Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 432: Ten Tips for Transitioning from GP to Business Central
In this episode of Dynamics Corner, Kris and Brad are joined by Microsoft MVP David Laster as they share insightful tips, discuss the challenges and opportunities of ERP migration, and explore the role of modern technologies like Power BI in enhancing business processes. Whether you're considering a move to the cloud or looking to optimize your current setup, this conversation offers valuable guidance and expert advice. Tune in to learn how to navigate your ERP journey with confidence.
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Alright, welcome back everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. You know, brad, one thing I did recently is got my LASIK done, so I don't wear my glasses no more. No more reflection of this episode. One thing I did notice, though, that it takes a lot of time. I spent more time in preparation leading up to the LASIK and the whole thing was only, like you know, three minutes max, and I was done out the door. But, which is very fitting, that we're going to talk about things that you can do to prepare. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. So I'm your co-host, chris.
Speaker 2:And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on September 5th 2025. Chris, chris, chris LASIK, you have to watch out for a little while because you're going to have those ghost glasses. I didn't see you pushing up in this episode. I didn't notice it, but hopefully that goes away.
Speaker 2:Hopefully your site. You have some improvement with your site there with the LASIK. It's amazing what they can do with technology and just like that. We have a lot of amazing individuals in our community and with us that. We have a lot of amazing individuals in our community and with us today. We had the opportunity to speak with one and we also had the opportunity to speak with that individual on an important topic. We had the opportunity to talk about 10 tips for moving from GP Great Plains to Business Central and with us today we were joined by Microsoft MVP David Laster you think so yeah, I know something good afternoon you know, I really like that room.
Speaker 2:It's his little american flag painted on the wall.
Speaker 3:It is Actually, yeah, that's my door. Yeah, here, this goes out to the yard.
Speaker 2:That's my patio.
Speaker 3:I got a fire pit. That's where I do all my thinking actually.
Speaker 2:It's sitting right there, but I like the wall because I see the blue around the window.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the plan.
Speaker 2:Is that new or was that on there last time and I just didn't notice it? I'm old, so it could be.
Speaker 3:You're getting there too, friend. No, that's been there, oh my gosh, since I built the shed probably 20, yeah, 21 years ago, maybe 22 years ago.
Speaker 2:You built it from scratch.
Speaker 3:Oh, the whole thing. Oh, dude, even the trusses that you can't see up there, oh yeah, yeah, this thing is storied. I got to say.
Speaker 2:We have to sit down. Well, when we get together, when I come up, it seems like we always have hit or miss, because we hope nobody's listening, but we try to get too many people together at the same time and we can never get anybody together.
Speaker 3:It to get too many people together at the same time and you can never get anybody together.
Speaker 2:It can be hard, it can be hard. Yeah, now we're. Now I'm drawing a stake drawing a line uh putting a stake, drawing a line in the sand, putting a stake in the ground what do they say?
Speaker 3:we're getting together, we're gonna do it, we're doing it.
Speaker 2:We're doing it next time. Uh, next time, which is good. No, it's great. I like that little shed and I didn't know that you were in a shed, so we have to hear that. I thought that it was a room, but I like that.
Speaker 1:I think he had mentioned that last time, when we first, when we first had you, david, I think you and I was like what did you look? I think it was like during winter or something. It was cold.
Speaker 2:You had like a, maybe a vest. Think at that time, probably you look like you're at outside.
Speaker 3:That's not uncommon, though, for up north I used to wear vests and sweatshirts, and stuff in the in the house as well too. Heat is expensive, um, and it gets cold, so it does. I have an infrared heater that I actually close this door off, and I use this door right here in the in the winter time to go in and out okay it's locked up right now because that's where my car is. But yeah, and then I got an infrared heater and it heats it. It's perfect in here, like about 62, even overnight.
Speaker 1:So the whole thing is 62 is perfect. You know it's so funny if you're in the north, 62 is nice and warm, that's perfect.
Speaker 2:I have my house set to 75 when I'm home. And it's cold for you and 78 when I'm not here. And I can honestly say there's been times that Do you have air in there?
Speaker 3:There's been times that I've been cold at 75.
Speaker 2:But then when I go back north, like I was just up there, I just came back it's 64 degrees and I'm like, oh, this is great, I come down here, 75 is freezing.
Speaker 1:I think you get used to that right, because, like for for us out here in the pacific northwest, anything above 80 is too hot. It's just too hot. It has to be between 68 and 75, that is the sweetest spot, but anything above that like gets to 80, it's just too hot. It has to be between 68 and 75, that is the sweetest spot, but anything above that like gets to 80, it's like everyone just complains how hot it is the sad state.
Speaker 3:We were all born to be outdoors, so exactly, whatever the temperature is.
Speaker 2:You know, we really should be outdoors a lot, hence my you know garden office.
Speaker 3:Honestly, is I really enjoy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, swings and temperature and of course, rain, snow, all that good stuff, yeah yeah, yeah, I'll have a new office set up up north pretty soon too, so hopefully you know, maybe when I reveal it or unveil it, see, I can't even talk. It's. It's.
Speaker 2:We never do episodes on fridays so here we are this is the why, and we'll have a big reveal. But with that, I've been looking forward to this conversation and it's timely, it's relevant, it's all of the above. Before we jump into it, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:Sure, thank you. David Laster is my name. I've been doing the Microsoft Dynamics ERP thing for over 25 years and love it. As you can see, I do it from my shed here. It comes from just about every angle but I really put a lot of my time and energy into helping people set ERP up right, ultimately to drive the reporting impact, the analytics that are the end result of doing it all the right way, in a clean way, you know, organized fashion. So I manage a team of folks that are really smart most of them way smarter than I am, that are developers that are functional, folks that span GP, power BI, business Central. Just really love what I do every day working at Greylock up here in the northeast north of Boston.
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent, and you're doing it right you always surround yourself with people that are smarter than you.
Speaker 2:One, you can get things done and two, you can learn quite a bit. I do believe you become what you surround yourself with. You really do. You become your environment. So if you surround yourself with good people, you become a good person. If you surround yourself with bad people, you become a bad person, and everyone can use that definition.
Speaker 2:But you have some great experience and I have some hopes to discuss with you about a topic that surfaced years ago. When we first spoke with you, it started to murmur quite a bit, but now, over this past year, I've seen a lot of traction on this topic and a lot more people paying attention to the topic and executing this topic, and that is the GP to BC migration, or the GP to BC to BC migration or the GP to BC re-implementation, or whatever you'd like to phrase it. But moving from GP to business central is something that's been quite popular and with it I was hoping to get ready. Can I say what it is? David Laster's top 10 tips. I always would say top 10, but it could be more, could be less. But David Laster's top 10 tips?
Speaker 2:I always say top 10, but it could be more, could be less, but David Laster's top 10 tips Now setting the bar for you, for my moving from GP to Business Central. But before we get into that, for those that may not be aware what's going on with GP, GP.
Speaker 3:It works, it's a fantastic product. It's widely used, it's trusted, it's stable um it's accessible. But what's happening with great planes is that the um microsoft has announced that their future um dollars, investments and focus is going to be in cloud-based technologies, and that's not what Great Plains is. So they have announced the end of life for Dynamics GP in terms of getting new stuff, like getting new year-end updates to help run your payroll right. If you don't need certain compliance-based functionality like that, then you know what's going on with GP. You know could last you and your business a little bit longer and you can maybe potentially postpone, I think, the inevitable of going to the cloud in some way, shape or form with your ERP system or your accounting system, whatever it is you use.
Speaker 3:But a lot of people are very interested because you know a whole generation has passed in a lot of ways from when Great Plains was implemented, you know, for a lot of companies in the 90s, and it's not a replacement, it's a new journey. It's a continuation of the journey that your business may have started back then, just using much more modern technologies and approaches to really getting your business to the most optimal place that you can be. So Great Plains will work. It is working. But there's a new thing in town, you know, from the Microsoft side, and it's definitely worth taking a look at and learning about and, you know, not, getting, you know, bent out of shape. But there's change coming because the more we embrace that change, the more we can actually do good, we can find some efficiencies, you know, we can maybe solve some problems that are real headaches, and we just look the other way when our day-to-day is upon us.
Speaker 1:Is there a?
Speaker 2:date.
Speaker 1:Was there a date? The end of life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's 12-31 of 2029. So we're about four years out, a little over four years out right now.
Speaker 2:So with that you hit a key point. So GP or Great Planes all these names keep changing with Microsoft, but it was originally Great Planes, now it's GP has the end of life, which basically means, as you had mentioned, it ends the product support. They're not going to make new updates, you're not getting to get enhancements, but it doesn't mean that it will stop working on that day. So the panic that I've heard and had conversations with wow, it's the 12 of 29,. It will just stop working. That's not going to be the case, just like I know individuals using Division version 2009 and even earlier still and that stopped. It went out of support. What? 15 years ago? I don't even remember how long ago it went. It was a very, very long time ago.
Speaker 2:But those, as you had mentioned, are looking to do a new journey. They have to. You know they're looking to move. It seems to be a good progression to move from GP to Business Central and there are differences between the applications and there's things to consider when you're moving from one application to the other as well. Like you said, you can get some improvements. You get a chance to reevaluate your business process and also maybe take advantage of some different technologies that may not be in the application that you're using.
Speaker 1:So with that, Like Copilot right Brad.
Speaker 2:Take advantage of Copilot. Take advantage of Copilot. I don't think GP will have Copilot if it's on-premise. We're waiting for that.
Speaker 3:SQL-based Cop-pilot studio object to light up, but it keeps. I think it disappeared. Actually there was a while where it was grayed out, you know, because they were still not quite ready to do that Interesting, and then they think it might have gone away. So, yeah, we were trying. On the GP side, you know we were all interested in it because you've got good structured data there that you know Copilot with a little training could probably do some good with. But without the SQL connector that's where our data is. So you know that would make it a little bit more difficult. So the cloud-based technology is clearly, you know, a reflection of that. Now we can use Copilot within and around Business Central, not something you're really going to get out of GP. So good comparison there.
Speaker 2:Okay, so if we could run down maybe some tips or suggestions or things to consider, you ready, you ready?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what? Speaking of co-pilot, I was getting ready for our call today thinking about what 10 tips to talk about, because there's a lot. You know you talk to anybody else that does what I do, which is help people get there. You know, from here they will tell you probably 10 different tips that I'm going to give you. So the reality is, you know, don't lock in your information to just one source, although I will provide 10 helpful tips don't get me wrong but talk to other people that may have gone through the experience as well, just in case you're you know they provide some perspective.
Speaker 3:That's just a little outside of what we have time to talk about today. So, and speaking of co-pilot, I took my 10 tips, brad, and you know all of us in our dynamics mindset now we're kind of fed this whole co-pilot thing and I took my 10 tips and tried to to to build a presentation with some pretty cool graphics and things. I'll share it with you when we're all said and done, just in case you end up finding that interesting. Oh, definitely, please share, please share yes.
Speaker 3:It took me hours and hours, and once I really broke what I needed Copilot to do down into smaller steps, it was able to digest it and work a lot more efficiently for me. So it's interesting, the more you play with some of that new technology, how much easier it is to leverage to your favor. So I'll send you those shots.
Speaker 2:That could be a good exercise as well as how to you know that's a whole how to use copilot.
Speaker 3:So many great people that are that are doing that right now, and there's a lot to learn from them.
Speaker 2:It is there is a lot to learn from them, and there's a lot to learn in general with it, because it seems, with new models, new technology is changing by the minute. So all right, all right.
Speaker 3:Are you ready for tip number one?
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 3:Tip number one I'd be curious what you guys think, but I would bet you at least the shining quarter that you'll probably agree. Work with a partner who understands your business, shares your goals.
Speaker 1:Work with a partner who understands your business, shares your goals and has a track record of delivering successful Business Central implementations in your line of business. Yes, that's a very good one.
Speaker 2:You have to understand the industry as much as you know, not just the application itself that's very important and how the business processes work within the application, because Business Central is full of features. You can do quite a bit with it and with that you have many different options not to the point where it's overwhelming or it's not manageable, but there are certain different options that you have. So if somebody can help and equate those options or the functionality to your business process so you can understand, it is helpful. That is a wonderful tip.
Speaker 3:Especially if you're industry, you don't want somebody that's really good, maybe at not-for-profit implementing your manufacturing for the first time.
Speaker 3:You know those kinds of considerations are are, you know, worth worth? You know, answering that question as you're going to go and pick a partner or work with a partner, and maybe you're and I hear other great folks in our sphere talk about this is maybe your current partner isn't the right partner for Business Central because of either a skill set or a product support match or something. So, you know, don't be afraid if your current partner is somebody that you know just isn't supporting Business Central, but that happens to be the path that you want to take. So there are plenty of great folks out there that can pick up that and help you make that smooth transition.
Speaker 1:Are you referencing to like? If you're a GP and you want to upgrade and talk to your GP partner, that GP partner may not be the right partner for you. That's a tough conversation to have right, especially if they've been your partner for so long. It's entirely possible they might not be doing.
Speaker 3:Business Central, though they might want to force you into another ERP system in terms of a different direction, and that might not be where you want to go. So there's a variety of reasons. Yeah, they can be uncomfortable, I'm sure, when it comes to it, Because it's really about picking the right partner To, I'm sure you know when it comes to, because it's really about picking the right partner you know, to win the race, you need to have the right team on the field, and if you're going to throw a lot of money at implementing an ERP system, I firmly believe the partner is probably the number one consideration.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, I think that is one of the things that's often overlooked is making sure you have someone that can go through that journey with you. Uh, it's not just. You know, chris is a partner. I'm gonna go with him because he's a good guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's good, don't go. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:I can't implement gp you can't even buy, you can't, you can't even buy great planes, uh, really that's true. You can't buy licenses, no more, you can only really do a subscription for just now, until end of life, and even after that you're supposed to just stop using it. So, um, if your business is growing, you know, and you want to try to borrow more licenses, you're really not in a position to do that anymore with gp, so you know another reason.
Speaker 1:So your hands are tied. You really have to decide. You really have to move. Just the decision of where you're going is going to be an important part, okay.
Speaker 2:So let's move over to tip number two.
Speaker 3:Tip two Audit your existing Dynamics GP environment by surveying and reviewing all of your GP product usage Keyword we know that in the business central lingo not only usage yes, your ISV or your third-party add-ins, customizations, modifications and integrations.
Speaker 3:Anything in or around your Great Plains environment needs to be reviewed, documented and sometimes you might be carrying some technical debt from a number of different products that you set up and you might have used with GP years ago but don't anymore. So while you're taking that survey, you're gathering intelligence about what you have that you need and what you have that you don't need, and then that really informs and hones in on some of the other tips right in terms of you know, assessing functionality in future state, what you need you know and how you can take what you've got, map it over to Business Central, but also let go. There's probably plenty of things you might have set up and started with and really just don't need anymore. So understanding, getting a really good baseline and having the team also talk about and ensure that the right features that are really set up and being used need to carry forward into your business central.
Speaker 2:I like that and I'd like to talk about that a little bit more, because I think this comes with even the implementation. So you're doing an audit and you're talking about looking at the functionality that you're using and evaluating what you're using. But I also like the point that you mentioned let go. Sometimes it's that, oh, I spent a lot of money on this feature. It has to move forward without even evaluating Do you still need that feature? And how could you do that process in Business Central without carrying that technical debt? And how could you do that process in Business Central without carrying that technical debt? So it's a combination of evaluating why, to validate that you need it and to see if that's still the same need for a process in Business Central and, as part of the audit, what about data? Should they do anything with their data as part of doing their audit?
Speaker 3:We have to get through a few more tips here, brad oh. I'm sorry, I like that analogy.
Speaker 1:I like that. You know, don't bring it just because you spend a lot of money. It just made me think about the analogy of a car.
Speaker 3:You know, remember back in the 90s where you could buy the CD player, cassette and you can remove the faceplate oh yeah, Like it's so fancy and you have like a 30 cd player.
