Your Microsoft Dynamics GP Product Management & Marketing team:
Errol Schoenfish
Pam Misialek
Jay Manley
Jen Dorsey
Gerice Anderson
Darrin Hawley
While this blog is technically "owned" by the Microsoft Dynamics GP Product Management and Marketing team, it truly belongs to ALL of those who call themselves a part of the Microsoft Dynamics GP community!
Yesterday Pam mentioned the Partner webinar on Business Intelligence, and I wanted to make sure Partners also knew about two more upcoming webinars that you should attend if possible:
Drive Sales in a New Economy: Expand Your Customers Ability to Collaborate with the Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office SharePoint Partner Sales Training When: August 12th, 12:00 p.m. CST
Drive Sales in a New Economy: Microsoft Dynamics GP Human Resources and Payroll Partner Sales Training When: August 26th, 12:00 p.m. CST
These are both focused on how you can present more value to your existing Microsoft Dynamics GP customers and increase your sales. I think you’ll find these webinars more than worth your time!
PS: If you can’t make the live webinar, they’ll be posted and available on-demand on the Partner Learning Center the day after.
AndyW
Since I’ve been around, businesses have poured millions and millions into implementing ERP, SCM, and CRM systems to help them match business processes, eliminate inefficiencies, increase productivity and drive change. The buzzword changes from time to time, but it’s been the same major issues since at least 1994, most likely a lot longer.
I would guess many businesses owe their very survival to the various changes they’ve made over the years, some large, radical improvements, as well as the small tweaks. In a business’s conquest to thrive, many look to new ERP system as the solution to solve the typical problems businesses face.
Many businesses are optimistic that a new ERP will resolve most of their business problems, rapidly increasing their business success, profitably, efficiently and with little negative impact on their business. But, many don’t have this type of experience.
So, why is this? Why has the huge radical effort of so many businesses resulted in marginal gains? Is there a standard weakness in the approach many take? Why would a company willing to make changes not get the optimistic results they expect? And, more importantly, can this elusive promise land be found?
My thoughts on why…One positive thing about the economic situation is that it’s forcing companies to really look at themselves and really change, before many changed without actually changing. By defining and automating the most important business processes, businesses should work more efficient, reduce overhead, increase agility, improve insight and the list goes on. But, the people in the business have to be open to changing their existing processes where it makes sense to get the most benefit. People move to a new ERP system and try to make it exactly like the old system.
A partner told me a long time ago. People don’t really want what they ask for, but they think they do. It’s a good partner who can interpret what they really need and can use. So, is it that most businesses are missing the right focus?
The business processes covered with an ERP system is a fraction of what actually occurs, but it’s predictable and structured. It’s relatively easy to define and improve a structured process. In the real world businesses are filled with chaos; quick decisions, ideas, problem solving, collaboration, knowledge, perceptions, obstacles, change, exceptions, etc. The chaos results in a layer of inefficient, unproductive processes, the very problems businesses are trying to solve. This unstructured layer changes rapidly and the problems are not usually solved solely by an ERP system.
How do you define a process to something ever changing and varies by person? Do you think there is a way? There has to be because people are doing it today. I believe it’s through empowering individual people and giving each person the tools for them to be efficient. To help them focus on the most valuable work. Of course, complete process automation is still a fantasy because the chaotic parts of a business are important. Business’s need the personal element.
Now, more than ever people and business are ready to really change how and what they do; it’s the perfect opportunity to really have an impact on business. I believe the best way to solve the most common problems, being efficiency and productivity is to focus on the unstructured processes and find ways to approach them. These unstructured processes have a common element, communication. The ERP system needs to talk to people. People need to talk to the ERP system. And people need to talk to people. When only a few have access to ERP, it makes it difficult to have people talk to the ERP, so there’s usually a middleman doing that connection. That’s where the power of SharePoint, Excel and Outlook come in. People can now talk to ERP through Office instead of a person.
With Dynamics GP we have the solutions available to really solve a customer’s holistic business problems and make them actually productive. We just need to focus on the right areas and see what’s possible. I encourage you to look at what’s out there and see how you can leverage it, take advantage of it. Also, if you have any stories, please share.
