Microsoft Dynamics SL Differentiators

You will find that many systems cover the basics fairly well but there are differences between them that can be crucial. Our analysis was conducted a few years ago for a seminar presented at the Financial Technology Show. We will endavour to provide an update to our analysis in the near future.

Target Market

Small, medium-sized and some large companies with $10 - $250 Million in revenues

Customization

SL was one of the first systems to provide customization tools that allow you to change screens and add user defined fields outside of source code. SL was also built with hundreds of objects, which allows third party developers to call specific SL objects/programs as needed. This saves a lot of time in the development process and reduces the risk of programming errors.

Professional Services Automation (PSA)

SL is one of the few accounting and ERP systems that include extensive functionality for professional service based organizations that require tools to manage projects, track time, manage resources, manage opportunities, bill clients... With the May 27, 2003 release of SL 5.5, the PSA product was enhanced and now includes tight integration with Microsoft Project. Microsoft. Microsoft Project is the leading Project Management system, and many companies use it to set up and track the status of projects. SL's PSA also includes SharePoint, which enables any team, whether they reside in a small company, inside a corporation, or are located around the world, to easily share information. Sharing information is an important capability especially in professional service based organizations that need to share documents and information amongst team members working on a project.

Distribution

Not that well known is that SL is strong in distribution. Many distribution systems work with third party programs for EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) which can lead to additional costs and reliance on third party companies every time there is a change. SL includes EDI in its core system. SL also includes an customizable work flow system for order processing. You can define rules for orders that could include credit checking and authorization levels. Orders that don't need additional controls and can be immediately released for picking. Many distributors also want to track the costs for projects, and many distribution systems don't provide this capability.

Account Setup

With SL, you define account/subaccount independently and can combone them automatically on the fly subject to permissible account/subaccount combinations.