Microsoft Business Solution – Great Plains is an integrated business solution package targeted for small to medium-sized businesses in the US market. Its many features combined with customization capabilities make it one of the best ERP software packages available today.
Great Plains uses the ODBC drivers installed by Microsoft SQL Server, making data accessible from each of its modules to be used for other applications such as Crystal Reports. In addition, Great Plains was developed in a proprietary programming language called Dexterity, which allows access to all of Great Plains resources such as tables, reports and scripts.
In addition to Crystal Reports, Great Plains also integrates with FRx, a financial reporting software. FRx pulls information from your General Ledger (or from any general ledger for that matter) then understands your fiscal periods, chart of account and other balances to tie it all into an easy and accurate financial report. FRx also eliminates the need to print and copy because of output options such as Excel (spreadsheet), ASCII, OLAP, or FRx DrillDown to be emailed or posted to the Web for easy access both internally and externally.
FRx reporting enables users to become more productive and effective. However, consultants reported that some problems exist with FRx upgrading. Issues were also raised with remapping FRx when migration of Great Plains from a legacy platform (Pervasive SQL or Ctree) to MS SQL Server took place. The following are some pointers with regards to FRx:
With FRx, you can make proactive decisions and know where your company stands financially. You may have other tools to imitate the financial reporting of FRx, but we recommend sticking to this application because it improves efficiency in your operations and empowers each user with its customizable and accurate reporting capabilities.
Divine Rigor is the Technical Writer for Alba Spectrum Technologies USA ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), a Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company. We are based in Chicago with locations in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York and contacts in international markets.
Feb 2005 Alba Spectrum Technologies USA
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