Microsoft Dynamics SL is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family.
This product was acquired from Solomon 2000.
The product is typically used by SMBs, particularly in project-based businesses (e.g. construction). It has strong accounting and project management capabilities.
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NetSuite ERP
Score 8.0 out of 10
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NetSuite is a suite of ERP and accounting modules which is sold in various editions aimed at different size customers. The multi-country, multi-currency version is an additional module called OneWorld. Netsuite is a SaaS system and is not offered in an on-premise edition.
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Pricing
Microsoft Dynamics SL
NetSuite ERP
Editions & Modules
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No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Dynamics SL
NetSuite ERP
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Users subscribe to NetSuite for an annual license fee. The license is made up of three main components: core platform, optional modules and the number of users. There is also a one-time implementation fee for initial setup. New modules and users and can be added as a business grows.
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.
Really in this hybrid environment, being up in the cloud and being able to securely access the data and work from anywhere, I think it's a real game changer for my team. So I really like the fact that NetSuite keeps up with security features and allows users to access it from anywhere.
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.
They do reporting very well. I love the ability to have control over how the information flows through my NetSuite, my user roles, and my responsibilities. I can assign certain tasks to certain people, and they do that and then also have the control to approve that and make sure it's done correctly.
Just being able to drill down into a particular GL account or into a particular line item and see what really makes that up and what's driving our certain costs.
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.
Honestly, right now, my biggest pain point is kind of our own doing, but I would appreciate a little bit more support and help in the area of performance management and kind of understanding how our application is built, what are the best choices for customizing or solving a problem in terms of performance, because our company is rather large, we have a lot of data coming in and out, and that has been an issue for us recently.
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.
NetSuite is able to cover all of our needs, spanning multiple departments and managerial levels. We use it daily for a multitude of functions, including creating promotions, estimating inventory, pulling historical reports, forecasting sales, and more. Overall, we're very satisfied with NetSuite as an ERP solution and recommend it to medium to large businesses.
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.
I have given this rating due to below use cases: - Order Management - Advanced Revenue Management - Invoicing - Automated Billing - Inbound and Outbound Integrations with applications such as Salesforce, Zip, Stripe, Mavenlink, Avalara, Floquast - Project management and billing - Training -Customer Support - Knowledge Article Support
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.
It has been very reliable. I can only think of 1-2 times in 4.5 years that we have had issues getting in, and in each case were able to get back in within 1 hour. There has not been a major downtime
Most of the time the performance is very good. Pages load in a few seconds; financial reports take less than 5 seconds; basic searches take a few seconds. But performance can be sporadic throughout the day and cause the run time to triple.
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.
The account rep changes quite often, which requires restarting. Suite Answers is a very good tool but can be hard to use for somebody who is not fully confident with Netsuite. Asking questions that are not already answered in Suite Answers can be rough. Training is readily available, but most of the time stays on the surface and doesn't answer medium to more advanced questions.
I had in person training for a day when first got the software. The training was good. The challenge was that there was a large gap between training and when we went live so we forgot quite a lot
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!
I felt NetSuite Professional Services did an excellent job of guiding us in the implementation. I also felt our internal teams were a little resistant to the change and engagement of new software. Had we performed better engaging and buying into the new software, I would be able to rate the implementation better. Therefore, the lower number should not be viewed as a deficiency with the software or the professional services teams, but as an reminder of how important complete buy-in from the local users is.
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.
Well, the reason why I'm with NetSuite is because obviously it beats out those other options quite considerably. It gave us the whole ecosystem that gave us everything we needed. I didn't need a dedicated administrator whose full-time job is to deal with it like our current system would need to really be useful. I can find people or train people how to use it right away. So for us, that really beats it out compared to the Sage and QuickBooks where we were looking at it from a perspective of, yeah, we can find people who are experts in those fields. They don't scale up to the size that we need as we're going to really quickly go from R&D company into doing tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue and activities. So that's where it beats us out over say Sage or QuickBooks is it's got that complete scalability. We can go to multiple subsidiaries, foreign currency, not a problem. It's got that full functionality.
We have been able to scale our business 25X without any major overhaul with Netsuite. Its dashboard setup makes onboarding new employees very easy and allows data to be shared across multiple offices. Its cloud setup does not put any pressure on IT to scale servers or other infrastructure. We have been able to become much more efficient in all aspects of the business.
Positive impact, again, it's our source of truth, so we are able to not have questions about how much money we have in the bank or do we have enough material to build this job. Being able to know those things immediately is super valuable.
I mean it's the grease that skids the wheels that gets us to accomplish the things that we do in our business.
