Estimate for Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics NAV Causes Acid Reflux

If you are currently on NAV and looking to upgrade, particularly from NAV 2009 or earlier to NAV 2013 on up, you may have received an estimate from your partner which may have caused a moderate to severe physical reaction, depending on your constitution. 

The reason for the huge costs to upgrade are primarily due to the major technological improvements in NAV 2013 and the lack of stellar upgrade tools for NAV 2009 and earlier.   To make NAV more-web accessible, the screens (forms) were replaced by pages, data conversion tools (dataports) were replaced by XMLports and the proprietary report writer was replaced with Visual Studio.  

So, what can you do to reduce the upgrade costs?  Ask for a detailed estimate that breaks down the estimate by type of object.  For example, what is the estimate to upgrade tables, forms, reports, dataports and codeunits. 

The largest cost will likely be upgrading modified reports.  So, this opens the door to reducing your upgrade costs.   You can ask your provider to install code to track which reports you actually run prior to upgrading.  You can also review the modified reports to see if you truly need them in the new system. 

It is very likely a good majority of Dataports (data conversion utilities) do not need to be upgraded as there are often used for initial data conversions when you went live and no longer needed.  

Upgrades from 2013 and onward will be much less likely to cause a severe reaction as the upgrade tools have been markedly improved. 

Don Saito

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