Take care and be productive,
Pam
I presented a partner focused Web Seminar yesterday focused on driving existing customer sales around Business Intelligence. The comments were positive, so I feel it’s worth for others to watch. This post has a link to the recording as well as links to information referenced in the recording.
Partner Recording Link
A lot of good information is in the Business Intelligence Sell Sheet. Also for those with the Unleash Your Potential, there is an entire section on Business Intelligence, check it out.
Customer Facing On-Demand Web Cast for Customers to view. Partners can point customers to this as well.
Downloads for the Add On for Shopping Basket, and other Data Mining Features:
Add-On to Excel for SQL 2008
Add-On to Excel for SQL 2005
Collateral Links:
Case Studies
•New Belgium Brewery
•American Red Cross
•G&J Pepsi
•Current Energy
•Brookline Village
Customer Videos
•Search for Comm
•Orange County Choppers
•Township High School
•Winona Health
•Nexion Healthcare
•Pinellas County
•Concern WorldwideLifeNet
•Pacific Writing Instrumentss
Whitepapers
•Report List, Smartlists and Office Excel in Microsoft Dynamics GP
•Analysis Cubes for Microsoft Dynamics GP
•FRx
•Forecaster
•Microsoft Enterprise Reporting
•Report Writer
•Crystal Reports
•SQL Server Reporting Services
•Electronic Document Delivery
•Extender
Other:
•Business Intelligence Click-Thru Demo
•Business Intelligence White Paper
•Business Intelligence Overview Click-Thru Demo
•Microsoft Dynamics GP and Office Excel Predictive Analysis DemoMate Demo
•Microsoft Dynamics GP and SQL Reporting Services Gauge DemoMate Demo
•Extender Demo
•Extender Whitepaper
Weekly, the Dynamics GP team is posting a ‘Did you know?’ series. We give tips, tricks, and general comments around features and functions that already exist in Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Our challenge to you is…how much do you really know about Dynamics GP?
Our topic this week is Preferred Service Times in Field Service Management.
Why this feature is cool!
Customers often request service hours that differ from their operation hours to limit disruptions to their staff during peak times of the day. The Preferred Service Times feature allows you to specify the hours that each customer site will accept maintenance technicians to ensure that you meet or exceed the demands of your clients.
· Enter service times per customer address
· Define service times for each day of the week
· Display warnings for times when customers are not available
What does it look like?
Warning displayed when dispatching outside of preferred service times:
Thanks,
Ben
The Developing for Dynamics GP Blog hit it’s first anniversary on July 11th. This blog has been a huge value to our Dynamics GP Community and is one of the most valuable blogs we have. It’s elite.
Blog Announcement
Our topic this week is Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) for Payables Management.
While EFT usage has been high outside of North America for many years, more and more businesses within the US are starting to use EFT more heavily to automate accepting or sending payments between customers and vendors. We’ve found that while many banks do typically use a standard file format (of which a few exist), there are others with pretty unique format requirements that can’t be offered “out of the box.” Well, with the EFT for Payables enhancements with Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0, you can…
A nice surprise I’ll add for you GP Insiders is that you can expect this SAME level of functionality to modify EFT file formats within the EFT for Receivables Management with our next release!
Enjoy your weekend everyone and take care…
With every release, and sometimes multiple times within a release, our test team takes a crack at proving out just how scalable Microsoft Dynamics GP really is when put under some demanding scenarios…demanding, as in 1,000 concurrent users demanding! Well they just completed another round of this testing on our 10.0 SP2 release, along with both Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. The results are impressive to say the least! A whopping 3.28 MILLION business transactions and 10.66 MILLION business transaction line items were processed over the period of an 8 hour day!
Partners can download the full report here, but I’ll give everyone some details below on just how well Dynamics GP can perform when put to the test…
The first thing you have to realize is that we run this test multiple times to validate the results, and we disperse the 1,000 concurrent users throughout the system to mimic a real-world type of scenario. Here is the breakout of how the users, transactions, and processes are split out:
Now, with that level of activity going on in the system, here is the throughput of each area when tested over the period of a typical 8 hour workday:
Do the math yourself. This test proved Microsoft Dynamics GP can process up to 3.28 MILLION business transactions and 10.66 MILLION business transaction line items over an 8 hour day!
