Microsoft Great Plains: Manufacturing or Bill of Materials - Overview for IT Specialist

Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions product, targeted to mid-size companies. Currently Microsoft is in progress of transforming several ERP products it has: Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon and Navision into several business suites - Microsoft Financial, Microsoft HR, Microsoft Manufacturing, Microsoft Logistics.These suites may be (in the future) put together and work for your company as integrated ERP solution with web interface (Microsoft Business Portal). If you are midsize company with some manufacturing - you should make the research on light manufacturing packages available on software market. In the case of your commitment to Great Plains (if you use it as your accounting system) you should probably first answer this question - do we need full featured manufacturing or we should implement just bill of materials and have missing functionality be filled with custom Crystal Reports and light Dexterity customization?And one more thing to consider - Microsoft Manufacturing will be more likely build on Navision manufacturing base. If you have process manufacturing - you should not implement GP manufacturing - it is discreet manufacturing.If you answer yes on most of these questions, you do need manufacturingDo you need Manufacturing Resource Planning?Are Cost Centers required?Do you base your production on the specific Sales Order?Do you track working shifts and allocate the cost?Now - this is what you can have in Bill of MaterialsSamples bills of materials - to do the replacement of the itemsPurchasing configuration, based on ABC codes and other criteriaHistorical bills reportingWith Crystal Reports you can have this information, having just Bill of MaterialsSales/profitability by customer, item, region or custom criteriaFuture Sales predictions, based on your criteriaEmployee time and cost allocationSimple Cost Centers, based on product line, specific order or other user defined informationGood luck with your research – we are here to help with Bill of Materials or recommend the best GP Manufacturing partner! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.comAbout The AuthorAndrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, New York, Washington, Georgia, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com.akarasev@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev