During a discovery call a couple weeks back, a food distributor asked a question that comes up more than you'd think. They were ready to move to a real ERP, but they run their email and documents in Google Workspace, and their field team had finally settled on Google Chat after trying a few other tools. Her worry was simple: if we adopt Business Central, do we have to rip out Google too?
The short answer is no. And if you're staring down a big system change, it helps to know what you have to touch and what you can leave alone.
Business Central and Google Workspace can coexist
You can run Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as your ERP and keep Google Workspace for email, documents, and spreadsheets. They aren't an oil-and-water situation. If your team likes Docs and Sheets and your field staff lives in Google Chat, there's no rule that says adopting a Microsoft ERP forces a switch.
This matters because an ERP migration is already a lot of change. Layering an email and collaboration migration on top of it, when the existing setup is working fine, usually isn't justified. Change for its own sake just creates more hurdles during an already busy transition.
Moving to a new ERP is enough on its own. Keeping the email and chat tools your team already knows reduces the number of things people have to relearn at go-live.
You can still connect the two
Staying on Google doesn't mean giving up the nice integration touches people associate with the Microsoft world. The API support on both sides is strong enough to build bridges where they're useful.
A practical example: say Business Central kicks off an approval workflow for a transaction over a set dollar amount. In an all-Microsoft shop that approval might land in a Teams chat where someone clicks approve. With some custom integration work, that same approval request can be routed into Google Chat instead, so your team approves it right where they already are. We can't promise every integration before scoping it, but this is the kind of work that's very doable.
And if you change your mind later
Some businesses eventually decide they want everything in one ecosystem, usually for licensing or administrative reasons. If that day comes, moving from Google to Microsoft 365 for email, files, and chats is a standard project. It's separate from the ERP and handled on the general IT side, so it doesn't have to be tangled up with your Business Central rollout.
The decision sequence we'd suggest:
- Get your ERP live and stable first, keeping your current email and collaboration tools.
- Add any integrations that genuinely save your team steps, like routing approvals into your existing chat.
- Revisit consolidating into one ecosystem only if and when there's a real business reason, not as a default.
The takeaway
An ERP project shouldn't quietly become four projects. You get to decide what changes and what stays, and a good partner should be able to make Business Central work alongside the tools your people already trust.
If you're sorting out what has to move and what can stay put during an ERP switch, we're glad to think it through with you and keep the change manageable.