Microsoft Great Plains: Houston ERP market notes

In this small article we would like to share our consulting experience, serving Houston business metro ERP/MRP/CRM market, in our case this is Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Navision and Microsoft Axapta implementation, customization, integration & reporting.  Let’s make introduction on the products. 

Microsoft Business Solutions renamed its ERP products: Microsoft Great Plains into Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft CRM into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Navision into Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Axapta into Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Solomon into Microsoft Dynamics SL.  Project Green should result in merging product interfaces and making modules cross-integration seamless somewhere in the second decade of XXI century. 

To the specifics of Houston market and clientele:

• Oil & Gas: Oil Drilling companies and Oil Refineries are relatively large and it is new opportunity for Microsoft Great Plains.  In our opinion, when Microsoft SQL Server became a rival to Oracle, DBII and other high-end DB platforms, large enterprises got a very good chance to decrease ERP application implementation & licensing cost and switch from functionally rich ERPs: SAP, Oracle Financials/E-Business Suite/Applications, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards to standard functionality ERPs: Great Plains eEnterprise/Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, etc.  Microsoft Dexterity customizations allows you to tune Great Plains to the specific business logic versus paying high price for rich functionality modules
• Defense & Aerospace.  These enterprises are spread across Texas: San Antonio, Dallas, Austin.  These companies, being established and traditional have challenge of cross application integration.  In some cases, due to the size of these corporations, Microsoft Dynamics GP serves as ERP for regional branch or subdivision and is subject for consolidation into Corporate ERP.  Special consideration should be given to Microsoft CRM and Great Plains integration with Lotus Notes Domino.
• Venture Capital & Startups.  Especially in Dallas area.  Our experience dealing with such implementations indicates that business processes are so unique, that custom pieces are almost always the must.  The business type is generally new services and Service Advantage Suite is usually customized with Microsoft Great Plains Modifier/VBA and Microsoft Dexterity.  As Project Green advances, you should expect more .Net side customizations: XML Web Services, eConnect, etc.  When we are talking about venture capital – we also include micro cap ventures.
• Chemicals.  Across the Gulf of Mexico, up to New Orleans – we have experience implementing, customizing and upgrading Microsoft Dynamics GP for chemical tanks cleaning company. 

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