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The Business Case for Integrated ERP

ERP software (Financial, Inventory, Production and Human Resource Management) is in the middle of a fundamental and profound paradigm shift that is affecting companies of all sizes, from the Global 1000 through small and medium sized business—no one is immune. Organizations that embrace and exploit these sweeping changes will be poised to dramatically lower costs, increase customer satisfaction, and save the most precious commodity of all—time. Those companies that fail to adapt will be left behind, unable to compete in a world of lower cost alternatives with better customer service and higher customer loyalty.

Far too many companies today still use ERP software in a ‘Closed System’ environment. That is, their ERP software is only able to accept inputs from people—it is unable to talk to other applications and systems that contain data relevant to key business processes. This may take the form of reports that are printed out from an external billing or point of sale system and hand keyed into the accounting system. It might also be the payroll entries that get manually entered twice per month, or the inventory adjustments that are made daily to account for production. The status quo won’t scale, isn’t repeatable, and isn’t sustainable.

If you are concerned about the impact of these changes on your business or your competitive marketplace, you must read this white paper that I wrote with Peter Chase, Executive Vice President of Scribe Software Corporation entitled, "The Business Case for Integrated ERP: Reduce Costs & Increase Revenue with a Connected Back Office". It will provide you with some clear examples as to why integrating your business applications is something you cannot put off for one more day.

Getting Started ….

Determining the appropriate IT infrastructure required to support Microsoft Dynamics CRM is very dependent on your business’s particular scenario.  By performing Architecture and Scoping Assessments on your current IT infrastructure prior to implementation can determine the architecture changes required for your project. Following the SQL Server requirements and recommendations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a good starting point. But anticipating and planning for the growth is equally important.  There are three components to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the Client, the Application and the Data, each with different optimization considerations. A good CRM Infrastructure architect understands all the components and knows how to build and deploy using best practices.

Once the designed infrastructure is in place, initial performance testing should be performed. A good tool for this is the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance Toolkit created by the Microsoft CRM product team. The toolkit facilitates load testing the performance of CRM deployments and is available for download at www.codeplex.com/crmperftoolkit.  

Maintaining the performance….

After initially deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, you will want to revisit your settings periodically to insure you’re still on track. Periodic monitoring can verify your system is optimized to accommodate the unique business and environmental factors inherent to your scenario.  A good white paper called “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Optimizing and Maintaining Performance” contains information on optimization techniques and performance improvements. Another good white paper is “Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data with Microsoft SQL Server 2008” which contains information on SQL 2008 features that, when implemented properly, can improve the performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 implementation and secure the data within that deployment.

Regularly downloading and installing the latest hot fixes and update roll-ups is a critical first step to enhancing and maintaining the performance of a CRM implementation. After changes are made, be sure to monitor performance to determine if the changes have positive performance gains. You can use the Windows Server System Monitor utility to collect and analyze performance data.

Another area that’s important is overall network performance. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM system relies on good network performance. Two key elements of network performance are bandwidth and latency. Networks with high bandwidth do not guarantee low latency. Excessive latency creates bottlenecks that prevent data from filling the network pipe, thus decreasing effective bandwidth. It’s important to measure and maintain consistent performance on a network by managing both bandwidth and latency in a coordinated fashion.

Having the right technology design, along with maintaining and optimization is just the start. Having a good Technology Solutions Roadmap that identifies what your requirements are today and tomorrow, and is flexible enough to change and adapt as needed is essential.

Companies in the clean tech industry have a huge potential for growth. Despite the economic downturn of the past two years, there has been a flurry of venture capital investments in clean technologies. According to preliminary data released in January by the Cleantech Group, a facilitator of clean technologies, venture investments in the clean tech arena totaled $5.6 billion for 2009. Wind energy continued to be a significant investment area in 2009. Global Fortune 500 companies, as well as energy and consumer and industrial product companies, made large investments in clean tech as well.

As investors, customers, employees, communities and governments insist on more accurate carbon emission data, organizations are beginning to track carbon emissions as rigorously as they track revenue and expenses. It’s important for clean tech companies to develop processes and controls in three key areas - measuring, monitoring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions. This is getting increasingly important given the Securities and Exchange Commission's recent interpretive guidance on climate change disclosures, and because there is pressure coming from investors, insurers, regulators and other stakeholders for enhanced reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and related risks.