Speaker 1:I swear right. But then, like it's like someone saying like, hey, I'm gonna get a modern car, but he already has a built-in car play and all of a sudden I really want that, I want to take that with me. It doesn't fit anywhere, so that's, it's another way to look at it. Uh, from that I was just thinking about a car the other day yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:It's true. It's true. It's that technical debt and those sunken costs of what you put into implementation. You just need to let it go and not get tied to it. But doing a good audit of what you have and the features that you need help you for a better implementation, but also help you make the choice of where you're going to go with your implementation. Again, we're talking GP to BC, but it also just revalidates your decision as well, just to make sure that it's going to support your business. I like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, One of the key things I do.
Speaker 3:You know I mentioned the word usage and you know how I'm a big fan of telemetry.
Speaker 3:For Business Central, which they also call usage, it's really telling you in a Power BI style of format what people are doing, what they're actually using in Business Central. Great Plains doesn't really have that, but there is a script that we use frequently that tells us what tables have data in them and that allows us to say if they're using sales orders or purchase orders or if they're using analytical accounting. So we can empirically as GP experience consultants or people that are helping folks understand how to get to cloud really extract what the customer is using. They may not know, they might not know they're used to clicking buttons in the user interface, but when you get into the architecture of the tables and the views and you really see what's really being utilized in terms of how many records and so forth, you get a good sense looking at the data. It doesn't take that long to do that from somebody that's got some experience. So no, it's good to bring that experience as you had mentioned, just to.
Speaker 2:I always like to repeat it just in Brad's terms. Again, it comes with age. Someone who's using the system may not even know what they're using. In a sense, right, they know how to do a job or a function. But somebody who's coming in to work with them, such as yourself, if you say, hey, you're using this they may not understand technically what that means.
Speaker 2:But they know, oh, I go here, I enter my customer, my item, my quantity, and I know business central, we post it. I'm not certain what you're doing, gp, but having someone come in to help you, absolutely, oh yeah. Okay, I can honestly say I think I looked at GP once in my career.
Speaker 3:Okay, don't look back, you just looked at it. Just look ahead. You're in a good spot, looking at Business Central. So, if you want to see what Great Plains looks like, brad thedynamicsmindsetcom. Right, I have been comparing Great Plains to Business Central for over a year now and I have actual screenshots with highlights and things. So if people are really curious and they want to see what GP looks like on the sales invoice page versus Business Central, I have a place where you can go.
Speaker 2:So that is what is needed. Is that guy that you have the dynamic mindset is where you can go to see. This is what I'm doing, this is what I would do, right, so we'll go, uh, we'll go from there so yes, but it's also to do that audit and have somebody help you with that audit so that you ensure that you cover as much as you can don't miss anything.
Speaker 3:Don't miss anything. That's. Another important part is you know it's good to have a couple sets of eyes on it. Make sure you document it, um, and then then move forward with what you've learned.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, so let's head over to what are we on three.
Speaker 3:We're up to three now, Brad.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 3:All right. Don't discount discovery. Take the time to dig deep into your company's workflow processes, inputs, outputs, pain points and financial reporting needs. Talk to everyone, synthesize their input to build for a better outcome. I like that. It's so important.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, Fred. It's so important with the discovery.
Speaker 2:No, that right there is so powerful it goes back with. Nobody has the time to do it the first time, but they have more than enough time to fix it on the tail end, and taking the time to set this up and review it helps for a better implementation. Yeah, they need to budget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that they need to budget that Cause a lot of people a lot of you know SMPs were coming from a GP, not not just GP in general, it could be another ERP going to business central is that they're reliant on just subject matter experts and knowing and but not realizing that you do need to do discovery. You need to flesh it out and identify. Ok, do you want to bring this over? You don't. Is this a process that we can get rid of? And then can Business Central do something better and more efficient?
Speaker 1:And they tend to forget that discovery is a preparation method and so you don't do it sort of on the fly, which we we tend to forget that discovery is a preparation method and so you don't do it sort of on the fly, which we tend to see sometimes at least when I was working at End User where they kind of roll discovery during the setup and configuration, which kind of defeats the purpose, and then you forget okay, which toggle switches, did we make changes and what were the effects, because you're discovering at that point. So, yeah, you take the time to discover just about everything that you do as a business and then jump into the implementation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll throw a sub tip on that, if I can, as you're talking you're helping me, yeah, 3a.
Speaker 3:You're helping me remember some things that have been helping me help you, right Is some customers have 90% of their businesses that think the same thing over and over and if you can, as the end user, record yourself doing that video, record yourself creating this or creating an order and fulfilling it and do like, if you can show what you do and talk it through, that helps anybody that's about to help you. You don't have to meet multiple times. You can share that video with multiple people, right? You have the chance to do maybe a couple of videos to cover all the real key pieces and then not pull that person out of their productivity loop. So you know, as you're going through this discovery tip 3A, maybe have those high-intensity, really important functions actually video and audio recorded and saved as part of that discovery process.
Speaker 1:That's a good call-out, but remember though, because a lot of times people don't always watch the videos, but it's a good opportunity during the discovery. I guess this would be. 3b is that you need to look at your existing SOPs, or standard operating procedures, and you know, are they up to date? Because sometimes you make one change every two, three years, but then there's a lot of things that happen in the last two, three years, but no one bothered to go and update those documents, so that's very helpful. By the way, as you transition from GPp to business central, you can look at some of this as a reference point when you move.
Speaker 2:I do like the video idea. Uh, it's another thing and I like that because I think you can do a lot with those videos. Uh, maybe you could have co-pilot.
Speaker 2:Look at the video but, oftentimes when you're going through discovery. I think sometimes when someone's working through a process, they often don't consciously know what they're doing because they're so used to doing their job that they may forget to point something out, whereas if they actually record the process, you can physically see what they're doing and what they're entering and where they're entering it. And it's by no means saying that they don't know what they're doing in a negative way. It's just you have habits, you go through, I fill in this, I fill in that, and that's why when you go through, and sometimes when individuals are going through testing, they say oh, by the way, what about this field? Because when you're doing the discovery, if you didn't get to physically see what they were doing, they didn't mention it because they didn't think it was important or they overlooked it because it's so natural.
Speaker 1:So I do like the video.
Speaker 2:I do like the video idea so that everybody can go back and reference that and share it with other team members and make sure it gets relayed properly.
Speaker 3:So I like this tip A trained eye will notice sometimes if it's a customization that they're working through or if it's a ISV solution that they're working in. So a user and then somebody experienced would be able to tell if it's something that's really core or not core in terms of GP. So that helps them map that for the future.
Speaker 2:Should I learn something new Every time we speak, it happens. I learn something new every day. I learn something new every day.
Speaker 3:All right, you ready for four?
Speaker 2:I'm ready for four.
Speaker 3:We beat three to death, so let's move on to four.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's four's turn for a rumble.
Speaker 3:All right. So we just you know, we did our Great Plains discovery, we did our workday everything discovery. Now let's perform a thorough evaluation of business central functionality and then map your business to the application by functional area right Sales and finance and manufacturing and purchasing to expose new efficiencies, right when things are going to make things better. Focus on that and then work on filling any gaps along the way. Like, take it as brand new, try to make everything work and then we'll worry about gaps. So half glass full, not empty, when you're going through that process of evaluating business central for the first time.
Speaker 2:I'm stuck here. I like this. Four we're going to beat. You thought we'd beat three to death.
Speaker 2:Four we're going to really beat to death because that's something that always comes to my mind when individuals are working on ERP implementations. I know everyone talks about well, stay as out of the box as possible, but I have a different viewpoint on that. Before you even think you need to make a modification, try to process to see how it works, to see what you can do. Don't get into the it takes. I'm sorry, I'm going to go on a tangent.
Speaker 2:I know this is your tip, but this is going to set me off because and I've gone through implementations where someone's like, oh well, they're going through and we need to do, oh, it's too long, it takes too long, there's too many steps, there's this going on and I always say give it some time. This is your first time doing it. It always takes more time, sometimes the first time you're doing it because you're paying attention and you're doing it, or once you get the process done. There are some things that you may be able to do to simplify it, versus trying to make a modification out of something before you even enter a sales order, for example, and I'm glad that you say evaluate Business Central first. But now it's going to get me to the other question.
