In upgrading to Dynamics NAV 2013, users reflect on a range of decisions, challenges

Since experience is the best teacher, particularly when it comes to upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, hearing from someone who's already been through that process can be a time saver - not to mention a life saver.

Taking advantage of NAV 2013 enhancements

Steven Chinsky is a project manager for finance at Quidsi, a division of Amazon.com and a Dynamics NAV customer that was eyeing an upgrade. He recently discussed the highs and the lows of his NAV 2013 upgrade experience in an online meeting of the NAVUG.

"Dimensions was completely rewritten to be more of a dimension set," Chinsky said. "So it has the ability to have all the dimensions values. And for my company, we have nine dimension values and we use all nine from a reporting standpoint and in almost every posting transaction."

A couple other things that played into his company's decision to upgrade were server improvement and the web client.

"The web client is going to be my lifeblood. This is probably the number one thing because I really did not want to keep buying full licenses. With the web client I can buy a limited license to give [people] a few features and limit them to do just the actions they need to do."

Managing legacy customizations and reports

When came to finally deciding to upgrade, one of the issues Quidsi took into consideration was customizations. NAV can be molded to fit almost any need, and like many customers on an earlier release, the viability of old customizations must be weighed against the benefits of new standard features.  Chinsky said his company had about 700 ...