Dynamics Gp In Distribution And Wholesale: Implementation, Integration, Barcode Technology

Microsoft Dynamics GP, or how it was formerly known (prior to the acquisition of Great Plains Software by Microsoft Corporation) Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise, is powerful and flexible mid-market Corporate ERP application with modules and add-ons for various industries. GP has special suite of modules, named Distribution, where the majority of features are implemented, concerning Wholesale Trade, Nationwide and International Distribution, Warehouse Management Automation, Supply Chain Management. Distribution modules, such as Inventory Control (with Distribution version of Bill of Materials), Purchase Order Processing and Sales Order Processing are the most popular as integration points for Microsoft Dynamics GP ISV maintained add-ons, such as Warehouse Management System, Point of Sale (POS) terminals, SCM extensions. If you are in transition to your new Corporate ERP application and currently in the phase of watching Corporate ERP and MRP applications executive presentations, Dynamics GP should definitely be on the list of options. Lets review several important components, often required in distribution and wholesale trade industries:

1.Warehouse Management System. WMS typically is based on Barcode scanning technology and has software and hardware components. Hardware components of the WMS are barcoding devices, such as laser scanners, barcode label printers, barcode servers to name the few important ones and WMS software typically has two tiers WMS client (running directly on your barcode scanner, where you have small processor and operating system, such as Windows Mobile, or text only compliant WMS client), and WMS Server, managing all the scanners on the warehouse floor and transmitting info to Dynamics GP server via such technologies as ODBC, direct SQL Server native driver. Warehouse Management System is available on the ERP software market in various flavors and technology envelops. We would like to suggest a classification, where we have two technology hives: External Standalone Warehouse Management System (with connectors to major dominant Corporate ERP applications, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, SL, NAV, plus such non-Microsoft ERP platforms as Oracle eBusiness Suite, Accpac, SAP Business One, SAP R/3, MySAP). And the second hive is direct WMS extensions to Dynamics GP distribution modules (often referred as barcoding extensions to SOP, POP and Inventory control forms)

2.Supply Chain Management or SCM in abbreviation. SCM includes WMS concept in its theory and has some emphasis on Manufacturing parts and finished goods delivery to the production facility and final customer destination respectively. If you cannot find Dynamics GP ISV add-on, covering your SCM automation needs, you may consider to locate Dynamics GP Technology partner, who has programmers and technical consultants, fluent in such technologies as Great Plains Dexterity, eConnect, Microsoft Visual Studio SDK for GP, Extender, Modifier with VBA. Then you discuss with your chosen Dynamics GP Reseller the customization needs

3.Dynamics GP and Barcode Technology. Here you need to consider two options and maybe agree on the compromising solution. Dynamics GP screens, such as Sales Order Processing Transaction, POP Purchase Receipt, Inventory Transfer or Adjustment are ready for barcoding, but they might be not very efficient, as the user has to tab through all the required fields, prior to clicking the barcode scanner button to scan something like item number in SOP or POP forms. We recommend Dynamics GP Dexterity custom programming to enable barcode scanned documents upload to Great Plains Distribution forms, especially when you need unique business logic to be implemented and there are no existing Dynamics GP ISV add-ons available

4.Recommended Dynamics GP Integration Technologies. Here we assume that you are on the tight budget and would like to export your Legacy Business System transactions to the text file or even expose them via ODBC connection (where you really resolve computer platform dependency: Linux, PHP, Unix, Oracle, Informix, Sybase, IBM DB II, Progress or such small business DB applications as Foxpro, Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Access, XML, Coma or Tab delimited text files). The first option in our recommendation would be GP Integration Manager. The second tool to consider in our opinion is eConnect SDK, where you have more control from your program development projects, especially from Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB.Net

5.Dynamics GP Distribution and Wholesale trade implementation red flags. We recommend you to stick to modern computer world realities, Corporate ERP limitations. For example, do not try to pursue unrealistic goals in data conversion, when you are switching from legacy ERP to Microsoft Dynamics GP or another Corporate ERP platform. Historical data migration might be the way to ERP implementation limbo. Especially problematic technic in our opinion is direct SQL data feeding to GP tables (SOP10100, SOP10200, GL10001'), as here you are exposed to potential data integrity compromising

6.Business to Business eCommerce (B2B). In distributions and wholesale scenarios, there is often the need to provide purchase order via EDI or B2B ecommerce channels. Dynamics GP is open to EDI protocols and to such eCommerce shopping carts as Magento/MySQL/PHP or ASP.Net Storefront/Microsoft Windows .Net, SQL Server, SQL Express

7.Special attention to IBM and Oracle DB platforms. Dynamics GP is naturally dependent on Microsoft ODBC, Windows platforms. Earlier Great Plains Accounting was available on Mac and DOS platforms (where earlier days Microsoft was not yet there). Regarding Oracle Financials platform, we believe that there are some disputed points, however customers should not be involved into the discussion and should not lose their hard earned money

8.Special Attention to Michigan local customers. Alba Spectrum opened its location in Benton Harbor, Saint Joseph. Besides of the buzz about Dynamics GP remote support our consultants should be available in Kalamazoo/Pertage, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Holland, Muskegon, New Buffalo, Paw Paw, Lansing, Ann Arbor areas

9.To request further support, please call us 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com We need to discuss your cards in order to recommend you the best solutions, which is not contingent to our preferences. We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/skype conferences). Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas