How To Reduce The Cost of ERP and CRM Licenses Using Microsoft Sharepoint

Most companies today still have islands of information throughout their organization.  Accounting has their own general ledger, receivables, and payables systems.  Other departments like sales, human resources, or manufacturing often have their own systems, non-integrated applications and tons of resulting duplicative data.  For example, both the accounting and manufacturing departments would have their own vendor information and important document files related that are often in either the accounting application, manufacturing system, a shared network drive, or maybe a user’s local hard drive.  This has the disadvantage of maintaining information in multiple systems and no systematic relationship for file sharing, uploading or retrieval.

When considering the implementation of a new business solution, organizations need to pay special attention to eliminating these islands of information and eliminating duplicative data entry.  Microsoft Dynamics GP has multiple tools such as eOne Smart Connect that allow real-time integration of accounting systems to line-of-business applications so data doesn’t have to be re-keyed. 

Utilizing systems like Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can also standardize where documents are stored with Microsoft SharePoint.  When vendors are created in CRM you can utilize a CRM workflow to create a SharePoint document library for the vendor. Users have access to the vendor information in CRM from a Documents tab (via an IFrame) on the vendor record. A GP web service is also used to create the vendor record in GP and storing of the vendor SharePoint document library URL on the GP vendor record.

The solution utilizes web services to create and keep vendor information in sync between two systems and creation of a vendor document library in SharePoint accessible from either Microsoft Dynamics GP or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  In fact, employees wouldn’t need CRM or GP user licenses to now access the data off SharePoint. This makes it easier for employees to find and store important documents as well as reducing the number of ERP or CRM user licenses required.   Attend an educational Microsoft Dynamics webinar by The TM Group of Michigan, and learn how Microsoft Dynamics works together with Microsoft SharePoint to help organizations keep their licensing costs down.

by The TM Group – Michigan Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner