The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear to most businesses that moving to the cloud is not an option but a necessity. Change remains the only constant thing, and only those who are quick to accept change will remain relevant. A recent study revealed that 86 percent of CEOs place Digital as their top priority. Another study revealed that about 50 percent of top business decision-makers confirmed that their cloud usage and spending will increase in the near future. This study supports the recent surge in the migration from on-premise services such as Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 cloud.
Cloud computing offers businesses more opportunity to drive engagement and improve customer experience. Also, a move to the cloud makes it easier for businesses to scale their productivity at a fraction of the cost. In this article, we’ll look at some of the challenges impacting Dynamics NAV, and why Dynamics NAV customers should move to the cloud.
What is Dynamics NAV?
Dynamics NAV is an ERP solution targeted to help SMBs with their financial, project and supply chain management, and more. For over two decades, NAV has been helping business collaborate, and simplify their business processes. Popularity designed as an on-premise solution, only businesses with the capacity to manage a full-scale on-premise system were able to implement NAV. Implementing a full-scale NAV ERP is cost intensive, and has to be stationed within the business facility. That’s why only about 100,000 customers use NAV in 2017, meanwhile over 1 million businesses have adopted at least one cloud solution to power their business in 2021.
Top Challenges facing Dynamics NAV Customers
On-premise systems are Static
As customer choices continue to change rapidly, system requirements need to change to meet up the demand for speed, scalability, and improved engagements. The major problem with on-premise infrastructure is static in nature. All resident servers installed come with a specified database size and when the memory is filled, it will require a replacement or an upgrade. For instance, something as simple as Microsoft office can make businesses consider whether its going to work on their NAV ERP. Also, regular office updates might slow down the mean time to repair (MTTR) of some NAV systems.
Updates are Cost Intensive
NAV doesn’t offer seamless platform or application updates. Running an update requires replacing a stand-alone physical machine, installing unsupported legacy operating systems or application updates, which can be cost intensive.
Inconsistent Bug fixes and patches
Most business owner will prefer to run a bug fix and patch on their application because it is affordable when compared to upgrading a completely new version of the application. However, bug fixes and patches don’t entirely work efficiently because its need to be done regularly to prevent system breakdown and attacks. Not all businesses can be consistent with the right hotfixes and patches. They are usually overwhelmed, and battle with the demands of running updates regularly.
The benefit of migrating to the cloud
Many organizations that strive to automate business processes are already enjoying the numerous benefits of moving to could. Here are a few benefits of moving to the cloud.
Drastic Cost reduction
Cloud computing reduces a lot of expenses to run and maintain the business. Whether you run a healthcare brand that makes pharmaceuticals, or you run a small collaborative team, you don’t need to purchase servers, worry about too many operational expenses or electrical bills to keep your equipment’s up and running. Many cloud vendors.
Scalable resources
Cloud lets business manage heavy workloads automatically and quickly. On the other hand, on-premise infrastructure will require adding additional equipment’s to increase capacity. And when the load spike exceeds its capacity, you will still pay for redundant resources it consumes.
Other benefits of migrating legacy systems to the cloud includes reliable security over cloud storage, databases, servers form cyberattacks. Cloud adopters get to enjoy swift implementation of cloud-based project. Businesses using cloud services can easily integrate other collaborative tools for seamless communication of teams from different part of the world.
Moving to the cloud for Dynamics NAV customers is a logical step in the right direction if they want to create more engagement, reach milestones faster and save cost. It should become a must-have strategy for most businesses who want to scale their services faster than normal. To learn more about upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central from NAV, contact our team of ERP specialists.