Speaker 3:Chris alluded to Chris. If I steal it, Chris.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, no, no, no, it's all good. I got a comment on that too. It's all good, Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Now you have a current partner that you're working with with your GP or Great Plains implementation. Now we're saying let's evaluate the functionality of Business Central. How do you do that If your Great Plains or GP partner doesn't know Business, know business central, right, this gets into that. Having the tough conversation, yeah, um, and also the side note to it I'll let chris say, because if he doesn't say, don't follow up to it. But how do you go through that process of finding someone to evaluate that process with you so you understand the application?
Speaker 3:references are powerful. Honestly, I start with references first. Anybody in your network. Ask if they're familiar with Business Central. That's a good way to go in terms of getting up close and personal. You might find some very interesting information when you do. The more people I go skiing with or go to random places, they're like oh yeah, I've heard of Business Central. So don't be surprised if somebody in your network has heard of it and they might make a recommendation about a partner and they say, oh, my partner was great. So you know, that's one potential avenue we have. We live in a day and an age where there are a good number of really strong small, medium and even large implementation specialists in Business Central.
Speaker 3:What is your firm need? Ok, so when you want to go, look for that partner again. Are they in your industry? Do they have a track record? Right? You know what is it that you need out of your partner? Because some folks are going to come in and need help with everything. Others are going to come in and they're already going to have a couple of dev people, or they're going to have a Power BI guy. They're going to have a Power BI guy. They're going to have something that the partner doesn't need to bring.
Speaker 3:So, you know, doing some research and then and talking, I mean we're people I'd say, talk, talk to meet people, meet potential partners. You never know what you'll find when you make a new connection out there. And just because you talk to somebody doesn't mean you're breaking up right with your old partner. It is worth gathering knowledge at this phase because GP to BC is a big move. Moving ERP of any kind is a big move. So, you know, while it might feel a little uncomfortable, you know, sometimes we end up having to break up and need to move on. It's just the way that it works and it's not necessarily that I have hard feelings about Great Plains. It's just that that's not where my investment in the future is coming. It's going to be coming from the cloud-based solution. So let me partner up with somebody who's really going to make, you know, give me some vitality in terms of that for my business, you know, for the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's true. And just to go back to Brad's comment about you know, just go play with it or just go through the entire process. It kind of reminds me of like and I've shared this with others too kind of an analogy right, you can fly a plane and set an autopilot and it'll just fly for you. But if that doesn't work, you need to be able to understand how to do it manually. So if, for some reason, automation doesn't work for you, automation is not available for you, you should be able to go through how to do it if none of those work, or if none of those, it doesn't exist yet. So you should be able to go through that, not so much of a manual process, but just to go through the steps to get to the results you're looking for, In this case, being able to just post and see what that looks like. But yeah, you're right, Brad, A lot of people overlook that they immediately want to just like hey, I want to automate everything.
Speaker 1:But like hey, what if the automate doesn't work? Right, the job queue stopped working or power automate doesn't work, Do you just stop business? No, you have to understand. Okay, this is if that doesn't work, I should be able to go through the process without that.
Speaker 2:And as they learn the functionality. Chris, those are great points to understand why you're doing something or what you're doing as well, but is that also a point to evaluate why you're doing something or if you can improve? I mean, it's the take of do you need to do it the same way and how can you extract if you should change the process that you're executing or change the application?
Speaker 3:Or is that another tip? It's actually part of the journey. Honestly, we might start off doing it the way we used to, just to get going, just because we we need to and knowing that maybe there's a phase two or there's a, there's a new way that we want to start to integrate how we do things, but we have to wait until we switch systems like the payables agent, the sales order agent, like that's an example of where you kind of have to wait until you're in business central before you can take advantage of the new workflow. So, yeah, understand, you're gathering information, you're gathering what you have, you're seeing what Business Central offers. Right before you get into tip number five.
Speaker 2:And then is with that is it go ahead. I don't know if I'm going to jump into tip number five. It seems to be a natural progression, so I'll pause going to jump into tip number five.
Speaker 3:It seems to be a natural progression so I'll pause. I think it's like getting your data. It's evaluate, analyze and prepare your GP master record data. At that point, cleaner is better at that point in time. So you've evaluated, you know what you're going to keep, harness the good, you know what Business Central mostly is going to need. So now let's start to clean up our item list, our vendor list. Knowing what we can take advantage of, we can automatically number our customers and vendors and items. That's not something Great Plains has. So your learning process up until you go clean your data will then help you clean your data more effectively.
Speaker 2:GP doesn't have customer numbers gp.
Speaker 3:Gp doesn't have customer numbers, it has ids. But a lot of people use this fun thing called the, the logical alpha numeric naming convention. Right, it's called american locksmith. It's a m e r, zero, zero one. And then when the american delivery company comes by, they, they're A-M-E-R-O-O-2. Somebody's keying those in every time. Brad, there's no just tab through. Get next. Can you imagine?
Speaker 1:Just to talk about the data migration, because I remember having to deal with the GP to BC. One thing I noticed is that in GP the phone number even the phone number as simple as that, has pads at the very end. So I've seen someone where just like import it and then there's like a bunch of like spaces at the very end and no one realizes like hey, that's why it's failing. Right, because there's spaces. But from from just a human looking, and it's like no, there's no, it looks fine, this phone number is correct. No, but there's like seven spaces.
Speaker 3:So or it's all zeros like why load all zeros into business central you? Know, so that's that's the kind of fine eye you need to go clean when I say clean your data you know, don't put letters in the phone number.
Speaker 2:You know little things like that. Can I add one to that or a little bit to it?
Speaker 3:this is a big, big, big topic, brad, so I know this is actually a make it or break it, for a lot of people is starting with clean data. We're starting with dirty data, data is the foundation of it.
Speaker 2:And well, there's a couple things to it. One, you don't need to bring everything over, because you're just bringing junk over. I have to use my simple terms. I'm sorry and never say I'll fix it after. These are things I hear. It's like, oh, let's get into it and we'll clean it up later. Later never comes. As I say over and over again, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution and people forget. If you need to reference something, you still can look at your old system. Gp is not going away. So if you need to reference historical information for a period of time, you don't need to bring over everything. You need to bring over minimally, what you need to run your business and to be able to do your analysis. It's just um, exactly, exactly. And with business central, with power BI, you can now run combined power BI reports that look across both of those data sets and have one report. So it does give you the opportunity not to bring it over, but in data, in my opinion, I'm glad you brought this up.
Speaker 3:See, these are your tips, but I just have to say it can make a breaking implementation in my opinion.
Speaker 2:I really believe that what people would call a failed implementation versus successful implementation, outside of a lot of these tips sometimes can come across of the data that they have. Because why is it doing this? Why is it calculating my sales prices incorrectly? Well, let's take a look at the data. Oh, the system's wrong. No, it's not. It's your data.
Speaker 3:So I use I take this part one of the things that I did on the Dynamics Mindset website last year when I had my broken foot remember I was going through table by table, field by field and comparing Great Plains to Business Central at the master record level Vendors, vendor addresses, vendor banking, all the little nooks and crannies and recording the differences. The item character length is different it's 30 in GP but it's 20 in Business Central. That can hang some people up. Address codes are 10 versus 15.
Speaker 3:So there's some significant differences there and one of the things I enjoyed doing was building a free for download Power BI report that you can point with the parameters to your GP environment and you can refresh it and you can look at a lot of the master record data that you might want to dump to Excel and start cleaning. You can dial it in with like a time span you know what customers have we sold to in the last four years, six years, 10 years, you know to get a sense of how many records you're going to want to need to clean or bring up. So Power BI is a great way to look at some of your existing data and get a sense of what maybe Lyft might be in front of you on that, but I agree, you know, once you got clean data, you will have a much better chance of having a successful project on time and on budget.
Speaker 2:I like it and don't bring anything with you.
Speaker 3:All right, yeah Right, all right, you want number six? I'm ready, let's go. Okay, prototype the new business central environment in a sandbox. Perform functional area walkthroughs with the key people. Evaluate configuration options diligently. There could be choices to be made, not by the partner but by the customer, to ensure that best methods and practices are developed and the users and and and. That gets users to use the new system. So set up the sandbox with clean data. Perform walkthroughs with people so they can get a sense of what it's like to do now versus then. Draw parallels so they can get familiar with it in a sandbox environment, and anything that's that's a gap or that you know that doesn't fit will be a topic of discussion chris, you're laughing, go ahead no, I, I think it's a uh, you know, going through that one-to-one, uh, it is very important to you, you know, get them comfortable right.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of people, at least in implementation, the very beginning, again, my experience is that we, you know, I would stand up an environment, a sandbox environment in this case David had mentioned and get them to log in, get them to start navigating, get them to start comfortable, to be comfortable in how to go get around Business Central Because, again, it's a brand new application.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to go back to the analogy of driving a car. When you're going from one old car, you know where all the buttons are right, so quick, and then you go to a new car. For example, when I got into a Tesla, I was like, ah, I don't know how to get it, like, where do I find this? And it gets so frustrating, right. But it only took me a few days, no different than Business Central. Once you get in there and get comfortable, you can navigate and then you can learn how to find things. And then, to your point, david, I want to be able to turn on my ac and you should be able to navigate in business central. I want to go to my sales order and create one. Simple as that, to get to get comfortable with that, though.
Speaker 2:When is it appropriate? Well, we have to first classify the types of users you'd have in an implementation, right, but now the users that you're talking about. Get the users into the system, is what we're saying it gets them to use the system.
Speaker 3:People with the key key decide.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm saying is when is the appropriate time and that was my sort of the prelude to this of there are different types of users and we should classify the types of users, because when do you get users into using the system? Because I can look at it to where, if somebody can get into it, it can bring frustration if it's a new system, if they feel lost and they can't perform their functions and there's not a way through it and and it's like a stop go, stop, go. So when is it appropriate to bring the users in to do their functions? And what do you mean by key users?
Speaker 3:Every project is a little different, as you well know. Right, there can be some very, very small ones, very few people, sometimes a one or two or a three user environment. Those are I don't want to call them slam dunks, but those are fairly straightforward when it comes to these types of discussions. The more modules that you use, the more people that you have, the more locations and the more complexity that you include in the business. Central environment means that you probably don't want everybody in the discussion that first pass through. You want to proof the concept, to make sure that, okay, let me do a warehouse shipment and zap it with my scanner and make sure that it works. Does this look right? Did it go to the shipping station? There's some familiarity that will help the key decision makers understand that they've got their supply chain nailed. There's a tight end time. That comes later, shortly thereafter later, because you will have greased the wheels right. You set it up. You discussed the module specific behavior. That's a big thing in Great Plains. There's a lot of options and all the modules.
Speaker 3:In Great Plains, you want to do this or turn that off, or allow this or don't allow that. That's true in Great Plains. You want to do this or turn that off or allow this or don't allow that. That's true in Business Central too, and while we want to get there quickly, I think those are important decision points that need to be kind of pondered.
Speaker 3:As you're doing, do you like this, do you like that? As you coach and work with the customer to get them to buy in on some of the decisions and it's the reasoning why you set it up to only show debits and credits, not both, in the general ledger, like there's a variety of things that you know want to get the buy-in, get the customer to own it, and those walkthroughs with key people. Then that information will disseminate down through that training. Well, here's why it looks that way, here's why we do it this way. And if they sense something coming from a user even later on that doesn't quite fit, you know, with what they had mocked up or walked through, they know they have a toolkit now to call upon to maybe help work that out, resolve that, or to raise a flag and say you know, we have a new issue, let's put that on the issues list and track down a solution for that.
Speaker 2:I like it, that's it's important to get them, as you had mentioned, to get the users in there and get them in there at the right time.
Speaker 3:It's like getting in the shallow end of the pool and then you eventually can swim and there's nothing to stand on in the deep end. Um, and that's very great. It's gradual. Um, for more complex environments, because a lot of it has to come together. A manufacturing environment you've got a lot of bits and pieces just to get one thing to go through. So you know that could take a little bit longer, require more people. But you know I see a lot of core financials.
Speaker 1:If I can throw in something in there and again, this is just based upon the experience that I've dealt with in the past where sometimes from a partner's perspective sometimes a client coming from an ERP system going to Business Central, they don't know what they don't know right, they know their business process but they don't know ways to improve. So sometimes it gets pretty dangerous when a consultant says, hey, let's toggle this, do you like it? So you don't, and then we say, oh, I like it, but is it the right thing for them just because they like it right? We have to remember, even from a client's perspective, you have to find a good partner, as you noted, david, at the very beginning. You have to find the right partner that knows the industry, because you don't want a partner that just we're kind of going backwards here, I apologize. You don't want a partner to just say, yes, yeah, you like this. You want a partner that will tell you no, that's not what you do, you don't need to do that. You need to do it this way. Clients should.
Speaker 1:From my experience, clients love that because it's like, okay, yeah, because, yeah, you're right, I don't know how this application works. I need you to tell me, am I doing it right? Is's the right thing to do? Because you are the expert. You're the expert of the industry in the application. I'm the expert of my business. You know I need to be more efficient. I just want to put that out there because it can get. It can get uh wonky if the client, if the end user is just like yeah, I like it, but it might not be the right thing. Sure, yeah, it's a great point.
Speaker 3:The beauty is that there's so many ways to do so many different things in Business Central and you have to have that sandbox. You have to do those walkthroughs to really understand what it is that you're going to, what's going to be your standard operating procedure moving forward, because it could very well be different in BC than it is in GP, because the platform's a little bit different. All forms a little bit different.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm ready for the next one.
Speaker 3:We're up. All right, let's do number seven Develop a clear cutover plan for all of the open transactions for master records, such as AP, AR, bank, rec, but also those residing in the sub ledger, such as projects, sales orders that still need to be fulfilled or manufacturing and production orders that are like halfway started or not even fully completed yet. That has to find its way through a successful cutover as part of the process. The devil's in the details and sometimes a practice run and some good advanced SQL script preparation. Dumping your data from Great Plains before go live can impact a clean cutover. Right Practice dumping OpenAR, practice dumping BankRack and getting into the templates for Business Central so that then you can go into what will be tip.
Speaker 3:Number eight, which is somewhat of it, is training. Sometimes you can train on that practice run data. Sometimes you're going to practice on real key it in data. There's a couple of different ways to look at that, but you know a clean cut over, with all the nooks and crannies, is going to be really important. Don't wait till the last minute to dump out. You know your quantities from all of your locations with the cost layers and the serial numbers. You need to do that a month or two at least, maybe three months, before you target a go live to get the right data.
Speaker 2:And to realize you have everything, because those open things are missing. So a cutover is when you're switching from. You're going to basically shut off your old system and turn on your new system. I have two questions for you. One, when is the best time to do a cutover? Because I hear a lot of people who have suggestions on do's and don'ts. And two, what are your thoughts on running both systems simultaneously like parallel systems?
Speaker 3:I answer number two. First, it's hard to run parallel systems. In some organizations it's just, it can be virtually impossible to run parallel systems. You might do a sample, you know, a day, a week, a month in the life, and just kind of compare notes. You know, make sure that you can do here what you do there. But I don't see too many people doing a full parallel these days. We don't have time. Honestly, it's really hard to do that and we only have so much energy in a day and as somebody who guides and coaches people on implementations, I say let's channel the energy into making it go right. Okay, so that's just my theory, all right.
Speaker 2:So I like that theory. I do like that theory because if you have two systems, one thing to think about is if there's a mismatch or something that somebody feels is an incorrectness, which system's right, which system's wrong, and did the person do it the same in both systems?
Speaker 1:If fast-paced, it wouldn't work.
Speaker 2:Or did the process run the same in both systems?
