Bramvia — Business Central Experts
Your partner doesn't respond, bills hours without deliverables, or lost the one consultant who knew your system. Changing your Business Central or NAV partner is not a project and not a migration: the tenant, the data and the extensions are yours. What transfers, what to demand, and the 30-day plan we use.
Short answer: changing your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner does not require migrating anything. The environment (tenant), the data, the installed extensions and the licenses belong to your company, not to the partner. Three things change: who sells you the licenses (the subscription is transferred to the new CSP partner), who holds delegated admin access to your environment (revoked from the old partner, granted to the new one) and who answers when something breaks. For NAV or Business Central installed on your own server, the mechanism is a "change of partner of record" with Microsoft, signed by the customer, which does not interrupt the maintenance plan. An orderly handover takes about four weeks and starts with a free assessment of what you have. As with everything we do, each part is invoiced only after you accept it.
Sound familiar?
- You open a ticket and the answer arrives three days later, or never.
- Hours are billed every month and you could not say what was delivered.
- The consultant who knew your system left, and every call starts with explaining your business from scratch.
- You were told that moving to the cloud or adding a module means "rebuilding everything".
- You suspect you are over-licensed, but nobody has ever walked you through the Microsoft invoice.
If two or more of these ring true, this article is for you. At the end we explain how we solve it.
What is yours and what is the partner's
This is the part most people don't know, and the one that creates the most fear. In Business Central online:
| Element | Who owns it | What happens when you change partner |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant and data | Your company, inside your Microsoft 365 | Untouched |
| Installed extensions (per-tenant and AppSource) | Installed in your environment; source code depends on the contract | Keep working; the new partner inventories them |
| Licenses | Paid by your company through a CSP partner | The subscription is transferred to the new partner |
| Partner delegated access (GDAP) | Granted and revoked by your Microsoft 365 admin | Revoked from the old partner, granted to the new one |
| Integrations, reports, job queues | Configured in your environment | Documented and tested during the handover |
For NAV or Business Central on-premises, the license and the Enhancement Plan are tied to a partner of record at Microsoft. The customer requests the change with a signed form; the maintenance plan is not interrupted and nothing has to be reinstalled.
What may belong to the partner is the source code of what they built for you, unless the contract says otherwise. In the cloud, many per-tenant extensions let you download their source from the environment itself; when they don't, you request it under the contract, and a partner who refuses has just told you something.
The 5 real reasons companies switch
- Response time. By far the number one reason: tickets that age, Microsoft updates nobody tests before they land.
- Technical depth. The partner can configure but cannot develop in AL, integrate through APIs or convert what was left over from NAV. Complex work stays undone or is subcontracted without telling you.
- Turnover. The person who knew your system left and the knowledge was never written down.
- Over-licensing. Full users who only read, Premium where Essentials was enough. How to check it against your invoice.
- No guidance. Nobody tells you what each release brings, what affects you, or what you could stop doing by hand. The system ages even in the cloud.
None of the five is fixed with a new project. They are fixed with a different partner and a different contract.
When your partner has been acquired
Partner acquisitions follow a familiar pattern: the team that knew your system is reassigned or leaves, your account moves to a larger queue, and response times stretch. Your contract usually transfers to the new owner, but your system does not belong to either of them. The tenant, the data and the installed extensions stay in your Microsoft 365; the licence subscription can move to another CSP partner; and the acquirer's delegated access can be replaced with a new partner's. That is why changing partner after an acquisition is a handover, not a project, and it can run while the old partner still answers the phone.
The 30-day handover
This is the plan we run, with one deliverable per week that you accept before paying for it:
Week 1 — Access and inventory. We receive delegated access and inventory the extensions (flagging those that modify the standard), integrations, reports, job queues and users with their license type. Deliverable: a map of your system in a document you probably don't have today.
Week 2 — Open tickets and risks. We collect what your previous partner left pending, prioritize it with you and review which Microsoft updates are coming and what they could break. Deliverable: prioritized list with an estimate per item.
Week 3 — Support channel and first fixes. We open the channel (tracked email, phone and, if you want, WhatsApp), close the quick tickets and check licenses against real usage. Deliverable: tickets closed and, where applicable, a license right-sizing proposal with the savings calculated.
Week 4 — 12-month plan. What to automate, which extension to replace with standard functionality, which included modules you are not using (Power BI, approvals, agents). Deliverable: roadmap with priorities and an indicative cost per item.
At the end of the month your system is documented, support is running and there is a plan. If at that point you decide not to continue with us, the inventory and the plan are yours.
What to demand from the new partner (from us too)
- Response times in writing in the contract, not in the sales proposal. We reply within one working day.
- A named consultant who knows your system, and a second one who can stand in.
- A documented inventory of the system within the first month: whoever doesn't deliver it hasn't understood your business.
- Payment tied to accepted deliverables, not to hours.
- Ownership of the code developed for you, by contract.
- No lock-in beyond a reasonable notice period. A partner who keeps you by contract knows they would not keep you by service.
How we help you solve it
We start with a free assessment: half a day with read access to your environment and a conversation with whoever runs the system on your side. We tell you what you have, which risks we see, whether changing partner makes sense and what the handover would cost. No commitment: sometimes the honest answer is that your partner is reasonable and what fails is the contract.
If we go ahead, the 30-day handover is invoiced week by week as you accept each deliverable. After that, a support and evolution contract with no lock-in, written response times and a named consultant. We work in English, Spanish and Polish, for US and Canadian companies and for international groups with a Spanish subsidiary.
And if your system is still Dynamics NAV, we support NAV without pushing you to migrate and work out with you what staying costs versus moving before you decide anything.
FAQ
Our Business Central partner was acquired and service has dropped. How do we move support and licences to a new partner without disrupting the business? Run it as a handover, not a migration. The new partner gets delegated access and documents your system in the first week, takes over support while the old partner is still in place, and the licence subscription is transferred to the new partner's CSP account without touching the tenant, the data or the extensions. Users notice nothing. Check your support contract's notice period and ask for the source code of any custom extensions. Any Microsoft partner with a real Business Central practice can do this; ask for written response times, a named consultant and payment per accepted deliverable. We run this handover in 30 days, for the US and Canada through 365 World Software Services and for Spain and the EU through GESTION INTEGRADA ERP CRM SCM, S.L.
Can my current partner lock me out or keep my data? No. Your Business Central environment lives in your company's Microsoft 365 and the global admin is yours. The partner's access is delegated and can be revoked at any time. With NAV on your own server, the database is yours and the license transfers with the change of partner of record.
Do I have to notify my partner before switching? Check the notice period in your support contract. The license transfer and the access change can be prepared in parallel so there is never a day without support.
Will I lose my customizations? No: the installed extensions stay in your environment. What may be missing is the source code if the partner never handed it over; we inventory them anyway and, if something needs rebuilding, we tell you what and how much.
What does changing partner cost? The assessment is free. The 30-day handover is quoted after the assessment based on the size of the system, and each week is paid only when you accept its deliverable.
What if the problem is the project, not the partner? Then it is not a handover but a stalled project rescue, which starts with an independent audit. We tell you which one it is in the assessment.
Free assessment · Evaluación gratuita
Tell us your current system and how many users you have. First reply within one working day. / Cuéntanos tu sistema actual y cuántos usuarios sois. Respondemos en un día laborable.
Want to know whether changing partner makes sense in your case? Request the free assessment: within a week you have the answer and the inventory of your system, whether you stay with us or not.
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