Microsoft Great Plains Beverage Production & Distribution ? Implementation & Customization Highlight
January 31, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has many years of successful implementation in multiple horizontal markets. In today’s small article we’ll share our experience of implementing and customizing Microsoft Great Plains, formerly Great Plains eEnterprise/Dynamics in beverage production and distribution industries. These examples will cover two scenarios: US regional distribution and International fruit punch production and sales in US, Latin America and Europe. We’ll try to be industry specific and at the same time technical ? using Microsoft Great Plains technical & customization terminology to address both ? decision makers and technical consultant / programmer.
? Concentrate and Output. Usually company sells concentrate to small and mid-size production facilities, where fruit punch or soda is produced and company control the produced volume in Gallons or Liters. In Great Plains you should have light production customization, the natural way is to build it upon Bill of Materials (BM) module. This production is very simple ? you put some labor units and portion of concentrate or powder to produce one Gallon / Liter of punch/soda.
Microsoft Great Plains Jewelry ? Implementation & Customization Overview
January 30, 2008
Each Industry and market niche has business specific and unique requirements to ERP/Accounting System. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is ERP platform, ready for third party modules additions and customizations, plus being SQL Server-based system it opens you wide spectrum of integration options and tools. In this small article we’ll give you Microsoft Great Plains implementation and setup highlights, typical for Jewelry retail network.
? Fixed Assets. Jewelry retailer owns the network of jewelry retail outlets and each one has relatively expensive set of fixed assets: counters, holders, computers, etc. Company has to track each individual Fixed Asset item and depreciate it accordingly: for IRS, State and probably several internal company management accounting depreciation scenarios and methods: straight line, DDB, etc. Due to the fact of reselling precision metals: gold, silver, gem stones and diamonds ? you should expect regular audit from IRS and State authorities. Depreciation plays substantial portion of company’s non-cash expenses and so should be 100% accurate. Additional challenges ? bonus depreciation, introduced several years ago. Plus you must have comprehensive reporting on FA locations by store and region.
Microsoft Great Plains Furniture & Fixtures ? Implementation & Customization Highlights
January 30, 2008
Microsoft Great Plains, former Great Plains Software Dynamics / eEnterprise was introduced in 1993 as first Microsoft Windows and Macintosh based graphical accounting/ERP application for Mid-Size businesses. Considering the history of furniture retailer and custom assembly lines ? they showed up on the market about five decades ago and they have automated their business operations with Unix-based businesses in the late 1960th and earlier 1970th. You can find such furniture resale systems as Storis, which is Unidata based application, automating furniture retail outlets. Let’s consider the options.
? General Ledger. There is no need to immediate replacement of legacy retail stores automation software. It is reliable and proved to work over years. They usually sit in very reliable Unix hardware such as IBM AS/400 or RS6000. You would need just import General Ledger transaction to the system, where you would have flexible and quick financial reporting. In this case you need Unidata export and feed it into Great Plains General Ledger. Use Great Plains Integration Manager or heterogeneous SQL queries.
Microsoft Great Plains Food Processing ? Implementation & Customization Highlights
January 29, 2008
Microsoft Great Plains might be considered as ERP platform to build your own custom solution upon or as the assembly place for the existing modules. Microsoft Great Plains has Inventory Control (IV), Bill of Materials (BM), Manufacturing modules, coming from Microsoft Business Solutions directly, plus it has third party solutions, such as Horizon Light Manufacturing. In Food Processing industry, however the manufacturing itself is so-called process manufacturing, where with variable input you have variable output. It is opposite to discrete manufacturing, where you expect exact number of parts to be assembled into exact number of finished products. In our opinion ? you should first understand your options to automate business processes and if Manufacturing module is absolute must ? only then you should purchase manufacturing and implement it. Let’s give you some highlights:
Demand More From Your Lead Tracking Software
January 28, 2008
An integral part of any quality CRM system is lead tracking software. This is the part of the system that helps you gather customer data from your sales force. The ideal lead tracking software package, however, won’t just tell you where the sales are coming from, but will help generate revenue by pointing sales representative to higher conversion segments of your customer base.
Lead tracking software varies in features and capabilities, but most companies require a software package versatile enough to track both in-bound and out-bound sales information while taking into account numerous lead sources. If your current lead tracking software is unable to track lead information from a majority of the following sources, chances are you’re going to be left behind by your competition:
· Word of mouth leads · Search engine/website leads · Email leads · Pay-per-click leads · Phone leads · Direct mail leads · Trade show leads · Advertising leads · Face-to-face sales leads
Reduce Pop-ups and Annoying Ads
January 27, 2008
There is many things more frustrating than surfing a website only to have your screen suddenly full of pop-up advertising or a cascade of new windows opening. There are so many intrusive kinds of advertising on websites that there must be a way to deal with them. Luckily for us there is a few programs out there that will help to reduce the amount of advertising that happens while you surf.
My favorite solution actually comes by using a great new web browser called Mozilla FireFox. This web browser gives you lots of great new features while you surf, including tabbed browsing which saves you loads of time, but one of the greatest features is that is had integrated pop-up blocking built right in to the web browser! There are still a few advertisings that seem to squeak through, but I would say that 90% of the pop-ups I would suffer in other browsers are eliminated because of FireFox web browser.
Microsoft Great Plains implementation: Restaurants Supply Chain Management Example
January 26, 2008
Microsoft Great Plains serves majority of US based horizontal and vertical markets. Being relatively flexible and customizable ? it can fit your specific business requirements with light or deep customization. You can have portion of the system customization done by your in-house developers (such tools as Modifier with VBA, MS SQL Server stored procedures, Crystal Reports do not require unique expertise) and the most critical and difficult part could be subcontracted ? especially Great Plains Dexterity. In this small article we would like to give you good example of customization scenarios, where client needs warehouse management, random weight purchasing and by-pond resale to end clients, barcoding.
? Warehouse Management. If your company needs logistics and warehouse management automation ? you should research supply chain management applications available on the market. Usually they are expensive and targeted to large logistics clients. You can use Microsoft Great Plains inventory module features, such as locations or sites, serial/lot number tracking, inventory count, inventory transfers and combine these with simple VB-based barcoding to feed documents from your barcode scanners to Great Plains directly.
Microsoft Great Plains Customization: Project Organization ? International Business Example
January 25, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains fits to majority of horizontal niches and clientele in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, U.K., Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Middle East. If you are project organization: Real Estate, Law Firm, Placement Agency with permanent clients, Construction or Freight Forwarding company ? you probably use or plan to deploy Project management or Project accounting extension for Microsoft Great Plains. If you have your business in one country ? this work relatively simple, however we see clients, involved into international business, when your headquarters is located in the US for example and offices and locations are in Mexico. Let’s look at your options:
? Localized version of Great Plains. Former Great Plains Software, who created Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise/Dynamics C/S+ back in 1990th had serious international expansion plans and realized the majority of them. Currently you can purchase Spanish, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese and other local versions of Great Plains. When we are talking about localization ? we mean not only translated into local language, but also tuned to local taxation regulations. You can have users working with the same company in Great Plains ? some of them will use English and others Spanish version.
Microsoft CRM and Great Plains Implementation: Freight Forwarding Business Automation Example
January 25, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions offers several ERP applications: Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and its own CRM solution ? Microsoft CRM. Targeting to automate all business operations, Microsoft CRM is now integrated with Microsoft Great Plains and in the close future it should have integration with Microsoft Navision. In this small article we’ll show you business automation example, where Microsoft CRM and Great Plains are integrated and customized to fit Freight Forwarding business processes.
? CRM. Central Customer and Vendor records place. Assuming you have agents across the USA and internationally ? CRM, being web-interface application and so, could be used across the globe with good internet connection. The nice features of this product are central emailing ? you send email from MS CRM and receive responses from your clients back in CRM, where they are permanently stored and documented. You can issue Quote and Sales Order directly in CRM if needed or could have them issues in Microsoft Great Plains with propagation to Microsoft CRM (deploying MS CRM-Great Plains integration tool ? BizTalk based connector).
Microsoft Great Plains Accounting/ERP Implementation ? Finance Industry Customization Example
January 24, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very generic accounting application out of the box and has multiple modules to address specific horizontal or vertical market requirements. At the same time Great Plains, now being moved on MS SQL Server platform allows you to deploy standard tools to customize and fit to these requirements, when you don’t need rich custom functionality, just few touches. In this small article let’s take a look at finance industry.
Bonds and Loans. If you are issuing these documents ? you probably already have production system in place. What is often seen ? this loans tracking system is not integrated with accounting application. Another case ? loan tracking system may required manual interest recording, especially when client is state agency working in state subsidized programs, such as loans to farmers or small inland townships
? Customer Link. In Microsoft Great Plains borrowers are usually customers in the Accounts Receivables module (RM00101 table ? customer master). To link customer with loans you can have simple Dexterity or web application/extension to be opened from customer maintenance screen. This custom application will show you all the loans associated with this borrower/customer
