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.
N/A
Oracle E-Business Suite
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Oracle E-Business Suite is a comprehensive suite of integrated, global business applications. The suite includes cross-industry capabilities spanning ERP, CRM and supply chain planning.
Oracle E-Business Suite provides a wider variety of solutions and better stability. Sage and Orion are more user-friendly. MS Dynamics GP is easier to implement but lacks robustness. If the cost is a major factor in the solution selection process, then Oracle EBS ranks lowest …
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.
Oracle eBusiness Suite is the best combination of CRM and ERP. Oracle helps us in managing the entire process of Sales and Marketing. The best feature is that it is highly user-friendly. We can easily manage the entire process of marketing from running a campaign to managing it and getting an interesting prospect than making a lead to making an opportunity by recording each and every conversation from day 1 to last day so that customer feels its valued by the company after that finally getting a business from the prospect.
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.
The EBS Oracle Order Management and Shipping Execution solution allows the creation of an integrated, seamless order-to-cash process and accurately capture of customer orders across multiple channels.
Orchestration of order details for seamless fulfillment execution.
Efficient shipment planning and confirmation.
Communication of order status information to customers throughout the order lifecycle.
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.
Because the application is working globally, it sometimes hangs and the connection is dropped.
It should have more shortcuts to make it easier to develop macros. I create many macros and use the "sendkeys" command in VBA, due to the lack of these shortcuts, it is not possible to automate the process.
For now I can not think of other areas that require improvement.
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.
After almost 5 years, we have a full control of this ERP System. We are able to implement new functionalities and modules without any major "consulting" expenses. As of today we are making almost 90% of the personalization/customization and implementation all in house. Once [it] is tuned, [it] keeps running very well with no major issues.
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.
The various forms - like order entry forms that allow the uses to enter sales orders and the ability to personalize the views based on end user needs - are easy to use and follow standard business processes. The new release has a big focus on usability and forms now have a familiar web look and feel which has increased usability considerably.
Because of the transactional nature of the system this software is available 24 X 7, and IT is responsible for making sure the system is available during normal business hours.
The performance of the product is very good. Given the transactional nature of the system one of the key focus areas for IT is to make sure performance is not affected for internal reasons. This can also depend on the server configuration and setup. For example, performance on Exadata machine is far superior to other Linux custom systems that companies choose to deploy. In general though, as already pointed out, the platform is now very stable and has few bugs. Whenever there are any issues, the cause is usually customizations that we have made to the platform, rather than out-of-the-box standard functionality.
In general, support has not been great - particularly standard (non premium) support . The main issue is that our IT staff has been using this platform for years and is very knowledgeable Whenever something goes wrong, we usually have a very precise idea of what the problem is. We are skilled at problem diagnosis. But the Oracle support process is very rigid and slow. Typically, we are required to go through a lengthy diagnosis process where they ask us multiple questions sometimes over several days and we are obliged to talk to different people with differing levels of knowledge. Since we already know what the problem is, we really just want a patch or a bug fix, but it takes days to get there instead of minutes. This can be very frustrating. This is a big part of the reason why we pay for premium support. But it's still a bit disappointing.
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.
The key success factors for the implementation was project management, in-house expertise in IT and time. The implementation process started with the initial evaluation with the initial upgrade on a test system and mapping out the gaps and requirements. We did work with Oracle to understand the new functionality R12 had to offer and did another upgrade and researched solutions. With the use of software development cycle procedures there were conference room pilots with IT, business users. We then refined the project plan to the core key details, performed mock go-live implementations and finally upgraded the software. Overall, this was a very successful process.
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.
We explored Coupa, SAP, PeopleSoft, Salesforce. We chose Oracle based on value for money, features it offers and the easy availability of vast talent pool in the market. There are many trained Oracle product specialists readily available in the market. This helps us to tap experts when needed easily. Coupa does not have a Project Accounting module. SAP was too expensive. PeopleSoft is more catered towards to human resources software, while Salesforce is for CRM. Oracle has better financials and project portfolio management suite when compared to the competition and this what we needed.
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!
