Cloud Considerations for Current Dynamics GP Users
If you pay attention to commercials or online ads, you’ll notice a strong trend among all technology companies. More and more, companies are promoting the benefits of the cloud for both personal and professional use. While most consumers are now using the cloud to back up pictures, contacts, and data on their phones, many are not yet considering all of the different ways it could benefit a business.
Current Dynamics GP users are chained to hardware – which means costly backups, maintenance, disaster recovery backups, and IT security costs. Maintaining hardware also means buying a new expensive server every three to five years. Just like a new car, the value of your hardware immediately starts depreciating the moment you turn it on. With cloud-based software like Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft is responsible for all hardware purchases and maintenance – removing the financial liability from your organization.
Having your ERP software in the cloud allows your employees to be more flexible. With access on any device, in any location, your employees can work from where they are without an RDP connection. This eliminates missed productivity days when an employee has to stay home with a sick child or when they have to travel for work. Additionally, it allows companies to expand their hiring area due to the ease of managing remote employees.
Probably the most beneficial reason that companies are moving to the cloud is interconnectivity. With Dynamics 365, each area of your business has a 360-degree view of your data. With the right systems and processes in place, you could easily speed up your sales and fulfillment process, increase customer satisfaction, and have a better understanding of your business KPIs.
By connecting your people and processes with a single, unified solution, data can be quickly and easily shared with key people throughout your company. You have access to the most current, accurate data so you’re making the most informed decisions possible.
For example, the second a sales rep in the field makes a change to a customer quote, it gets reflected in the numbers being pulled for a forecast report back at the office. With more accurate information at your fingertips, decisions have a bigger impact on the bottom line.
Functions like banking and CRM systems are just as integrated, so your people can share the most current data and respond to customer requests faster with the most accurate information. A few examples include:
- With PayPal Payments Standard extension, users can pay invoices faster using a trustworthy payment service and without having to enter their credit card information on websites.
- Yodlee Bank Feeds service allows users to quickly reconcile payments by linking system bank account to their online bank accounts.
Outside of the core Dynamics 365 product, integrations also extend to other Microsoft applications that you use daily like Word and Excel. This gives users an easy way to import and export data between applications without having to complete any manipulations of data. The Power Platform also directly integrates with Dynamics 365 Business Central. Power Platform includes Flow, Power BI, and Power Apps.
Flow allows you to generate workflows and approval processes within Business Central and includes 280+ connectors. Power BI is a data visualization and reporting tool that uses information directly from your system that can be viewed within Business Central or on its own. Finally, Power Apps allow ‘citizen developers’ to quickly build and deploy applications to connect apps or add functionality.
When you’re considering where your business will be in the next five or ten years, it would be detrimental not to consider how Dynamics 365 Business Central can help you reduce costs, gain better insights into your data, and connect your departments and processes
Learn more about transitioning from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central.
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