Upgrades are essential in today’s business environment as technology is rapidly changing. New software releases can offer notable changes or major improvement over previous versions. Also, delaying an upgrade can potentially bring its own set of issues for your company. The longer you wait to upgrade, the more difficult it is to move to the most recent version. It makes the transition more complex and involves more effort – this increases the potential for extended downtime and greater costs.
Here are the top five reasons our Microsoft Dynamics GP customers have chosen to upgrade:
- Improved security through migration of Dynamics GP to the cloud
In the past, our Dynamics GP customers would invest in new servers when planning for an upgrade. But now, many are deciding to migrate to a secure cloud-hosted environment. It saves them money by reducing maintenance costs for these servers internally but most often, it’s about the security. There have been many news reports recently about major data breaches at large, established companies like Equifax, Yahoo, and Facebook. New viruses and digital threats are developed every day. A security breach not only puts your sensitive business data at risk, but also jeopardizes your relationships with your clients and your overall brand reputation.
Microsoft Azure has rigorous security, testing and monitoring to ensure your data is kept safe. Additionally, cloud hosting allows companies to manage, maintain, backup and access data remotely. A recent report from Intel Security showed that 93% of IT security professionals surveyed are using some type of cloud service in their organization.
You will need to ensure that your version of Microsoft Dynamics GP can be hosted in a cloud environment.
- Increased productivity by leveraging their full investment
If you’re not using the most recent Microsoft Dynamics GP release, you are missing out on key productivity upgrades. Your business is evolving and so are the tools — and much of that innovation is to provide better and more meaningful tools to access and manage your data, such as the Microsoft Power Platform.
By keeping your Microsoft Dynamics GP version up to date, you’ll find it easier to integrate with new technologies and external applications. You can take advantage of new functionality (more on this later) and further simplify your business processes, thereby leveraging the full capacity of Dynamics GP and your other compatible programs.
- Supported versions
To ensure that you can access all the support resources available, you should ensure that your deployment is upgraded to the latest version. As software packages age, some support options may no longer be accessible, which can potentially jeopardize your solution.
Also, over time with any business application, staff develop their own workarounds to issues. These workarounds aren’t always to your business’s benefit — they can create security issues, compromise data, or simply take more time and internal resources than going through traditional support channels. The current version may have fixes or new features that can benefit your business and reduce the exposure caused by workarounds.
- Added functionality
The latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP includes several community-requested functional improvements. This list highlights some of the most-requested improvements:
- Longer Description field in Payables
- Display user who posted a Journal Entry
- Document attach in Bank Reconciliation
- Date Enhancements in SmartLists
- And more – see daily blog: https://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/dynamicsgp
- Improved upgrades as part of the Modern Lifecycle!
Dynamics GP has been added to the Microsoft Modern Lifecycle. The Modern Lifecycle means that updates and upgrades occur more frequently, but due to changes in the underlying software and data structures, these upgrades are simpler and easier to accomplish. Working with your ISVs and third-party software solutions, your upgrades should be less burdensome to plan and execute than they were in the past. Find out more about Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/30881/modern-lifecycle-policy
Contact SHEA Global to talk about your Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrade. We can do an assessment today and help you decide how to get started.