Microsoft Great Plains: Large Scale Implementation
By Andrew Karasev
Alba Spectrum Technologies
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918,
help@albaspectrum.com
Microsoft Business
Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, Solomon and CRM are coming up to
satisfy ERP needs for large corporation, including multinationals. In this
article we will be describing Microsoft Great Plains as the MRP platform,
fitting to multiple industries and business niches: aerospace, defense, textile,
pharmaceutical, healthcare, constructions, mining, services, distributions &
logistics, wholesale & retail, public sector, chemicals, oil & gas, finance,
brokerage, etc. We’ll try to give you orientation and set realistic
expectations if you are CIO for large publicly traded company and looking for
reasonably budgeted solution.
- Technical versus
Functional implementation. The
trend of our new post-recession era is biased toward technical
implementation. If you look back to 1990th Clinton golden days –
when we would say huge number of CPA-oriented businesses were realizing and
implementing mid-size and large accounting applications. Today – accounting
department team is comfortable with generic ERP interface and needs minimal
training. Usually we train IT people and they in turn provide Great Plains
interface and reporting training to the end users, or end users attend online
training to get advanced skills in the application interface.
- Technical
Customization & Modification.
Well – if you remember old-good-days SAP, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Oracle ERP
systems implementation – you would agree that they required a lot of
programmers and developers participation. The same is applicable if you look
at Microsoft Great Plains – however we need to make some remarks, related to
our new time. First of all – Developers are mow concentrated in the
development centers, dispersed across the USA and especially internationally
in so-called offshore zones: India, Philippines, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine. We
are not talking about China here, because Great Plains is not very popular
over there. So, normal situation should be when your have nation-wide
consulting company here in the States with regional project managers and Great
Plains Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, Integration Manager, eConnect, Crystal
Reports, VB.Net and C#.Net developers in Sao Paulo, Moscow or Manila.
- Remote Support.
Nowadays technology tries to move us toward the ideal world when you as
end-user in Denver could be supported by consultant or developer in Brazil
through web session, remote desktop connection, VPN, Skype, VOIP, or other
tool. The only requirement is fast internet connection from your and
technician side – which is catching up very quickly.
- Multinationals.
Multinational corporation has to deal with the following issues: taxes (VAT,
GST, Sales Taxes), customs fees, tax filing rules, local chart of accounts
regulations (France, Russia), localizations – ERP application should be
localized – all the screens should be in local language: Chinese, Spanish,
Portuguese, Russian, French, German, Polish. Microsoft Great Plains is
localized for South America, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Middles East
(Arabic language support), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria and
central Africa
Good luck with
implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns
– we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call
866-528-0577 or
630-961-5918!
help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew is Great Plains
specialist in
Alba Spectrum Technologies (
http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft
CRM Partner, serving clients in
California, Minnesota,
Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia