Dynamics GP versus SAP Business One or which Popular Route to Undertake

Nov 14
07:54

2011

Andrew Karasev

Andrew Karasev

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At this time we are observing rapid evolution in Small Business Accounting and Corporate ERP systems architectures. If in the recent years competition was around flexibility and ability to be customized with minimal exposure to programming then now it is probably around Cloud concept and web or thin client user interface.

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Achievements of the past were able to port customization metadata directly to the SQL database.  Web user interface is breaking through the differences of remote and local computing as well as eroding the differences between such popular operating systems as Microsoft Windows,Dynamics GP versus SAP Business One or which Popular Route to Undertake Articles Linux and Mac.  We are we staying in the competition between Microsoft Dynamics especially GP and SAP Business One?

1. Software Licenses and Implementation cost often also referred as investment.  GP has at this time more native modules supported directly by Microsoft Business Solutions as well as third party add-ons.  Business One is catching up however it is more geared to be considered a Small to mid-market ERP.  GP software licenses often result in higher final cost as well as implementation consulting hours

2. Customizability.  In GP you have various instruments, such as Dexterity, Modifier with VBA, Visual Studio Tools and of course eConnect SDK.  Business One offers Software Development Kit which is friendly to Microsoft Visual Studio VB or C# developer.  We would like also to mention that in former Great Plains new tables were normally created in GP Dexterity and later one exposed to Visual Studio Tools as well as to VBA scripts in modifier.  Business One offers direct native tables modification by adding user defined fields in settings as well as creating new user defined tables the same way.  When these custom objects are created they could be referenced in SDK coding project

3. Openness to integration.  We like Great Plains Integration Manager module where you can do the job being end user or do advanced level integration being VBA programmer.  SAP B1 offers Data Transfer Workbench with CSV templates.  These templates are useful for initial data conversion but for ongoing integration DTW is possible to use but you have to get familiarity with advanced ODBC queries often toward SQL Views.  So IM is more advanced in our opinion.  Regarding GP eConnect and Business One SDK then we would like to mention that integration requires programming and efforts are comparable to achieve similar results

4. United States versus International ERP market.  Here SAP BO is probably more comfortable in the international expansion as it is translated to such popular languages as Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and it is made compliant to regional business legislations.  At this time Dynamics GP has higher circulation in the United States however its architecture Dexterity is not Unicode compliant and this is one of the reasons that GP is restricted to being marketed and offered in English, Arabic and Spanish speaking countries of Latin America

5. Reporting tools.  SAP is leaning toward newly acquired Business Objects and Crystal Reports while Dynamics is drifting toward Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services or often abbreviated as SSRS.  In Financial reporting area GP is in process of switching from FRx to Microsoft Management Reporter while SAP B1 is featuring it internal Financial Reporting

6. Web Client trends.  Microsoft Dynamics is pioneering in Cloud computing especially with such Dynamics products as Microsoft CRM which already is web based.  At the same time Dynamics ERP packages are increasing the number of features in so-called Business Portals where B2B ecommerce, requisition management, employee self-service and other modules are available for GP.  B1 is enabling its ecommerce, CRM and other modules in web client interface.  From both sides exposing traditional so-called ‘fat client’ user interface requires additional investments into Citrix, Microsoft Terminal Services or competitive technologies.  And this is where we see the leverage of competition for such web based accounting packages as NetSuite

7. Microsoft Office Integration and Dynamics project.  Microsoft is pioneering in computer learning about its user habits and preferences and changing its behavior accordingly to better fit the user.  Definitely this is a trend which deserves the favor.  On the other hand it creates additional difficulties in IT departments as users are asking the questions where IT technician has no clue because these questions are related to user personality.  Microsoft obviously has advantages over competition as it is also responsible for such dominant tools as Microsoft Office, Sharepoint, SQL Server and Windows platform in general

8. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center). help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan and Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. We feature our expertise is in International Business.  We provide second opinion in SB1 data migration, customization and reporting