Reasons Dynamics GP Users Switch to NetSuite

Transcription

1 The Top 1 0 Reasons Dynamics GP Users Switch to If you are looking at Microsoft s Dynamics GP solutions (previously called Great Plains) as well as, here are some important points raised by customers just like you who switched from Great Plains to that you should consider: 1 Dynamics GP has no native CRM. Great Plains has been around for a long time and covers many functional areas but it has no built-in customer relationship management. To get CRM support requires buying and integrating two Microsoft product sets, or some other third party solution. Because they were designed with and for two different code sets, even Microsoft has problems integrating its CRM product with Dynamics GP. provides a single integrated suite of ERP, CRM and ecommerce with editions tailored for specific vertical markets. 2 Dynamics GP has no native ecommerce support. For ecommerce applications such as a Web storefront, you need to buy and install Microsoft Great Plains econnect that would then allow you to re-direct Web-based transactions into data entry screens, and share inventory, pricing and other key information on your Web site. Dynamics GP does have a Business Portal feature that gives a limited dashboard functionality but it cannot be customized and is not very flexible. It does offer some canned KPIs, but nothing like s business KPIs. provides integrated ecommerce support for seamless data flow between all business processes without need to purchase connectors. Today, over 2,000 companies run their Web store or website on. 1

2 3 Dynamics GP has no native deferred revenue management support. Companies that need to manage deferred revenue recognition have to integrate a third party product from Tensoft called RDM. Dynamics GP lacks native ability to manage recurring billings, distributor revenue management; ship-and-debit contracts; FOB revenue recognition delays and application of SOP standards to revenue. It cannot natively support planning or phased timing of revenue recognition, as well as support for sales-related expenses, such as royalties. provides total GAAP compliant revenue recognition within one system with the checks and balances for review, approval and execution of revenue due to be recognized. provides editable and customizable revenue recognition schedules at the line item level with detailed drilldown/audit capabilities. manages reverse amortization for credits/refunds, and reports forecast future revenue recognition scheduled all integrated with advanced billing. 4 Dynamics GP makes even simple modifications difficult. The tables and existing fields in Dynamics GP cannot be modified. You cannot change a table structure without ruining data. The Dynamics GP workaround is to provide 10 user defined fields that are a blank space at the end of a record that you can use anyway you want but use those ten up and you re done with any tailoring you may need for your business. provides Suitelets and Portlets to make modifying your work environment easy. Suitelets are web servelets that can produce a front-end GUI or handle back-end responses to user requests. Portlets allow you to have your dashboard exactly as you d like it, including external data-feeds via RSS, HTML or Flash. You build a custom interface that runs invisibly within the framework and can be applied to tailor workflows to your specific business needs. 2

3 5 Dynamics GP makes customization close to impossible. Customers tell us that customization is dangerous in Dynamics GP. Any change has to be viewed against its impact on all 21 million lines of code. This has impeded both customer and partner-created customization of Dynamics GP. Developers have to work outside the GP system, building a customization in Visual Basic and then integrating it at the data layer, not with the application itself. The ramification is that one can easily blow up the entire ERP system with a single line of code. Why? Because there are no safeguards to prevent you from putting corrupted data into the SQL table. uses web services that talk directly to the application layer and therefore are subject to all the business rules that apply to the application. This eliminates data corruption and bad data. s SuiteTalk lets you use Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), standards-based Web service APIs to extend to other systems and third-party vertical applications, or build add-on capabilities. SuiteTalk gives you the ability to use any programming language or platform that supports the SOAP standard to generate business objects. 6 Dynamics GP limits your business process flexibility. You can a change a few items, but you cannot change businesses processes. This means that Dynamics GP determines how you run your business! There are some simpler editing-level capabilities: Dynamics Great Plains offers user defined fields that can be renamed to capture a user s specific information. Some can even be used for sorting on screens and reports. But what if you really want to tailor something? Some changes to screens can be accomplished with yet another product: Modifier. However, all you can do is add new fields, change the order of fields, remove unused fields, and set fields that only change your data entry processes. Great Plains still determines how your business will be run! includes all custom fields, forms, and tables in search criteria, but more important, provides customization of business processes with SuiteScript, a toolset that supports business process customization, and lets customers run their businesses the way they want to by allowing them to customize their business processes to meet their particular needs. Built on industry standard JavaScript, SuiteScript provides customization of even the most complex processes. And, critical to businesses, all customizations, including SuiteScript customizations, are automatically maintained when the application is upgraded. 3

