Dynamics GP and RMS Integration Options

Sep 11
08:28

2010

Andrew Karasev

Andrew Karasev

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If you are working in retail business and plan to deploy Microsoft RMS as your Point of Sale and Store Management system with back office on Microsoft Dynamics GP, this orientation is for you.

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You may be already ware that there is integration (Great Plains Dexterity add-on),Dynamics GP and RMS Integration Options Articles which comes with Great Plains Dynamics GP purchase.  This integration does very simple but reliable job, sending Daily Sales into GP General Ledger batch, plus it integrates AP transactions (as you may prefer to do merchandise restocking directly in MS RMS Store Operations or Headquarters modules, but you would probably like to keep AP check cutting from your Corporate ERP application, which is Dynamics GP).  If this is exactly what you need, please call to your Microsoft Dynamics GP Reseller or Consultant to discuss this Microsoft RMS to Dynamics GP integration acquisition and implementation.  If this simplicity doesn’t do the job for you, here are other options to consider:
1. Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing (Purchase Receipts), Inventory Control (adjustments and transfer) synchronization between MS RMS and Dynamics GP.  This is pretty complete possibly integration scenario.  You send all your daily POS transactions from all your stores (after they are transferred overnight or hourly into your RMS Headquarters database).  Purchase Receipts could be done either in RMS or in Dynamics GP directly (in the case of Great Plains Purchase Receipts you can get advantage of more flexible barcode labels printing options, for example, plus they could be matched against Purchase Orders and even with some negotiation activity in Dynamics GP Business Portal Requisition Management module).  The same is possible with Inventory moves (from one RMS store to another or from one Dynamics GP Inventory Site to another)
2. RMS to Great Plains integration settings.  Here you really have more than other products could offer.  If your business has pretty complicated legal structure, where you one of your companies may own one or more RMS sales outlets, you can map one or more of your RMS stores to be associated with the GP Site (or multiple sites) in the one of the GP companies.  You can keep your expansion practice being flexible and purchase companies, without the need to fold them into your family owned company, just transfer them to Dynamics GP and Microsoft RMS platforms
3. Light version – integration of RMS POS transactions as AR Invoices and Returns.  In this case you do not bother to track your inventory items quantities, QTY Sold, Returned, Available in the Warehouse.  All you want to do is to track POS transactions distribution on precise GL Sales Accounts (in this case you can control your P&L directly in Financial Reporting, such as FRx or Microsoft Management Reporter, available for new version of GP 2010)
4. Integration Performance.  Alba Spectrum Integration between Dynamics GP and Microsoft RMS is coded exclusively in SQL Server Stored procedures, meaning that it is designed for ultimate volume of POS and Purchase Receipt/Inventory Adjustment and Transfer transactions, comparing to the competitive products coded in Microsoft Dexterity (Shell, specially programmed in C programming language with its own proprietary coding language Sanscript, where database manipulations are done via Dex cursors) or eConnect (this Dynamics GP SDK follows and replicates Dexterity source code business logic with 100% validation, where some of the performance might be slowed)
5. Versions supported.  Integration was introduced for Great Plains Dynamics and eEnteprise 7.5 on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft RMS 1.2.  Current version is available (for Dynamics GP 2010 or 10.0 and MS RMS 2.0).  As general recommendation, we suggest you to upgrade to current (or minus one) of Microsoft Dynamics GP and MS RMS, as if you do try to implement this tandem on older versions, chances are high that you will be paying extra price for technical support and possible fixes down the road
6. Dynamics GP Warehouse Management System as complete barcoding solution for your stores.  As an addition to the integration described above, in the case when you are mod-size retail and distribution chain, we suggest you to consider Dynamics GP WMS extensions.  This product works out of Dynamics GP Databases and naturally open such Great Plains business logics as SOP Sales Order, POP Purchase Receipt, Inventory transaction and transfer to barcode scanning
7. Recovering unsuccessful Dynamics GP implementation in retail environment.  If you are not happy (or up to the point to say frustrated) with your implementation progress, there might be various factors in place, including your next Corporate ERP selection homework lapses, the lack of industry expertise of your chosen Dynamics GP Partner or Consultant (typically we, consultants in ERP consulting community are trying the best to help you out, but from time to time we over estimate our ability to learn new product as the implementation happens).  Whatever was the reason, we are happy to review your case and give you second opinion
8. Give us a call: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com.  Local service in Illinois, Michigan, California, Texas.  We are positioned to do remote support for Dynamics GP implementations and Warehouse Management System user training.  International support is possible, our consultants speak Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese.  Our general customer profile is small and mid-sized retail stores USA, Canada nationwide, here we serve via short visits onsite for the implementation and user training and following remote support via web sessions and phone conferences