What Happens if You Don't Upgrade NAV?

1. What Happens if You Don't UpgradeNAV? Our team frequently works with customers who are using legacy versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. These NAV users, forvarious reasons, reach a critical point at which they begin to weigh the pros and cons of remaining on their legacy system or upgrading their NAVsolution. We could tout the advantages of the latest NAV version until we’re blue in the face, but we understand that upgrades canbe expensive, they can be painful, and they can be disruptive to your organization. Because of this, we work with our customers to find the best solution forthem. The question we get all the time is this: Sure, it’d be nice to upgrade NAV to the latest version, but what are the consequences of doingnothing? If we choose not to upgrade, is it just business-as-usual or is there a real downside to staying on an oldversion? Here are some of the possible outcomes your organization could run into if you “do nothing” and hold off on any NAVupgrades. Thisblogpostwilltouchonthemainissuesyoucouldface,andwe’vealsoputtogetherafreeeBookthatyou’remore than welcome to download and share with yourcolleagues. What are the potential consequences of choosing not to upgradeNAV? IfyouhaveanoldversionofNAVandarewonderingwhatitwillmeantoyour businessifyouwaittoupgrade,here’swhatyoucan expect: You’ll be accumulating technicaldebt Every time you pass on an upgrade, you're accumulating technical debt that will at some point need to be addressed. Inother

2. words, you’re pushing your problems to the future instead of dealing with them in thepresent. You’re playing with fire when it comes to your ITsecurity There are a lot of security issues today that didn't exist when your version of NAV was designed. The new software addresses these dangers, but if you’re on certain versions of NAV, Microsoft no longer offers support, so your IT defenses are weakened. Your system performance willdeteriorate As with any system, performance inevitably degrades over time. Your infrastructure atrophies and you’ll encounter more and more technology that’s simply incompatible with your outdatedsolution. Your employee productivity willsuffer If your employees are being faced with system issues that slow them down, they’ll have to waste otherwise productive time in their workday to solve them. This can have a ripple effect across your whole organization, not just your financedepartment. Your users will try to create workarounds, which leads to inefficiency and siloedinformation If the software starts becoming less useful to employees, they'll resort to creating workarounds. Whether that means they'll start to do things in an inefficient manner or they'll start using outside software, you’ll be faced with a situation with siloed information. This goes against the philosophy of ERP software where you want everything contained and visible in onesystem. Your software won’t work with currenttechnology If new technology is incompatible with your old system, you’ll miss out on new features and functionality that your competitors have access to. Forward-thinking technology is designed and written forward and not backward for outdated systems. By remaining on a legacy solution, you make it much more difficult for your organization to remaincompetitive. You’ll face hardware and serverlimitations If your server crashes tomorrow and you’re on a legacy NAV solution, you can’t just purchase a new server because, again, the technology being created for today’s market isn’t written to be backward compatible. You’ll have very limited hardware and software options as you look for something that works with your old NAVsoftware. You can’t take advantage ofadd-ons Due to version incompatibility, you can’t simply plug in apps, add-ons, or extensions. You’ll have to rely on custom code and individually tailored solutions for your system, and this is a much less cost-efficientroute.

3. It’ll be harder to find support from NAVpartners The older your software is, the harder it will be to find someone who cansupport it. You have a dwindling pool of support because experts on older versions of NAV have either retired, moved on to newer software support roles and therefore lose familiarity with your solution, or can only offer limited assistance due to a static knowledgebase. You no longer have Microsoft’ssupport When your legacy NAV software reaches the end of life cycle support, Microsoft no longer offers updates or security patches. For a deeper dive into this, here’s a great resource to check out. Essentially, when you buy a Microsoft Dynamics solution, you have a ten year support life cycle. For the first five years, Microsoft will actively publish hotfixes, service packs, cumulative upgrades, and enhancements to the software. After that, for the next five years they only provide occasional security updates but nothing beyond that. You accumulate baddata During NAV upgrades, your data will be cleaned up, so by putting off an upgrade you’re also putting off a data cleanse. Incorrect data can create inaccuracies in reporting, and it prevents you from making optimum businessdecisions. You begin to experience “ERPbloat” NAV is known for being very easy to customize, and while that is a powerful selling point, if handled incorrectly it leads to ERP bloat. What’s more, depending upon the way in which your customizations have been coded, it takes longer and longer to upgrade that code into newversions. If you wait too long, you’ll have problems upgrading your C/ALcode Microsoft's new development paradigm for NAV software has changed significantly in recent years, so if you wait too long, you’ll experience an issue with migrating legacy C/AL code. For now, you can still upgrade toBusiness Central “version 14” which works with two types of code: the old C/AL code and the new AL code. By October 2020, version 14 will no longer be available and if you move to Business Central you will be required to move to a version that only supports AL code. As a result, if your system us es C/AL code, you have a narrowing window of time before your upgrade gets complicated. For more information on this, check out this blog. What Happens if You Don't UpgradeNAV?