Customer Focus is solution that includes order management, inventory management, warehousing, CMS, E-mail marketing, CRM, and general accounting functions. E-Commerce web stores are also included in the solution.
$50
# of stores and users
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Dynamics GP is an ERP software with accounting capabilities. It includes various packs for customizability and features tailored to specific industries’ needs. GP is offered as a perpetual license or subscription.
Today, with a globalized competition and without truce, a company must evaluate and take into account its size, and use this to analyze which of the tools available in the market is more suited to their needs. If it is a small company, you can improve your customer service by incorporating a chat. But a company of national level must evaluate other aspects like: marketing, tastes, preferences, tendencies, etc. To achieve the effective management of relationships with our customers, this technology provides us with effective tools and easy access.
A large company where users have one function- for instance, where someone only receives or works in payables. That minimizes the number of windows they need. A smaller company where one user does multiple functions will require a lot more training and user knowledge to navigate, and it makes it harder to secure users. You also have to understand that GP started life as Great Plains, designed for accountants. The other modules were added on after Microsoft bought Great Plains, which means that modules like Manufacturing are red-headed step children with much smaller support ecosystems. So, if you're starting fresh, you may want to look at something built for the mobile world. D365 and Business Central are a lot more money, buggy, and hard to customize and essentially still vaporware. Microsoft is heavily investing there, leading to the previously mentioned question about the future of GP. If I was starting today I would be hard pressed to justify jumping into GP in a world where Salesforce ties in with so many programs. GP has MRP but it is limited so it's hard to justify a manufacturer starting with GP today.
Facilitates the interaction between the company and customers, through various communication channels, thanks to the storage of information of interest, such as the needs and preferences for products or services.
Access data of interest (about the clients, their histories, products, prices, etc.,) from any place with access to the internet
An extensive knowledge about the clients allows the company to present commercial offers adapted to their needs, so the income is also higher, through a lower sales cycle. The CRM allows to enhance sales and marketing functions.
Able to be extended into multiple areas of your business
One feature we have been using for a few years is EFT for payables - it has significantly reduced the time spent paying vendors and reduced our check printing and mailing costs. It is very easy to setup and use.
Cost is always an element to consider when purchasing a computer solution, both for the purchase of the software and for its maintenance, many forget about the ongoing support costs that come with software.
Many systems are backed up automatically through the cloud or through some other solution, but not all. So there is a good chance that the data will be lost. it is therefore necessary to take the safe backup forecasts in the event of any unforeseen occurrence and cause us an unpleasant surprise.
There is a difference between being served by a real person when making a phone call, to an automated attention system. Sometimes it is good to make the tasks more automatic, but it is also good to have a little personalized help to avoid losing the human value of relationships.
With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.
Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.
Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.
Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.
Sales management is based on the management of customer relationships and must be centralized so that its analysis is effective. The data that is collected must be available for the generation of statistics for decision making by the directory. This tool allows us to generate the necessary data to generate results, save time and production cost. The other products did not fit our objectives.
I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.
With the information available, about the clients, the company can know and segment the markets and develop effective and successful marketing campaigns.
With the information the employee can develop more personalized relationships with the client.
This customer service tool facilitated the administrative processes of sales to achieve higher performance and better results in the company.
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!
