Microsoft Great Plains Furniture & Fixtures implementation & customization
highlights
By Andrew Karasev
Alba Spectrum Technologies
1-866-528-0577,
1-630-961-5918,
help@albaspectrum.com
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. Lets 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.
- Payroll.
Great Plains would be reasonably priced payroll solution if you process
payroll inhouse. If you have less then 500 employees then Great Plains
Standard douse excellent job and software price would be around k$10. You
will have to pay annual maintenance program and receive Payroll taxes and
federal magnetic media updates to keep you safe from the payroll taxation
errors and miscalculation. If you cross over 500 employees line Great
Plains software price will be around k$30 and you could find cheaper solutions
with unlimited number of employees look at Accpac.
- eCommerce.
If you are replacing your legacy system, then you could build eCommerce upon
Microsoft Great Plains Inventory Control (IV) and Sales Order Processing
modules. Looking into the future you should expect increasing portion of you
business to come from eCommerce ordering. Here you deploy eConnect and have
your or contracting developers do the job. If eConnect is too expensive you
could appeal to experienced developers, who has set of custom stored
procedures to work with SOP10100, SOP10200 and IV00100 tables
- Commission
Reporting. In Furniture outlet
shift manager commission is based on her/his employees-salespersons
performance. And it is usually tiered. We saw very complex and proprietary
formulas. Our suggestion is to realize it in SQL Stored Procedure and then
you could create Crystal Report with parameters to calculate and report
commission amounts
We encourage you to analyze your
alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: 1-866-528-0577
or 1-630-961-5918,
help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at
Alba Spectrum Technologies (
http://www.albaspectrum.com ), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision
to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia,
Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan