Help! What do The Beatles have to do with Microsoft Dynamics GP?

Great decision-making is often a blend of art and science. How confident are you in your own decision-making skills and track record? Can you think of any past “big” decisions you would rewind and do over if you could? Perhaps you realized after the fact that you failed to account for all available information, or worse, were given “critical” information that turned out to be simply wrong, regardless of intent. Or, worse yet, maybe you didn’t receive information you should have had (see below!).

Our “biggest” decisions usually carry the greatest implications. Imagine being the record label, or specifically the person(s), that rejected The Beatles in favor of another “local” band. Ouch! Through a historical rear-view mirror, we’ve all seen or perhaps experienced big decisions that span the spectrum–from dreadful to brilliant. I’ll be happy if we help just one company make a better decision through this blog.

ERP Decisions are in the “Big” Category

While making an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) investment decision may not have the thrill of deciding on whether to sign The Beatles or not, it is definitely one of the biggest decisions companies of all sizes make. These decisions carry substantial, even if expected, implications: large investments, lengthy implementation time-frames, and significant changes to running your business. Obviously, when making an ERP decision, you want to be at your decision-making best given the high stakes. If you have not personally experienced it, most of us have heard the stories of the ERP implementations that cost more than double what they were budgeted for and took twice as long as planned.

In an ideal world, given the sheer magnitude of the endeavor, businesses could make just one major ERP decision, and that technology choice would support, grow, and adapt with them perfectly forever. Given that is an unrealistic fantasy, the next best thing is to achieve the highest return on investment (ROI) possible with those big decisions, while minimizing risks and business interruptions associated with your ERP decisions. My aim in this blog is to contribute, if even in a small way, to higher ROI, lower risk, and/or less unnecessary disruption for one or more decision-makers.

Long Live Dynamics GP!

For companies running on Microsoft Dynamics GP, this is highly relevant. There are companies actively making (or have already made) important ERP decisions directly because of an absence of information. Specifically, companies are making decisions to replace GP with another ERP because they have been incorrectly informed that GP is nearing its end-of-life. I recently spoke with an executive from a mid-market business that had made the big decision to migrate from GP to a cloud-based ERP because they believed they did not have a choice. This executive was more than mildly agitated when I informed him that Microsoft announced earlier this year that they were officially extending GP’s lifecycle to “2028 and beyond”.

This is unfortunately not an isolated case. I encourage you to read Terry Heley’s article for the most complete information about the extension of the Dynamics GP Lifecycle. It’s critical that you understand what you need to do related to Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy if you want to benefit fully from it.

What we at Cavallo want more than anything is for our valued customers and others to make the absolute best decision for their businesses at the moment of truth. Our philosophy is to meet our customers where they are: if staying on GP is in your best interest, we’re happy to serve you there. If you are ready and want to transition to a cloud-based ERP platform, congratulations on your rigor and decisiveness, we can help you with that too. It’s not in our long-term best interest to influence a customer’s business for our selfish gain. Taking care of our customers will take care of our business. We remain bullish on GP and you can be too. We’re going to continue to support and expand our capabilities with our SalesPad products.

For Those Committed to the Cloud

You’ve done the hard work, you’ve fully maximized your ROI from your on-prem ERP system, and you have a clear and compelling business case to move to the cloud. Way to go. We’re ready too.

While remaining committed to Dynamics GP, we’re equally motivated to make all distributors more efficient and profitable, wherever they are. Within the last two weeks, we’ve dramatically expanded our product offerings with multiple new cloud-based solutions aimed at doing what we have done in harmony with GP (with our SalesPad products) over the last 18 years. Specifically, we’re now positioned to supercharge selected cloud-based ERP systems too, starting with Dynamics 365 Business Central.

We will be integrating with other leading ERP platforms in the coming quarters. Like everything else we do, we’re guided by a sincere mission to enable substantial and measurable business performance improvements for our customers running distribution operations.

Here’s to a great finish to the year and making better decisions!