Alterdata Pack vs. Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. SAP Cloud ERP

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

Incentivized

Does well Manufacturing companies - E2E integration. Product Costing integration with manufacturing. Order to Cash - E2E integration, Joule, and openness to integrating third-party products. Less appropriate AI capabilities - competition is moving faster. E2E professional services business as business is evolving faster, and new ideas are coming in at a fast pace.

Incentivized

• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

Incentivized

• The software helps in forecasting and identifying potential challenges that would affect our organisation in the near future. This enables us to prepare in advance and also adopt practical and viable measures.
• It enables faster and accurate data processing, which enhances decision-making.
• It's easily customizable according to specific organizational needs. This promotes overall efficiency and productivity of the organization.

Incentivized

• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

Incentivized

• The beginner's user-friendly UI can help learners learn easily, and it feels a bit complex.
• Implementation of AI bot on common tasks.
• There are no offline functionality that users can use remotely.
• As the scalability of the products grows, they become more expensive.

Incentivized

Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

Incentivized

The cost of SAP as an ERP is quite high and the switching costs associated with ERP systems are even higher. That being said moving from one ERP to another only happens once in a great while for large organizations. Those switching costs include retraining, IT hardware requirements, outside consultants and more

I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

Incentivized

Day to day data insight is more accurate for manufacturing industry to procure as per forecasted from supplier. Supply and fulfillment cycle becomes more easier. I would say more about performance as we are using this new server so we can see clear difference between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and ECC. Also it has customized business extensions for rapid development.

Incentivized

We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

Incentivized

Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

Incentivized

The support system I find great as whenever I run into problems they rectify them quickly as possible they never reacted late the support is just up to the mark for me. They provide many solutions to the problems I faced the [technical] team support is always amazing they [listen] to mean work accordingly.

More effective

Incentivized

Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

Incentivized

SAP requires
a lot of internal and external resources to complete its successful
implementation. The cloud version requires a deeper understanding of the
different capabilities of the local systems (hardware) and the connection
towards your local IT team. We found several problems on our systems that we
couldn't foresee before the implementation and roll out.

Incentivized

Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

Incentivized

The platform utilizes advanced predictive analytics to anticipate operational bottlenecks and put them out of commission before the problems become larger. We can proactively develop effective strategies that help keep service quality in the face of unexpected changes in the market, or external disruptions, by continuously analyzing historical performance data as well as elements of the current market

Incentivized

Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

Incentivized

• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

Incentivized

• The financial management part ensures every process is well planned and allocated resources are used efficiently.
• The development of payroll management ensures that all employees are happily remunerated and, hence, very productive.
• The creation of solid financial reporting acts as the primary driver in decision-making, which brings more insights into development.

Incentivized