Time has become the litmus test for ERP modernisation

Most companies running Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains are planning around the support deadline to make their move to a new ERP, but does this match the pace of your business? asks Adele Esterhuizen, Practice Head for Service Desk and Customer Experience at Braintree.

Microsoft has set 31 December 2029 as the end date for the support of Dynamics Great Plains. The deadline removes enhancements, tax and regulatory updates, and standard technical support with only security patches available until the end of April 2031. This official line in the sand is also the last possible moment at which a small to medium enterprise (SME) can start and complete a minimally viable migration without compressing scope, increasing risk or overpaying for partner capacity. 

Most companies are looking at the December deadline as the final moment when they need to make a decision. Do they head into Business Central or do they need to invest in Finance and Operations? It’s the right question, but the wrong timeline because having time and a strong migration outcome are not the same thing. December 2029 is the last possible moment to act because delays and deadlines can seriously impact the value you get from your move.

Stepping out of Great Plains and into Business Central is a structured project and process with each stage taking time to complete properly. There are years of transactional histories, customisations and integrations that have to be mapped and cleaned. And the new environment has to be configured and tested to match how the business runs today while teams need to be trained and given the right tools to benefit from the new system. None of these stages are easily compressed, so the planning window closes considerably earlier than the support date. 

A planned migration also opens the door to value. The discovery phase, for example, can then run over a period of weeks instead of being compressed into a few days. This allows you to map your environment before anything moves out of it and lets you make configuration decisions with all the information. Your edge cases are caught and resolved in testing rather than after the go-live. 

Training is also built into this timeline so your finance and operations teams can spend time working in the new system and the go-live date is then chosen based on the right business cycle rather than on an external deadline. In a pressured migration, the timeline isn’t set by the project so key factors like data cleansing are deprioritised and the business migrates the mess. Configuration choices also run the risk of being made quickly and with incomplete information, and these are challenging to unpick further down the line. 

The result of the hasty migration is minimal training, under preprepared users, and a sharp drop in productivity for up to a few months. Your implementation partner is also stretched because they’re not just managing your migration – they’re helping all their Great Plains customers run the same race at the same time. 

There is another clock that runs concurrently with the Microsoft deadline – competitive value. If a company migrates earlier, they get the benefit of rapid and consistent structural change. Microsoft ships two major release waves a year with minor updates released in between and each wave now includes updates to Copilot and AI-agent capabilities that automate sales and purchases directly inside the platform. A business already on Business Central receives these automatically but a frozen Great Plains estate does not. 

The second consideration is supply. As December 2029 approaches, every Great Plains customer in the region will be having the same conversation at the same time. Businesses will be competing with one another for partners able to deliver. 

The real question isn’t when support ends, but how much room you want when you finally move on to the next-generation ERP platform. Is it on your terms and timeline or one that is decided by the market? The window is open wider today than at any other point before 2029, and that is the deadline worth planning around.