Microsoft Great Plains – main Microsoft Business Solutions application for US and Latin American (except Brazil, where MBS promotes Navision) markets is built with multiple modules. In the case of Sales automation you – software selection specialist should consider two Microsoft Great Plains modules: Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Invoicing. You should understand the difference between the two and see which one is the best fit for your company. Let’s consider two modules SOP and Invoicing. We’ll give you non formal view, based on our consulting practice.
Common Features. SOP and Invoicing have these features
Sales Automation – this is obvious statement.
Posting to GL and Bank Reconciliation – this means that automated posting across Microsoft Great Plains is applicable to both modules as well as to the whole Great Plains design.
Integration with Accounts Receivable (AR) module – Great Plains has very clear structure of base modules: GL (core), AR, AP, IV (inventory control). When you post document from SOP or Invoicing – system creates posted RM Sales transaction (Invoice) in Accounts Receivable module
Integration with Inventory Control Module – both modules are integrated with Inventory Control – this means that you can select items from the inventory as well as non inventoried items and have them as Invoice lines.
Sales Order Processing Additional Features. These are what you don’t have in Invoicing
Quote/Sales Order/Back Order/Return – you have workflow. You can start with quotation, then you can transfer quote to sales order (with Items allocation or without it in Inventory control). Then sales order can be transferred to Invoice or Backorder (in the case of shortage)
Process Holds – you can have holds with password protection placed on the way of transferring quote to invoice or order. Other holds functions are: printing, fulfilling and posting. However we would like to tell you about our experience. In 10+ years of our consulting practice we had only couple of clients who used this holds feature
Quote/Order/Invoice types – you can define these types and have different workflows associated with each of them. Imagine – Internet Orders you transfer to internet invoices, government quotes you either void or transfer to government orders, etc.
Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases
You have Dexterity customization
You are doing migration from Pervasive/Ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE, especially when you have third-parties without migration tools
You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports
You have old version of Great Plains: Dynamics or eEnterprise 6.0 or prior – in this case you can not appeal to Microsoft Technical Support – it is discontinued
Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend – if it fails – you have business problems
You don’t have support – in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan – you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
