Cloud Data Migration: Ensure a Successful Migration from Dynamics GP to Business Central
While new technologies and updated capabilities tend to dominate an ERP transition, one of the most overlooked – but important – factors in ensuring a successful migration is something less flashy: your data.
The quality of your data directly impacts the quality of your GP to Business Central cloud migration. Trying to transfer years of outdated, duplicate, or inconsistent information into a new system can cause unnecessary headaches from day one. Taking the time to prepare, organize, and optimize your data before migration often results in smoother implementations, cleaner reporting, and a better overall user experience.
In this blog and video, we will highlight key data considerations that can help set your migration up for success, including:
- Preparing your data
- Choosing the right migration strategy
- Redesigning your chart of accounts
- Cleaning master records
- Determining what historical information to retain
- Understanding what the implementation looks like from start to finish
Data Considerations Before Migration
Preparing your data isn't simply about exporting information from Dynamics GP and importing it into Business Central. It's an opportunity to evaluate how your organization manages information today and decide what will provide the most value tomorrow.
Instead of asking,
"How do we move everything?"
ask yourself:
"What data does our business actually need to succeed going forward?"
That simple change in perspective can dramatically improve the outcome of your migration and reduce the roadblocks you might see on the way.
Think Beyond Your ERP
Moving from an on-premises environment to the cloud involves more than replacing Dynamics GP.
Many organizations currently rely on a combination of file servers, SQL databases, Exchange Server, Active Directory, and various supporting applications. As you transition to Microsoft's cloud ecosystem, information that once lived across multiple on-premises systems may now reside in services like SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Azure SQL, Dataverse, Azure App Services, and the Power Platform.
This is an ideal time to evaluate where your information belongs and how your users should access it moving forward.
Review Your Existing Data
Most GP environments contain years – sometimes decades – of accumulated information and data. While most of it is likely still necessary and relevant to your business, not every single record needs to jump to the cloud.
It’s important to take time to evaluate:
- Data that can be consolidated or simplified
- External spreadsheets and supporting files
- Existing integrations that feed information into GP
- Whether those integrations will continue in Business Central
- What role each data source will play in your future environment
Thinking through these questions now helps eliminate unnecessary complexity later.
Start Cleaning Early
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is waiting until implementation begins before cleaning their data. The fact of the matter is that if you are considering a move to the cloud, the best time to start reviewing your data is today.
Some things to look at and consider include:
- Duplicate customers
- Duplicate vendors
- Obsolete inventory items
- Inconsistent naming conventions
- Inactive records
Cleaning your data ahead of time reduces implementation effort while giving your new Business Central environment a much cleaner starting point. It will also reduce disruptions with your new solution, as users can operate more effectively if they know the data relevant to their roles will be there.
Look for Process Improvements
A migration project is also an opportunity to rethink how work gets done. While there might be certain processes and workflows that your team is familiar with that you want to replicate, the cloud also presents you with a unique opportunity to improve processes.
- Pays vendors by cheque
- Prints and mails invoices
- Performs manual bank reconciliations
- Exports SmartLists into Excel
- Relies on custom SQL reports
Business Central offers opportunities to modernize these processes through electronic vendor payments, emailed documents, automated bank reconciliations, built-in workflows, Power Automate, and Power BI reporting.
Rather than recreating every manual process, consider taking advantage of built-in AI and automation features to reduce effort and free your employees to focus on higher-value work.
Understand How People Use Your Data
Before implementation begins, it's important to understand how information flows through your organization today.
Ask questions like:
- How is data entered into GP?
- Are integrations handling imports?
- Which spreadsheets are employees relying on?
- What reports are users creating outside the ERP?
The more you understand current processes, the easier it becomes to redesign them for Business Central.
It's equally important to identify subject matter experts throughout your organization. Payroll, finance, purchasing, warehouse, operations, and other departmental leaders all understand the information their teams rely on every day. Their knowledge becomes invaluable throughout the migration process.
Migration Approaches and Process
Every Dynamics GP migration is different. Some organizations want a clean slate with only essential information, while others require years of detailed history to remain readily available inside Business Central.
Choosing the right migration strategy depends on your operational requirements and unique business needs.
Migration Is More Than a Technical Exercise
One of the most important things to understand is that moving to Business Central isn't simply a technical project where you set up a new solution and let it work.
It's a business transformation that requires constant care and team member involvement.
This is your opportunity to:
- Improve reporting
- Redesign inefficient processes
- Automate repetitive work
- Simplify day-to-day operations
- Better support future growth
Successful implementations don't simply recreate yesterday's processes. They find ways to streamline workflows so that your team can focus on their most valuable tasks.
Reimplementation
A reimplementation focuses on creating a fresh foundation. This means that the data that is brought over is really only the “essentials.”
Typically, organizations will bring over:
- Beginning balances
- Open documents
- Core master data
- Cleansed records
If you go down this road, note that historical information can still be retained separately if needed, while the live Business Central environment starts with a fresh, clean, and organized slate.
Data-Heavy Migration
Some businesses require significantly more historical information.
These projects may include:
- Detailed transaction history
- Historical records
- Legacy structures
- Manufacturing information
- Production orders
- Service or work orders
- Sales and purchase order history
These migrations tend to be more complex but may be appropriate depending on reporting requirements and operational needs.
Data Strategy Considerations: Process Improvements
After selecting your migration approach, the next step is creating a data strategy. While it might be tempting to bring everything over, try to determine:
- What data must come over
- What data should be cleaned
- What historical information should remain accessible
- Where historical information should live
These decisions affect reporting, performance, maintenance, and user experience long after implementation is complete.
