Now that you’ve made the decision to upgrade from Dynamics GP 2013 to GP 2018, there are a few items you must take into consideration. First and foremost, Dynamics GP 2018 has its own system requirements. Before we install any major upgrade like this, we will perform a technical audit first.
With a technical audit, a member of our upgrade team will run through various questions with your team. These questions typically include:
- Would you like to host GP in cloud?
- Would you like to complete the production upgrade during normal business hours?
- How are you currently using GP?
- How do you hope to use GP with the new updates available?
Our upgrade team will also collect the technical information needed. From there, we will set up a meeting with our Project Manager, your dedicated upgrade consultant, and key members of your organization to discuss what it will take to get your hardware ready for the upgrade (if needed) and create milestones for the upgrade process.
Keep Dynamics GP On-Premise or on the Azure Cloud?
There is no better time to decide whether your business wants to keep their ERP system on-premise or in the cloud than when planning an upgrade. While Microsoft does not have any plans to make GP a true cloud ERP at this time, there is always the option to host GP 2018 on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
If your hardware needs to be updated per the GP system requirements, moving to the cloud would take away the need to purchase new servers. Sikich’s Microsoft Azure team can set up a test environment for your upgrade, which will in turn become your production environment moving forward, so it is an easy transition to the new environment. The move to Azure also comes with Sikich’s Tech 360 plan, which includes:
- unlimited, 24/7 support (including holidays);
- patches;
- monitoring; and
- Help Desk support.
We also include all the necessary licenses, such as SQL, needed to successfully run your applications if you do not already own them. The hosting fee is a monthly fee that your Account Manager can discuss further with you at the time of the upgrade technical audit.
Testing and Downtime
When planning for the upgrade it is also important to note that testing will be a large factor which will fall on your GP users. Sikich will set up a test environment with your current data as well as any third party products that integrate to GP. We will then turn it over to your team to test your daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and even year end tasks to make sure everything is running as is. The testing time frame is completely up to you, as we know you have your day jobs to focus on as a priority. Testing will allow us to fix any issues that arise with test data before you are in your live environment with your live data so it is very important that your users take the time.
Of course, the upgrade will require some downtime, where GP and third party products that integrate to GP will be inaccessible. The downtime usually lasts one-and-a-half to two days. To avoid this, Sikich can complete the upgrade over the weekend. We can start Friday once all your users exit GP, so when the users return on Monday they will be in the new version. No matter when you decide to go live on GP 2018, though, Sikich will be available to your organization for go-live support.
A typical upgrade takes roughly four to six weeks from start (with the technical audit) to finish (going live). Be sure to take that into your planning since support for Dynamics GP 2013 ends in April, and thus your company will have to have something new in place well before the end of the year.
Ready to upgrade? Contact us as soon as you are.
