Microsoft Dymaics GP (Great Plains) Review

By Michael Burns published in the CAmagazine March 2006

Microsoft Business Solutions has been reborn. The group of products has a new name – Microsoft Dynamics – along with a new logo sporting the same colours as the other Microsoft brands. The objective? To better align the products with the company’s strategy of moving toward a unified code base. All the product names have been abbreviated; for example, Great Plains has become Microsoft Dynamics GP, Navision is now Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Solomon is Microsoft Dynamics SL. But if you’re like me, you will probably continue to refer to these systems for a while by their old names.

Many people can’t tell the difference between Microsoft’s existing enterprise resource planning systems. This is not surprising, since these systems used to be in competition with each other before they were acquired. A general rule of thumb is that Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX (Axapta) are for companies requiring a highly customizable system because of their unique requirements. GP is aimed at organizations that want “out of the box” functionality with little or no customization. Although Microsoft says SL is best suited for companies that are largely focused on professional services, a significant percentage of GP’s sales are also in that area. I think Microsoft needs to work on its product differentiation. The Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV and SL product lines offer two editions – standard and professional. The standard edition is targeted at companies with more than $10 million in revenue; the professional edition is for those with revenue higher than $50 million. Axapta is for companies whose revenue tops $100 million.

One of Microsoft’s strategies is to make customers for life. It will soon be releasing Small Business Accounting for customers in the one-to-five user range. Also, Small Business Financials (a scaled-down GP), offering more functionality than Small Business Accounting, and scaling to 10 users, will be releasing version 9.0 in February 2006. With this product portfolio, businesses can start with one of the entry-level products and move within the Microsoft Dynamics family as their business grows.

Microsoft Dynamics GP

When people think of Microsoft Dynamics GP, they usually think of a financial management system. Wrong. Microsoft Dynamics GP has a wide range of functions, including distribution, discrete manufacturing (work orders, routings, material requirements planning, job costing, field service (scheduling, preventive maintenance, invoicing, etc.), HR (including employee self-service over a browser), demand planning, contract management, grant management and project accounting. Microsoft Dynamics GP also has many well-kept secrets. Have you heard of Business Portal, Forecaster, Analytical Accounting and Collection Management?

Business Portal is built using Microsoft SharePoint Services, which can be used to create websites for information sharing, analysis and document collaboration. This means you get quick access to lots of information via the Internet. Best of all, you get one licence for Business Portal for every user licence you purchase and if you need more it costs only about $50 a user.

Forecaster will be useful to companies that have budgeting and forecasting challenges. It is a Web-based product with an Excel-like interface allowing you to create budgets from actuals and formulas based on any information such as head count, revenue models and capital budgeting. It includes work flow tools for managing both the approval process and tracking the status of the budget itself. The Microsoft Dynamics GP financial report writer, FRx, can read the budget data from Forecaster – so once completed, you can track your budget to actuals.

Analytical Accounting allows you to attach user-defined transaction dimension codes to ledger transactions, eliminating the need to analyse transactions on the basis of account segments. You can slice and dice across multiple dimensions without needing to set up the dimensions in the chart of accounts.

Collection Management applies to companies with heavy-duty collections processes and includes automatic follow-up actions and reminder dates, sending customized e-mail notices to customers based on their overdue status.

A number of noteworthy features not found in many systems include consolidating of customers and vendors that are the same so that you would only pay the net amount owed. Contract billing would allow you to bill customers based on the terms within the contract. Revenue and expense deferrals would allow you to recognize revenue or expenses in the future, based on the accounting treatment you wish to give these transactions.

Microsoft Dynamics GP prides itself on ease of use. Perhaps the best reflection of this is the “Smart List” feature. Smart Lists allow you to create your own list of customers (those only you work with), or your own list of vendors, items etc. You can also customize the way they are displayed. You can filter and run reports on your Smart Lists and save them for later. You could send your customer data to Excel and launch a mail merge with Microsoft Word.

What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0?

With typical Microsoft fanfare, version Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 was launched November 16, 2005 for release in December 2005. The application includes 170 functionality enhancements. Some deliver on the “first wave” of the Microsoft Dynamics product roadmap, code-named “project green.”

One of the most important changes delivered in GP 9.0 is “role pages.” Microsoft has conducted more than 2,000 interviews with people in common roles across multiple industries. Using this information, the company is defining system functions based on how you work in your specific role. The goal is to deliver more than 50 roles, and version 9.0 starts off by delivering 21. Each of these roles gets its own home page with key performance indicators, reports and links to application functions that are specific to their role. The 9.0, version brings more integration with Microsoft Office. Not only does the user interface look like Microsoft Outlook, but lets you have the Outlook calendar and to-do list right on your home page.

With version 9.0, Microsoft addresses a classic problem of many ERP systems – namely, they are great for transaction processing but offer limited business intelligence. BI simply means turning data into information useful for decision-making. With Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, you get the company’s SQL Reporting Services, which allow you to generate graphical representation of data, schedule your reports and include data from external sources. Version 9.0 includes eight examples of reports using SQL Reporting Services. Online analytical processing (OLAP) is often considered synonymous with business intelligence. OLAP requires analysis cubes to slice and dice information across multiple dimensions. Version 9.0 includes these analysis cubes as part of the package.

Version 9.0 provides management information, applications and business processes through Business Portal, which can be delivered in an intranet or extranet format using the Executive Centre. The Executive Centre presents critical business performance data using graphical representation of key performance indicators. Business Portal allows users to enter and process data in functions such as order entry, time and attendance, expense tracking, updating employee profiles and requisitioning. Business Portal also offers workflow to ensure approvals for many of these functions. It should be noted that some of the additional functionality within Business Portal requires extra modules.

By now, you have probably heard of Web Services, which allow companies to share data using standards such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Version 9.0 includes 160 Web Services access points supporting 20 key business processes. Salespeople, for example, can enter orders while in the field using PDAs and the order will flow automatically to GP using XML.

Bottom line

Not so long ago, Microsoft was a newcomer to the ERP business. In only a few short years, it has emerged as one of the leading vendors in that area. It doesn’t dominate the market today, but you can bet that’s the goal.