Focus on Business Value
Nearly every organization will migrate information such as:
- Customers
- Vendors
- Inventory
- Chart of Accounts
Beyond that, all organizations' requirements are different. Some need detailed transaction history, while others only require summary balances while maintaining historical information somewhere else. Making these decisions early, with intent will give your team a more efficient Business Central environment to work with.
Design Before You Migrate
Your migration strategy should include thoughtful design decisions. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Which records should be merged?
- Which inactive records can remain behind?
- How much historical detail is truly needed?
- Should you migrate detailed history or summarized balances?
Answering these questions before migration begins saves considerable time later.
Chart of Accounts and Dimensions
For many Dynamics GP users, the biggest mindset shift is moving from GP's segmented chart of accounts to Business Central's flat chart of accounts with dimensions.
In GP, it's common to create accounts using multiple segments for divisions, departments, locations, or other organizational structures. While this may be an effective – and comfortable – approach, it can often lead to an ever-growing chart of accounts. Each time you add a new division or department, you might need to add dozens (or even hundreds) or additional GL accounts.
The Business Central Way
Business Central approaches this differently. Instead of continually expanding the chart of accounts, organizations maintain a simpler, flatter account structure while using dimensions to capture reporting information.
Rather than embedding organizational detail directly into account numbers, dimensions allow certain types of information to be assigned at the transaction level, including:
- Division
- Department
- Customer
- Salesperson
- Business unit
- Location
This gives you a much cleaner chart of accounts while giving users tremendous reporting flexibility. Dimensions also allow you to control combinations and guide users toward selecting the correct information during data entry, improving both reporting accuracy and data consistency.
Customer, Vendor, and Inventory Data
Master data deserves careful attention before migration, even though Business Central provides an excellent opportunity to clean up years of accumulated records and establish better standards for the future.
Customers and Vendors
When cleaning customer and vendor data, there are a few key things to review:
- Duplicate records: If they exist, merge or remove them before exporting the data from GP.
- Naming conventions: Data is easier to find with naming conventions, so this is a great time to consider what your team is naming files and establish consistent guidelines. Consider the fact that customer IDs might no longer make sense for your business or that separate divisions may benefit from different numbering structures.
- Inactive Records: If customers haven’t purchased from you – or vendors haven’t been used – consider blocking or inactivating them to avoid bringing unnecessary records into Business Central.
- Multiple Addresses: Review shipping addresses, billing addresses, and naming conventions to ensure consistency across your data.
- Vendor Banking Information: Determine how your team will manage electronic payments and EFT processes going forward.
Inventory Data
Inventory should receive the same level of attention. You must evaluate:
- Item naming conventions
- Obsolete inventory
- Item categories
- Posting groups
- Inventory organization
Business Central also provides opportunities to better manage inventory through capabilities such as reorder points, minimum and maximum quantities, and improved inventory tracking.
Preparing inventory data now creates a stronger operational foundation after go-live.
Transactional and Historical Data
One of the biggest questions during every ERP migration is:
"How much history should we bring into Business Central?"
The answer depends on your reporting requirements. Some organizations prefer detailed GL history spanning multiple years, while others only require summarized balances for comparative reporting.
However, open operational transactions almost always need to move, including:
- Open Accounts Receivable
- Open Accounts Payable
- Sales Orders
- Purchase Orders
If your organization is a bit bigger and more complex, you might also want to consider:
- Production Orders
- Projects
- Jobs
Before migration, it's important to reconcile these subledgers to the general ledger so balances remain accurate.
Planning for Historical Data
Not every historical record needs to live inside Business Central, but you might want to keep it around just in case. When considering this, your organization should determine:
- How historical information will be mapped
- Where it should be stored
- How users will access it
Historical GP data can be retained in an Azure Data Lake, allowing organizations to visualize historical information within Business Central without maintaining legacy GP servers. This eliminates the need to switch between systems.
Understanding the Implementation Process
Many organizations ask what the actual implementation journey looks like once they're ready to move. While every project is unique, a structured implementation process helps ensure both the technology and the people are ready for success.
Align: During this phase, your implementation partner works with your team to understand your business, demonstrate Business Central, and develop a statement of work.
Define: Your implementation partner works with you to understand:
- Reporting requirements
- Chart of accounts changes
- Customer and vendor requirements
- Business processes
- Future automation opportunities
Create: During the Create phase, your organization's subject matter experts work directly inside Business Central alongside the implementation team. This includes validating processes, configuring the solution, and completing end-to-end walkthroughs to address any issues or disruptions that may come up.
Deploy: Once configuration is complete, the project enters the deployment stage, where:
- Users complete acceptance testing.
- Business processes are validated.
- Teams prepare for go-live.
- A final go/no-go decision is made.
Everyone should understand their responsibilities before the system officially launches.
Hypercare and Beyond: Go-live isn't the end of the journey. A great implementation partner will provide hypercare support to ensure that your team becomes comfortable with the new system, answer lingering questions, and resolve issues on an ongoing basis.
At this point, you can move into future phases that expand Business Central capabilities as your business needs continue to evolve.
Build a Stronger Foundation for the Future with Stoneridge Software!
You might look at all the data in your system and not know where to start when it comes to cleaning it. The good news is you don’t have to navigate that journey alone.
At Stoneridge Software, we've helped organizations successfully transition from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central through every stage of the migration process. From evaluating existing data migration strategies to implementing Business Central, we support long-term success.
Get in touch with the Stoneridge team today to future-proof your organization and start your move to the cloud off on the right foot!
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