User Group Summit North America 2019 Preview: Upgrading from NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central and the need for project managers

Editor's Note: MSDynamicsWorld.com is collaborating with User Group Summit North America to explore the upcoming conference in a series of preview articles.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV users and partners planning to attend October's User Group Summit North America can look forward to finding solutions to their issues and hearing about best practices from peers and experts. They'll also hear about important changes and get the latest product information from Microsoft.

One of the experts presenting at the event is Andrea Hall, information technology director for Stonewall Kitchen LLC. Hall spoke with MSDW about her involvement in the event and the subject of the session she'll be presenting.

A participant and a presenter

In years past, Hall was a member of the board of advisors for BCUG/NAVUG and took part in the planning.

In that role, I helped put together one of the subject matter tracks for the conference. This year I get to be a participant, which I'm super excited about, and then I'm presenting one session.

The session Hall is delivering revolves around project management.

I'm so passionate about project management. And it's by scraping my knees for many, many years and bonking my head that I finally learned these lessons. We firmly believe in project management, and we are very blessed to have an in-house team [consisting] of an inside developer, a business analyst, and a project manager. I know that a lot of people are not blessed to have that.

Hall says it's not enough for your Microsoft partner to provide a project manager because that person can’t really manage inside the organization. She believes you need a project manager inside your organization dedicated to the project to ensure success.

There are so many tasks that are inside the organization that the partner sometimes doesn't even see. Never mind can they rally or figure out who's supposed to do it and hold them accountable.

From NAV to Business Central

Stonewall Kitchen has been running Dynamics NAV since 1999 and just recently upgraded to Dynamics NAV 2018. However, the company is planning a move to Business Central in 2020 or 2021. As part of her job, Hall has been trying to get up to speed on Business Central to prepare for the upgrade.

That was one of the best values at last year's Summit event – it was the first time that my team and I were like 'wow, we can really see where this is going' and it's going to be ready to go in the cloud as well. That was the first time we were really prepared to hear about Business Central, and they showed it in the most real way yet. It was really starting to get legs.

That was the first time ever that we could imagine going to Business Central and eventually going to it in the cloud. And so we can't wait to go back [to the event].

Looking ahead