IT Strategy for Midsize Business: Microsoft vs. Java, Great Plains & CRM
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IT Strategy for Midsize Business: Microsoft vs. Java, Great Plains & CRM
Author: Andrew Karasev
Date Added: Sunday Jul 03rd, 2005
Category: Technology
Midsize business or
non-profit organization should decide if one-vendor solution would be
appropriate and the associated risk acceptable. In our opinion, balancing the
risk of one-vendor-approach is not economically feasible and should be avoided.
This means that you need to decide if you plan to be Microsoft-oriented or
Java/Unix/Linux/Oracle oriented. In the case of Java direction – you again have
to further consider your options and if possible do not deploy too many systems
from different vendors. Even if you host your systems with somebody else – we
think that in the future you might have a risk of complex data conversion from
one system to another. In this small article we’ll show you typical way if you
follow Microsoft direction: Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains and
Microsoft CRM
- Sales Automation.
It was actual at all the times, however now it is becoming critical to have
decent Client Relation Management (CRM) system implemented. You order takers
or sales people should be working exclusively in CRM, where you should have
sales workflow, approvals, pipeline of pending deals, reporting with future
cash flow prediction. Use Microsoft CRM Sales module.
- Servicing. If you would like to avoid tame wasting when your service and
sales people are talking to each other and have long meetings to fulfill
customer order, you have to organize them around CRM Service module: Contract,
Case, Activity, workflow and assignments to service technicians, plus email
to/from your customers should be captured in MS CRM
- ERP.
Currently, Microsoft Business Solutions has MS CRM integrated with Microsoft
Great Plains. Great Plains is good ERP
solution for majority midsize business and fits to variety of business
niches. Great Plains is integrated with MS CRM on the level of Sales Order
Processing module (SOP).
- Customization.
Usually each midsize business has unique procedures which should be mapped
into their CRM and ERP. So, be ready to have minor or major customization
implemented. In the case of MS CRM – majority of the customizations are done
in C# or VB.Net – so called Microsoft CRM SDK programming and development. It
is open technology – you can download MS CRM SDK and have anyone with C#/VB.Net
skills do the job. In the case of Microsoft Great Plains he technology is not
that open and you might need somebody with Great Plains Dexterity,
VBA/Modifier, Integration Manager, eConnect, SQL coding – this combination of
skills is usually available from one of the Microsoft Business Solutions
Customization Partners
- Integration.
If you have something else, besides
Microsoft CRM and Great Plains, then you might need the integration. Assuming
that your major systems are on the Microsoft platform – integrations should be
done via heterogeneous queries from the side of Microsoft SQL server – through
linked servers
- Reporting. In our opinion – the best tool for non-financial reports
(financial – use FRx) is Crystal Reports. Base your
Crystal report on heterogeneous view or
stored procedure to pull the data from multiple systems. You can deploy
Crystal reports in your web application, if needed
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
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