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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SAP ERP
Score 8.6 out of 10
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SAP ERP is an enterprise suite comprising Financials (A/P, A/R, accounting, reporting, risk management, etc.), Human Capital Management (HR and Payroll), and Operations (procurement, manufacturing, sales & service). This is an enterprise level product designed for large organizations.
Main differentiator: extensive proven experience in different industries, robust solution that includes each functional area, SAP ERP is not only an accounting platform, it is also a business ecosystem. Extends its basic functionalities with products for the analysis of …
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.
The availability of the leading and non-leading ledgers meets our financial reporting requirements and helps us fulfill both the stock exchange requirements at the parent company level and country-specific requirements at the operating entity level. In addition, the Open Item Managed Account feature ensures that reporting teams optimize their efforts on subsystem-driven accounts to achieve accounting concurrency.
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.
Organizational resource management and integration of different departments with each other as a software automation
We have Access to all insights and analytics data from anywhere
It doesn't matter how big your organization is, it supports everything from small companies to giant high-tech organizations, and they all have access to data at very high speeds.
If you use the web and cloud version, the initial costs will be greatly reduced and even a small start-up small company can enjoy the benefits of SAP ERP.
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.
SAP sometimes gets slow whenever most of the people in the company simultaneously use it
Hopefully they would extend background job processing to all tables in SAP since it sometimes goes time out whenever extracting large historical data (ex. 5 years expense data)
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.
The cost of SAP as an ERP is quite high and the switching costs associated with ERP systems are even higher. That being said moving from one ERP to another only happens once in a great while for large organizations. Those switching costs include retraining, IT hardware requirements, outside consultants and more
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.
It is worth my time as far as my concern I just loved the product and it has saved me from many problems that I used to [deal] with earlier overall it has [enhanced] my work efficiency that is why I am happy to give this rating to this product Also I loved the features and worth my working skills.
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.
Well, I've had several scenarios where it was evident that they simply buy time. At the same time, their Product Support and Implementation teams are most likely not in sync. What's said by a member of implementation may not hold good when you refer the same thing with a member of the support team.
There are online courses available from SAP called openSAP courses which can be used as a learning tool. Apart from it, SAP trainers can be arranged at an additional cost to train in person.
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!
Implementation of SAP ERP is actually taken up with phases, and every phase has a business purpose. Mostly every implementation goes well with the Golive, and support during HyperCare ensures that all issues raised post golive are fixed before going into Maintenance mode
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.
SAP is totally integrated as are many of its greatest competitors, but the level of detail in the integration between modules puts SAP heads and shoulders above all others. Granted, the SAP implementation can be much more difficult to perform, but in the long run, the amount of effort you put in will result in excellent usability. After using Oracle's E-Business Suite for over 20 years, we did a due diligence search that lasted over 18 months before making a decision to go with SAP. This was a result of our Oracle system being made "un-upgradeable" due to a custom module that Oracle Consulting actually built for us. We were stuck in an old version of their database that would not work upon patching to the next version.
