Integrating Microsoft Great Plains Accounting/ERP: RMS, CRM, eCommerce, Lotus Domino – overview for developer

Integrating Microsoft Great Plains Accounting/ERP: RMS, CRM,
eCommerce, Lotus Domino – overview for developer
By
Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has substantial
market share among horizontal and vertical clientele in the
USA, Canada (including French version for Quebec/Montreal),
UK, Australia, New Zealand, Spanish speaking Latin and Central
America, South Africa and Middle East. Nowadays ERP can not
stay as it is off-the-shelf product – it requires integration
with Legacy or newly implemented systems, such as CRM, Retail
Management applications, custom in-house made business systems
(transportation/cargo tracking, etc). The tendency is that if
company uses Microsoft-driven computer park (Windows domain,
SQL Servers, MS Exchange) the rest of the ERP/CRM applications
are Windows-oriented. However you can have successful bridge
between non-Microsoft ERP and Great Plains: Oracle, IBM Lotus
Notes/Domino, DB2 or others), usually it involves Java/CORBA/
EJB/JSP type of expertise.

Microsoft RMS-Great Plains integration. There are few options –
first one is to use standard integration, coming with MS RMS.
It has Dexterity interface in Great Plains, does integration
to single company at the time. Doesn’t integration on SOP/AR
level, however. Second option is to use integration,
maintained by Alba Spectrum Technologies – it integrates
unlimited number of stores, SOP/AR/POP, posts through Bank
Reconciliation module and so allows to track Check Books/
Credit Card balances. This integration also has Dexterity
interface for Stores-GP Companies mapping and could work as
nightly or real time SQL Server routine

Microsoft CRM-Great Plains integration. This integration is
maintained by Microsoft Business Solutions and allows you to
synchronize SOP and Customers in Great Plains with Microsoft
CRM Quotes and Orders. Microsoft CRM has open Microsoft CRM
SDK and so you can customize and integrate Microsoft CRM at
will, having C# or VB.Net in-house expertise. The above
mentioned integration could be altered and tuned by
programming MS BizTalk server (it can use either BizTalk
runtime or regular license)

Microsoft Great Plains as Back office for eCommerce web-site.
Here we need to mention interesting thing, The product,
created and dedicated to eCommerce developers – Great Plains
eConnect is often considered as a bit expensive and licensing-
restricting solution. If your company is ISV and implements
eCommerce product, integrating to Great Plains – you would
rather prefer set of open and simple stored procedures, moving
data to and retrieving from Microsoft Great Plains Sales Order
Processing (SOP) module

Microsoft Great Plains integration with Oracle. Well – you can
do it either from Oracle or from MS SQL Server side – in both
cases you have linking tools and heterogeneous queries
mechanisms

Microsoft Great Plains integration with Lotus Notes/Domino. –
If you want Great Plains documents lookup from Lotus – you
typically use ODBC connection to MS SQL Server. You need to
know Great Plains tables structure (Tools->Resource
Description->Tables in Great Plains)

Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or concerns – we
are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a
call 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com
(mailto:help@albaspectrum.com)

Bobette Kyle is publisher of http://www.Take-Payments-Online.
com (http://www.Take-Payments-Online.com) , an ecommerce
information site. She is also proprietor of The
WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Network, subject-specific Web sites
designed to help you find the right information for marketing
plans and marketing programs. Visit at http://www.
WebSiteMarketingPlan.com (http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com).