Selecting Microsoft Great Plains Partner/VAR/Reseller: ERP Implementation & Customization - Overview

In the case when you represent mid-size or mid-size-to-large business, it is not a surprise that you have to do ERP selection and switch to new technologies, doing your own research. If you a trying to stay with Microsoft technologies and try Microsoft Business Solutions products: Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft Navision, Solomon, Axapta with integration to Microsoft CRM, you should know the history of Great Plains Software and Navision partners over the last 10 years.

? Great Plains Dynamics VAR of earlier 1990th. These companies were a mix of CPAs, received application consulting training. Second feature - these companies were concentrating on the local market, the preferred method was on-site visit, sales technique - cold calls with following hard pressuring sales.

? Great Plains Dynamics C/S+/eEnterprise VAR of 1995-1999. This time, due to the fact of increasing competition on Graphical OS market and Microsoft aggressive market take over, consulting firms had to hire more technical consultants and programmers. These employees were engaged into data conversion, data repair, Great Plains Dexterity interfaces, VBA, ReportWriter, Crystal Reports customizations and web development. This was the time of technology diversification and golden time for programmers. At the same time the importance of application consultant CPA was in the decrease, one of the explanations could be - universities picked up in educating future controllers in basic CPA, standard ERP and financial reporting

? Microsoft Business Solutions nowadays VAR/Partner/Reseller. We see segregation of duties, however it is not transparent to the end customer. Regional Partners are still deploying strong sales techniques, but they have rather strong sales force. Consulting job is subcontracted to independent consultants and customizations challenge is subcontracted to nation-wide customization partners, such as Alba Spectrum Technologies.

? Nation-wide partner specifics. You are probably lucky if you got nation-wide customization partner directly, because you can save 30% in local implementation and customization rates, due to the fact that nation-wide partner doesn't participate in the bidding, but rather is subcontracted by the winner of the bidding battle.

We encourage you to analyze your alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan