Episode 424: Business Central: Insights from Real-World Implementations

In this episode of Dynamics Corner, join hosts Kris and Brad as they delve into the intricacies of implementing Business Central, featuring insights from Jesse, Rama, and Pablo, who share their experiences transitioning from NAV 2013 to Business Central 2024. Discover the challenges, strategies, and successes of managing a large-scale upgrade across multiple companies, and learn valuable lessons for your ERP journey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
What does it take to implementBusiness Central?
I'm your co-host, Chris.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onMay 1st 2025.
Chris, chris, chris, what doesit take for a BC implementation?
Migration, upgrade,re-implementation, whatever you
want to call it?
With us today, we had theopportunity to speak with an end
user that recently had gonethrough a migration from 2013 to
a recent version of BusinessCentral.

(00:31):
With us today, we had theopportunity to speak with Jesse
Rama and Pablo.
Hello, hello, oh, look at that,look at that.

(00:53):
How are you doing?

Speaker 1 (00:55):
good, yeah, I got my sweater too, but I'm not wearing
it right now.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
See that, see that, jesse this is uh this is uh,
we're gonna get you one, eventhough you're not an mvp, oh wow
, but you have the fancy hat Ilike the hat.
You like my hat I'm not wearingit.
I just wanted to mess with youyou're the host now.
That would have been a first Iwas gonna come in with my boston

(01:21):
accent and start being like,hey, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
That wasn't a Boston accent Get out of the box after
this that's a Southern accent.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, I do have a Southern accent.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's okay, y'all should see me.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
I am tucked away in the corner of my son's bedroom
because there is constructiongoing on downstairs in my house.
And then I got all the way uphere and my neighbors are
cutting their trees.
So yeah, this is my life.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
It always happens to me.
Oftentimes, if you know, youcan see me scrambling because we
do a recording.
It is it's always inevitablethat somebody comes and bangs on
the door.
Somebody just the lawn teamdecides to come and cut the lawn
or something, yeah, and theystop, so they, they stop
hopefully they're done.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
They're doing construction in your house.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Whatever they're doing they are remodeling my
shower and they're putting in acloset for me, a closet, a
closet system for me, so likeit's just a bunch of people in
and out.
It was supposed to be done bynow.
Are you treating this?

Speaker 1 (02:23):
like a bc implementation where you know
staying in budget and, oh, I'min budget the construction
people are over budget.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
They ruined some stuff and I'm like I'm not
paying for that.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
You did it, oh yeah well, speaking of the bc
implementations, we doappreciate you taking time to
speak with us this afternoonbecause you, as a user of
Navision or Dynamics Navre-implementation, which we hope
to speak about how that processwent, what you did as an

(03:07):
organization to ensure that itwent smoothly, some of the
pitfalls or challenges that youuncovered that you didn't expect
, maybe give some insights tosomeone who may be listening.
But before we do that, wouldyou mind telling us a little bit
about yourself?
Jessie, we'll start with you.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Hi.
Yes, I'm Jessie.
I am the senior businesscentral NAV support manager.
So I've been with Forum for 10years this year, but I've been
in the NAV business centralworld for about 17 years.
So other than that, you know, Ido all this volunteer fun stuff
for the Dynamics CommunitiesBusiness Central Board and I

(03:42):
help run the local user groupmeetings.
And not to do a shout out, butwe are having our very first
local chapter meeting in Houstonin June Yep, since 2019.
So it's all planned in books.
So just wanted to throw thatout there because I'm proud of
it.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Excellent Congratulations which date in
June.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
June 24th, from 10 am to 2 pm at the Microsoft Center
.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Excellent, excellent, hope everybody attends Me too.
Look forward to seeing what theagenda is, pablo.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yes, so, pablo Hernandez, I've been with Forum
for 17 years with the BC supportand BC security admin team.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Excellent, excellent, rama, would you mind
introducing yourself to us aswell?

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Sure, my name is Rama Satyapeda.
I've been doing nav, like thedevelopment, for almost like 20
years and I enjoy doing supportalso.
But I don't get to do a lothere in Forum, but in my
previous companies I do supportand develop.
My background is a developer,but you know, I like doing both
uh, development and support.
And it's been nine years before.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
So in a few months I mean next year I'll be it'll be
10 years for me too excellentand just so you know rama, this
is recorded, so I'm gonna go uhsign five support tickets to you
right after this that's okayokay that is what you, what you
have give me support work butI'm like

Speaker 3 (05:10):
the level 3 support.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
I support the support team basically when everything
really goes to hell, give it toRama.
Is that how it works?

Speaker 4 (05:22):
oh yeah when we're done everything we can and we're
stuck and we're lost.
We're like Rama, we need you tolook at this.
We have one other internaldeveloper as well who's not on
this call that we do the samething to.
We're like you're going to haveto walk through this with us,
yep.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Nothing ever goes to hell.
So it sounds like all of youhave been working there for
quite some time.
Working there for quite sometime, and what were you using
before you moved to BusinessCentral?
Nav13, nav2013r2.
Nav2013r2, just shortly afteryou went from the roll-tailed

(06:04):
client to out there, and withthat, what made you wait to go
to the business central?

Speaker 4 (06:05):
upgrade, or why hadn't you upgraded to the
previous versions of?
Nav through the years from 2013through 2018 so technically,
the first, very first projectthis was in the works before I
even started um at this company,they were getting everybody off
of nav 5 and nav NAV 2009 ontoNAV 2013.
So when I started, we werestill moving people to that, so

(06:30):
that just took a very long time.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
We were doing what one company at a time when I
started yeah, yeah, we did onecompany or a couple companies,
but there's a lot of companiesin NAV 5 and NAV 2009.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
how many companies do you have?

Speaker 3 (06:47):
75 around 70 75 companies, 75 yeah, yeah, I
think we tried to merge a fewand now we are down to like
around 50 or 55.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, well, that makes sense why it took a long
time.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Huh, yes, I could see that 50 companies and within
those 50 companies, some of themjust financial companies.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yes, so what features ?

Speaker 2 (07:10):
within the application are you using within
these companies?

