Often when developing reports for Microsoft Dynamics GP users, we face what I like to call the need-to-know challenge.  No information is volunteered, you have to ask very leading questions to really understand the report’s purpose, and at every step someone else needs to be consulted.

This dynamic frequently results from the fact that the person requesting the report is two or three degrees removed from the actual users of the report and often does not know the detailed requirements.  It can also sometimes happen when users think that by giving the report designer too much information they will be wasting time, and since they’re paying by the hour, time is money.

The reality is that the need-to-know approach to report specification will typically lead to a much longer lead time for your reports and most likely require more iterations before it actually accomplishes the desired results.  If you are using internal resources for report writing, this situation can cause to a lot of frustration and wasted time.  If you are using external resources, this can translate into far more expensive reports.

Next time you are the one requesting a report, be able to answer the following five questions:

1.       What is the business need behind the report?  This is an important place to start, especially when you’re talking to a consultant that has already developed numerous reports for others – they may have already created a report for a similar need and might have re-usable code or an approach you may not have thought of for creating the report.

2.       What does the report need to look like and who will be using it?  The answer may be critical in determining the tool or method used for creating the report.  For example, a report that needs to be presented to the board or to persons outside the company for review might need to look a lot more presentable than an internal report, so maybe it would be created in Crystal or SSRS.  Something that will be used internally only and possibly need to be manipulated or edited may be better accomplished in SmartList or Excel.

3.       What columns of data should be on the report?  Some of this may need to get pretty detailed.  Putting together a sample output in Excel, or even on paper, can be very helpful to the report designer.   If you’re using dates, be very clear about which dates; for example, each subledger transaction in Dynamics GP has at least two dates: document date and GL posting date.  If you’re looking for data like address, comments, or Salesperson ID on sales transactions, specify whether these should be from the line item level or the overall invoice level.  If any of the columns should be totaled, or if you want them grouped or sorted in a particular way, show that on your sample.

4.       Where/how do you enter the data that is needed for the report?  What often seems like a very straightforward request can have myriad meanings.  A common request we get is for “a sales report”.  This could mean almost anything when you’re talking about Dynamics GP.  To start, there are four typical modules where this data may be entered or found:  General Ledger, Receivables Management, Sales Order Processing (SOP), or Invoicing.  In addition, ‘sales’ could have different meanings: it could be the sum of all the extended costs on all sales lines, it could be the totals of invoices and returns, it could be invoice totals less tax, or it could be everything that’s in the GL accounts in the Sales category, regardless of where it originated.  The business need for the report should help determine the answer to this.

5.       What parameters and/or other logic are needed?  If you need to use a number of parameters when running the report that may rule out certain tools, like SmartList.  Also, consider additional logic – should your report only return posted data or all data with a status column?  Should voids be excluded, or shown, but with a void status?  Are any calculations or other data manipulation required?

If you are not sure about the answers to some of these questions, an experienced report designer will be able to help you put your report specification together.  What is important to understand is that without this information it will be difficult for anyone, internal or external, to create the report you are looking for.

www.kraftenterprise.com

www.kraftenterprise.com

JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite
JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite is more of a best-of-breed solution, specializing in international trade and in logistics and transportation management, and is less of a full scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) system than the other two solutions. This is evidenced by its comparatively poor showing in back office functionality (a major part of what constitutes an ERP solution), and its relative strength in international logistics and transportation.

Also noteworthy is that JDA specializes in the high and middle end of the mid-market (as shown in Chart 2 above), deriving a full 50 percent of its revenues from companies in the $501 to $1 billion (USD) range, and a full 40 percent of its revenues from companies in the $101 to $500 million (USD) range. Only 10 percent of its revenues come from the low end of the mid-market segment ($51 to $100 million [USD]).

In terms of its customer base, JDA is very much North American–based, with almost 70 percent of its business coming from North American customers, with most of the balance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and very little in Asia.

Pronto Xi
Pronto is an Australian-based ERP vendor, so it’s no surprise that 70 percent of its business is in Australia, with most of the balance in the Asian market, and very little in North America. Unlike JDA, Pronto specializes in the mid and lower ends of the market, with 60 percent of its revenues coming from these two segments, and only 10 percent coming from the high end of the market. Pronto offers a full ERP solution with strong back end functionality.

