Microsoft Great Plains implementation: restaurants supply chain management
example
By Andrew Karasev
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918
Alba Spectrum Technologies
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.
- Variable Weight.
In the case of food supplier you may be purchasing food in cases or other
variable weight units and resell them in pounds or kilograms to end customer.
So – you need parallel quantities tracking with probably serial numbering for
each case. This is typical customization for Inventory, Sales Order
Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing (POP) modules in Great Plains.
It should be done in Great Plains Dexterity to provide seamless interface for
GP users. In addition to parallel weight measures (cases and pounds) you may
also need average weight control to prevent issues with your warehouse workers
- Repetitive Orders.
You may figure out that majority of your customers order the same items each
time with regular intervals. In this case you can have customer typical order
screen to automate order taking. Plus – you may have associated and
replacement items logic incorporated in this screen.
- Delivery Automation.
If you sell on consignment – you may simply send trucks to your customers
every day with recommended combination of items, based on historical data –
day of the week, holidays, seasonal variations, etc. And barcode could help
you in automatic picking ticket printing and allocation
Good luck with implementation and customization 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! 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