Migrating from Dynamics GP to Dynamics Business Central: The Advantages of Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) users are faced with conflicting information about staying on GP versus migrating to Dynamics 365 Business Central. We’re attempting to clear the clutter and give you some straight answers to help you make your decision. As we mentioned in The Case for the Cloud, there are distinct advantages for GP users to move to a true-cloud ERP. In this blog, we discuss the advantages offered by Business Central.
Microsoft Dynamics Busines Central (BC) offers distinct advantages over Dynamics GP (which Microsoft will not be continuing to develop). BC is particularly well suited for mid-sized manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and professional services companies. Some of these advantages include:
- Business Central is flexible and easy to customize. BC has a visual drag-and-drop interface that allows users with no development experience to customize the software with no-code/low-code options to match the way they do business. For more sophisticated customizations, BC’s business logic can be easily modified to perform more complex functions. And all these customizations will be preserved between software updates.
- Business Central can run on premises or in the cloud. Running BC does not require users to run their software in the cloud. BC can also run on premises. Users can always move BC to the cloud if and when they are ready.
- Business Central has support from a large developer community. Business Central is supported by nearly 1000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who develop specialized add-on applications to extend the capabilities of BC, from credit card acceptance to warehouse management. See the ISV products available for BC by visiting Microsoft’s AppSource.
- Business Central easily integrates to external applications. Business Central comes with native integrations to popular third-party cloud applications. If you don’t find an integration to an application you are using, one can be built easily using BC’s development environment. This lets BC integrate to HCM, CRM, Payroll, and many other modern business applications.
- Business Central has more manufacturing and distribution capabilities than GP. BC comes with native manufacturing and distribution capabilities and can be easily extended to perform complex functions, including warehouse and inventory management, supply chain management, lot and serial tracking, manufacturing process automation, bar coding, and more.
- Business Central has better support for branches and multiple entities than GP. BC comes with more robust capabilities to handle multiple branches and entities within the organization.
- Business Central comes with out-of-the-box dashboards. BC allows users to customize their own dashboards, so they can follow the key data that affects their work the most. Preconfigured dashboards are available out-of-the-box, or they can be modified or created on the fly as needed with no coding required.
- Business Central makes it easy to add user-defined fields to records and reports. Data in BC is easily accessed for use in dashboard and reports. Customize reports, add fields to customer records, show fields in dashboards – all with little or no coding required.
- Business Central leverages the capabilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. The Power Platform is a suite of applications that makes access to information easy, particularly for the non-technical end user. Use the Power Platform to connect Business Central to other applications, such Office 365, Azure services, and many third-party applications (like Salesforce). Components of the Power Platform include:
- Power BI – Gather meaningful business intelligence in real time by collecting data from BC and other business applications and using this information for proactive insights and decision making.
- Power Apps – Non-technical users can use low-code/no-code “point-and-click” features to create powerful custom applications quickly.
- Power Automate (formerly Flow) – Create workflows to automate repetitive tasks and processes for your business.
Learn More About Moving from Dynamics GP to Dynamics Business Central
To learn more, download our FREE eBook, Moving from Microsoft Dynamics GP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Then contact ArcherPoint to discuss your options, questions, and concerns. We’ll also give you a FREE Assessment to help you determine the right path for business.
