Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 / Great Plains support in Argentina: Dexterity Development, Reporting

Mar 5

13:50

2006

Andrew Karasev

In this small article we will be reviewing Microsoft Great Plains and its Spanish version, available and used in Argentina.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP product family consists of Microsoft Dynamics GP (former Microsoft Great Plains, Great Plains Software eEnterprise/Dynamics/Dynamics C/S+), Microsoft Dynamics AX (former Microsoft Axapta), Microsoft Dynamics NAV (former Microsoft Navision), Microsoft Dynamics SL (Solomon), Microsoft Dynamics CRM (former Microsoft CRM). In this small article we will be reviewing Microsoft Great Plains and its Spanish version, available and used in Argentina.

Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV & AX. All three are translated to Spanish and ready to be deployed in Argentina. Historically both Great Plains Software and Navision Software had marketing plans in Buenos Aires back in 1990th, prior to their acquisition by Microsoft. To consider international market – Microsoft seemed to be promoting Navision Attain / Navision on emerging markets, beginning at 2003 (when Navision made very hard time for Great Plains resellers/VARs in such countries as Brazil, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic), then in 2004/2005 (East Europe), 2005/2006 (LATAM/Brazil) Microsoft Business Solutions / Microsoft Dynamics subdivision of Microsoft decided to localize Microsoft Dynamics AX – Axapta for the same markets.
Microsoft Dynamics GP/Great Plains. This ERP was architectured by Great Plains Software (Fargo, North Dakota) in the earlier 1990th as one of the first graphical Accounting/MRP packages – Great Plains Dexterity programming language and development tool was intended to isolate ERP from the specifics of computer graphical and database platforms. As for the GPS Dynamics in Argentina – it was translated to Spanish (Dexterity string resources) for versions 5.0, 6.0 and higher
Great Plains Dexterity Customizations. Dexterity chunks were very elegant customization mechanism for earlier versions of Great Plains Dynamics up to the point when Microsoft Great Plains migrated and established itself as reliable Microsoft SQL Server 6.0, 7.0 and 2000 ERP application. When this happened – Great Plains Dexterity became mixed with SQL scripting and stored procedures, which made former Dexterity database independence and transferability principle irrelevant.
Great Plains Accounting. You can still find clients in LATAM who run GPA – it is no more supported (support ended in 2002) by Microsoft Business Solutions, if you need support - you should contact VAR, such as Alba Spectrum. Who has access to legacy GPA support database
Ctree & Btrieve/Pervasive SQL Legacy. The last version of Microsoft Great Plains, which was still supporting these platforms was Great Plains 7.5. Microsoft Business Solutions stopped Pervasive and Ctree/Faircomm support in December 2004. We know that this voluntary step left a lot of local clients in Argentina without the support options and lead to several mid-size businesses scandals.
Competition. From the high end or functionally rich ERP applications Great Plains meets the competition from Oracle E-Business Suite/Oracle Applications/Oracle Financials and SAP R/3/mySAP/SAP-All-In-One. Also GP is facing the competition from Microsoft Axapta and even partially from Microsoft Navision. From the low end – or simple functionality ERPs Microsoft Dynamics GP is competing with SAP Business One (to be introduced in Argentina in 2006/2007). Plus you should consider locally developed ERP solutions