4 7 Dynamics GP Causes Bug-Fixing Nightmares. If you call a bug into Dynamics GP Support, it can easily be 3-6 months at best before you see a fix for it, according to our customers who previously used GP. Because of the 21 million lines of code and the multitude of different versions installed at customer sites, it takes forever to solve bugs. Then you are required to apply the patch to every client workstation in your company, requiring all users to log out of the system. Missing even one workstation can corrupt the entire application and cause a system-wide crash. Because is an on-demand solution, all customers run on a single multitenant infrastructure. Any bugs reported can be addressed immediately in a single instance of the code, fixing the issue once for all users transparently, You have no need to apply patches anywhere in your environment ever. 8 Dynamics GP Makes an Integrated Solution Cumbersome. Dynamics GP is a twenty-five year old product with 21 million lines of proprietary code. It often takes years to completely integrate a customer s solution because most of the modules are built and purchased from a plethora of third party vendors, not Microsoft itself. The resellers who sell and maintain Dynamics GP and many of the add-on product sets often do not actually use the Dynamics GP to conduct their own businesses even though they can get it free. And while Microsoft offers certifications, many resellers simply do not have the bench strength of staff with the required knowledge for a totally successful multimodule implementation. is built from the ground up as an integrated application, whether one buys the entire suite or separate modules such as CRM. We provide deep integration with partner application such as the seamless inherent integration of services from UPS and FedEx inside to facilitate shipping and package tracking. We work very closely with our VARs and partners to always assure that the total solution works together for our customers the way they need it to. 4

5 9 Dynamics GP proves to be an expensive business solution both in the long and short term1. The product is available for on-premise deployment; the price will depend on the license program being used. The full-suite Professional Edition generally costs between $20,000 - $250,000 for licenses with variations caused by differing module costs. Microsoft introduced new role-based pricing with all modules included for approximately $3500 per concurrent user. Add around 1 to 1.5 times the purchase price for implementation. Support adds a 15 20% maintenance fee that is required each year for a few tech support calls, upgrade to the next revision and access to the Microsoft customer source website. Microsoft will fail to mention that to upgrade to a new revision is typically a hour job depending on the size of the database and customization is extra. Customers pay a premium to make unlimited support calls. And you need the operating environment, and the hardware in-house to support it. Plus charges for add-on modules you may need to run your business, and costs of acquisition, integration, and support for the other third party applications you need to run the company. And what about your in-house IT support? Dynamics GP + Dynamics CRM will cost over 5 X more than in the first year alone. is an On-Demand solution you pay by the number of users per month. All the technical support, the upgrades, the application management, the secure operating infrastructure rest with. does everything with regard to maintenance. A large ongoing expense for a GP client is the need to have a database administrator on staff and to hire a VAR to accomplish an upgrade once a year or so. This can be very expensive. gives you peace of mind with regard to disaster recovery. In reality, few Dynamics GP clients adequately test and maintain their backup and their restore functions. (You can t blame them they are too busy running their businesses.) With the size of the Dynamics GP database ever expanding, having the security of verifiable offsite storage through is critical. We guarantee our uptime performance. We alleviate risk and stand behind our ability to keep your business up and running. 1 Yankee Group reports that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for on-demand solutions is much better than that of traditional onpremise solutions even when evaluated over a 3- to 5-year period. Yankee Group. June

6 1 0 Dynamics GP has an uncertain growth path. This is worrisome to current customers and prospects. Microsoft committed to two more releases of the previously-named Great Plains product. It committed to support the latest 9.0 and 10.0 versions until at least 2011 and promised to make the conversion to whatever they finally come up with fairly painless. At its 2007Convergence Conference, Microsoft announced that its single platform will consist of Dynamics NAV at the low end for companies with fewer than 51 users and Dynamics AX at the high end, and while Microsoft will continue to come out with its promised versions of Dynamics GP and SL, these largely U.S.-focused products won't make major contributions to the future Dynamics platform. How long will your investment in Dynamics GP last? How much upheaval can your company afford in the future? already has the Web-based, service-oriented architecture that Microsoft is attempting to design. Our roadmap consists of adding functionality to meet your future business needs, not rip and replace. The path to future business success is far more predictable with. 6