Speaker 1:Yeah, fast-paced environment wouldn't work for parallels. Now I have seen where, if they're just using business central for finance, right, you could, technically, just it's pretty straightforward, right, you, just, you're just using finance at that point. So, yeah I, I get that you could probably do that. But when it comes to like full warehousing and you know you're shipping a bunch of stuff, yeah, you're right, there's nobody has time for that. It doesn't make sense. You, you're, you're technically driving two cars at the same time. It's just impossible, it's not, it's not, it's not good for you. So, yeah, I, I would not encourage that for parallel testing in terms of like yeah in terms of cutting over.
Speaker 3:When is the best time to do it? When you're ready. Don't do it before you're ready. Uh, there's one. One does not have any magic to it to to be honest with you.
Speaker 3:We can load year-to-date in any system at any given time, even if it's payroll. A lot of challenge happens around 1.1, but it's also a fantastic opportunity at 1.1. So I've seen every month of the year be a go-live. But I would say never do a mid-month conversion. Pick the first of the month or the first of your period if you're doing a 4-4-5 kind of calendar, so that it's a start of something that's important and not midway through. It's just too difficult to reconcile and try to just get it right when you're doing mid-anything really so that 1-1 is not that magic date?
Speaker 3:anything really. So that one one is not that magic date. The magic is in the cutover plan and, having been through all the other steps to make sure people are, you know it's set up, it's working right, people are trained, they know what they're doing, and then the plan helps get them to cut over without having to do everything twice.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's just one one. That just brings me back to like ptsd, where right after holidays and I think brad and I had we had conversations about this where it's a. In my opinion, it's a terrible date to choose in the new year, uh, and first of all, everyone's on vacation and by the time everyone gets back on vacation, they had forgotten a lot of stuff that you would have trained them. On top of that, you have to travel in New Year's. I missed three birthdays because it was January. My birthday's in January. So it's not fun. Everyone's high stress because everyone's coming from a holiday. Because everyone's coming from a holiday, the best time to do a go live is, in my opinion, in my experience, is usually the slowest time of the year and, yeah, you pick the beginning or end of the month, whatever fits you, but slow times are good.
Speaker 3:I'll dovetail onto that with number eight, chris, because number eight was training. Right, you need to make sure people are fully loaded and trained and ready to go at the cutover date, and December, like the holidays, is a tough time to get that to get people in the classroom right To having them validate that they've got their test scripts done, that the customizations work, that the integrations work.
Speaker 3:Like consultants, like everybody, is like a little crazy in December. So maybe avoid that month if at all possible, just knowing that there can be a lot of moving pieces to corral if you really want to do a one-one.
Speaker 2:Lots of vacations, lots of holidays, lots of people concerned about where they're going for the holiday, what they have to do for the holiday. They prepared for the holiday. I think there's enough stress between Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, and the New Year. Yeah, there is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Brad, would you want to? If that's your favorite New Year, are you sure you don't want to go live in New Year? No, Thanksgiving's my favorite. On Thanksgiving. Yeah, some people go live on Thanksgiving, the only thing I'm doing on.
Speaker 2:Thanksgiving is eating, so that's why it's my favorite. Everybody shows up Christmas or some of the other holidays, depending on what you celebrate. Christmas, everyone's stressed about did I get a gift? Do I have this? Do I bring this? Do I bring that?
Speaker 1:Thanksgiving's all like let's just all get together and eat and have a couple drinks and celebrate. Dude, that's only two months away. Brad, time flew by. It's only two months.
Speaker 2:Don't ever remind me about how fast time is going, please yes I'm starting to get a little nervous about something, and we'll talk about that at the end all right, ready for tip number nine.
Speaker 3:Are we good? Do you want to talk about training at all? Because that that that's a one word tip training's tough, okay.
Speaker 2:So I hear there's different training and I understand every project's different. I agree with you, because there's no one size fits all to a project or an implementation and uh, yes, I don't want to use the word project and if you listen to the previous episode, the one that's right before this one, you'll learn something about how to look at an ERP implementation, which opened my eyes to how to look at an ERP implementation in the 1998. That's two, that's 2000, that's the 182 is 2000, then there's 25, so I've been doing this for 27 years.
Speaker 1:Two decades and a half, almost three decades, it was eye-opening.
Speaker 3:Don't give up, brad, you're doing great.
Speaker 2:It's 2025. I still have a long way to go, no, but it was eye-opening in a way to look at these projects as ERP implementations. It's definitely worth a listen to. But training how is it effective to train? Is it train? You know people talk. I hear things like train the trainer. I hear things like you know pick a key user to be responsible for each area Subject matter expert.
Speaker 2:Individuals or subject matter. Expert. Thank you. Video record training. And then also, how can you validate training? I mean it should someone. So there's a difference between I'm loading these up for you, you know, sitting down and saying, hey, I've gone through training. Is there some sort of validation that should be put in place to ensure that I don't like to use the word ensure it's too committal To evaluate the individual's training? Put in place to ensure that I don't like to use the word insurance to to committal to to evaluate the individual's training.
Speaker 3:Everybody's a little bit different in how they want to learn, everybody's different in how they want their teams to learn, and part of, actually, my next tip is about a project manager.
Speaker 2:We'll come back to that, oh see, that's like I didn't see your list, but it's, it's. No, it's like the surprise is all flowing together it is.
Speaker 3:But ultimately somebody has to corral people for training and because people approach how they learn and how they need to be taught and when they need to be taught and what they need to be taught at different points in time during the process, some people need to be taught up a little bit early. Right, they're key players. They're key people in the project plan. Other people don't need to be really brought on to click things until 30 or 60 days, until go live. That's just. You know why bother, you know they have to do their day job. They just have to do it differently on day, you know T minus whatever. So to get training in there is there's a lot of ways to do it. I recommend and I've always been a fan, this is why I volunteer so much in the communities is training, training, teaching concepts, so that when somebody else is sitting down to learn and do it, that, oh, I remember what that means or how or why and that makes, I think, the learning experience a little bit better. So I like live learning a lot. We like to do like from a good best practice is make sure that we book sessions that are of a reasonable length of time, because we do it all remotely these days, like it's nice to be on-prem, it's nice to be, and when you can, great. That style of training can be very different classroom style or where maybe you're on the shop floor doing some training. It's different wherever you're. On-prem is, but we don't have so much attention to stand and look at the screen and learn because we've got distractions. The reality is that we need to provide a medium for people to have effective video-based learning so they can stop it, rewind it, replay, it, store those videos in a vault, somewhere that any end user now, tomorrow, next year can get in and see and watch those videos and kind of get up to speed. They don't have to be every you know, nip and talk of the whole system, but the idea is to go through the standard operating procedures. Here is how I you know set up an item Boom. Here's how I build my bill of materials. Okay, great. Here's how I create a new vendor and go through the approval process.
Speaker 3:Whatever we call them user scripts and that's a common term I think you'll see out. There is these test scripts where you kind of I'm going to perform a check run today. What does that mean? Okay, you know you enter the vendor, enter and post the invoice, perform the payment journal process, like you can string a number of individual things together in a single test script just to kind of make sure that they see the quote to cash. Or you know the flow of of whatever it is.
Speaker 3:You know, functional area, it is that, they're that, they're that they're working through, so, um, they can come back to them. Uh, honestly, they can be transcripted. You can even take with copilot that and build standard operating procedures from the transcripts to say you know, this is how we do it, this is how we enter the data or report on the data. There's also the ability to flip the script and have one person teach the next person internally so that one person gets a little bit better. They work as a pair. They form a bond, a shared bond over the newness that's coming with whatever it is. They have to figure out how to do together or report on together or do on one one whenever they go live. So you know there's a lot of different avenues and methods and techniques for learning. All of the above should be considered for an implementation project.
Speaker 2:And I have to point out I'm not going to go on my tangent on page scripting, because that is the best thing that was added to Business Central since the GL account.
Speaker 3:That's a great way to bring automation you know, to this because that's not something you have in Great Plains. If you want to test something or you want to, you know there's a day and a time for pretty much every cool thing Business Central can do. But you have to start trainers in the in the shallow end, you know, with with people until they can feel like the water's warm enough to swim Is that exercise different from like.