Microsoft Dynamics® GP helps you achieve accountability, transparency, and security to maintain measurement, monitoring, and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions within the Clean Technology industry in the following ways:

• Use core functionality to identify, design, and control access to critical systems, helping you monitor and protect company assets from inappropriate use or loss.
• Provide the audit trails and structured reporting needed for monitoring critical business processes or company assets.
• Set up business alerts in Microsoft Dynamics GP to report any attempt to bypass internal control procedures.
• Take advantage of electronic signatures to prevent problems with compliance or reduce the risk of losing critical data or compromising company assets.

Njevity is a Microsoft Gold Certified consulting firm that helps mid-size companies select and implement Accounting, Inventory Management, Time and Billing, Sales Force Automation, Help Desk, Document Management and Workflow applications from Microsoft, specializing in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

So you work at a company with complex business processes that require much more than a typical out-of-the-box business application can provide. You want a single system that meets all of your needs, but no such application seems to exist (no, not even in the AppStore...). In the past, your options were generally limited to cobbling together several disparate systems or leveraging the future of your business to have an application custom built from the ground up specifically for you. But now, you have a much better option. It is called XRM.

XRM is a relatively new term that refers to the building of custom business logic and functionality on top of an exisitng CRM system such as the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. But how is this better than traditional custom application development? Quite simply, when you build on top of the Dynamics CRM platform, you can develop all of the unique functionality required by your business using the latest .NET Development Tools while also taking advantage of the many in-the-box capabilities of Dynamics CRM. As a result, you can leverage the existing functionality for Account, Contact, Activity and Opportunity Management as well as the help desk, knowledge base and marketing components of Dynamics CRM without writing a single line of code. Instead of investing your time and treasure in the development of these basic elements, you can focus your development efforts on the areas that truly add value to your business.

If you build your custom XRM application on the Dynamics CRM platform, you can also immediately incorporate the following Dynamics CRM capabilities:

• Security
• Workflow
• Reporting
• User Interface Design
• Office Integration
• Data Modeling
• Web Services

These are just a few of the ways in which combining the power of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform with your custom XRM development efforts can add tremendous value to your business. You can provide your users will all of the power, functionality and ease of use of the Dynamics CRM system without sacrificing any of the capabilities upon which your business relies. You get a single, packaged application upon which to run your business that includes all the unique functionality you require to really run your business. And you can get it all in less time and at a lower cost than any previous option.

For more information, I invite you to read the following article by Shan McArthur of ADXStudios Inc., titled, "An Introduction to XRM for a .NET Developer". Then give us a call and we can help you quickly start to formulate your XRM strategy so you too can start saving time and money while making your users more efficient, your customers more satisfied and your business more profitable.

"I get this cryptic error message."

"I entered and posted a transaction that was wrong.  What do I do?"

"I tried everything that CustomerSource said to do but it doesn't fix the issue."

When do you need to get a consultant involved and why?  Any of the three statements above should be an indicator to get us involved.  Here's why.  A number of times, Dynamics GP will give you an error message that is cryptic and indecipherable.  Further, there are other situations where we should get involved, including wrong postings or when you have exhausted your options.  Here are the reasons why:

First, do no harm!  When you have a cryptic message or a bad transaction, trying to fix it yourself can be risky.  For example, an error message that appears can be researched but the level of expertise necessary to fix it may be beyond your skills.  A few key indicators include:  any resolution that involves running a Utility in GP, anything that requires your database to be backed up, anything involving SQL Server or any resolution that involves changing a setup record.  The reasons for calling us into the situation include:  Possible damage to the database, possibly making the transactions and audit trail more convoluted or simply making a change that will affect further processing. 

The value of bringing in a consultant is that the consultant understands many complex variables that apply to your system.  First, they understand the setup and processing rules of your system.  The consultant will know why your setup and configuration is the way it is.  Second, your consultant understands the processing behind the GP system.  They have the experience to know which tables and fields are populated and which ones can be modified without disasterous results.  Finally, your consultant will have the technical expertise to apply fixes without causing further damage.

In summary, when in doubt, call!  We are here to help and many times, we can resolve the issue quicker, less expensively and more completely than trying to fix the issue in-house.