Corporate ERP Initial Data Conversion to Microsoft Dynamics

Formerly they were known as Axapta and Great Plains respectively.  Before we begin we would like to share with you some fresh air about data conversion, its export from legacy application, cleansing.  Importing documents into the new system requires consulting budget, which potentially could be avoided.  Think about just keying in initial account balances in General Ledger and start using the system in production on the first day of the next fiscal period.  If you are in B2B selling model with limited number of customers and suppliers you may avoid migration project by entering customers, vendors and inventory items manually.  If you are in B2C selling you may decide to import let’s say customers and inventory items only.  Let’s begin reviewing details:

1. Historical documents migration.  We would like to make an observation, that historical transactions import is the most complex part of the implementation and often leads to its failure.  You are not the first and not the last one who decided to do historical import, however statistics stay the same.  If your business has numerous historical years there might be millions of posted customer orders and invoices.  It might be not realistic for such integration instruments as AX Excel Import to place mullion records into Excel template and then move it into Axapta.  It is much easier to keep legacy accounting system up and running on one of the servers for historical records lookup in the case if customer decides to look at its old invoices and payments.  If you absolutely need it – ask yourself the questions “Is it possible to convert only couple of recent years?  Do we really need to bring over invoices dated back in XX Century?  What is the probability that the customer will call and request the info about invoice, dated five or more years ago?  If we are importing old General Ledger entries, is it OK to consolidate them into single monthly transactions or we need detailed ones?”  Speculating about these questions and answers on them should be able to save you a lot of implementation money

2. Dynamics AX Excel Import tool.  This is pretty self-explanatory instrument.  You need to fill formatted Excel worksheets and they should be ready for importing.  You may do it internally, assuming your IT folks are advanced in Excel.  This tool is recommended for moderate data conversion project scope, below ten thousand lines.  Excel is user friendly, however human being is not supposed to read the spreadsheet with millions of rows.  If you feel that Excel Import is not positioned to do your massive import, consider other options, SSIS for example

3. Dynamics GP Integration Manager.  This tool is probably more advanced and user friendly, comparing to what you may have in Axapta.  It is possible to handle pretty advanced and large in scope historical records migration in IM.  The method works as following.  You open the first historical year for transactions.  You integrate one huge batch of let’s say SOP Invoices per year and then you post them.  Normally you disable posting to General Ledger as GL has its own historical migration.  When all the years are imported you post batches one by one (may take an hour to post the batch with million invoices).  When you are satisfied with results you close all the years in GL one by one, starting the oldest year.  We recommend you to stick to Integration Manager in data import.  There might be enthusiasts in IT department who believe that they can bring over records directly in SQL insert statements – this method doesn’t validate business logic and leads to potential data corruption

4. Exporting records from legacy Corporate ERP.  This procedure might be even more challenging.  We found that the most difficult is extract data from proprietary databases, such as QuickBooks, for example.  The good news is the fact that QuickBooks provides various reports, which could be printed into the text files and imported into custom SQL tables for further cleansing.  Also it is easy to export documents from archaic Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Mac.  This application tables reside in Btrieve database and ODBC connection requires DDF files.  Even if you were able to produce DDF files and copy them into company folder (typically GPData if you have only single company) file typically hosts multiple tables and when you read records in Pervasive SQL Control Center – you may find that numerous rows contain suspicious symbols and don’t look like a valid ones

5. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center). help@efaru.com We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese.