Recovering Microsoft Great Plains Customization – Tips for IT Director

Remember nice and prosperous Clinton era? When you implemented innovative those old days accounting application – Great Plains Dynamics. And did a lot of customizations to fit your business requirements precisely. You still remember the names of consultants and programmers who did the job and probably the name of the company – Great Plains reseller in your business metro. This company more likely doesn’t exist in the same form – either closed the doors or merged and transformed to something else. When you tried to contact former programmers – they more likely nicely let you know that they do not do this any more – they got completely different job and profession. Great Plains Software was acquired by Microsoft and not part of Microsoft Business Solutions. In old good days Great Plains Software was taking care of popularizing its customization and growing Great Plains Dexterity programming expertise. Nowadays Microsoft Business Solutions has more concerns on merging all its ERP applications: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta and making them run together as a set of modules (project Green).• Dex Programmers Pool. Well, you may say – anyway let’s place ad and look at five Dex programmers to choose from and make an upgrade to our really advanced customization for Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL. We’ll move it to Microsoft Great Plains on MS SQL Server 2005. In about month you may realize that nobody actually replied to your ad and you got only couple of Indian offshore development companies general offers to contract them software development you might need. Where are all the local Dex programmers. The answer is – they more likely do not exist anymore• Great Plains Customization Partners. Programmers were laid off and transformed their career to something else. Dexterity programmers still exist but they had to move and get a job with nation-wide Microsoft Great Plains Customization Partner. The same should be said about Great Plains Modifier/VBA, Continuum for VB and Delphi, ReportWriter and Great Plains Integration Manager VBA programmers. These technologies, especially Dexterity source code programming and require substantial dedication. In some cases these people become project managers and lead offshore development force• Offshore Developers. Even in the time of legendary Great Plains Software – a lot of third party modules were programmed and designed in Philippines – if you remember Match Data Project Accounting – this company was purchased by Great Plains Software (interesting enough that the rival was Intellisol International – Australian based company, later on moved to Fargo in hope of the luck). Then Great Plains subdivision was transformed into Microsoft Business Solutions Philippines and then closed around 2002. Nowadays the best Dexterity source code programming pool is concentrated there and in Australia. You may ask – how about tradition offshore places, such as India – yes – you can find a lot of MBS development companies in India, but in the case of Great Plains they might be short of Dex source code programming expertise.• How do I recover my Dex custom piece? You should in our opinion look for inexpensive nation-wide Great Plains customization partner, who has Dex project managers and offshore developers.You can always appeal to our help with your customization upgrade or modification, we use regional project manager and developers in Philippines and Brazil! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.comAndrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia

Andrew Karasev