Our first two blog posts in this series talked about where we've been (Dynamics GP) and where we are going (Dynamics 365 Business Central). This post will discuss our process of going through the Business Central implementation.
Decisions to make
Finding a helpful and knowledgeable Microsoft partner is key in major projects like this. They can advise you on the best software and setups for your company, and provide information around best practices throughout the implementation, and once you are live in your new system. We found a great fit with a highly recommended Microsoft MVP.
Another important decision, go-live date and when to start the implementation to successfully meet your go-live date. You and your partner can discuss all the required steps along with the level of knowledge of your staff to determine an appropriate time frame. With our internal expertise in Dynamics payroll and financial systems, 3 months was enough implementation time for us.
Discovery, preparation, documenting, and processes
We started our Business Central implementation process with a review of our current Dynamics GP processes and data. In turn, this helped us to identify critical areas to consider as we moved that data into Dynamics 365 BC. Along with that, we documented our key processes at a high level, including things like payroll reporting, invoicing, and monthly financials.
Moving to a new system also gives you a chance to start over in a sense. Take the opportunity to improve your processes, your new system will have fancy new functionality that you can take advantage of and likely streamline some of your existing processes.
Business Central payroll implementation
Payroll for our new Business Central environment was a no-brainer. We implemented our own Payroll NOW embedded payroll application for Dynamics 365 BC.
We did an assessment of all payroll-related activities and policies, and made sure we understood the key differences between Dynamics GP payroll and Payroll NOW. It became clear that Payroll NOW provided many improvements right out of the box that would have taken additional. Overall, the payroll part of the implementation was the easiest part for us, but hey, that's what we do!
The hardest part
The most complex part of the Business Central implementation was the integration between our SaaS billing solution and Dynamics 365 Business Central. We found the solution in a custom flow to listen for invoice creation activities in the billing solution, then create those invoices in BC. This showed us even more of what we had been missing and further proved that our decision to migrate to the cloud was the right one.
There's a lot more to this business central implementation story!
.
Previous blogs in this series:
- Part 1:
- Part 2:
Other related blogs:
today for more information on Payroll NOW, an embedded payroll application for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