Epicor Enterprise
Epicor Enterprise falls right down the middle in terms of the market segment it most supports, with 45 percent of its business coming from the mid-level companies. Its next strongest segment of the market is the lower end, with 20 percent of its revenues coming from companies in the $51 to $100 million (USD) range.

Sixty-three percent of Epicor’s business is in North America, with almost all the rest in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

We’ve included information on the vendors’ market segments and geographical markets because we believe these are important factors to consider when selecting a software solution. Any vendor doing a lot of business with companies of your size and in your geographical market is likely to have the kind of knowledge and expertise necessary to understand and support your company’s special needs and problems.

Functionality
Now we come to the all-important functionality scores. It must be remembered that the functionality ratings you see here refer to the specific solutions being rated, and not to the vendor in general.

Chart 3. Breakdown of business components.

As you can see in Chart 3 above, the functionality portion of the Showdown is broken down into four main areas: Supply Chain Management (SCM), Distribution Process Management (DPM), Retail & Commerce, and Back Office. Within each area are functional subareas, a total of 13 in all.

In SCM, the backbone of any ERP – distribution solution, Epicor Enterprise has the strongest showing across the board. JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite is strong in Transportation Management, Trade Logistics, and Procurement, but gets only average scores in Warehouse and Supplier Management. Pronto Xi is also strong across the board in SCM, except in Transportation Management.

In Retail & Commerce, Pronto Xi scored best, with Epicor Enterprise and JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite sharing the second spot.

In DPM, it’s basically dead even. All three vendor solutions score well across the board, although Epicor Enterprise slightly outperforms JDA in Process Management, and slightly outscores Pronto in Purchasing Management.

In Back Office, both Epicor Enterprise and Pronto Xi get top grades, with JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite placing third. Again, this is no surprise, since this JDA solution is more of a supply chain optimization, best-of-breed solution.

Conclusion
Each of the vendor solutions we looked at in this Showdown offers a different combination of strengths and weaknesses.

For example, Pronto Xi scored well in every functional area except Transportation Management . If your business requires a strong transportation management module, JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite may be the better choice, but that comes at a price: JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite is weaker than Pronto Xi in Web Commerce and Financials . Epicor Enterprise also scored well across the board, but was weaker in Retail and POS . (It should be remembered that Epicor Enterprise offers other solutions that have strong retail and POS functionality). If your needs include a strong retail component, both JDA Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Suite and Pronto Xi may be better choices.

Also worth considering is which vendor is best positioned to understand and support your needs. With almost all its business in Asia-Pacific, Pronto has good knowledge and experience in that geographical market. On the other hand, if your company is in the upper part of the mid-market and North American–based, that much more closely fits with JDA’s corporate profile than either of the two other vendors. If your business is in the mid or lower end and North American–based, Epicor is the closest fit in terms of business size and geography. And, of course, functionality, as we’ve seen above, has to be factored in as well.

The fact is, no solution is ideal for every business. At the end of the day, it’s largely the particular needs of your business that will determine which solution is the best fit for you.

A quick and easy way to compare ERP – distribution solutions based on your organization’s particular functional requirements is by using TEC’s ERP – Distribution Evaluation Center, which contains the latest vendor request for information (RFI) data for 17 different ERP – distribution solutions. TEC’s ERP – Distribution Evaluation Center allows you to set priorities that reflect your organization’s business model and special needs at every level of functionality, and you’ll get the results in a matter of minutes. At the modular and submodular levels—even down to the individual criteria—you can tell the system which business processes are critical, important, or not important to your organization. The system then compares your priorities against the vendor RFI responses to produce a shortlist of solutions. You get a custom comparison—one that ranks vendor solutions on how well their functionality matches the business requirements of your organization.

www.KraftEnterprise.com

Kraft Enterprise Systems is your resource for all thing Epicor related.

SOURCE:-

http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/welcome-to-erp-distribution-showdown-epicor-enterprise-vs-jda-supply-chain-planning-optimization-suite-vs-pronto-xi-19312/

These acknowledgements follow recent placements for Microsoft Dynamics CRM among the Leaders in The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites for Midsized Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010), The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites for Large Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010) and the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers.

“We provide a strong vision and a road map of ongoing innovation to help customers get the maximum return from their CRM investments,” said Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “With the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, customers will reach new levels of productivity and collaboration with a low total cost of ownership, and partners will unlock new opportunities with a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premises deployments.”

Results From Gartner

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation evaluates vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. Evaluation criteria weighed for each included product/service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, customer experience and operations, and offering (product) strategy, business model, innovation and geographic strategy, respectively.

According to Gartner, “Vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help the top sales executives achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and Asia/Pacific in a wide variety of vertical industries with multiple proof points above 500 users.”

Results From Forrester Research

To assess the market of CRM suites customer service solutions software and see how vendors compare with one another, Forrester evaluated the customer service strengths and weaknesses of the top CRM suites vendor products against 196 criteria organized into three high-level categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. According to Forrester, vendors in the Leader category have both a strong product and strategy.

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM shines by offering customer service flexibility for large and midsized organizations,” wrote William Band, vice president and principal analyst, and James Kobielus, senior analyst, Forrester Research, in the report. “It supports flexible options in deployment (on-premises, on-demand and partner-hosted deployments); how to pay (license, subscribe, finance); and how to use (Outlook client, browser, SharePoint site, other interfaces). Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides strong support for: phone agents; call center infrastructure; agent collaboration tools; knowledge base; customer data management; analytics; email response management; architecture and platform; business process and workflow tools; integration; security; and Web 2.0 tools.”

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2010 by Gartner Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of easy-to-use, integrated and adaptable ERP and CRM applications that enable business decision-makers to quickly respond to market shifts, take advantage of new trends, increase their competitive edge and drive business success. Microsoft Dynamics solutions are delivered through a world-class network of reselling partners providing specialized services and additional innovation to help customers excel in their industries.

www.kraftenterprise.com

A Fortune 500 company embarks on an ambitious program to implement a Master Data Management solution. Three years and a $100M later, executive leadership decides that too much money has been sunk into the program and the anticipated objectives have not been realized. The program is shut down. How often have you seen this?  Why haven’t we got better at detecting problems before they happen?  With all of the talk of business change management over the years, does anyone even know what it means or how to do it?

Too much emphasis is put on a project’s scope, schedule and budget. We believe that the organizational, cultural, and political issues are as important – a project’s early warning signals, or weak signals. The divisive issues are not technology in nature, but around goals, incentives, executive buy-in, decision-making, resources capacity and skills.

How Can Project Managers Detect Weak Signals?

We recently helped a Fortune 500 insurer canvas the crowd for areas that their enterprise web initiative might not be set up for success. Within a few weeks of initial conversations with the Chief Internet Officer and the CIO, we had surveyed 65 project stakeholders, consisting of executives, managers and professionals across business and technology on 7 dimensions:

• Program Economic Model
• Executive Buy-in
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Execution Management
• Business Change Management
• Resourcing
• Vendor Engagement

Here are some of the things we heard:

• “No one has ever explicitly explained to me what the ownership is. I know Marketing has ownership and I’m assuming the joint ownership with IT and Business but I’m not sure.”
• “IT areas don’t seem to be cohesive. Their structure, areas of ownership and processes are not understood by the business partners. The dysfunctional feel of the organization leaves one to question their competency.”
• “I am not aware of the chain of command in terms of decisions. Hopefully this will be communicated once the Program Manager comes on board”

The biggest issues were the lack of clarity around the leadership and management structure and lack of consensus across functions and management levels. The business management group was hugely skeptical while the technology management group was quite optimistic. But when responses averaged out, the insights revealed the following:

• Lacking clarity on the means to achieving goals
• Uncertainty around cost-benefit analysis
• Limited consensus on scope, duration, and timing
• Concern over skill and capacity
• Limited definition of business data integration needs

Some of our recommended immediate follow-up actions were to set up meetings amongst key stakeholders to clarify scope, start benefits case validation, and start a proof of concept for business data integration. Another set of actions addressed communications and recommended publishing a year-by-year set of objectives, sending weekly program status report to the steering group, and developing a communication plan to coordinate and align relevant stakeholders. The program leadership took immediate action on the diagnostic recommendations to ensure tighter cross-functional alignment and buy-in from its various stakeholders.

We worked with project management expert Michael Krigsman and his best-in-class company Asuret to conduct and analyze these surveys. It would also be possible to roll your own using Sawtooth and Tableau for example.

Ultimately, the results from the diagnostic itself were not surprising; however they provided validity to constituents’ concerns in a neutral and non-threatening way. It is a simple and effective tool for organizations to monitor warning signals within their large investments.

What is your experience from large and transformational programs? How have you watched out for weak signals in your programs? What would you have done different in the programs that have failed to realize its stated objectives?  What other creative project management approaches have you used to improve delivery success?

www.kraftenterprise.com

This JavaScript is very re-useable, in that multiple pages, or multiple scrolling images can use this same code without any modification:

The JavaScript

var unit = “px”; //the unit of measure when moving each image up

var keepScrolling = true; //default to true so the images continue to scroll

var moveAmount = 2; //number of units to move each picture

/*

The main function that sets up the images

*/

function scrollImages(groupID, imageHeight, scrollDelay, imageDelay){

/*

Each image lives in its own div with a common id and numerical suffix (ex: pic1, pic2, ect.)

*/

var counter = 1;

var images = new Array();

//if the element exists, add it to the array

while(document.getElementById(groupID + counter) != null){

images[counter - 1] = document.getElementById(groupID + counter);

counter++;

}

//the first image should be at the very top

images[0].style.top = 0 + unit;

images[0].style.display = “block”;

//place the rest of the images directly under the first image

for(counter = 1; counter < images.length; counter++){

images[counter].style.top = imageHeight + unit;

images[counter].style.display = “block”;

}

setTimeout(function(){scroll(images, 0, imageHeight, scrollDelay, imageDelay)}, imageDelay);

}

//this funciton actually does the scrolling

function scroll(images, firstImage, imageHeight, scrollDelay, imageDelay){

var image1 = images[firstImage];

var secondImage = 0;

var thirdImage = 0; //if you only have 2 images, then the third image will always be the first

var image2 = null;

//because this function is called repeadily, the first image is not always the first image in teh array

//so the second image is simply the next image after the curent one being displayed

if(firstImage + 1 < images.length){

secondImage = firstImage + 1;

}

image2 = images[secondImage];

//scroll each image up the number of units

if(keepScrolling){

image1.style.top = (image1.style.top.replace(unit,”") – moveAmount) + unit;

image2.style.top = (image2.style.top.replace(unit,”") – moveAmount) + unit;

}

//if the second image isn’t at the very top yet, keep scrolling.

if(image2.style.top != “0px” && image2.style.top.indexOf(“-”) < 0){

setTimeout(function(){scroll(images, firstImage, imageHeight, scrollDelay, imageDelay)}, scrollDelay);

}

//if the second image is at the very top, get the next image and scroll

if(image2.style.top == “0px” || image2.style.top.indexOf(“-”) > -1){

if(secondImage + 1 < images.length){

thirdImage = secondImage + 1;

}

image1 = images[thirdImage];

image1.style.top = (image2.style.top.replace(unit,”") + imageHeight) + unit;

setTimeout(function(){scroll(images, secondImage, imageHeight, scrollDelay, imageDelay)}, imageDelay);

}

}

// the div that contains the image divs calls these funcitons on mouseover(pause) and mouseout(unPause)

function pause(){

keepScrolling = false;

}

function unPause(){

keepScrolling = true;

}

The CSS:

/*the main div that contains each images div*/

.flash {

background-image: url(“../images/flashspacer.png”);

clear: both;

position: relative;

width: 980px;

height: 240px;

overflow: hidden; /*this is very important because it keeps the images that are outside the div hidden*/

}

/*each image div uses this css class*/

.hero-image {

padding-left: 19px;

clear: both;

position: absolute;

width: 942px;

display: none;

top: 0px;

}

The HTML:

<div class=’flash’ onmouseover=’pause()’ onmouseout=’unPause()’>

<div id=”hero-image1″>

<a href=’page1.html’><img src=’img1.png’></a>

</div>

<div id=”hero-image2″>

<a href=’page2.html’><img src=’img2.png’></a>

</div>

<div id=”hero-image3″>

<a href=’page3.html’ ><img src=’img3.png’></a>

</div>

<div id=”hero-image4″>

<a href=’page4.html’><img src=’img4.png’></a>

</div>

</div>

If you want to add another image to the mix, all you need to do is add another image div and increment the numerical suffix by 1.

www.kraftenterprise.com

Adaptive Planning will be unavailable due to a software release upgrade from Friday August 13th at 6:00PM PDT to Saturday August 14th at 2:00AM PDT.
The upcoming release of Adaptive Planning, version 7.0, contains many exciting enhancements to several areas of the application including new and expanded capabilities for reporting, admin, export, and formula building. These new features are briefly described below:

Reports

• Reports Parameters- Report authors can create reports that allow the report users to filter the report based on specific dimensions without having to modify the report in the report builder. Parameters can be specified to prompt the user either when the report is run or on the face of the report once it has been run.
• Report Segments – Report authors can now specify more than one set of dimension element combinations for each axis (creating “segments” on each axis). This allows the report author significantly more control over which rows and columns will appear or not appear on a report.
• Element Search – Report authors can quickly search for elements in the different element trees to make report building more efficient.

Import / Export

• Filtering control – Users can now filter exported data based on accounts, plans, dimensions and time specifications.
• Currency control – Users can specify whether to export data in corporate or local currency.
• Data security – Export now respects a user’s Plan access rights and therefore limits the data which they can export.

Additional Enhancements

• Drag and Drop administration of Account, Plan, and Dimension Trees – Eases the task of ordering elements in a tree by utilizing simple drag and drop capabilities.
• Validate Formulas – A new administration feature that shows the user a listing of any accounts that have formula errors to speed the validation and error checking process.
• Formula Enhancements – Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) functions have been added as standard functions.

New APIs

• New Export API created for Standard, Modeled, and Cube sheets.
• Import API extended to include Modeled and Cube sheet data.

These features will be available to all Corporate and Enterprise edition subscribers as part of your annual subscription.
Release notes will be available on Saturday, August 14th, in conjunction with the release on our customer documentation page:

http://www.adaptiveplanning.com/customer_documentation.shtml

Webinars
Adaptive Planning will conduct several live training webinars beginning Thursday, July 29th, You may register for and attend these webinars by visiting their training page at: http://www.adaptiveplanning.com/services/online_training.php

• Accounting
• Data Management
• Dynamics GP
• Tax Management
• Workflow Management

Executive coach and blogger Michael Wade recently made the important point that a base camp in the jungle requires regularly chopping back the jungle to keep from overwhelming the camp.

His key points were that:

1.       You can’t chop back the entire jungle.
2.       It makes no sense to chop back more than is operationally required because you’d be wasting energy and time.
3.       Daily chopping is easier than chopping every two or three days but it may provide a sense of less accomplishment since the growth would be smaller.

The illustration resonated with me because almost every time I walk into a client that is having ongoing difficulties with Dynamics GP, I see it is doing a poor job of chopping back the jungle. Some companies are unwilling to do the hard work. Others can’ t bring themselves to change their routine. Like creeping jungles, maintaining Dynamics GP is simpler and easier with small processes done daily.

An awful lot of accountants are still stuck in a routine that is focused on a monthly time frame, even as the volume of transactions grows exponentially around them. You can’t cut back the jungle once a month. In a month, the camp will be overgrown. If you’re behind, you may have to take some drastic steps to get caught up-for example, using temporary workers, delegating work and focusing on fixing a specific process.

Now is the time to hack away at the jungle. The closer we get to year-end, the faster the jungle seems to grow. Grab your machete and tame the Dynamics GP jungle on a much more frequent basis via such steps as:

• Backing up daily
• Balancing the bank account daily
• Balancing subledgers to the GL daily
• Reviewing cash daily
• Using cycle counts to manage inventory
• Gathering vendor 1099 and W-9 information at vendor creation, not year end
• Moving items like depreciation out of month end
• Invoicing more often
• Proactively collecting from customers
• Leveraging time savers like correcting and copying transactions
• Forcing transactions through subledgers to minimize journal entries
• Implementing other modules to save time
• Adjusting processes to quit making more work for yourself

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics GP on the Kraft Enterprise Systems site.

Here’s a handy overview of the newest version of GP, released this year.

Read the whole article.