Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Sage Inventory Advisor

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.

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As we are selling products in multiple countries, we need multiple warehouses. Many apps out there is very much limited to one warehouse per account, but here we can track multi-warehouses so its really suited for our company and future scalability. It gives us clear advantage on forecasting, we can now prepare well for stockouts, and safety stock levels, it reduce cost for us from overstocking, thus giving us real ROI

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• 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.

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• It gives us detailed metrics of product sales performance
• It gives us graph of sales forecast too
• It provides table with multiple customizable columns to activate for us to see important details
• It also gives a lot of filter options for us to be able to see priority items for attention
• It helped us create weekly and monthly reports that give us chance to plan ahead

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• 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.

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• It still has some room for improvement, there's no option for custom formula
• We cannot also create a product barcode within the webapp
• Although PO label is possible, its just CSS and HTML, which is not friendly for team mates who usually manage it

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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.

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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.

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Although it helped us to reduce cost, and help our company to save time and money in making sure we are monitoring all of our products, avoid overstocking and avoiding stockouts, just like other apps out there, there is some room for improvements for the app - first, its too expensive for small teams, second, there are times some glitch in SKUs that are on both warehouses, it has less flexibility in custom reports, and customized barcode creation

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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We used Prediko before for few months to a year, and its visual is stunning, but its a startup company by that time and the development is slow. The integration is also barely limited at that time. Although in terms of prediction - its cheap alternative is already great for accurate forecasting of stockouts, how many and how much to order for replenishment, colorful warnings and notifications and simple reports. Its more cheaper than Sage Inventory Advisor, but we still chosen Sage Inventory Advisor because of how many functions Sage Inventory Advisor could offer, namely customizable reports, multi-warehouse options (not possible on Prediko) and easy integration to our apps for warehouses.

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

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• 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.

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• It reduced our warehouse storage cost as we can now plan ahead more accurately only buying what is needed
• It helps us save time in organizing our datasets, thus our time is now revolving more on product sourcing rather than too much time in forecasting
• We can now have a 3D view of our historical records and future scales, thus we can now more atleast near accurately predict future sales giving us data driven decision making easier

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info