| If your company is established business, which uses | | | | of Microsoft Dexterity |
| one or another in-house developed Business | | | | 3. SQL Stored Procedures approach. SQL is definitely |
| Management System and you are now in situation | | | | the fastest tool to try, however you should be |
| when you are moving the business to the new | | | | proficient in SQL scripting and understand the impact |
| phase, where you need industry strength ERP | | | | of various SQL expressions on GP data extraction |
| system behind, or how now they name it accounting | | | | and manipulation performance: Select versus SQL |
| backoffice, you may be interested to read on how | | | | cursor is good example. This is not the only warning - |
| Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains can do the job | | | | when you use SQL update, delete or insert query, |
| for you | | | | you can damage GP DYNAMICS or company |
| Of course, and this is not a big secret, GP integration | | | | database tables |
| needs to be designed and programmed by GP | | | | 4. Integration Mapping. Your employees or traditional |
| consultants, who will work in concert with your | | | | IT department contractors might be giving you the |
| internal IT professionals. Let's take a look at typical | | | | signal that they'll integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP |
| scenarios: | | | | with your legacy Sales system. Microsoft as |
| 1. Sales Order Processing and Vendor Drop Shipping. | | | | successor of Great Plains Software, knows that GP |
| If you have strong presence on the web as | | | | is mid-size ERP package and being such it requires |
| eCommerce reseller, there is the chance, that what | | | | consulting partner network to sell MRP software and |
| you actually do is transfer customer sales orders to | | | | do certified GP ERP installation and implementation. Of |
| vendor drop ship purchase orders. If this is the case, | | | | course your people could ultimately and theoretically |
| you will need to integrate your SOP system with | | | | be done with the GP implementing job, however you |
| Microsoft Great Plains. The first and the most reliable | | | | should understand the risks and learning curve cost |
| tool to choose from and consider on the first place is | | | | impacts |
| GP Integration Manager. In IM itself, please review | | | | 5. Diving to Technology Ocean. GP technologies |
| eConnect connectors to integrate Sales Order | | | | include: Microsoft Dexterity, SQL Server 2005 and |
| Processing and Purchase Receipt documents. | | | | 2000, GP ReportWriter, GP Modifier with VBA, |
| eConnect route is definitely faster, in order to see | | | | Crystal Reports, eConnect and XML Web Services, |
| the difference you should know that traditional IM | | | | GP Integration Manager with eConnect connectors. |
| connector uses Great Plains workstation as OLE | | | | MS Sharepoint and GP Business Portal at this time are |
| server to do the job, basically filling up fields in the | | | | in market attacking mode, so if you need such |
| form and so, validating business logic | | | | practical modules as Electronic Document Delivery, |
| 2. Direct eConnect programming. This option should | | | | Requisition Management (successor of eRequisition), |
| be faster in comparison to Integration Manager way, | | | | Order Management (successor of eOrder) |
| as IM eConnect connector has to do all the steps in | | | | 6. Pervasive SQL or Ctree integrations. There are |
| business logic validation, while in eConnect MS Visual | | | | chances that your company had hard time in earlier |
| Studio.Net c# or VB programming you can choose | | | | 2000 and you lapsed to pay Microsoft Great Plains |
| the steps to perform in business logic validation. | | | | annual enhancement program. In this situation, if you |
| However eConnect "atomic" stored procedures might | | | | plan to get new GP version, currently GP 10. |
| still be less efficient as they had to validate the logic | | | | |