What to Expect Before, During, and After Your Dynamics GP Upgrade

Asking questions and seeking reassurance is a natural and healthy response to uncertain or anxiety-inducing situations. We regularly have clients reach out to us about their Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrade with tinges of fear, uncertainty, and doubt creeping into their emails and conference calls. One of my favorite parts of my job is inducing those sighs-of-relief after explaining the ERP upgrade process and how Velosio minimizes the stress of an upgrade for our clients. I know I’ve done my job as a technical consultant when I can feel that release of tension when our clients understand what really goes on during a Dynamics GP upgrade.

Setting the Stage

We are hard at work before your upgrade even begins, scoping your project, determining the best consulting team, aligning internal schedules, and checking your software licensing. The 7 “Ps” apply to both Velosio and our clients during this stage: proper prior pre-upgrade planning prevents poor performance.

Both sides can ask plenty of questions at this point. In fact, the more questions we answer now, the less uncertainty we have during the actual upgrade process. Velosio will be asking you for an outline of your GP environment via our questionnaire, you’ll be asking us how soon the upgrade can get started, and your users will be asking you how many days they can take off during the upgrades process (sadly for them, Velosio offers weekend upgrade options that result in virtually zero GP down time).

What Happens During the ERP Upgrade Process?

During the ERP upgrade process, your Velosio project team will be hard at work on their individual areas of expertise. Your Velosio Project Manager will keep you informed of the project schedule, budget, and task milestones. Your Velosio Upgrade Specialist will be installing and upgrading your new GP environment and your Velosio Training Specialist will be addressing user questions and leading your training on the helpful new features of Dynamics GP.

Almost all of our Dynamics GP upgrades follow the same project cadence. There’s the pre-upgrade period where we have our project scoping, paperwork, and kickoff calls. After that, we do a Test Upgrade where we copy your Dynamics GP ERP data to new servers where it’s upgraded to the latest version of Dynamics GP while leaving your current production GP untouched. Using this Test Upgrade environment, you complete your User Acceptance Testing Phase. Once we get the thumbs up that you are satisfied with the functionality of your new version of Microsoft Dynamics GP, we then pick a time to re-upgrade your data during your Production Go Live, and you then start using the new version of Dynamics GP for your day-to-day activities.

Our goal is to distill your task list down to one main objective: testing the upgrade. We can certainly provide you with a list of suggested reports and processes to run in your new Dynamics GP environment, but you know your business best. You can sit back and relax during the technical data conversion piece of the upgrade, but once the User Acceptance Testing phase starts, it’s your time to shine. Make sure that your team is comfortable running their regular transactions, integrations, and reports in your new version of Dynamics GP, and communicate any issues to us.

This relevant and comprehensive testing is the best thing you can do to ensure that your Go Live is a happy time instead of a fire drill. Of course, Velosio will be with you no matter what, but we do our best to ensure that all issues are solved before they impact your daily usage. The best way we can do that is by identifying them during that testing phase.

The Dynamics GP Upgrade is Complete! Now What?

Once your Dynamics GP upgrade has completed successfully, we’ll all breathe a little easier. Your Velosio Project Team will remain on-call for a few weeks to address any questions that come up in the immediate aftermath of your upgrade. After that, our Client Care team is just an email away if you have any subsequent Dynamics GP questions.

The fun doesn’t have to stop there, though. Velosio offers what we call a “Path Forward” meeting for all of our clients, no matter their Dynamics GP upgrade status. In fact, during the ERP upgrade process, we often do a mini “Path Forward” during your new feature training to identify how your Dynamics experience might be improved. If there is any training, new feature implementation, or 3^rd party products that would make your business more productive, we’ll start that conversation with you, so we can build on the success of your upgrade even further.

Hopefully this outline of the Dynamics GP upgrade process has illustrated how Velosio seeks to make your project a positive and productive experience. If you have any questions about your specific upgrade needs, please reach out to us so we can start you on your journey to what’s next in Dynamics.