Pretty incredible if you ask me. And a very nice improvement over the previous test which leveraged GP 10.0 RTM with SQL Server 2005 and Windows Server 2003 (the test that delivered 2.6M transactions with 8.3M transaction lines). This new test actually used the SAME hardware as the previous 1,000 concurrent user test, with the same test methodology and data. Which means in an apples-to-apples comparison, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 showed a whopping 26% improvement in transaction throughput (+28% in transaction line throughput)! That is some serious performance!
Hello Everyone!
It is with GREAT EXCITEMENT that we are announcing the availability of the new Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 SP3 Technical Demonstration Toolkit/VPC!!!
This has been an enormous project!! I am very proud and thankful of the work from all who have made this project a reality. There is no question, this is the BEST Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 VPC we have released yet!!
Here is the link to the download page on PartnerSource:
https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/deployment/methodology/vpc/MDGPVPC
Here are some highlights of the new Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 SP3 VPC:
Applications Upgraded/Installed:
As always we STRONGLY ENCOURAGE all of you to download and read/review the documentation associated with the new VPC. We have significantly revamped the documentation to only help you better understand this new VPC and to improve your overall demos! IMPORTANT: This new VPC will have two .vhd files. They are: MSFTDynGP10SP3.vhd and MSFTDynGP10SP3 Pagefile.vhd. The pagefile .vhd is used for additional performance improvements. You MUST also utilize the MSFTDynGP10SP3.vmc (Virtual machine console file) file (Please review page #3 of the “How To Setup” document on the download page to properly use this VPC image.)
All of the demo scripts that are posted on this download page (from the link above) have been tested against the new VPC. We have not tested any of the older demonstration scripts. However, the older scripts may still work with the new VPC. In FY10, look for a new IT demonstration script. We are also considering the creation of new Demo2Win! Field Service, Project Accounting and Manufacturing demonstration scripts as well.
In addition, this new VPC has been uploaded to VM Express.
In the August/September timeframe, we will be releasing a differencing disk with the Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 SP4. No additional improvements, just the SP install.
We will then take a few weeks off from building images, and then turn our focus to the Microsoft Dynamics GP 11.0 VPC/Technical Demonstration toolkit. This project will be built from scratch/from the ground up. It will NOT be an upgrade of the current Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 series of vpc’s. A beta VPC image for GP11.0 will likely be available in the winter of 2009/2010 and then a GA image will likely be available at Convergence 2010.
PLEASE forward to anyone who demos Microsoft Dynamics GP!!
Happy demoing and thank you again to everyone who worked on this project to make it a success!!
Dynamics GP Product Management
Weekly, the Dynamics GP team will be posting a ‘Did you know?’ series. We’ll give tips, tricks, and general comments around features and functions that already exist in Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Our topic this week is Excel Report Builder.
Now, you may think, I’m happy with my SmartLists and I don’t want to start something new or I have the Crystal reports I need, so why introduce something new. Hey, I agree, it’s usually a good strategy to not mess with something that’s working. But you should ask yourself a few questions:
1. Does everyone in my business have the information they need? If they had more information could they do their job better?
2. Do you have someone in your company who spends time creating, manipulating, and distributing reports to various teams?
3. Do your leaders have graphical reports to get a pulse of the business? If so, how much time do you spend creating them?
If you said yes to any of these, Excel Report Builder may be a good option for you. And, your SmartLists will convert to Excel Reports as well, so it should be easy to get started.
Key Benefits of Excel Report Builder
Important FAQ
Microsoft Dynamics Webcast- SmartList Builder Gets Even Better with Excel Report Builder
Developing for Dynamics GP Blog on Finding Table and Fields
Take a look at Excel Report Builder and let us know what you think!
I was pleased to hear about the release of a new document from Nucleus Research, Inc. this week that focuses on how Partners can maximize the success of a Dynamics ERP implementation by leveraging a structured methodology like Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Sure Step team over the past couple of years, and have seen first hand how valuable this methodology can be when deploying the Dynamics solutions. This Nucleus Research only strengthens the value of the Sure Step methodology in my mind. You can access the guidebook here:
http://nucleusresearch.com/research/notes-and-reports/guidebook-maximizing-success-delivering-microsoft-dynamics/
On a related note, Microsoft announced yesterday at WPC that ALL Dynamic Partners can now access the Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology for free! Many partners today are already enjoying the benefits Sure Step provides. In order to help Partners be more successful and enjoy the same benefits other partners receive, Sure Step is now available to all Microsoft Dynamics partners – no Partner Service Plan required! Partners can learn more at PartnerSource > Partner Essentials > Sure Step .
