NAV

When you are considering an upgrade to Dynamics NAV 2018 or Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must decide how to migrate only relevant data – and what to do about the customizations, you have made to the old solution.

You should also consider how to move to a 100 % standard solution in order to avoid the same challenge with future upgrades.

Most companies spend a lot of money upgrading customized ERP solutions. Money is spent on migrating custom built functionality to a new version. It is a lot of money spent without creating any business value.

This is why you should make the next upgrade your last.

Upgrade NAV or buy new?

Unfortunately, there is not always much difference in terms of price and work volume.

If you have an older version of Dynamics NAV, it can be quite a substantial undertaking to upgrade to a new version. Typical challenges include the following:

You have customizations in the old version , and they need to be reviewed one by one to ensure that they won’t create problems in the new version. Some of the custom solutions may no longer be relevant, or may no longer work as intended, or you might not even need them any longer. There is considerable work involved in assessing these one by one.

You are locked into the old version . The new version certainly offers new, smart features that your work processes in NAV are not ready to take advantage of. Unfortunately, a lot of companies cannot make use of the new features because they are locked into old processes and customizations.

Data needs to be migrated into the new version . The new version may have a different data structure. Maybe your customizations have been modified to conform to the new version, and now the data needs to be modified accordingly. Perhaps you have some old, cluttered data that you want to get rid of. Unfortunately, you usually need to transfer everything over, with no exceptions, unless you start over with a blank database.

That’s why upgrading causes headaches for NAV owners

If you have an older version Dynamics NAV, it can be quite a substantial undertaking to upgrade to a new version. Typical challenges include the following:

That’s why upgrading causes headaches for NAV owners – even the mere thought of it.

Abakion’s solution to this challenge is to move you over to a standard solution:

All of your old customizations should be deleted . We hold a number of workshops to ensure that your work processes fit in with the new solution. You also need to have an overview of how your processes will have to be adjusted a little.

Your specific needs must be supported through the set-up in the new solution. The Master Data module gives you the option of creating your own data structure. The Document Customizer module enables you to customize invoices, delivery notes and so on. Customizations in the old version will become settings in the new version.

You can choose which data you want to transfer – and how many years of history you want to include. We transfer your data into the new solution using a data migration tool that makes the process easy. You choose how the data is mapped to the standard chart of accounts in the new solution. The decision is up to you.

Data migration – this is what we do

We need to move your data from your old solution into the new one. The challenge here, of course, is that the data format is not always the same.

Even if you are moving from an earlier version of Dynamics NAV, the data structure will have changed and you may have added a lot of fields in the old solution that contain important data you need to transfer.

Master Data Information for Dynamics NAV and 365

If you have an earlier version of NAV, then we set to work in your old solution. We have made our Master Data Information module, which you get in the new NAV, available for all earlier versions of NAV.

This means that you can install the Master Data module in your old solution and then you can start moving the data into the new structure, which makes migration to the new version very easy. It is a really smart and efficient process.

The next step is to move data from the old version to the new one. We have a migration tool that handles that.

It does not really matter whether you are moving from an earlier version of NAV or from another ERP system. As long as the data can be output in a comma separated file, we can map the data in Excel and execute the transfer, as you will see in a minute.

You will have some work to do in Excel if you are coming from another ERP system, since this package is based on being able to retrieve everything in NAV. But it can easily be done – you will just have an extra task to complete.

If you are coming from an earlier version of NAV, Abakion will take care of it all with our migration tool.

Migrering of data to Dynamics NAV and 365

Migration with no effort

If you have been working with Dynamics NAV for many years, then you are used to data migration being a difficult process that takes a long time.

So a little scepticism is understandable.

But you will see that our Master Data module and data migration tool make the process quite simple.

You should also hear how we move your historical data from the old solution into the new one. The simplest way is just to start over from the beginning: make an opening balance and then just get started.

That is what a lot of companies choose to do, which is why we have priced the migration of historical data separately. Remember to include this in your business case if it applies to your company.

If you choose to include historical data, then we need to make sure that we only move a select set of high-quality data over to the new version.

Find out what your next ERP will cost:

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