If your company is established business, which uses
one or another in-house developed Business Management System and you
are now in situation when you are moving the business to the new phase,
where you need industry strength ERP system behind, or how now they
name it accounting backoffice, you may be interested to read on how
Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains can do the job for you. Of course,
and this is not a big secret, GP integration needs to be designed and
programmed by GP consultants, who will work in concert with your
internal IT professionals. Let's take a look at typical scenarios:
1.
Sales Order Processing and Vendor Drop Shipping. If you have strong
presence on the web as eCommerce reseller, there is the chance, that
what you actually do is transfer customer sales orders to vendor drop
ship purchase orders. If this is the case, you will need to integrate
your SOP system with Microsoft Great Plains. The first and the most
reliable tool to choose from and consider on the first place is GP
Integration Manager. In IM itself, please review eConnect connectors to
integrate Sales Order Processing and Purchase Receipt documents.
eConnect route is definitely faster, in order to see the difference you
should know that traditional IM connector uses Great Plains workstation
as OLE server to do the job, basically filling up fields in the form
and so, validating business logic
2. Direct eConnect programming.
This option should be faster in comparison to Integration Manager way,
as IM eConnect connector has to do all the steps in business logic
validation, while in eConnect MS Visual Studio.Net c# or VB programming
you can choose the steps to perform in business logic validation.
However eConnect "atomic" stored procedures might still be less
efficient as they had to validate the logic of Microsoft Dexterity
3.
SQL Stored Procedures approach. SQL is definitely the fastest tool to
try, however you should be proficient in SQL scripting and understand
the impact of various SQL expressions on GP data extraction and
manipulation performance: Select versus SQL cursor is good example.
This is not the only warning - when you use SQL update, delete or
insert query, you can damage GP DYNAMICS or company database tables
4.
Integration Mapping. Your employees or traditional IT department
contractors might be giving you the signal that they'll integrate
Microsoft Dynamics GP with your legacy Sales system. Microsoft as
successor of Great Plains Software, knows that GP is mid-size ERP
package and being such it requires consulting partner network to sell
MRP software and do certified GP ERP installation and implementation.
Of course your people could ultimately and theoretically be done with
the GP implementing job, however you should understand the risks and
learning curve cost impacts
5. Diving to Technology Ocean. GP
technologies include: Microsoft Dexterity, SQL Server 2005 and 2000, GP
ReportWriter, GP Modifier with VBA, Crystal Reports, eConnect and XML
Web Services, GP Integration Manager with eConnect connectors. MS
Sharepoint and GP Business Portal at this time are in market attacking
mode, so if you need such practical modules as Electronic Document
Delivery, Requisition Management (successor of eRequisition), Order
Management (successor of eOrder)
6. Pervasive SQL or Ctree
integrations. There are chances that your company had hard time in
earlier 2000 and you lapsed to pay Microsoft Great Plains annual
enhancement program. In this situation, if you plan to get new GP
version, currently GP 10.0 license keys, you will have to undergo GP
enhancement reenrollment procedure.
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com - help@albaspectrum.com
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving customers USA/Canada
nationwide: Illinois, California, New York, Quebec, Ontario, Colorado,
Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas. Local service is available in Houston
& Dallas: Richmond, Sugar Land, Katy, Rosenberg, Missouri City,
Pearland, Friendswood, Meadows, Mission Bend, Jersey Village, Fort
Worth; serving GP customers in Chicago, IL: Naperville, Aurora, Joliet,
Wheaton, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Lyons, Niles, Downers Grove, Lisle,
West Chicago, Barrington, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village, Lombard,
Morris, Ottawa, Marseilles, Seneca, Oswego, Plainfield, Darien,
Winchester, Hinsdale.
related reading : Http://listfreeware.com
Powered by ScribeFire.
