Dynamics GP Partner: Warehouse Management, Manufacturing, Barcoding

If you are small or midsize business, prospering on proprietary know-how with custom system built around that knowledge – you probably understand the value of preserving your legacy application in implementing new Corporate ERP system.  In this small publication we will talk about how Dynamics GP could be implemented for the businesses, where light discrete manufacturing (production on order), Warehouse Management (WMS) is critical:
1. Dynamics GP and Barcoding technology.  Modern barcode scanner is no longer the character entering extension to your computer (like keyboard).  It is now small or even pretty powerful computer with Windows Mobile or Text compatible mode (similar to old-good-days DOS character based operating system).  When you scan, the scanner could save in its memory the whole document (prior to be uploaded to your ERP application), or even the whole batch of documents (barcode scanning and upload in batch mode).  Considering this fact, you cannot expect scanning, just having Dynamics GP Sales Transaction entry screen open – you need Barcoding add-on.  Typically you would like to open Dynamics GP via Barcoding extension in such areas as Warehouse Management System (Order Fulfillment, Merchandize restocking, Inventory adjustments and transfers), Manufacturing or Bill of Materials and sometimes also in Fixed Assets purchase receipts and counts
2. Warehouse Management System.  As it requires add-ons or separate WMS product, we recommend you to select the software package from the market and do not do custom in-house or contracted programming project.  You will discover a new World of Warehouse Management, Supply Chain Management, Distribution and Logistics products, but in general you will need to decide philosophically between external standalone WMS and Warehouse Management extensions (working directly with Dynamics GP tables, objects and transactions).  External WMS is something very reliable in its realm, but when you would like to have its transactions to be integrated to Dynamics GP SOP, POP and Inventory Control modules, you may find that its integration requires numerous consulting and software development hours.  WMS extensions for Dynamics GP may have lesser circulation (the number of implementations is lower), but it is more efficient in integration (in fact it doesn’t require integration, as it works within Great Plains Database realm).  We are typically recommending our Dynamics GP WMS extensions, working with Sales Order Processing module (Sales Order Allocation or Fulfillment), Purchase Order Processing (Purchase Receipt as Inventory Restocking) and Inventory Transaction (where it has either adjustment or transfer types, inventory cycle count is based on inventory adjustment transaction business logic)
3. Small Assembly or Production in Dynamics GP.  Smaller businesses or companies with unique proprietary manufacturing technology might already have in-house programmed manufacturing application in place and they would like to incorporate it into the next ERP system.  In the case or Great Plains Dynamics this strategy works, but your need to pick the right Dynamics GP Technology Partner, who is familiar with such tools as Great Plains Dexterity, eConnect, Extender, Modifier with VBA, Dynamics GP Table Structure and SQL insert statement based data integration
4. Full featured manufacturing versus distribution Bill of Materials.  Dynamics GP Manufacturing suite has reach discrete manufacturing business logic, and if you decide to do that route, you should understand the consulting cost associated.  If you are proud about yourself as being (small or midsize) manufacturing company, it doesn’t mean that you should invest long dollar into manufacturing software.  We recommend you to take rather conservative position and think about low profile production modules for Microsoft Dynamics GP, where Bill of Materials (BOM) comes to the scenes
5. Electronic Commerce.  Here we recommend you to pick industrial ecommerce shopping cart platform, such as Magento (if you feel comfort with PHP and Linux, as well as MySQL database) or ASP.Net Storefront (if you are committed to Microsoft Windows .Net).  We do not recommend you to develop your own shopping cart from scratch, however we respect that kind of decisions, when you are large ecommerce B2B or B2C player on the USA, Canada or international market, where source code control might be very important if not critical
6. How to contact us?  Please call us 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com  We serve you USA, Canada, Mexico nationwide and internationally.  Local service is available in Western Michigan (St. Joseph, Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, South Haven, Saugatuck, Holland, Battle Creek, New Buffalo), California (Los Angeles, San Diego, Irvine, Long Beach, San Marcos), Illinois (Chicago, Naperville, Aurora), Houston TX