Microsoft Great Plains in Construction & Building – implementation & customization highlights

By Andrew Karasev

Alba Spectrum Technologies

USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918

Microsoft Great Plains could be tuned and setup to fit most of horizontal markets. You can deploy third party modules or build your own custom logic in Great Plains Dexterity. Today we’ll look at the options to automate building & construction business. We’ll try to use technical language to be understood by programmer, technical consultant, IT system/database administrator, web developer.

Project-Oriented business. Construction company is project oriented. You incur expenses, labor, inventory against the building and stick to the budget in order to meet the expected profit. Microsoft Great Plains has Project Accounting module with budgeting, expenses, inventory, labor. If you need phases with their budgets – you should probably look for one of the third party project modules, such as WennSoft JobCost. If you are established business with decades of history – you might still be using such legacy (and very efficient in Phasing functionality) Project module as Intellisol Project Accounting – in this case you are looking to convert it to either Great Plains Project Accounting or other current third party module.
Financing. Builders usually finance the projects. When you do construction project budgeting – you need automatic financing cost estimation. This is MS SQL Server stored procedure, incorporated into Great Plains Dexterity customization for project accounting module.
Sales. It is natural way to discount the property if potential customer is willing to finance it or pay upfront for the future property. In Great Plains Receivables Management (RM) or Sales Order Processing (SOP) modules – you should have discounting quote/invoice. The discount amount is based on the phase of the construction
Warranty. Certain percentage should be placed aside for warranty and payment to repair crews or subcontractors. Microsoft Great Plains has Field Service Suite of modules with repair automation logic/functionality. Expect the needs to customize it via Great Plains Dexterity or Great Plains Modifier with VBA
Customization Technologies. Microsoft Great Plains is build with Great Plains Dexterity – this is former Great Plains Software programming language and IDE, it was designed in the earlier 1990th. Dexterity allows your customization work it Great Plains graphical environment and security realm. VBA/Modifier – it is for light customization of existing Great Plains screens – you can place your custom button through Modifier and then attach VBA script to this button – feel free to use ADO to connect to the database. Web applications – your can deploy eConnect to incorporate Great Plains objects into your web application – eConnect was initially designed for eCommerce developers. Crystal Reports – is reporting tool of choice.

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 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 Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK