Corporate ERP Selection Notes: SAP B1, Dynamics GP Great Plains

Corporate ERP System is a must for small and mid-size business, when you plan to lead your company to the point, where the business has stable market value, and it is ready to be open for micro and small capitalization, venture capital, or simply be placed for sale.  Corporate ERP is one of the first parameters to be checked by potential investors or business buyers.  In this small publication we would like to share our vision of midsize and small company corporate ERP selection, implementation and support:

1. Stick to the ERP brand: Microsoft Dynamics, SAP Business One, Oracle – these names are sound and you in our opinion should select reliable and recognizable Corporate ERP brand versus little known new venturing ERP application, where its future fate, technical support and versions upgrade are unstable and exposed to business venture volatility.  This process might to some extent resemble old painting collecting, where you bet on little known modern artist, who may or may not become new Rembrandt in twenty years from now.  In our opinion this betting options should be left for Corporate ERP market professional envision gurus, and the rest of us should not risk and stick to proven Corporate ERP brands: SAP, Microsoft, Oracle

2. Microsoft Dynamics GP or former Great Plains Dynamics.  If you are thinking about Axapta Dynamics AX, Navision Dynamics NAV, or Solomon Dynamics SL, please read our earlier articles on these Corporate ERP applications and let us concentrate on Dynamics GP Great Plains.  GP is matured Corporate ERP and MRP application, hosted in Microsoft SQL Server (and this means that it is very reliable with its current versions 10.0 and 9.0).  MRP functionality covers Discrete Manufacturing business model.  Dynamics GP is popular in tandem with Microsoft CRM 4.0 (as we are writing these lines in June 2009).  Great Plains is very reliable Corporate ERP brand and being chosen it should lead you ten or twenty years of future Corporate ERP progress

3. SAP Business One.  Here you have the opportunity to pick Corporate ERP system platform which is by all means intuitive for regular Salesperson, AR and AP Accountant, Inventory clerk, Warehouse worker, Service Technician. If you own pretty small business, where you need attributes of mid-size business Corporate ERP: simple discrete manufacturing, bill of materials, service warranty contracts, consignments, rentals contracts, picking and packing, seamlessly integrated CRM module.  SB1 modern user interface allows you to design custom business processes by appealing to writing down data entry and processing procedure.  Some ERP consultants believe that SAP B1 is scaled down small business ERP (lacking such important features as Batch Posting), while others believe that SAP BO ERP is well rounded and could be further advanced by SAP B1 SDK programming or SB1 Data Transformation Workbench Integration