How does this relate to the Microsoft Dynamics GP solutions?  The core functionality of Dynamics GP (formally Great Plains) will provide features to run your business, but that is only the scratch of the surface.  There are many add-on solutions that can take the base functionality of Dynamics GP and provide transparency with not only your internal staff, but also for your vendors and customers.

Why would it be a good idea to provide transparency to these three groups?

• Internal Staff will have the ability to field questions about specific vendors and customers by quickly accessing account information, track invoices history with full audit trail, and streamline day-to-day activities.
• Vendors can see purchase orders, submitted invoices, and payment status to reduce costly phone inquiries freeing your team to focus on your business’s core competencies.
• Customers can see a full invoice history which will save your team by automating the collections process and streamline communications all to improve relationships via transparency.

Through the use of portals, businesses can provide transparency to their internal staff, customers and vendors to significantly cut cost in processing Account Receivable and Account Payable Transactions.  Providing information at the tips of your and customer/vendor fingers will improve communication.  If the ability to provide this information is not already a part of your daily activities, wouldn’t you want to try?

Contact your local Microsoft Partner and ask to learn about Enliven Software and The FIDESIC Platform.

By Enliven Software, The full circle accounts receivable and accounts payable processing platform within Dynamics GP.

Portals Improving Relationships: 3 Groups of Transparency with Dynamics GP is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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Dynamics GP employee portal solutions provide access to collaborative functions, documents and information to employees no matter where they work. Employee portals are easy to implement, have minimal continuing support requirements and help enhance productivity through:

• Secure, web-based access to Microsoft Dynamics GP functionality, information, applications and processes let your people work more productively no matter where they are with personalized gateways based on their business roles.
• People and teams can manage information and streamline administrative tasks like entering payroll hours, tracking time and accessing HR documents. Self-service capabilities can be set up to provide appropriate information for each employee’s needs.
• Requisition management lets employees submit purchase requisitions online, route to managers for approval and automatically send to the purchase order system.
• Project management through Microsoft Dynamics GP lets you track project costs and time spent and allows managers to drive better project efficiencies.

Make sure that you can respond to the needs of your employees with systems that support them wherever they work.  Promote collaboration and deliver services to your remote teams to improve their productivity. 

Find out how Dynamics GP can help connect your workforce.  Contact Steve Kane at 301-634-2404 or skane@broadpoint.net for a no obligation consultation from BroadPoint, Virginia’s premier Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner

Dynamics GP Supports Remote Project Teams And Telecommuters is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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Efficient

Whatever the type of portal – purchase requisitions, employee requests for PTO, dealer orders, or an outright retail ecommerce site – the design of web pages focuses for just that transaction type. 

Cost Effective

If you analyze your need for power users closely, you’ll find a small number of users actually cross multiple functions in the ERP system.  Once a company reaches the size where there are 15+ ERP users, the company has probably reached a total employee count of 75 or more.  This is a good balance point where the deployment cost of the portal is less than the cost of additional power user licenses.

You’ll identify your main accounting staff, manufacturing managers, and payroll staff, for example.  These users need reporting, inquiry, analysis, transaction, and routines processes (like month end AR closing).  Other users are so specialized they use the ERP system only to enter purchase requests, sales orders, or timesheets.  These users can be given access through inexpensive portals.  Comparing costs with fully web-based systems, the $40 one-time named-user portal license is incredibly cheap compared to a monthly subscription named-user license that’s typically $100+ per month.

Secure

Security becomes streamlined with this setup.  Inside the ERP system, the security is easier to setup because you’re dealing with just 15 users, not 115.  The portal security is simple because it’s tuned to the transaction entry.  In the case of the retail eCommerce site, there’s a hardware firewall between the buying public and your ERP system.

Performs

The web portal is being hosted in a manner which meets its needs for performance.  Think of a retail eCommerce site for a company with 85% of their sales in November and December.   That type of site is pointed outward to manage up to 2,000 orders an hour.  You don’t want to bog down that site with 15 order takers processing the orders, 25 manufacturing people fulfilling the orders, and 5 shipping personnel; you separate the need for speed from the need for ERP access.

Real-life Example

We recently had a client deploy the Order Management portal for their dealer and distributor network.  This is a secure site where various pubs and retail stores can log on and order one of Oregon’s finest microbrew products.  The cost to deploy?  Deploying the portal on their existing Windows/Commerce Server, they had no additional hardware or software cost.  The client already owned the Business Portal and Order Management licenses with their Advanced Management bundle.  They purchased 20 $40 Business Portal Named Vendor/Customer User licenses for beta testing and will increase that number as they train their dealers and distributors to use the portal.    We provided less than 20 hours of consulting assistance and their IT manager did most of the work.  Their payback will take less than one year.

Computeration is helping companies in Idaho and the Pacific NW through their November user group meeting centering on Web Portals.

by Computeration

Web Portals Interfaced to Microsoft Dynamics GP – Economical, Efficient and Effective is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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