Microsoft Great Plains: Large Scale Implementation

By Author: Andrew Karasev
Total Articles: 27
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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


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


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