Corporate ERP implementation has some percentage of failures or stalled projects, where you need to think about changing original consulting firm.
It is often difficult to say who is the cause of failure – ERP reseller typically tries hard to keep good reputation, however there might be learning curve exposure. Also if VAR doesn’t know your industry it may suppose that consultant will learn the specifics as project progresses. Through the long years of consulting career, implementing such applications as Great Plains, SAP Business One, Solomon, Microsoft CRM, we found out that there are typical scenarios, where implementation failure risks increase dramatically. Let’s review these scenarios and try to recommend practical steps in getting second opinion to get project recovered and finally implemented:
1. Scenarios, potentially leading to the failure or limbo. The “champion” here is likely unrealistic data conversion. If you are migrating away from small business accounting package, such as QuickBooks, Peach Tree, MYOB, SAP B1 to Great Plains and you are willing to “migrate everything” – the consulting firm might be optimistic (to get budget approved for data export, massage and migration). But the project scope, its technical challenges might be underestimated. Data conversion tool of choice is Integration Manager. If you would like to “migrate everything”, then you would need to export all your historical documents, create all the fiscal and calendar years in GP, matching your old accounting years, import documents and then post them to open and historical tables. Then you need to close the years, now considered as historical in GL and in modules. If you have several GB of historical accounting data files, the process might be not realistic. When you are considering data conversion, we recommend you first think about minimum of what is really required. For example, consider just Chart of Accounts and master records (Employees, Vendors, Customers, Addresses) and then just GL beginning balances
2. Unrealistic Customization Requirements. Second problem is unrealistically complex customization requirement. Generally it is good idea to pick your new Corporate MRP, Accounting or ERP system using criteria to provide maximum in standard business logic and only tiny fraction in ISV add-ons or custom programming. If your modification estimation alter ten percent or more of the existing logic (or create new logic) – you should rethink your decision making – maybe you need to align your processes along standard logic or consider another ERP package. We also heard from customers that they are successful business and they can “afford” programming budget. Unfortunately we were also participating in recovering from such situations, where initial consulting firm spent hundreds of hours in coding, debugging, deploying Dexterity or eConnect custom modules and the project went into limbo
3. Integrations or Data Migrations with direct SQL Insert statements. This one is very popular, especially when you have SQL enthusiasts in your IT department. Well, Great Plains is open for ad hoc SQL queries, however its business logic is complex and vulnerable, if you are doing it on the SQL queries level. Think about the following – you just graduated from college, have dozens of thousands as college debt and bought your first used car. You were able to drive it couple of thousand miles and got it broken. If you just open the hood and try to add extra oil stop leak solution (as you may think that three bottles of the fixing solution should work better comparing to just one dose) – the chances are high that you will simply kill one of the cylinders. This is the same, when you are not really sure how your Corporate ERP application data is distributed across SQL Server tables and you are trying to fix the data directly in SSMS
4. Looking for second opinion. This is OK. When your original implementation consultant gives up and let you go – you are still own the software licenses and would like to preserve the investment. You also probably invested into SQL Server licensing and Server hardware. All you need to do is to seek second opinion, select new consulting firm and finish the project
5. Orientation Session for the customers, who are trying to find the ways to upgrade old Great Plains version to Dynamics GP 2010/11.0. Technically every version of Great Plains ever released has upgrade path, including Great Plains Select on MSDE 2000, Pervasive SQL 2000, Ctree as well as even Great Plains DOS, Windows or Mac versions of early, mid and late 1990th. If you are on the version earlier than 9.0, please be ready to have two or more version update steps. The best way to understand your migration path is to visit Microsoft Customer Source and search knowledge base. If you do not have active annual contract with Microsoft Business Solutions, you Customer Source account is suspended. In this situation, please call your Great Plains consultant, or if you are now sure who is it – feel free to contact our office. If you are on the version on Pervasive SQL/Btrieve or Ctree database – there is migration tool, which should move you to Microsoft SQL Server (and you resume upgrade from there)
6. Special Attention to Great Plains Accounting on DOS, Windows or Mac: 9.5, 9.2, 9.1, 8.0 and earlier. This archaic Corporate ERP application could be redeployed on Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 Small Business Server 32 bit edition (it is important that you understand that it is not compatible with Windows Server or Workstation of 64 bit edition, such as Windows 7 64 or Vista 64). In earlier 2000th MBS recommended redeploy GPA on Pervasive SQL 2000 DB platform. And this is understandable, as originally Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or Mac was based in Btrieve (Pervasive SQL is Btrieve successor)
7. Well, now you may expect after reading this publication – we are happy to provide second opinion and help you with failed initial implementation, customization, data conversion, reports design or upgrade. Feel free to visit our website if link is available below, or call our office. Internet articles are often syndicated, where About Author section is omitted, if you got us through such syndication, please visit EFaru website
8. If you feel that your concerns are not addressed or your question is not answered, please feel free to contact our office. Support domestically in the USA, Canada, Mexico and internationally. This option is possible via Web Sessions, Skype or Phone conferences and direct visits onsite (in the case of the large scale project). Our consulting team speaks English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Filipino. Feel free to call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, or email help@efaru.com
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