Dynamics GP as the Successor of Microsoft Small Business Financials/Small Business Manager

Small Business Financials is no longer supporter and the last version is SBF 9.0, from where you are recommended to move to Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Essentials Business Ready licensing structure.  Migration module is available, however you would need to purchase discounted Dynamics GP Business Ready software licenses (where the number of user should match) 

1. Migration path and experience.  Historically Microsoft Business Solutions offered you the paths to migrate from Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Mac 9.5, 9.2, and earlier versions.  Now it is a turn for Great Small Business Manager or Microsoft Small Business Financials to leave the scenes and be converted to Dynamics GP Business Ready license model.  If you are still in production with Microsoft Small Business Financials 8.0 or 9.0, we would like to share with you upgrade experience, and how bumpy it was, Well, you should expect something like 30+ hours consulting hours budget, but other than that, upgrade was successful  (we had to do additional setup in Dynamics GP SOP module, plus we had to train old Small Business Financials user to enter new Dynamics GP Item with assignment to the default warehouse and pricing schema)

2. Why MBS is abandoning Microsoft Small Business Financials?  Well, in our opinion this question is rather open ended.  Microsoft introduced such small business accounting product as Microsoft Small Business Accounting in somewhere around 2006.  Small Business Financials is scaled down version of mid-market Corporate ERP application – Dynamics GP, where Dexterity functions were disabled

3. What is Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Ready?  It really fits to mid-market ERP customers.  However if you just walked away from such legacy applications as Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows, or Macintosh, QuickBooks, Peach Tree, MYOB, Accpac, Microsoft Dynamics GP might be a bit overpriced for your small business.  On the other hand, if your business was experiencing steady growth, Microsoft Dynamics GP could be considered as the way out of small business accounting restrictions

4. FRx future.  This is another walk away and when to do so the question.  With the introduction of the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010/11.0 version, FRx Financial Reporting is recommended to be replaced (with migration pack) to Microsoft Management Reporting.  Our feedback from field Dynamics GP and FRx consultants is very positive and they report that FRx migration is very smooth and intuitive.  Typical issues with FRx from Small Business Financials as Sysdata directory related, such as GL indexes rebuilding limbo, Specification Set export and recovery, default font selection, trying to automate FRx reporting by accessing Microsoft Access FRx database and manipulating its records directly in MS Access (by breaking through FRx MS Access Password, we described the technology in several ar4ticles, but at this point it became too widespread and at the same time dangerous, we would rather recommend you to stick to FRx report design guidelines and be on rather conservative side)

5. Report Writer report design for Small Business Financials. By whatever reason Great Plains Software (and Microsoft  Business Solutions left this plan as it was)

6. Old Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL Server or Ctree.  If you are small business or lower mid-size one and you are deploying Great Plains since earlier 1990th, you might still be on Great Plains Dynamics version 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 on Pervasive SQL 2000/Btrieve or Ctree Db platform.  Alba Spectrum supports all the versions of Great Plains, ever released, including Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL/Ctree, or Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows (in fact this mid-market Corporate ERP application was available on Btrieve platform back in 1990th, and you can redeploy it on Pervasive SQL 2000 on such popular modern Windows OS as Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and earlier, the only restriction is 32 bit version)

7. What to do if you feel that Dynamics GP is too expensive option for your small business?  Well, we are happy to help you with data export from Small Business Financials to something like Microsoft Access or Excel or even text files (coma or tab delimited)

8. Dexterity customizations for Small Business Financials.  They are convertible to Dynamics GP, as the Dynamics.Dic dictionary is pretty much similar and if you decide to migrate from small business financials to Microsoft Dynamics GP Dexterity customization should be counted as transferrable (some minor code review might be recommended to be outsourced to Great Plains Dexterity programmers)

9. Dynamics GP XML exposure.  Great Plains eConnect SDK (not available for Small Business Financials, as you move to Dynamics GP, you can begin using eConnect) is supporting XML parameters call to its encrypted SQL stored procedures.  In our opinion eConnect came to its maturity with Dynamics GP version 10.0.  Plus take into consideration that eConnect was restricted to runtime for Small Business Financials (earlier versions, to the recent versions econnect was made not available)

10. Small Business Financials in international environment.  Dynamics GP is translated to various languages, including Spanish, French.  There are add-ons available on the ISV market where Great Plains is translated to such languages as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian.  The interface translation is not really the end of the story.  There is such a concept as Corporate ERP localization. Including such compliance requirements as local or regional language support, plus (and this might be more important) compliance to local bearing country business related legislation.  For example Dynamics GP is localized on most of the Spanish speaking South and Latin America countries, including Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Chile Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, Panama, Dominican Republic.  However, Dynamics GP is not localized in Brazil (where business language is Brazilian Portuguese, not Spanish).  Dynamics GP Dexterity is not supporting Unicode characters (2 bits), such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean hieroglyphs.  If you just need Dynamic GP to be enabled for Hieroglyph characters data entry, please consider NJ Stars extensions

11. Dynamics GP Support in Arabic.  Ancient Arabic characters might look like Chinese hieroglyphs in their view and their complicity to understand, mean while they are compliant to US ASCII table, and they do not require Unicode standard to be implemented.  There are multiple flavors of Microsoft Dynamics GP Arabic version implementation

12. Russian version of Great Plains Dynamics.  Here we have to give you some excurse into Corporate ERP application history in Russian Federation.  One of the Corporate ERP market pioneers was Sequoia Computers, opening the doors in Moscow in 2003.  In the time we were observing the war between such computer OS as Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS, Solaris/SUN, Unix.  In later 1990th Microsoft Business Solutions abandoned Dynamics GP Great Plains/eEnterprise on the Russian ERP market, and instead it recommended Navision and shorty after Axapta/Dynamics AX.  Several Great Plains Resellers in Russian Federation and especially in Moscow went bankrupt, nobody promised you an easy life anyway

13. Dynamics AX Axapta.  This Corporate ERP and MRP application is likely to be categorized as living through its triumph.  Axapta is popular in such user groups and Microsoft Dynamics implementation scenarios as Supply Chain Management, Process Manufacturing, Field Services. Project Accounting

14. To request further support, please call us 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com We need to discuss your cards in order to recommend you the best solutions, which is not contingent to our preferences.  We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/skype conferences).  Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas