Kansas City Chiefs Save $20K in Migration Scope from Great Plains to Business Central With Vena

Accelerated migration to Business Central by keeping historical data from Great Plains in Vena, saving $20K in data migration scope

Business processes experienced no downtime thanks to Vena’s pre-built connectors for Dynamics GP and Dynamics BC

Minimal IT involvement needed in ERP transition thanks to Vena’s best-in-class Business Central integration pulling in all necessary data

The financial intelligence of the organization continues to rise at all levels. That's difficult to do, and Vena has really made it easy for us

Michael Ragsdale

Vice President of Finance Strategy and Analytics, Kansas City Chiefs

The Challenge: Making the Transition to Microsoft 365 Business Central

While winning the Super Bowl may have been the highlight of 2024 for NFL powerhouse team, the Kansas City Chiefs, there were plays happening behind the scenes too.

With Microsoft planning to sunset their Dynamics GP (Great Plains) ERP platform (with support for the platform officially ending in 2029), the accounting team wanted to get ahead of this change by transitioning to a new ERP. As they prepared to move all of their people, data and processes over to Microsoft 365 Business Central, they knew this would be a huge undertaking.

To accomplish that goal, they partnered with the Chiefs’ finance strategy and analytics team. In 2019, Vice President of Finance Strategy and Analytics Michael Ragsdale had headed the implementation and integration of Vena’s FP&A software, consolidating processes previously managed by three separate software solutions for more agile and confident business planning. The Chiefs have been using Vena across their budgeting, planning and reporting ever since, cutting reporting times by up to 95% and making reliable financial data accessible 24/7.

Michael and the team knew that whatever new system they brought on, it needed to integrate with Vena to ensure the switch was seamless and that the organization continued to receive the critical insights they relied on.

“When we transitioned from Great Plains to Business Central, we wanted all that same detail and information coming in,” says Rebecca Swank, Director of Finance and Business Intelligence at the Kansas City Chiefs.

That’s where Vena’s native Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connector came in.

Maintaining Business as Usual—and Keeping All Data Easily Accessible—With Vena

Since the Chiefs’ historical transactional data from Great Plains already resided in Vena, they determined they wouldn’t need to import it into Business Central, helping them greatly reduce the scope of the migration, resulting in savings of $20,000.

It was also important to the Chiefs’ finance team that despite changing ERP systems, when the rest of their organization logged into Vena to access reports, forecasts and budgets, everything would continue, business as usual, with no interruptions. For that to happen, they would first have to rebuild some of their basic reports and templates, and remap their data.

“We totally changed our chart of accounts,” says Rebecca. “We worked really closely with Vena to create a mapping table ... just making sure that everything that historically has been in Vena coming from Great Plains would still be accessible to people as they look at their forecasts or their budgets a year from now.”

The Vena Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connector allowed the Chiefs to seamlessly integrate data from their new ERP, while letting them update their reports and templates for a smooth transition with minimal IT involvement. Michael, Rebecca and their supporting team members can refresh the data connection between Vena and Business Central anytime, on their own.

Crucially, Vena’s direct integration with Business Central pulls in granular information such as vendor details, an essential feature for the Chiefs’ finance team and end users, which wouldn't be possible with most standard BC integrations. “That was really key for us when we did switch from Great Plains to Business Central to still be able to pull in that vendor name,” Rebecca says.

Today, users across the Kansas City Chiefs can log into Vena and easily access reports and templates pulling both historical data from Great Plains and current data from Business Central, drilling down to the level of detail they require. “It’s what we’ve always wanted—as much as possible, the one-stop shop for everybody,” Michael says.

The process even gave the Chiefs a chance to introduce new best practices and efficiencies to their Vena usage—putting them in a great place to continue building on their Vena roadmap in the future. “With the Business Central connector, it’s an easier process than how we were pulling in Great Plains data in the past. So we’ve been really happy with the connector so far,” Rebecca adds.