Norfolk Airport Authority (NAA) was operating on Microsoft Great Plains (GP) that was initially installed in 1998. The system had worked well for them but the current version was at the end of its lifecycle. In addition, Norfolk had ideas for process improvements that they felt would be easier to make with Business Central.

The GP system “was pretty outdated and it was getting to the point where it was end of life for us. We either had to change ERPs or upgrade within GP to newer system,” said Ronnie Wampler, Financial Supervisor for Norfolk Airport Authority.

Rather than upgrade their on-premise system, NAA was looking for a cloud based solution.

“We found that we really needed to come into the new age, and we definitely needed a cloud based system so we could utilize the program on and offsite, especially for our emergency response,” said Wampler.

Once the decision was made to transition to Dynamics 365 Business Central, NAA started the search for a partner.

“We asked for recommendations from other airports and other business contacts that may have had an association with Business Central. We looked for how quickly potential partners responded, how easy they were to work with in the initial stages, and of course pricing,” said Wampler.

Kopis has consultants well versed in both GP and Business Central and “because the consultant had an understanding of both programs, she translated old processes well into the new system,” explained Wampler.

Once the implementation was underway the process went well and Kopis kept to the timeline. “We initiated in January/February and went live July 1st. We wanted to launch for the start of our fiscal year and we did,” said Wampler.

Post implementation, the NAA team underwent training with Kopis. Business Central is “different than GP and our training was very structured at first. Then after we learned the basics, we started to streamline the processes to best match our business and workflows,” explained Wampler.

Norfolk Airport Authority was able to see improvements quickly, “everything is an improvement. We couldn’t work offsite, we backed up to a server, we had glitches where an entire day’s worth of work had to be put back in a second time,” said Wampler.

But Business Central has changed all that. “Business Central is easier to maneuver, easier to work in, and overall, it is an improvement by far,” continued Wampler.

NAA has found a steady partner to help them as their business grows. “We already are working with Kopis again. We are working on fully automating some of our paper processes with Power Automate and Business Central,” said Wampler.