Speaker 1:So we talked about training, right? So training, you may be training a single person or a multitude of people, but that's one training. But then you also have user acceptance testing. Would you feel that those are two different exercises between training and testing?
Speaker 3:Because you had called out testing as well, which could mean you're testing a functionality that may need to be tested before you train everyone else of how it's used. Ideally, it's the end user that's doing the job. That has the final say, I think, on end user acceptance no-transcript, but did the end user actually do it? That's the person that needs to say that the script is good, my permissions are good. The report shows me what I'm after. So you had asked earlier and to follow up on this how do you ensure people are actually doing it right, how they're doing their use, their testing and so forth and their entries? You have a proponent of looking at the data. Be data-driven about looking at information. You can go right within Business Central. You can look at the posted transactions and see how many are being done by people. You can go to the table information page and you can find how many records are in certain tables and see how many there are now versus the past. You can also use telemetry and see how many users are logging in on a daily basis and what they're doing on certain days, just to confirm that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't see you've done any purchase orders yet, guys. When is that supposed to happen. You can have that oversight in sort of an overview way. But I grew up in the 80s guys. You're probably well aware of that Trust. But verify is an important thing to me personally. It's great to know that you say that is great and it's tested and it integrates or whatever, but I have to see it with my own eyes. I have to verify it myself. I do that with a lot of projects. Now I got to do my own record counts and make sure that I'm okay with the great work that you did, and sometimes a second person helps with that whole process.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you bringing that up because sometimes if you just hand it to them, it's okay, you're ready for testing. Go and train yourselves. They can tell you in return and say, yeah, I've already done it, but I have to see it, so we have to schedule that time together. I want to see you go through it. It also may be an additional tip during training. It's also a good opportunity Once you know things are working. Now you're in a training mode.
Speaker 1:It's also a good opportunity for them to create documentation. Right. I would prefer for end users to create their own documentation, not from me, because it goes back to that muscle memory. If they were to put it together, it will allow them to think okay, is this process make sense where it's not just me building it for them and then I don't have to look at it. I'm going to give it to them and they have to live with it. So they have to be able to be comfortable of making those changes along the way. So that's another thing that you could do as you're going through training is have them work with a consultant to build the documentation, but that documentation needs to be built by the end user, in this case, a subject matter expert.
Speaker 3:I love that, Chris. That's fantastic. I do see a lot of customers that want us to create the documentation. They don't want to put the energy or the time into building it themselves. So that can be a challenge, really, because that's going to eat our budget. You know being able to, you know going through and creating all that stuff. Sure, it adds value and happy to do the work, but it doesn't necessarily reinforce the learning process, as a customer did it themselves, If you can.
Speaker 2:If you the true, the true determination, if you understand something, is if you can explain it to someone else. Yeah, right, it's, it's if you can properly relay something. And again to both your point, it's saves time, saves budget, but also reinforces the learning for the individuals that you have, and they can also put it in terms that's relevant to their business. Right, it's, it's. Again, you have a partner.
Speaker 3:That's that put it in terms that's relevant to their business.
Speaker 2:Right, it's, it's again, you have a partner that's an expert in that industry or that region all the stuff that we're talking about but every implementation has different terms. You and I could use the same word and it means something different, but at least someone could explain something that's in the nomenclature of that particular organization, which is good, and you can use PageScript and help to make it easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, you have tools to do that, but the ownership should be on the end user.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, it's to use your Okay.
Speaker 3:Well, let's talk number nine. Then, guys, let's talk about dedicating a project manager to hold everyone accountable, provide coordination, support, guard against scope creep, manage, change orders and keep an eye on the budget, as well as provide resourcing in general, and that applies more often than not to both parties, both the partner and the customer.
Speaker 2:They both need a project manager, both the partner and the customer. They both need a project manager.
Speaker 3:The larger the project, the more of a manager you're gonna need to do all of those things Because, again, we all have our day jobs.
Speaker 3:Maybe you need a third party, impartial person that's a true project manager, actually be a coordinating force on that implementation team.
Speaker 3:They don't need to necessarily be an expert at ERP, but there's a lot going on on an implementation.
Speaker 3:You know when you've been there it takes. There's a lot of conversations about many different things and somebody who is collecting, coordinating, storing those training videos, creating those weekly scheduled touch base meetings, you know, asking the ISV to come in and do a demo, like there's a lot of things that a project manager can really add value and shorten the time to get your implementation off the ground right. If we have somebody helping to collect and move forward on these things, then they don't get left unsaid, untouched, undone, and you end up essentially in a better place because you have accountability, somebody who's really courting and people won't walk away because you have to meet and answer to the tasks that were assigned last week or agree to the tasks that are going to be due next week or the timeline for when you're available for training. So it just really helps bring some. It takes the personality out of it and puts it into all right. We're all in this. We're doing a project, you know, and somebody is a driving force coordinating all those moving pieces.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of pieces and you hit a couple points. So a project manager is someone who can organize well. They don't necessarily have to be an ERP expert. It helps because they would understand, maybe, an ERP implementation. But the key factor is is they have the personality and the ability to manage tasks, hold individuals accountable and keep the keep your implementation moving forward, instead of everyone going into a meeting saying yeah, yeah, I'll take care of that, and then it never gets done or it gets missed and staying calm as I want to say.
Speaker 1:Staying calm. As a project manager you are. You're supposed to be the most level headed person. I've seen project managers, unfortunately, where they just create this fear and it's like that's not a good project. You have to be motivated and level headed and it's the most calmest person in the room, because there's a lot of things going on and emotions usually get thrown out the door, you know, or part of that meeting, and so you need the good project manager. And sometimes, by the way, project managers should not be only depending on the size of the project, should not always fall into the partner side. You should have your own internal project manager as well.
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent, project manager. Number nine. So here we are for drum roll. I forgot how to do the sound effects, but drum roll for number 10. All right, let's see.
Speaker 3:Let's do this one. I actually have two, but let's do number 10.
Speaker 2:We can do 11. We can do a bonus. We'll do 10 and a bonus. Okay, there you go. We have a few minutes.
Speaker 3:Here's 10. Integrations and customizations are often a necessary element of any ERP implementation. So explore the options. Be open to new cloud-based technologies and ideas, including AppSource and per-tenant extensions. Just because it's not on AppSource doesn't mean it's not a kick-ass solution for what you need. So you guys are developers, right, you guys build some amazing stuff.
Speaker 3:And integrating data in and out of Business Central is very different. In Great Plains we don't have any of the same tools, techniques, methods at all. So somebody who's starting Business Central a lot of times, their first introduction to an integration is going to be one of two things either edit in Excel or it's going to be oh, what the heck is a configuration package. Okay, out of the box. Those are your two choices, unless you have some technical prowess and you can work with APIs. Great Plains has Econnect. It's all SQL based this. You know. These APIs that we have in Business Central wildly different in terms of how we piece them together and interact with them.
Speaker 3:So getting to a place where you leverage APIs for integrations and third-party already baked in solutions to help fit gap or provide industry-specific solutions like lease accounting or manufacturing, it's hard to say the sky's the limit. We do a lot of staffing at my firm staffing and recruiting. We built an extension that's just got tons of customers and it just keeps on ticking. But these things help fit gaps differently than they did with great planes. You don't necessarily need to deal with the flat file import the same way, although you can do a flat file import.
Speaker 3:But these are considerations. The more your organization is in terms of complexity, the more integrations and customizations you'll need, but don't be afraid of them. Learn about how they're different with Business Central and how they actually afford more opportunities. There are so many places that you can integrate to with Business Central it just pops my mind, honestly and we've developed a number of solutions to shipping solutions. You know shipping integrations for fulfillment. We've done sales invoice integrations. You know there's so many places that we can reach in the cloud for data, that we can reach in the cloud for data, and it's a matter of really having a good plan for what needs to be in your ERP, how it's going to get there and how it's going to be set up in a secure way, so that these customizations and integrations don't open up holes, you know, or things in your environment that would be adverse in a particular way.
