Integrating Microsoft Great Plains
Accounting/ERP: RMS, CRM, eCommerce, Lotus Domino overview for developer
By Andrew Karasev
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918
Alba Spectrum Technologies
Microsoft Business Solutions Great
Plains has substantial market share among horizontal and vertical clientele in
the USA, Canada (including French version for Quebec/Montreal), UK, Australia,
New Zealand, Spanish speaking Latin and Central America, South Africa and Middle
East. Nowadays ERP can not stay as it is off-the-shelf product it requires
integration with Legacy or newly implemented systems, such as CRM, Retail
Management applications, custom in-house made business systems
(transportation/cargo tracking, etc). The tendency is that if company uses
Microsoft-driven computer park (Windows domain, SQL Servers, MS Exchange) the
rest of the ERP/CRM applications are Windows-oriented. However you can have
successful bridge between non-Microsoft ERP and Great Plains: Oracle, IBM Lotus
Notes/Domino, DB2 or others), usually it involves Java/CORBA/EJB/JSP type of
expertise.
- Microsoft RMS-Great Plains
integration. There are few options first one is to use standard
integration, coming with MS RMS. It has Dexterity interface in Great Plains,
does integration to single company at the time. Doesnt integration on SOP/AR
level, however. Second option is to use integration, maintained by Alba
Spectrum Technologies it integrates unlimited number of stores, SOP/AR/POP,
posts through Bank Reconciliation module and so allows to track Check
Books/Credit Card balances. This integration also has Dexterity interface for
Stores-GP Companies mapping and could work as nightly or real time SQL Server
routine
- Microsoft CRM-Great Plains
integration. This integration is maintained by Microsoft Business
Solutions and allows you to synchronize SOP and Customers in Great Plains with
Microsoft CRM Quotes and Orders. Microsoft CRM has open Microsoft CRM SDK and
so you can customize and integrate Microsoft CRM at will, having C# or VB.Net
in-house expertise. The above mentioned integration could be altered and
tuned by programming MS BizTalk server (it can use either BizTalk runtime or
regular license)
- Microsoft Great Plains as Back
office for eCommerce web-site. Here we need to mention interesting
thing, The product, created and dedicated to eCommerce developers Great
Plains eConnect is often considered as a bit expensive and
licensing-restricting solution. If your company is ISV and implements
eCommerce product, integrating to Great Plains you would rather prefer set
of open and simple stored procedures, moving data to and retrieving from
Microsoft Great Plains Sales Order Processing (SOP) module
- Microsoft Great Plains
integration with Oracle. Well you can do it either from Oracle or from
MS SQL Server side in both cases you have linking tools and heterogeneous
queries mechanisms
- Microsoft Great Plains
integration with Lotus Notes/Domino. If you want Great Plains documents
lookup from Lotus you typically use ODBC connection to MS SQL Server. You
need to know Great Plains tables structure (Tools->Resource
Description->Tables in Great Plains)
Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or
concerns we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba
Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization
company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York,
Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple
states and internationally (
http://www.albaspectrum.com ),
he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal
Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew:
andrewk@albaspectrum.com