Migrating to Microsoft Business Central: A Starting Point

Unlocking Efficiency and Clean Data for Your Business

Migrating to an ERP system like Microsoft Business Central (BC) is a transformative step for any business. Not only does it streamline operations, but it also opens doors to optimise and cleanse your existing data. This is a rare opportunity, as changing your ERP system isn’t an everyday occurrence. Hence, it’s crucial to make the most of it.

The Importance of Data Cleansing

One of the most significant benefits of migrating to BC is the chance to cleanse your data. Cleaning your data ensures that only the most accurate and relevant information is carried over, eliminating outdated and redundant data. In our most recent implementation, we worked closely with our clients key people to cleanse things like “Customers” and “Vendors” data, ensuring that only up-to-date and relevant information was migrated to BC.
Data Cleansing | String Systems

Mapping Out Processes

Before diving into the Business Central program, and again, working closely with key people, we mapped out most of the business processes on a whiteboard. This visual representation helped us and our clients understand the workflows and identify inefficiencies. We believe in leveraging the expertise of our clients, the true experts in their business, to find the most efficient ways of rolling out BC. By combining our BC expertise with the customer’s business knowledge, we ensure a seamless and efficient migration process. The areas covered comprehensively in these sessions are specific to each clients needs but would typically cover the following areas:
  • Financial management
  • Business intelligence
  • Sales management
  • Supply chain management
  • Project management
  • Service management
  • Warehouse management
  • Manufacturing

Development and Testing

With this particular client, we were able to delve deep into processes that had had been fine tuned over years of the client living and breathing their business. This meant that we were able to develop and customise BC to match these processes. At the same time, we able to bring a few new ideas based on best practice from Microsoft and our own expertise earned from years in business and technical capability and skill. This meant that during the testing phase, we could see the true power of implementing such a comprehensive system like BC along with bringing users on board. For me this can be one of the most exciting and reward part of the stages we go through.

Tapping into customer expertise

Whilst we have touched on how we involve our clients key people, it is such an important part of the process that I am going to go into a little more detail. Our approach involves tapping into the expertise of our customers. While we are experts in BC, our customers are experts in their business. By collaborating closely with them, we ensure that all business processes are thoroughly reviewed and optimised. This collaboration helps us find the most efficient ways to implement BC, tailored to the unique needs of each business.

Ongoing Training and Support

Training in the first instance starts as early as the development and testing phase. It is in this phase that we map out the what and who part of the training process. Allocating “champions” in the business early on helps with accelerating in house client capability and ongoing training courses follow up with the rest of the team. Finally, a support package ensures that ongoing queries, be they training or further development are hugely beneficial in the successful implementation and ongoing update rollout process.,.,.

Migrating to Microsoft Business Central is a significant step, offering a unique opportunity to cleanse your data and optimize your business processes. By following the recommended steps for areas such as customers and vendors to items, fixed assets, and the chart of accounts, you can ensure a smooth and efficient migration. Leveraging the expertise of both our team and your business, we work together to unlock the full potential of Business Central, driving efficiency and success in your business operations.

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