IKT BilişimMoving from your current accounting or ERP system to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is more than a software installation. A well-planned migration gets every department in the business working from the same data. In this post we summarise the main steps of a migration project.
1. Clarify the current state and your goals
How do processes run today? Which reports are used in purchasing, sales, inventory, production and finance? Writing down the result you expect from the migration at the start (for example, a faster month-end close or better inventory visibility) keeps the scope from growing later.
2. Define the scope and phases
Instead of switching everything on at once, it is usually safer to start with core modules such as finance and inventory, and leave areas such as production, service or reporting for later phases.
3. Clean up master data
Customer and vendor accounts, item cards, bills of materials and the chart of accounts should be reviewed before they are moved to the new system. Duplicate records and unused cards should stay in the old system.
4. Setup and customisation
Keep Business Central's standard structure as much as possible, and develop custom features only where they are really needed. This makes future version upgrades easier.
5. Opening balances and data migration
Open customer and vendor balances, inventory quantities and values, fixed assets and open orders are transferred as of an agreed date. After the transfer, balances in the old and new systems should be compared.
6. Testing and training
End-to-end tests are run with real scenarios (from a sales order to an invoice, from a purchase to a goods receipt). Users learn by trying their own work in the new system.
7. Go-live and the first month
The first month-end close after go-live shows whether the system has really settled in. Close support and short feedback loops matter during this period.