Speaker 2:So Excellent, excellent. Do we get a bonus one?
Speaker 3:I'll give it to you if you want it. Yeah, and it's. It's really simple is when you go live, have a post live plan. Make sure that your partner's sitting with you, sitting with right, that your partner is there for the first 30 days, that first month, and close because you want to make sure that the AR balances and the AP balances and you can reconcile your costs. It's very easy to think that the AR balances and the AP balances and you can reconcile your costs. It's very easy to think that the whole budget should be consumed on go live. The reality is you still need to have a bucket of hours for after go live because you just because you do.
Speaker 2:No, listen, it's post. Go live is important. You spend all this time and sometimes money. Both time and money are an investment for an organization. You want it to be successful. It doesn't stop on go-live day, it continues forward.
Speaker 3:And that's when people are really held accountable to doing their work Hardcore all the time every day and they need us.
Speaker 3:They need us as a lifeline. They need those documents, they need those videos. They need to phone a friend, right that, you know, is that subject matter expert to help them get through that first purchase order that they forgot how to do because they didn't pay attention at training. So you know, my bonus tip number 11 is definitely, you know, don't burn all out of gas before you get to the go live line. Wait a little, leave a little bit in the tank to make sure that you're going to have ample support to make that first month end close successful. And then it's like flying a kite or anything else. You know, once it's airborne, you know the goal is to keep it up there. It's going to do what it's designed to do. But clean data, people trained, clean, cut over. You know, all these considerations in terms of tips is really what I would put together to, to to give you, you know, for information for our interview today.
Speaker 2:So no, no, it's great. We appreciate you taking the time to speak with those tips. So you're doing a lot of great things. Uh, and also uh, we're getting close to community summit in October, october 19th to the 23rd. Chris is talking about the time it's coming up. You're doing some great things there. What do you have in store at Community Summit?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, I'm busy this year.
Speaker 1:I have six sessions this year at Summit Yikes man A couple of them are deep dives.
Speaker 3:One of the things I truly enjoy in this Dynamis community that we all take part in is meeting people and helping them on their journey. All of you have helped me on mine, and it's just great to be able to give back in the way that I am, but I love working on both the Great Plains and the Business Central side. So across all six of my topics, three of them are on the business or three of them are on GP side. Three of them are on Business Central side. All of them talk about Power BI, though, so go figure, power BI with a different angle.
Speaker 3:You know talking about our 10 or 11 tips today my first session is called Modernizing the Dynamics Experience. It's the ultimate GP to BC comparison to help fast track your team. We take a number of the things that we did here and we draw a lot of comparisons in it. We take a number of the things that we did here and we draw some a lot of comparisons in it. It's a 90 minute deep dive. So I'm hoping to be able to really enlighten folks on that very first day, that's on Monday, I'm going to GP.
Speaker 3:Ask me anything regarding reporting. As you know, I really like reporting and analytics. I have a set done, a deep dive session on Power BI reports that you need for your GP users. I give them away for free, you know. You can download them, you can take them with you, you can plug them in and start playing with them right away so that you can take that first step in getting familiar with what the technology of Power BI can bring to you. But the last three sessions on the new to BC ask the experts session, that was fun. I did that last year too. It's great to hear all the questions, especially people that are coming from Dynamics GP, in that new to DC session I'm into breaking into the benefits of telemetry for Business Central.
Speaker 2:I've talked about telemetry a number of times in our call today and something I'm still very passionate about just the coolness of what it can tell you. We have to talk about telemetry one day. Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? That's my philosophical question for you. But we'll table that. Go ahead, telemetry. That would be a great session.
Speaker 3:Thank you. The last one is let's see 20 tips and tricks for maximizing the Power BI report apps for Business Central. I put this together about a year ago.
Speaker 2:I've given this presentation a number of times and it's fun. 20 tips and tricks for maximizing the power of the app.
Speaker 3:I have to jump into that one. I have some questions for you.
Speaker 2:Hopefully I don't have a conflict. It's very difficult with schedules. There's a lot of great sessions, a lot of things to do. We're usually running around like crazy during that time. Everybody thinks it's one big fiesta.
Speaker 1:But we actually? It's not the case, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Listen. The last one we did was directions. I was in Vegas. I was in bed every night by 10 o'clock, so 2200.
Speaker 3:Being on the East Coast. That's easy for us to do, though. When you fly out West, you can get to bed early, but you're staring at the ceiling at 4am. Yes, yes, but I still was in bed for that reasons.
Speaker 2:But no, thank you very much. We appreciate you taking the time to share those tips with us. Look forward to seeing you at community summit North America this October in.
Speaker 3:Orlando. I'm looking forward to your guys' sessions as well.
Speaker 2:Yes. I'm looking forward to your guys' sessions as well. Yes, yes, Thanks. We have some sessions. I have to, you know, do some finished final presentations. I'm fortunate enough this year that all of the sessions that I'm having I'm even doing the I'm doing an Academy class beforehand with AJ Ansari All my sessions are co-presenting. I'm big on this co-presenting thing. I'm doing it with Tanya Brekamesk. We're doing a session on events. I'm doing a session with Duilio from Italy on page scripting, my favorite topic.
Speaker 2:Okay, we did one version of it at Directions North of America, we did a little spin on it, and then the third session is a panel. Actually, it's one of those ask me anything, type things, and we have a panel on it.
Speaker 1:We have some great talent. You're busy too, brad man. I, you know, I, I, david, I, I commend you for doing six. Man, I did one year, I think I did five, and I was beat at the end of the week and I did, did not want to talk to anyone. So this year is I'm trying to keep it simple. I have just one session that's a co-asked experts kind of thing, and then the Academy as well and I'm running that administration of Business Central. So if anyone's listening and you're interested in it, Check these guys out.
Speaker 3:They know their stuff. These MVPs are great.
Speaker 2:They get to it and it is, thank you, appreciate you sharing your information, and also six sessions, as Chris said. I'll tell you, I know firsthand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're, we're we're.
Speaker 2:We're similar in the sense that if you do it, you want to do it right. So the amount of preparation you put into these- I'll see you. Sounds good. You can serve me that purple apps that you and your team have put together. I would specifically contact you.
Speaker 3:So hit me up on LinkedIn. Definitely find me at David Laster LinkedIn. I'm that BC GP and Power BI guy. Feel free, I'd love to hear you know where you are in your journey, if there's a way that I can help you as well. You can also see me at the dynamics mindsetcom and check out some recent posts that I have been doing for a little over a year now on just trying to put some great stuff out there into the universe to help people on their own GP to BC journey as well. I also work at Gray Valk. We're a full-service dynamics partner up in the Northeast, up near Boston. They're a 31-year-old, family-run company with a fantastic group of people to work for. So that's who I am and what I do and where you can find me. But, brad, you guys keep up the great work.
Speaker 3:Christopher, love your podcast. I told you separately that I think it's great. I walk around the yard sometimes and I'll, you know, pick weeds or maybe go for a walk around the block and I listen. There's so much fantastic content. You have great interviews and I always walk away learning from your guests.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate being on again as a second timer maybe you know, one time I'll be in a five timers club.
Speaker 3:We'll see. I always liked that SNL skit. But, to be honest, I'll be in the five timers club, We'll see. I always like that SNL skit but, to be honest, I'm grateful for the chance to to be able to speak to this. It's a hot topic for a lot of people and if we can make their journey a little smoother, by all means I'd like to be a part of that.
Speaker 2:No great, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate all that you do and also your kind words, and we couldn't do it without individuals such as yourself. We have a lot of great members in this community that like to share information, and we're very fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with them and for them to share their time with us because, again, as I say with everybody, time truly is the currency of life. Once you spend it, you can't get it back, and any minute somebody spends with us, they're not doing something else and you don't get that back. That for you and everyone else, and I look forward to seeing you in October, but I'm going to see you in October before Summit as well, that's true.
Speaker 3:So we have this date locked in.
Speaker 2:So a couple weeks we'll be getting together. I look forward to seeing you, then Talk to you soon, ciao, ciao, all right, later, ciao Bye. Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at Mattalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
