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Custom Sales Order System integration with Great Plains Microsoft Dynamics GP – Alba Spectrum

If your company is established business, which uses one or another in-house developed Business Management System and you are now in situation when you are moving the business to the new phase, where you need industry strength ERP system behind, or how now they name it accounting backoffice, you may be interested to read on how Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains can do the job for you. Of course, and this is not a big secret, GP integration needs to be designed and programmed by GP consultants, who will work in concert with your internal IT professionals. Let’s take a look at typical scenarios:
1. Sales Order Processing and Vendor Drop Shipping. If you have strong presence on the web as eCommerce reseller, there is the chance, that what you actually do is transfer customer sales orders to vendor drop ship purchase orders. If this is the case, you will need to integrate your SOP system with Microsoft Great Plains. The first and the most reliable tool to choose from and consider on the first place is GP Integration Manager. In IM itself, please review eConnect connectors to integrate Sales Order Processing and Purchase Receipt documents. eConnect route is definitely faster, in order to see the difference you should know that traditional IM connector uses Great Plains workstation as OLE server to do the job, basically filling up fields in the form and so, validating business logic
2. Direct eConnect programming. This option should be faster in comparison to Integration Manager way, as IM eConnect connector has to do all the steps in business logic validation, while in eConnect MS Visual Studio.Net c# or VB programming you can choose the steps to perform in business logic validation. However eConnect “atomic” stored procedures might still be less efficient as they had to validate the logic of Microsoft Dexterity
3. SQL Stored Procedures approach. SQL is definitely the fastest tool to try, however you should be proficient in SQL scripting and understand the impact of various SQL expressions on GP data extraction and manipulation performance: Select versus SQL cursor is good example. This is not the only warning – when you use SQL update, delete or insert query, you can damage GP DYNAMICS or company database tables
4. Integration Mapping. Your employees or traditional IT department contractors might be giving you the signal that they’ll integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP with your legacy Sales system. Microsoft as successor of Great Plains Software, knows that GP is mid-size ERP package and being such it requires consulting partner network to sell MRP software and do certified GP ERP installation and implementation. Of course your people could ultimately and theoretically be done with the GP implementing job, however you should understand the risks and learning curve cost impacts
5. Diving to Technology Ocean. GP technologies include: Microsoft Dexterity, SQL Server 2005 and 2000, GP ReportWriter, GP Modifier with VBA, Crystal Reports, eConnect and XML Web Services, GP Integration Manager with eConnect connectors. MS Sharepoint and GP Business Portal at this time are in market attacking mode, so if you need such practical modules as Electronic Document Delivery, Requisition Management (successor of eRequisition), Order Management (successor of eOrder)
6. Pervasive SQL or Ctree integrations. There are chances that your company had hard time in earlier 2000 and you lapsed to pay Microsoft Great Plains annual enhancement program. In this situation, if you plan to get new GP version, currently GP 10.0 license keys, you will have to undergo GP enhancement reenrollment procedure
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com - help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving customers USA/Canada nationwide: Illinois, California, New York, Quebec, Ontario, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas. Local service is available in Houston & Dallas: Richmond, Sugar Land, Katy, Rosenberg, Missouri City, Pearland, Friendswood, Meadows, Mission Bend, Jersey Village, Fort Worth; serving GP customers in Chicago, IL: Naperville, Aurora, Joliet, Wheaton, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Lyons, Niles, Downers Grove, Lisle, West Chicago, Barrington, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village, Lombard, Morris, Ottawa, Marseilles, Seneca, Oswego, Plainfield, Darien, Winchester, Hinsdale.