Speaker 4 (07:14):
So I would probably say about half would be finance
companies.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Rama, that we just do general budget, post-general
budget, yeah, 25 operationalcompanies, 25, 30 operational
companies, and then theremaining 25 are finance
companies.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yeah, finance companies, and the finance
companies very like small.
We just do like they just posta general journal entry in there
once a quarter or once a month.
Nothing major happens in those.
The rest of them we do likesales service.
Jump in anytime, pablo, andtell me more Warehouse, advanced

(07:48):
warehousing in some we do basicwith bins, in some we have
inventory count.
Time collection module.
Thank you, what am I missing?
I feel like there's more Scanguns.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
We're kind of across the board.

Speaker 4 (08:06):
Manufacturing, hello manufacturing.
I was waiting for that.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
So it sounds like you used a lot of the application
and, with having an internaldevelopment team, you had also
some of your own modifications,or you might have a significant
amount of modifications, andwhen you migrated to Business
Central kind of let's walkthrough the process of what you

(08:32):
had done to plan or prepare forit Did you go to Business
Central online or you were usingBusiness Central on-premises?

Speaker 4 (08:37):
On-prem.
We got outvoted on that one.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
You could have voted on that one.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
We tried, we tried so hard and they were like nope,
we're staying on-prem and we'relike all right.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
A lot of implementations have their
reasons for going on-premisesand others go online.
I'm happy to see that, as timeis progressing, some of those
limitations or reasons why Idon't want to use the word
limitation, but some of thereasons why some prevented or
wanted to go, some of thosereasons that prevented some from
going online and stayingon-premises, are being relaxed a

(09:12):
little, which is nice.
So there are some slightdifferences.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I do want to go through that process with what
your process went Deciding tomove to Business Central.
Brad, and I want to understand.
You have deciding to move tobusiness central.
You know Brad wants that, bradand I wants to understand.
Like such a, you have a lot ofentities, right?
It's certainly a bigimplementation.
You use all different moduleswithin business central, I'm
sure, using different add-ons.
It's a lot of coordinationthat's happening.

(09:38):
So, as you decide to move tobusiness central, was it a
natural path to go to BusinessCentral or did you also look at
other ERPs as well?
And when you decided, what didthat committee look like, right?
So you know, was there changemanagement, project management,
all that stuff being put inplace?

Speaker 4 (10:01):
So, yes, we did.
Actually, there was another ERPthat was being considered at
the time, um, when I me and myboss actually at the time we
presented business centralbecause, uh, we have what?
Seven business centralemployees, right, that are just
specifically for support five orsupport to our developers and

(10:21):
that's what we do and that's ourjob for this company.
So we presented it.
As you know, business centralwas the best route one because
we're already on nav.
So the functionality isbasically the same, right,
you're going to enter a salesorder, the same way You're going
to everything like that, right,we also told them it would be a
lot more money to switch ERPs,which we all we did the work on
that, obviously it would be, andthey wanted to upgrade, they

(10:46):
did not want to re-implement.
So you can't upgrade to SAP oranother GP, whatever you pick in
the thing.
You can only upgrade to BC,right, so that was kind of our
walkthrough for that.
And then, once we got theapproval, we originally were
going to jump to NAV 2018 first,and we did in the background,

(11:07):
but we didn't do it for the, youknow, for the users.
Um, so we decided we could getto BC 14.
Um, so we did that instead.
So we did the work to get there.
We started with two companies,right guys?

Speaker 5 (11:22):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Um, yes, we started with two of our companies.
They were kind of our like testcompanies who do, who use a lot
of the models in the system,also have the best users for us.
We have a lot of power, we havepower users in every ledger, so
they have, like, the best users.
So for that it was like wewanted them because we knew we
would get the best testing outof them.

(11:43):
Right, I have you know.
So we picked them.
That project for them was sixmonths.
For us it was a year, behindthe scenes, right when Rama, you
can probably talk more aboutthose jumps in the background on
the technical side.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, I mean more.
Like you know, we converted thecode from.
I mean, we removed most of thecode from Microsoft objects and
separated it in preparation forthe future upgrades and then we
have a script which actuallycopies the companies.
As you know, we started withtwo companies and we cannot go

(12:20):
to a different database.
We started with one databasewith two companies and then, as
we upgrade the other two orthree, we just used to copy
those companies into the initialupgraded company.
So, yeah, the first step fromNAP 13 to BC 14 took a little
longer because we have all thesecompanies and we want to make

(12:41):
sure everything is included forall of the companies.
I think it took around like ayear and a half, right?
Yeah, I think we started yeah alittle over.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
We were already doing the refactoring piece right to
prepare for it, and I think thatwas like a year and a half, two
years, something like that,yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
But then once yeah, go ahead.
Yep, but then once yeah, goahead.
So you worked on all of this inthe back end, using you know
two to three companies as yoursort of a pilot.
You know you've identified yoursubject matter experts when
you've decided to move forwardand then slowly added all these
other companies along the wayand then kind of repeated the

(13:23):
process to, you know, towardsthe other companies as well.
So it created a foundation, itsounds like, for you and then
kind of repeated the processslowly with the rest.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
Correct.
Yeah, so the first one we did wetook we were giving a timeline
of six months.
So we have three PMs thathelped with this.
Right, we have three internalPMs, our team and then the SMEs.
So you know, we we follow theregular phases of a project.
We kicked off, we went throughum like we demoed it for
everyone because we did and thisis going to probably surprise

(13:57):
y'all, but we did go to the webclient to be seen on BC 14, um,
which was not a fun thing atfirst but it was beneficial.
When we took the next jump, umto get them used to it.
Uh, so we, we did it six months.
They kind of like helped usstabilize all the major issues
that came out of that um as wewere doing testing for that.
And then when we started doingthe rest of the groups, which I

(14:19):
think we did what three moregroups?
It was like six at a time.
After that, those we did infour months at a time each round
.
Yeah, so it was prettyfast-tracked after the first
round was kind of complete.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
You have some of the testing.
So, going from 2013 to BC-14,you chose to upgrade versus
re-implement, which means thatyou brought all of your
historical information over andhad that as part of the upgrade.
The other point that youmentioned is you had a lot of
modifications within the systemand you decided to refactor that

(14:59):
.
Well, you had to refactor thecode in essence to accommodate
the future development and theway that the extension structure
is for coding.
How did you determine whichmodifications to keep?
Did you go through a phase ofreviewing the functionality of
Business Central versus themodifications you have put in

(15:20):
place to see which modificationsyou bring forward?
Because I know personallythat's always been a challenge
with organizations upgrading oreven migrating or
re-implementing Business Centralfrom an earlier version.
They have a lot ofmodifications they made, they
spent a lot on thosemodifications in both time and
money, and sometimes, beforethey even touch it, they want to

(15:42):
bring all that stuff forward.
What process did you go throughto evaluate which modifications
to bring?