Happy reading and downloading Partners!
Weekly, the Dynamics GP team will be posting a ‘Did you know?’ series. We’ll give tips, tricks, and general comments around features and functions that already exist in Microsoft Dynamics GP. This week we will focus on Payroll Garnishments.
In the past, we would frequently be excluded from various payroll software proposals because of Microsoft Dynamics GP’s lack of payroll garnishment functionality. Well, that all changed with the release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0. Check it out!
This feature adds functionality to match increasingly complex payroll responsibilities. Court-ordered garnishments may require deductions from an employee’s wages for child support, medical support, unpaid taxes, or debts. Federal and state law regulates multiple aspects of each garnishment, including the types and amounts of wages subject to garnishment, the method of calculating the garnishment, and the priority of each garnishment relative to other deductions. This feature allows users to meet these regulations, by enabling them to:
· Base garnishment deductions on either a Percentage of Gross Income, a Percentage of Net Income, a Percentage of Earnings (Net Disposable Income), or a Fixed Amount
· Specify which pay codes, deduction codes, and tax codes to include in the calculation of Net Disposable Income
· Set up Federal and/or State maximum withholding and exemption amounts
· Capture court order information, such as Court Name and Court Date of the Garnishment Deduction
In the Employee Deduction Maintenance window, the user sets up a garnishment deduction for an employee.
In the Earnings Setup window, the user specifies which pay codes, deduction codes, and tax codes to include in the definition of an earnings (Net Disposable Income) code, which is subject to garnishment deduction.
Ben C.
The Dynamics GP MVP’s are our technical leaders who are willing to help others. They blog. They write books and articles. They take part in user groups. They present at events or training sessions. They answer questions in community groups. And, they have their day job.
These people are an important part of our Dynamics GP Family and are an amazing group of people. They deserve recognition for all they do.
Microsoft Dynamics GP Most Valuable Professionals List
Couple Blog Postings Related to the new List:
Developing for Dynamics GP Blog Post on MVP's
The Dynamics GP Blogster MVP Blog Posting
Thank you MVP’s!
I’m thrilled, happy, and excited to announce the new Extender Whitepaper is now available!
Why would a new whitepaper get me so excited? Well, I was one of those people who thought Extender was just a tool if you want to add a new field or form. It really is much, much more and this whitepaper explains it. And, it includes information on the new functionality coming out in Service Pack 4 for Dynamics GP 10.0.
Extender Whitepaper for Microsoft Dynamics GP
With the new functionality releasing in August, I’ve created two new landing pages.
Extender Landing Page – PartnerSource
Extender Landing Page - CustomerSource
They have new fact sheets, demo scripts, feature lists, and pricing info.
For partners, it also has training on how to sell and how to use Extender. The web seminars were highly rated and are worth the time investment.
A huge thank you to my “GP Friends” who helped me create this whitepaper.
Weekly, the Dynamics GP team will be posting a ‘Did you know?’ series. We’ll give tips, tricks, and general comments around features and functions that already exist in Microsoft Dynamics GP. This week we will focus on the Security.
Over the years, I’ve heard many product suggestions from customers and partners around security. With the addition of functionality like Refreshable Excel Reports, SQL Reporting Services Reports, Web Services, SharePoint, it’s important to understand how to deploy these great solutions securely.
This post will talk about two specific security features and has important links to additional information.
Links to Important Security Information
David Musgrave's Blog on Security
Microsoft Dynamics GP Planning for Security White Paper
Security Management in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
FRx Security Overview
Excel Report Security FAQ
Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Architecture White Paper
Dynamics Security Synch Utility (DSSU)
DSSU is a tool to help administrators manage the process of synchronizing roles across Dynamics applications. Basically, the utility is a console that provides the ability to synchronize in any direction by specifying a source and destination.
Security Synchronization Utility for Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
Planning for Security in Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
New Role Based Security
In Dynamics GP 10.0, we restructured our security based on customer feedback. Maintaining security and going through audits is much easier. A few highlights:
Planning for Security in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
Frequently asked questions about role-based security in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
I hope you all have a great weekend, securely.