The #1 Piece of Advice When Implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central? (Dec '20 Huddle, Pt. 1)

New View Huddle, December 2020 – Part 1

In early December 2020 I convened members of New View Strategies’ Strategic Partner Program for a panel discussion around Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Now that the product has been out for a while, it’s a good time to reflect on the current state of the product, and in particular how it is similar and how it is different compared to Dynamics NAV with regards to implementing and upgrading. Following is part 5 of 5 of the transcripts from that discussion where the partners provide their number one piece of advice when implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central. To view the recording please visit the New View Strategies YouTube channel, and to listen or download the audio file please visit our website.

Mark Rhodes, New View Strategies:

We've been talking for quite a while. Let's go ahead and wrap it up, and I'm going to pose a question that I want each one of you to send off with. And really, for those who are looking at Business Central, what is your top recommendation, top piece of advice that you'd like to give them? Ben, let's start with you.

Ben Baxter, Accent Software:

Take your time. So everything out there is try to implement it as fast as possible, hit that one date. I mean, people time gate themselves and don't give themselves time to learn it and test it and work through the processes. Take your time with it. It's a big piece of software. Work with the right people and do it right.

Mark Rhodes, New View Strategies:

Yeah. Perfect, perfect standard. David.

David Gersten, Dynamic Consulting:

Yeah, I'll build to that. I think it's an absolute must that time... And do realize you need to have both a time investment and a financial investment. There are ways to strategically phase it. You don't have to bring in payroll from day one, even though you're using it in QuickBooks today. You can keep Intuit Payroll going. Let's focus on getting distribution ready. Let's look at those phases. And just because you're doing things manually today, it doesn't mean you have to automatically implement that as part of the process today also. So I think have realistic views, both time budget and total process investment.

Mark Rhodes, New View Strategies:

I wrote a blog post touching on that, David, a few months back, really looking at it as a strategic investment that you expect an ROI out of. And how are you going to achieve that ROI? And where's that going to come from? And really having that perspective that you're investing because this is going to provide you capabilities and a return in your business. And I think that's a different mind shift than historical IT investments. Erik?

Erik Hougaard, E Foqus Canada:

I think I'm got to leave you guys with a... Well, not you guys, but with a very simple advice that now that this is a cloud-based system, we have a piece of the system that is called the Admin Center, which is where you as a customer controls the environments that you work for databases, but the environments you have user access and what is updated when, update windows, and this is where you managed the advantage of having a cloud system, where you just go into the admin center and you control your system. And I have seen a lot of the people that like David, we get failed implementations from other partners. And one of the first thing I do is showing them the Admin Center and saying, "Wow, we didn't realize that." You can create a copy of your production environment as a sandbox and play around with it without destroying anything and stuff like that. So, very, very hands-on advice here. Make sure that you check out the Admin Center because that's really one of the cool thing about suddenly having a cloud-based system like this.

Mark Rhodes, New View Strategies:

Yeah. Great point. Great point. Tom?

Tom Doran, Innovia Consulting:

I would say do yourself a favor, get a partner and make sure that you check references. And we think the most important standard is ask yourself, would you want to go get a beer with these folks? Because the right partners are the kind of people that are going to be able to be a real... You're going to have a close relationship. You're going to get better advice. And would you want to go have a beer with these guys?

Mark Rhodes, New View Strategies:

That is due diligence I can get behind. Great idea. All right, guys. We could probably go on for a few hours. I hope we can get together and talk more around Business Central, maybe a couple of different topics again. So I hope you enjoyed it as well. Thank you so very much for taking the time, and a lot of great advice to unpack through all of that. Thank you very much, guys.

Read part 2 now or watch the full talk here.