Speaker 3 (15:53):
forward versus the functionalities within Business
Central.
So basically what we did was wehave an external Excel actually
Google Docs actually where weused to have customization
specified for each companyseparately, like if a company
requested it, we used to keeptrack of which company requested
it and how many companies aregoing to use this.

(16:15):
So we had something in place toidentify how many
customizations we have.
I mean, may not be 100%, it'sbasically when I started in
forum.
From then we kept track of it.
It's from 2016.
So when we started with thefirst two companies, we would go
and see how many customizationsare requested by this company,

(16:36):
and I know how many are beingused by other companies.
So we would go to the powerusers and ask them are you
really using thesecustomizations anymore?
They would say yes, no, andthat would let us know okay, how
much should we keep it?
And the second step is when weare merging the code with

(16:58):
Microsoft.
Most of the times you know it'ssimilar, you know the field
convention or whatever.
So then when we're merging,actually we had an external
company help us.
So they would let us know okay,we have this code, do you want
to still keep it or no?
You know, of course I had meand my other developer.

(17:18):
We have to analyze and makesure, okay, we need it or not.
So it's a little bit of manualwork also.
And then going to the businessand we had.
It's not easy but we hadsomething in place that would
help us to identify all thesecustomizations, which ones to
keep, which ones to remove.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
You made a great point on what other end users or
people that want to decide tomove to Business Central to
really have in place.
You had mentioned that you'vedocumented the development or
customizations you've had in Navand then you quickly identified
okay, are they being used?

(17:57):
So you're doing an internaldiscovery and I appreciate you
mentioning that because you knowa lot of times some of these
you know businesses that'scoming from Nav go into Business
Central.
They don't have thosedocumented.
So you putting some work behindthat, some effort.
It really prepared you toidentify okay, do we need to

(18:17):
bring this technical debt or not?

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Right.
So I think that's a fantasticway to get yourself on a good
foundation.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yep.
That really helped us toidentify what to keep and what
to eliminate from thecustomization.
And also at the end of the day.

Speaker 5 (18:36):
I mean, it's about standardization as well.
So you want to standardizeacross companies and you want to
make sure, okay, if there is acustomization that could help
another company, then they canutilize that, we can keep it.
So that was another big thing.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, and just to add to that too, a part of this
round of upgrades that we did toget to BC 14, we used to have
like 20 different posted salesinvoices.
Now we have one per country.
Like, we standardize a lot ofthose documents so when they ask
for updates we don't have toupdate 20 documents, we can just
update the one or things likethat.

(19:12):
So we did a lot of documentstandardization on top of that.
But, and reports some of thereports we had like two or three
versions of.
We were able to standardizethose as well.
But I mean data-wise you can'treally standardize that once
it's in there.
So a lot of it, some of it likeunit of measure, has been a big
issue for us.
In some locations it's EA andothers it's each things like

(19:34):
that.
But we did get to standardizewhat we could while we were
doing this.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
No, it's excellent and it is a great exercise, as
Chris had pointed.
You can do an inventory of whatyou have and what you need and
only bring forward what you needas well, which is a big help.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
It's worth.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
In my opinion, it's worth the effort and the time
that you may spend, as you'regoing through an upgrade or a
re-implementation, to reallytake a step back in inventory of
what you have, and through thisprocess did you have to do any
data you mentioned the unit ofmeasure Are there?

Speaker 4 (20:14):
any other data cleansing or data
standardization considerationsthat you had to make?
We had to okay.
So was that on the BC 14 jumpwe had to remap item categories?
Is that when it changed to thehierarchy?

Speaker 5 (20:22):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
So we had to get that mapping redone and reloaded.
What else was there?
Was there another one that Ican think of?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
No but what we did was yeah, it was a main one.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
It was a big deal, all the open documents you know,
since if you don't go to thenext version it'll be there.
So what we did was we cleanedup a lot of open documents you
know, like logs and everything,before upgrading.
We didn't want to do all thedata, so we did quite a few
cleanup in every jump we did wecould.

(20:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
And we did have some fields that ended up being that
we customized, that ended upbeing standard fields, that we
mapped during the upgradeprocess and got rid of our
custom field.
I can't think of any off thetop of my head.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
External document number reference number.
There you go.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
Thank you, I knew you would remember, paula, this is
me.
We started this project in what2022, 2022.
We started this project so, andwe got to 2024, wave two uh in
march march, was it march, wewent live with that.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, so we just finished.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
We just got up to date in march and just finished.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
So yeah, well it's it .
It does take some up to date inMarch and just finished

(22:04):
no-transcript well, we had tojump in between there, didn't we
?
You went to 18 or no.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
We didn't go from 14 to 23 and then to no NAB 2013.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
He's talking about NAB 2013 to BC.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
14.
Bc.
14 to 23.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Bc 23 to BC 25.
5 to the 8.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
Whatever you pick it, I don't know why he did that.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Everybody still has the same issue with version
numbers right, he's so confusing.
I have that issue daily.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know, it's 25, it's 24, it's 23, it's 2025,
wave, one which is 26, which isit's I I don't know they should.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's very confusing, but yeah.
So we we took our time.
Getting to BC 14, right Rama,we did it ledger per ledger.
We getting to BC 14, right Rama, we did it ledger per ledger.
We put them on the web clientbecause we knew we were jumping
again pretty fast, so we wantedthem to be used to that view
rather than that classic view,that Windows view.
So when we jumped to 23,everybody went at one time.

(23:11):
We didn't take them per company, so that was a fun job.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
So organizationally, you went from 2013 to BC 14.
They were functioning on BC-14.
Then you did another migrationto 2024, wave 2.
Or to 23 Wave.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
No 24, Wave 2.

Speaker 4 (23:31):
We had to jump in between there Between 14 and 24,
wave 2.
We went live last August withit.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, that is BC-2023 .
2030, yeah, so you went livelast August with it.
Yeah, that is BC 2023.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
So you went from 23 then to 24.
You can see why we're confused.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
We don't know where we are.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, so so, and you did that jump to for one.
It sounds like for them to befamiliar with the application.
Yeah, was there?
Another consideration Is thatwhen you converted the
extensions from the code fromCAL to AL as well?

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Yes, from the BC14.
Yeah, BC14 to 23 is when weconverted the code.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Okay, yeah.
So your first step was toreview your modifications,
determine what you need to bringforward.
You made and brought thoseforward to BC 14 and Cal.
You then went through and didsome data sanitization.
I'll call it to the best youcould to clean it up a little
bit.
Then you made at that point youhad to now go to 23, which was,

(24:38):
with 14 being the last versionwhere you could use cal right.
23 is now where your fullextensions.
What was the process like formigrating the code to 23?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
um, I mean as to al I should say right yeah, yeah,
when, like as I mentioned, youknow, even in the NAP 13, when
we did the refactoring in theback end, we had the NAP 2018
database where we moved all thecode to functions and that
helped our external team to movefrom BC14-Cal to AL.

(25:14):
So I mean, it was we alreadygave them outlines, you know,
defined everything, so they justhad to move the code from cal
to al for us converted that's athat's a great strategy because
you went to bc14.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Um, it kept the back end in terms of cal, uh, but you
did that so that you have abetter user adoption, to get
them very comfortable using theweb client on bc14.
So when, when you did that sothat you have a better user
adoption, to get them verycomfortable using the web client
on BC 14.
So, when you did the CAL to ALin 2023, it didn't really affect
so much with the users becauseit's like hey, I'm already in BC
14.

(25:51):
I'm comfortable with the layoutand the look.
The user adoption 23 is like oh, we're just with no more
features.
Yeah, right, yeah, that'sexactly what it was.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
That was the exact plan, yeah exactly, yeah, pc 14
web client.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Of course, as you know, that was like there's some
limitations in it, and theywere excited when we kept saying
that, okay, all these thingswill be fixed in 23, next
version.
So and for them they reallythey didn't have any difference
when they upgraded 23, exceptthat they have more features
available.
So that's fine.

(26:25):
And the backend side?
They don't need to know what'shappening on the backend side
and we are already preparing onfrom 13 itself to 14.
And then when we had to move tothe AL on the 23, so it was not
that bad as we thought, likeall the code conversion was good
.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Was it fun when they went to BC 14?
You know, bc 14 web client was,you know, a fun one, right?
And then so you had to convincethem like, hey, it's going to
get better guys.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
It's going to get better.
The main issue with BC 14 isthe personalization it sucks
Like it's terrible and that waslike our biggest complaint.
They were jumping in and out ofrole centers trying to change
things Like you know it's.
They couldn't.
They just couldn't do thethings that you can do in nap 13
when you personalize Right, andthat's like a big deal to have

(27:12):
your own view of how you look atthe system.
So we were like just hang on.
When we get to 23, it getsbetter.
Please hang on.
But, like every group we rolledout, we would get ticket after
ticket after ticket.
I hate, I can't personalize.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
That was our biggest issue,right.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
The biggest one, oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
So a couple of our ledgers.
It depended on the phase right,so we started in 2022 and I
think all the way till whatAugust of last year.
So we had, you know, peoplewere coming in each phase but
they had to live in BC 14.
Yes.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
Yes, not happy with this either.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
And they were like but we kept giving them the hope
, we're like, we're almost there.
We're almost there.
You know when we went intotesting for BC 23,.
You could see people werehappier.
Just with the personalization,just with bookmarking, they're
like oh, I get my bookmarks Justbeing able to bookmark.
Yeah, it was funny.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
That made me laugh, brad.
Remember hope isn't a strategy,but it sounded like this was a
strategy and it worked.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Yeah, it worked, it works.
I mean yeah, but we had to keepgoing.
But if we would have stopped, Ithink they would have killed us
at some point.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
No, it does, because the product matured over the
years as well.
I mean, it was a big jump evenback then.
I'm it so that they could geteverybody to it and then start
hearing some of the things thatthey know that they needed to
invest, to add it sounds like.
I don't know if that was thecase, but it's almost like like
what you're saying just bringeverybody there, get everybody
to a certain stable point, thennow take into consideration what
people are missing and whatpeople are asking for and then
invest and add to that for themto have it.

(29:02):
So, and it's an interestingjourney that you have.
So now you went from 14 to 2024.
Wave two is where you ended up,yes, and now you just finished
the switch.
Has the dust settled yet?

Speaker 4 (29:20):
yeah, actually it has .
Um pablo actually ran thatproject so you could probably
speak to it.
The best pablo, I mean.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
You were in the, you're in the thick of it yeah,
I mean we had less than 20issues really reported.
Most of them were due to someof the release included pages
that we had custom.
So our custom pages werereplaced with now the standard
Business Central, like ServiceArchive, for example.

(29:48):
We had a custom for that, sothat had to get replaced.
So there were some permissionsthat were also required for that
.
So most of the issues that wehad were related to permissions
to new objects and let's see,maybe our extensions that's just
about it or add-ons, somethinglike that.
Wow, that's excellent.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
So when you went from 2013 all the way up to BC24,
what was the ratio like in termsof changing business processes
versus customization?
Clearly, there's some thingsthat you didn't bring over.
You know, was there a lot ofthat business process changes?

Speaker 4 (30:26):
I don't think there was anything like major.
We did have to leave behind.
Um, we had our own documentattachment process and NAV 13
that did not upgrade, but wemoved everybody to just regular
attachments and and peopleseemed to love that more.
I don't think we had, except itdidn't exist on the service
side, but we built that for them.

(30:47):
But I can't think of any othermajor process change that
happened.

Speaker 5 (30:52):
I think the other one was templates.
Item templates.
Oh item templates yeah, mm-hmm,yeah, so they have the.
You know, in NAV 13 and BC 14,they had their item templates
that they could use and set upwhat's mandatory, etc.
But now you have in BC 25, youhave your.
I'm not even sure what thedifference.

(31:13):
I think it's configurationtemplates, maybe, and now in BC
it's item templates.
So some of those fields thatwere included in NAV 13 and BC
14 are no longer available onthe standard item templates that
they had that they have to usenow in BC 25.
So we're still battling thatone.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, yes we are still battling that one in the
UK.
Well, that sounds like a goodone.
So, looking back at theimplementation and how you went
through the planning, so you didthe demonstrations to validate
the product that you were movingto.
You viewed your customizations,you did some data sanitization,

(31:53):
you did an initial jump toincrease user adoption and, I'm
going to assume, to also testthe functionality as you
migrated from Cal, which was thewild wild West, to an organized
version of Cal.
Then you converted your AL codeand then you migrated up to the
version of business centralthat you're running now.
That's a lot.

