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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Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Score 6.7 out of 10
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An ERP primarily aimed at medium-sized companies that combines financial management capabilities contain the familiar general ledger along with expense management, accounts payable and receivable (AP/AR), advanced cost accounting, and fixed asset accounting.
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.
If there are lot of complicated systems this might not be the best system. If you have only some complexity Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a product a technical or application person can wrap their hands around and understand the whole system.
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.
The new versions (9.2) of JDE has so much open functionality and really gives the user control over the screens and what they want to see. Love that the layout of the screen is really up to the user and what they want to see it along with freezing columns and creating favorites for way access.
It is so flexible with the system platforms that it can run on and so easy to customize since it supports so many databases.
It is intuitive and does not need to have a lot of training on how to use the software.
It's just a great ERP software and one of the better ones I've seen.
Oracle is FINALLY starting to listen to the users and SIGs and putting enhancements into the system which makes life easier for us business users.
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.
The Configurable Network Language (CNC) is a proprietary protocol, and it can be difficult to source resources that understand this language well.
It has some inherent limitations with generating PDF or printable files. Most organizations use a third party platform like Creat!form or Bottomline to solve this.
No built in credit card processing solution, and no plug-and-play eCommerce or webstore capabilities available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
It is simple to use and implement as compared to complex softwares in the market that may take ample amount of time to implement. The budget is also slightly less to provide the same functionality that other softwares are providing. Also having Oracle database that comes with the system is much easier to handle and use and have much security.
Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne's advantage is significant cost savings and operational improvements when you run Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne in the Oracle Cloud. Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers the only no-compromise enterprise cloud platform for moving Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, its associated database systems, an ecosystem of apps to the cloud. Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne's One-Click Provisioning tool allows you to deploy Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the Oracle Cloud in hours, not days while maintaining the integrity of existing customized apps.
