If you're on Dynamics GP and you're looking for an honest, feature by feature analysis between GP and Dynamics three sixty five Business Central, this is the video for you. Today, I'll be walking you through what GP does and what Business Central can do that GP can't do. I'm not here to say that GP is a bad system, but I'm going to talk you through why Business is a better system. Additionally, we'll talk through what the cost staying on great plans looks like. My name is Zach Carahalis. I'm the Director of Business Development here at BOLT Technologies, and I'll be walking you through this today. So I would say that Business Central reporting is light years ahead of what you have within Great Plains. Right out of the box within Dynamics three sixty five Business Central, you get six hundred plus reports. These can be financial reports. These can be vendor facing documentation, customer facing documentation, out of the box Business Central reports, and lastly, Power BI reports. If you're not familiar with Power BI, Power BI is Microsoft's reporting and analytics tool that allows you to create reports utilizing data from Business Central, from SQL databases, from Excel spreadsheets, really anywhere, and create these reports. On top of that, you can actually embed these reports directly into Business Central. Not only can you build these custom reports, but Microsoft has actually started to roll out out of the box reporting capabilities with Power BI and Business Central. They've actually introduced several different dashboards, some for finance, sales, purchasing, service, manufacturing. These dashboards are all included within Business Central as long as you have a Power BI license. They're extremely powerful and something that we're seeing our customers starting to utilize on a daily basis. As many of you already know, Dynamics three sixty five Business Central, Dynamics Great Plains are both Microsoft products. One of the main differences though with GP and Business Central is that Dynamics three sixty five Business Central has built in integrations to the Microsoft three sixty five ecosystem. Not only is this a massive differentiator when it comes to competitors like NetSuite or Oracle, but it's something that introduces all sorts of automation and enhanced capabilities. You have built in integration to Excel, to Teams, to Outlook. You can export data from Business Central into Excel spreadsheets, manipulate, change the data, and publish it back seamlessly. You can send emails directly from the system. And lastly, and more importantly, you have the Copilot capabilities. I'm sure you're familiar with Copilot. If you're not, it's Microsoft's AI tool. It's something that is now embedded directly within Business Central on every screen. You have the ability to ask questions. It can help do automated bank reconciliations. It can help create reports. The capabilities are endless. So long story short, the Microsoft three sixty five ecosystem integrated into Dynamics three sixty five Business Central is extremely powerful and something that differentiates Business Central from all the other ERPs out there. As many people know, Great Plains and Dynamics three sixty five Business Central are both Microsoft products. What some people don't realize though, is the massive change in enhancements and capabilities and integrations you get with Microsoft products when you make the change from GP to Business Central. Right away, out of the box, since Business Central is that modern cloud based ERP, you have seamless integrations to the full Microsoft ecosystem. That includes Microsoft three sixty five, products like Excel, Teams, Outlook, Power Automate, or Power BI in the Power Platform family. And then additionally, lastly, but not least, you have Copilot. So let's start with Microsoft three sixty five. Right out of the box, you have full integrations into Excel. You can take data, you can export it from Business Central into an Excel spreadsheet, manipulate it, make changes, and seamlessly implement it back into Business Central through a quick import with all of the changes you needed. You have the ability to actually utilize Outlook directly within the system and even sends Teams messages. When it comes to the Power Platform, you have easy access to Power BI reports, as well as Power Automate. If you're not familiar with the products, Power BI is Microsoft's reporting analytics tool. It gives you the ability to create reports utilizing data from Business Central, from SQL databases, from Excel spreadsheets, and then actually embed those reports directly into Business Central. Additionally, on top of that, you actually have the ability to utilize out of the box Business Central Power BI reports. Power Automate is something that's also embedded directly into the product. Power Automate can be used to automate processes or build out integrations. The capabilities there are endless. Lastly, we have Copilot. I'm sure you're familiar with Copilot. It's Microsoft's AI tool. It's something that's embedded directly into all of these products, including Business Central. It's something you'll see on every screen. You have the ability to ask questions, to have it automate bank reconciliations, to have it create reports on your behalf. It's extremely powerful and the capabilities are just getting introduced. Every update there's new features that come out and it's something that we're extremely excited about here at Vault. The longer you stay on Great Plains, the more expensive the upgrade and implementation of Dynamics three sixty five Business Central is going to be. Every day that goes by, you're adding data into the system. You're creating new vendors, new items, new customers. You may be even be extending the system or creating new reports. Every extension, every item, every report that you create is going to be an additional waterfall task or data that needs to be migrated over or extension that needs to be created in Business Central. This adds scope to the project, which adds resource structures, which ultimately adds budget. So the longer that you stay on Great Plains, the more expensive your implementation upgrade can be. Lastly, when making the upgrade from Great Plains Business Central, you're introducing all sorts of new process automation and capabilities. What this does is this can create and make your employees more efficient. Now they no longer have to spend time on these manual processes like going through and reconciling bank accounts when Copilot can do that automatically for you. It gives your employees more time to focus on more important tasks, makes them more efficient, and increases your ROI. I'm not here to say that Great Plains is a bad product. It's something that's been extremely successful for Microsoft, something that thousands of companies are running their business on. But I'm here to tell you that by continuing to stay on great planes, you're missing out on all sorts of new features, new capabilities, new automations within Dynamics three sixty five Business Central. Think of great planes like a flip phone. You're missing out now on the new iPhone, right? You're ten generations behind. There's so many new added features, so many new added capabilities. It's something that I believe our customers, you know, we're doing a disservice by not making the recommendation for them to upgrade from Great Plains into Dynamics three sixty five Business Central. If you want to go deeper into any of the new Dynamics three sixty five Business Central capabilities, whether it's the Microsoft three sixty five ecosystem integrations, Copilot, Power Platform, added automations around bank reconciliation, please just reach out to us here at Volt Technologies and we'll do anything we can to help. Additionally, if you like this content, go ahead and subscribe. Thank you.
Zach Carahalis from BOLT Technologies presents a detailed comparison between Dynamics GP and Dynamics 365 Business Central, highlighting why Business Central is the superior system. He demonstrates how Business Central offers over 600 out-of-the-box reports compared to GP’s limited reporting capabilities, and showcases the powerful integration with Microsoft 365 ecosystem including Excel, Teams, Outlook, Power BI, and Copilot AI features.
The presentation emphasizes that Business Central provides seamless data manipulation, automated processes like bank reconciliation, and advanced reporting through Power BI dashboards. Carahalis warns that delaying the upgrade from GP to Business Central becomes increasingly expensive over time as more data and customizations accumulate. He concludes by comparing GP to a flip phone while positioning Business Central as the modern iPhone equivalent, urging viewers to embrace the advanced automation and efficiency gains available in the cloud-based ERP solution.