Speaker 4 (32:13):
It doesn't sound like a lot and people don't realize
it's a lot.
It sounds like it's so easy.
That's it.
You summed it up.
But hey, look that last jumpfrom like 23 to whatever we're
calling this version we're onright now 25.
Yeah, that was like a breeze.
We just called that a monthlyrelease for us.

Speaker 5 (32:29):
I don't yeah that one was clean.
That one was clean, that onewas super clean.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
So our goal moving forward because we're on prem,
so our goal moving forward is toalways be, I think what two
jumps behind Rama?
Maybe be I think what two jumpsbehind rama, maybe one jump.
If we can, if it looks good, um, that way we can.
You know, we can work out kinksand stuff like all those kinks
get worked out before we makethat next jump.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Um, so, but you, know , the more current you stay, the
easier it gets the easier itgets, yeah it was well because
just you don't have as radicalchanges as because they are
evolving.
The application, add infeatures toin functionality, the
changing the data structure,which is, again, it's a normal
part of the evolution ofsoftware as business needs.
But if you can stay currentwith it, that's the advantage of

(33:12):
the online version.
You stay current with it.
All the time you don't have togo through a three-year
implementation for each step.
Hopefully you can do it alittle bit easier.
So, as far as the movement ofthe data, how did you move the
data as you upgrade it?
Did you use the standard toolsfor that?
Did you have to get?

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Most of them are standard tools, but we have
quite a few custom fields, so wehad to include our custom
fields also.
Uh yeah, we, we didn't spend awhole lot.
It's most of them the standarduh tools.
Only we used standard Microsofttools.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
I'm very happy to hear that, because I know others
.
I've known others that tried todo other external ways and
sometimes they paid for it rightbecause the, the, the way it is
of course done in extensions isall the custom fields are in a
different table.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
They give us EXT as an appending to the standard
tables, which is a good thing.
So I mean we use the standardMicrosoft tools to convert all
the data.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, that's excellent.
I'm happy to hear that, and ifyou have a lot of data to move,
it must have taken some time torun?
How much?
If you can say, I mean any ofthis stuff.
If you cannot say it, Iunderstand as well.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
I think one ledger was what 48 hours or something.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Overall the whole database is.
Our database is 900 GB.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
So it's 900 gigabyte Gig, right yeah.
So it's 900 gigabyte, Rightyeah.
And it took you how long tomove it.
It must have been challengingto do individual companies.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Right, not to BC14.
It wasn't, was it?
That one was not that bad.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
No, no, the latest upgrade.
We did all these 800, 900.
Gb.
It took like 15 hours, wow,that's good.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
That's not that bad at all.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
There's a few things we did after that, which is not
related to the upgrade, but weincluded it because it's the
cleanup process and all.
But in general, the Microsoftupgrade process didn't take like
15, not more than 20 hoursdefinitely.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
There you go yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
We had to do it over the weekend, used the standard
tools?

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Yes, for sure do all the weekend Used standard tools.
Yes, yeah, sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
No, the standard tools were into it.
So, looking back at this, ifyou could summarize, you know
from each of you what are somethings that you thought went
really really well and becauseof what, for whatever reason.
From preparation or planning,you know what went really well
because of that and frompreparation or planning, you
know what went really wellbecause of that.
And then maybe, now that thedust is settling as we discussed

(35:47):
, what would you have donedifferently or what have you
uncovered as you went throughthat process?
So somebody else who may begoing through the similar
journey, taking pieces everyimplementation is different but
they may have not thought ofsomething that maybe that you
realize you should have or mayhave done differently, not
thought of something that maybethat you realize you should have
or may have done differently.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
I'll say one of the things that I think we did
really well is we have a verystrong group of power users in
every ledger that we depend onfor testing.
So, like my team willinternally test, right but we
don't know everydayfunctionality of what goes on in
every one of those ledgers.
So when we identified thembefore we kicked in every one of
those ledgers.
So when we we identified thembefore we kicked off every one
of these projects and we askedthem to break our system,
literally we were like pleasebreak it, do what you can to

(36:31):
break it.
We want to know, and I thinkthat was like the biggest thing
that we did.
That was helpful for us duringthis upgrade, cause we caught a
lot of stuff in the first round.
I think that would have been somajor show-stopping if we had
four or five going at a time,like four or five ledgers going
at one time.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Just to jump into that, you had SMEs that worked
with you on the testing.
Going through this process,often with the implications of
challenges, is how much time doyou give someone to do testing?
How do you manage the testingto make sure that they're
actually testing?
Did you have any tools in placeto help with the testing?
And then what about what somepeople say the day job?

(37:13):
Because as you're going throughthis implementation, you may
have these power users and theydo more than just test.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
They do just more than I'm assuming know see how
things are working.
They do have a day-to-day workfor it.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
But how did you manage that to allow them to
have time to test, and how didyou track the testing and come
up with use case scenarios forthem to test?
What was that process like?

Speaker 4 (37:38):
I'll give that one to Pablo, because he just did the
last round of it, so he'sprobably got it fresh in his
mind.
I'll give that one to Pablo,because he just did the last
round of it, so he's probablygot it fresh in his mind?

Speaker 5 (37:45):
Yeah, so definitely.
I mean, we took the releasenotes and those release notes.
We divided those up.
We were seeing what was goingto impact us, what wasn't Like
some of the AI stuff that's inthere, the co-pilot things, I

(38:07):
mean we're on-prem, so that'snot going to affect us.
So we kind of took those out ofthe equation and we just worked
on what was going to impact allof our ledgers and then we
assigned those to our SMEs onour support team and those SMEs
tested internally and then wecreated the test scripts if
needed for our end users toactually test.
We set a deadline for them totest and then, once they passed
it, then we were good to go.
We were good to to release thatwith the BC 25.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Yeah, and that one was for the 25.
For the rest of them, weactually have super scenarios
that we established a long timeago, um, that we make all of our
and we use TFS um for testing.
So we make them go in and signoff on them in there.
Um, for you know, they're verygeneric test scripts, basically
like the basics to creating asales order, you know, shipping

(38:50):
a sales order, invoicing,whatever.
Um, if they have any otherfields that they require, things
like that, we ask them to makesure they test them on their own
.
Um, for all of these updatesthat we've done, we have
sessions.
We have two-hour sessions withthe power users where we make
them sign off on the testscripts and do the actual

(39:11):
testing, and then we do separatesessions for training for
everybody else who wants to join.
Everything gets recorded so ifsomeone can't join they can
watch it later.
We do have certain power userswho do go above and beyond for
us and they would take, like, ifthey're in like sales, they
would actually take five or 10orders they entered in their
live environment during the dayand they'd spend an hour at the

(39:32):
end of the day entering thesetypes of orders in to the test
environment just to have reallive kind of scenarios.
So we're kind of lucky withthose.
We't require those.
We only have to have a sign offon a test script.
But we do ask for those kindsof things so we do have.
Like I said when I say ourpower users are the best, like
we have some really good powerusers out there that want to

(39:53):
make sure they function greatwhen we're live.
So it helps us out.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's fantastic to hear like you know you giving
that and I know Brad and I hadplenty of conversations with
others in the community whereyou have to give an opportunity
for them to be able to test, andit sounds like you have that
planned out where you're givingthem two hours, you know,
whatever day that is, and justall they do is like, hey, you're

(40:18):
allowed to do this, you'reencouraged to test, you're
allowed to do this, you'reencouraged to test, you're
encouraged to break the systemand get comfortable with it and
not reprimand them for you know,hey, you're not meeting your
day-to-day task.
You know what I mean.
And then do it at the same time.
Help us implement this thing.
So you have one of those like Ihate to say, rare, it is, it is

(40:42):
.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
It took us a long time to get these power users on
board too.
I think it's gotten better withevery jump we've done.
I think they've learned, butlike it took us a while.
But yeah, we really do havegreat power users that do that
we also.
I mean that environment wasit's it's, it's a testing

(41:02):
environment.
I think it was there for what?
Two, three months for them totest in during the whole process
.
What cause?
We were doing sessions and wewere like you don't have to wait
for us, you can log in rightnow and start your testing,
we're just going to have thesession anyways, kind of thing.
Um, we had early morning 2 AMsessions and then repeated them
again at noon, just cause we're,you know, international and the

(41:25):
major thing too.
Sorry, ron, I'm just going tosay this.
The major thing too is we makethem test with whatever
permissions they have inproduction today.
So a lot of people just give upand want to test functionality
and set all their users up assupers, and then they go live
and then they have nopermissions to do anything.
So we do test permissions alongwith that whole process as well

(41:47):
.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
That is beautiful because I know of so many
implementations that the firstday they start, everyone gets
frustrated because they can't doanything.
And it's because, as you hadmentioned, they didn't want to
inhibit testing, because theydidn't want users to get
frustrated with permissions.
But then they just sort ofpushed that down the road,
because now, when they're goinglive and they're supposed to

(42:08):
work, it seems like nothing'sworking because they can't do
anything.
It's because the permissions.
So it's great that you testedwith that and you flushed that
as well too, and now, sinceyou're up into the latest
version, you can incorporate thenew love of my life page
scripting.
That can maybe help you withsome of these testings.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
I hope so.
Yeah, it's on my list.
Yeah, so we actually have onelocation that we acquired Was it
last November, I think they're.
They're a business centralonline and he uses the page
scripting our support guy overthere and he loves it.
We have to be able to recordthe results somewhere when
someone runs the test, becausewe get audited and we have to

(42:48):
show test results.
Yeah, so that's the only thingwe haven't really figured out
yet, but it is on our list.
I know, pablo, haven't?
You dove into it a little bit.

Speaker 5 (42:56):
Yes, a little bit, a little bit yes.
As soon as we had that updateon there and that release note,
I went and tried it out and,yeah, it was great it's
wonderful Replay will track thetest results for you.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Oh, that's good yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
My guy at Veriperm.
Well, at the other ledger ofVeriperm, yeah, he says he just
takes screenshots and I'm likeI'm not saving screenshots yeah,
pablo, take a look at Replay.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
You can automate some of those tests and it will
track the results for you.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
Okay, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
It will give you a lot with it.
It does give you videos, itgives you the results, it gives
you everything, so you'll beable to see, if you'd like to
see the actual test, that aregoing with it too.
So it sounded like the testingwas something that you thought
you did really well.
What about?
And we?

Speaker 3 (43:41):
always say one more thing to you, and every time we
upgrade not only creating neworders we make them test the
orders existing before upgrade.
You know partial up ordersbecause if something got
upgraded we don't know, so ifyou create a new it might work.
So that's something we makesure they test new orders and
old orders, and partial you knowinvoice or shipments or

(44:03):
whatever for the old and neworders.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
So yes, that's an invoicing and, honestly, that is
a result of our tax engine.
When we did the last update, wehad to actually write a script
to revalidate all our orders fortax because they weren't
validated.
Yeah, we learned that one.
On group one of the BC-14 jumpthey weren't validated.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, we learned that one on group one of the BC 14
jump.
No, you need those taxes.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
Need taxes yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
So so do you have anything that you think went
really well from yourperspective, other than testing?

Speaker 5 (44:39):
I would say yeah, I mean I would say for for, from a
permission standpoint, testingwith the user's permissions
internally.
That's always helpful as wellto make sure that you can, you
know, get those error messagebefore you hand it over to the
user, so you can test with Superjust to make sure that
everything works, everythingfunctions correctly.

(44:59):
But then also turn around andgive your take a user, a power
user, copy their permissions,give it to your user.
That way you can test withtheir permissions and you can
catch everything beforehand.
That's also really helpful.
And let's see, I like Jessesaid, I mean our power users are
great, so that's definitely aplus in our SMEs, on our team.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
It's excellent, excellent.
It all comes down to the usersto make the implementation
easier.
Also, the users sometimes don'trealize they're making it
easier for themselves, and bygetting them in there, it sounds
like they were able to havesome ownership of it as well.
So I think it's a little biteasier if they feel that they

(45:51):
have a good part or part of theimplementation process, versus
it being forced down theirthroat, to say it bluntly which
is nice, ramas, anything thatyou look back, that you thought
went really well, that youplanned for.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
I mean, overall, everything's fine.
For me being on the technicalteam, the way we started doing
the code conversion, you know,and then now it's ongoing.
Actually we still find someissues and we'll just make sure
that we follow the standards,like basically Microsoft
standards, you know.
I know we cannot customize anyof the standard objects now, so

(46:17):
we just try to keep it asseparate as it is, so more easy
for the next upgrade.
So the timeline the reason whyI'm saying is every time we've
been upgrading from 13 to PC, 14to 23 to 25, the timeline went
down every time we're doing it.
So that really made a good thing, we are separating everything

(46:39):
from Microsoft Objects, so,which means, when we are
upgrading it, we just take itout, upgrade Microsoft and then
plug.
It means, when we are upgradingit, we just take it out,
upgrade Microsoft and then plugit in and that's it.
So we are doing really great onthat.
Excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I do like your cadence to do one to two
versions behind right.
Yeah yeah, because a lot oftimes where people move to
on-prem business center, theykind of just leave it alone as
if they'll never upgrade againand it is an internal
conversation or internaldecision.
Okay, how far back do you wantto be behind?

(47:11):
Because then you go back tothat same old ways of nav where
you stay in nav 2013 right foryears to come, versus with
business central, with the wayyou guys have set up, you're
setting it up every two versionsbehind at most and so you're
always upgrading.
So that's fantastic it is.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
It is you get the latest updates as well.
So if there are things thataren't working properly or need
to work slightly different, youget those.
So you can alleviate somefrustration and again, as we
were talking about it, goes muchquicker in retrospect, looking
back.
What is something or somethings?
If you have that you look backthat you wish you had done
differently, or you wish you hadplanned differently, sort of

(47:55):
something that you had learnedthat maybe didn't go the way
that you wish you had donedifferently, or you wish you had
planned differently, sort ofsomething that you had learned
that maybe didn't go the waythat you wanted and you wish you
had either known about orplanned differently.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Oh, rama, you should tell them about the server
patches.
Remember the server patches randuring the upgrade?
Yeah, right, and rolled it back.
Yeah, that's of course aninternal schedule.
Now, during the upgrade, yeah,yeah, and rolled it back.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's, of course, an internalschedule now.
I mean, it happened for onefirst time and then from then
onwards we just make sure wekeep track of any patching not
done during the you know go live, because we lost a day.
Luckily that it was for BC23, Ithink we gave a buffer, a lot

(48:37):
of buffers, so that's why wedidn't really, even though we
lost a day of work because ofthe patching for the servers,
but still we made it.
But that's something, yeah, wemade it in the deadline.
The deadline was made because weplanned ahead.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
We planned for it.
Yeah, we gave ourselves a day.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
We gave ourselves a day, a day extra.
Of course, pablo said when westarted this upgrade he went
through the Microsoft releasenotes, but I think we 100% don't
want to go with whateverthey're saying because they
missed some of them.
When we are doing the codeconversion, then we have to do

(49:17):
QA and see what else is involvedin it, because there's some
things Microsoft might thinkit's not a big deal.
I think there's a field whichthey made it a mandatory during
the code but it's not even therein the release notes.
But it is a process for ourside it affected, but it didn't
make a huge difference.
Process for our site itaffected, but it didn't make a

(49:38):
huge difference.
We had to work after the releaseupgrade but we overlooked it
because we thought, okay, well,they didn't do anything.
So for the next version notonly the release nodes we have
decided to go through the.
We'll just do a QA, likeMicrosoft objects, and see what
is that they removed or what isthat they added and we can

(49:59):
analyze is it going to affect usor not.
So that's one of the things forus.
For the technical side, we haveto do it next time.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yeah, it's good.
I've heard stories like thatbefore, so you're not alone
where they had server reboots orother maintenance plans
scheduled and it threw thingsoff quite a bit.
So you're not alone in thataspect.
Are there any other things thatyou can think of that you wish
you would have planneddifferently for or handled
differently to?

(50:29):
Anybody that may be, goingthrough the process or was it
just perfect?
No other thing?
No, we're not perfect, you know, I will say we had.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
we had some add-ons that we kind of struggled with.
I know our tax engine.
For the first jump I think wejust assumed everything would
update but we had to actuallyreload a lot of stuff with our
tax engine, revalidate, runthose scripts to revalidate all
the open orders Just stuff weweren't expecting, that we
didn't catch during testing.
I remember that for the taxpiece I know Pablo for was it

(51:03):
the TCM we lost some historicaldata that you had to go and
manually load.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
Yes for some posted time cards, things like that
yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:14):
So I mean all fixable things just weren't caught in
the front end because nobodythought let me go look at my
historical posted time cardlines, you know, or you know
everybody just assumed once youplugged in your tax engine all
you had to do is clickstatistics again and it would be
fine.
But not everybody does that.
So just little things like thatdoes that.

(51:37):
So just little things like that, other than that, we're perfect
.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
It sounds like you went well I mean you spent some
time to plan it.
You had the users testing andfortunately you have the right
individuals on your team to helppush it through and guide you
through it.
Not all implementations have tobe problematic, and nor, in
this case, are implement are allimplementations problematic,
but it just goes to show that alittle bit of planning and
proper procedure can make iteasier and you don't have to

(52:03):
rush through it.
I know it's not easy.
Sometimes you can get thoseusers in there, but if it's
sometimes just training issuesversus having systemic or data
issues, it makes a little biteasier.
But I'm happy to hear that youhad a pleasant journey with the
application, which is great.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Yeah, our project planning timeline is.
I think it's perfect.
You know we all agree with thetimeline.
Sometimes they crunch it, butnormally yeah.
But you know, in general theplanning team, like project
manager planning is actuallygood yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
They're heavily involved as well, sorry to
interrupt.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:44):
No no that's good.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
I was about to ask about the managing of the
project.
Clearly, you know the three ofyou are in the trenches and
testing and making sure you knowusers are testing, but at the
same time you have somebody hasto coordinate all of that, right
?
So I'm sure you're working withall the different internal
departments, but then you alsohave, potentially, your partners

(53:06):
and your ISVs that you workwith.
I mean, those all still have tobe coordinated.
So and Jessie, you hadmentioned you have four project
managers.
Did I hear that right?
We have three.
Well, we have four projectmanagers.
Did I hear that right?

Speaker 4 (53:16):
We have three.
Well, we have four, but threewere on the project, but one of
them is the manager of theproject managers.
I don't know how to the projectmanager manager.
Pmo.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
PMO.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
And he helps out too as much as he can, but the three
were actually the ones planningit together.
We did, I think, not for 14.
Did we bring the two other?

Speaker 2 (53:38):
ones.
Remember we had two consultantscome in.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
That was 23.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
Yeah, they came in and helped during the 23 one
because it was a bigger jump.
It was like all the ledgerswere jumping at one time it was
more.
But for the BC 14 jump we hadthe three and we really laid out
the foundation for that andjust fast tracked it for the
rest of it.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Were there internal PMs or were there.
Okay, so with you, I mean works.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
Yeah, three internal PMs for the BC 14 jump and then
we had three internal and twoexternal for the 23 jump.
Yeah, just because we weretaking more ledgers at once.
The only regret I have with thefast tracking of the timeline
when we went to, like, from 14to 23, like in there or some of

(54:26):
the BC 14 updates afterwards, iswe tried to merge testing and
training into one session and Ithink it caused a lot more
confusion at some areas into onesession and I think it caused a
lot more confusion at someareas.
I don't think I'll do thatagain.
I think we'll just keep itseparate moving forward.
Do you remember that, pablo?

Speaker 5 (54:44):
Yes, definitely yeah, we had to change it up in the
middle.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
We tried something new and it, you know it, I think
everybody was confused on whohad to sign off on the test
scripts was the main thing.
But yeah, we were like no, justthis person, it's fine you know
, but yeah it gets a littleconfusing in there.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Yeah, it definitely is.
I mean, especially what workedbefore.
Yeah, you tried something new.
It didn't work.
You know you iterate fast.
Now, going back to the ISVcomment I made earlier, was
there any ISVs or add-ons thatyou had where it didn't exist in
Business Central?
Did you come across any ofthose and if so, what was your

(55:25):
process like in replacing them?
Or did you even replace it andjust change the business process
?
Was there any of that happening?

Speaker 4 (55:35):
No, I think everything updated.
The attachment is the one theydidn't upgrade.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
We used the standard Microsoft functionality, which
process-wise is not different,but it's just different
Microsoft we are using, and Ithink, easy security they didn't
upgrade but the standardMicrosoft security is good, so
we had these two not working inthe Business Central, but
Microsoft options are alreadythere, so we didn't have to

(56:03):
really replace it.

Speaker 5 (56:04):
Did the rental fall into that Rental module?
We?

Speaker 4 (56:06):
removed the rental module because it wasn't being
used.
During the update we strippedthat out and one of the shipping
add-ons that we had sold thoseledgers and they were the only
ledgers that used it.
So we stripped the shippingthat shipping add-on that we had
out as well.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Got it.
So there wasn't major ISVs oradd-ons where like hey, they're
not going to Business Central,so there was a major change.
I mean you mentioned EasySecurity, but then you have a
replacement for that you knowout-of-the-box functionality.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
Yeah, Okay, Everything else.
Updated Everything else.
Yeah, had an extension we coulduse.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
So you had the perfect storm.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
I guess they would say, right, like, just
everything, just… I mean westill had to customize some of
those extensions to make themwork for us.
With our processes we have avery, very customized inventory
count process.
So that one actually when wejumped to 23, wasn't ready yet.
It took a little bit longer.
Um, so people were having tolike, do me, we have, like we

(57:12):
have a process in place where weschedule random counts.
So we have like it's a job runsand it just creates a count for
us and then they go print itand they do counts.
That wasn't working.
So they were having to manuallyrun their accounts every week
to do the randoms, things likethat.
Just little things that weren'tready yet.
But, like I said, thatinventory account module that we
use, we customized it a lot tojust work with our policy that

(57:36):
we have for accounting inventory.
So, yeah, sure, other than that, I mean everything else I think
was pretty straightforward.
Quality took a little bitlonger.
Pablo.

Speaker 5 (57:45):
Yes, yeah, quality was new because it moved from
what it was to separate, so itwas kind of a package before
quality and time collection, butthen they separated that, so
that was a new thing.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Got it.
So, with with all of thissuccesses, you have certainly a
lot of planning that you've done.
You know everything went uppretty smoothly.
You know, are you?
Are any of you doing anyspeaking sessions then to talk
about how you should do abusiness, central implementation
or upgrade?

Speaker 4 (58:18):
No, this is great.
Haven't you met me by now?
You know how much I hatespeaking Like oh Lord.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
That's a good point.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
I did volunteer Pablo to join the New to BC panel for
Summit.
So me and Pablo will be on thatpanel at summit new to bcs with

Speaker 1 (58:40):
david volunteer.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Still pablo, that was that was voluntold so I had one
of my employees do it with melast year, but she's not going
this year.
Um.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
So I was like, well, pablo, you can do it, you'll be
good I'm looking forward to that, seeing that session you'll
probably have a session at thesame time, so you know, probably
not the new to bc they usuallydo first right, the first step
the first timers meeting isthat's me, steve chinsky and kim
dollfield and that's on day one.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
That one's like a fast chat one.
This one's that panel one, theask the experts panels.
We do for every track weusually do for every track.
I added ours because I wantedours in there, because ours was
very successful last year.
We had a lot of questions.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
A lot of um people who were moving over from gp
were in there asking us a bunchof questions I think you'll have
a lot of questions this yearbased on what I see and what I
know that there are.
Thankfully the product is sortof exploding.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Yeah, that's why David Laster's in there, because
he's very, very knowledgeableon that migration.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
That's good to have someone in there.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
We'll take this recording.
You set your structure of youragenda.
Then you submit your session tohow to implement Business
Central in a 55 company.
That's actually impressive.

Speaker 5 (01:00:01):
Brad summed it up earlier, so we have the notes
already.
Yeah, there you go.
We'll get to the transcript andyou can go through the process
and tell your tales and go fromthere.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Well, jesse Pablo Rama, thank you very much for
taking the time to speak with ustoday and share your story.
It's nice to hear you know anice implementation story of
Business Central and what ittakes to go through
implementation, and it's nice tohear that they're not all bad
and some of them are very easyand a lot of them are very easy
as well I regards me here.

(01:00:32):
So we look forward to seeingyou in Orlando in October.
Hopefully I can go to your newto BC session as well, and we
look forward to talking with yousoon, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Thank you, thank you, perfect Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Thank you, bye.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
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 (01:00:57):
Thank you, brad, guests, for participating.
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom, that is
D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, andyou can interact with them via

(01:01:20):
Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E.
You can also find me atMattalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot
I-O, and my Twitter handle isMattalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.

(01:01:41):
Thank you and take care.