ERP Consulting: Future Directions for Microsoft Great Plains Partners
In the Clinton era, the status quo was simple: You serve your local customers, and if you want to expand your business, open offices in other metropolitan business areas. Great Plains Software was giving generous margins on software sales and invigorated local VARs/partners/leader resellers with so-called orphaned leads: customers who failed to pay their annual improvement program or called Great Plains Software directly to comply with the quality of service of your VAR. . When Microsoft bought Great Plains Software and formed Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions (soon renamed Microsoft Business Solutions) and acquired new ERP/MRP/accounting applications: Navision, Axapta, Solomon (Solomon Software was purchased by Great Plains Software at the end of of the 1990s). When Microsoft introduced Microsoft CRM, it tried to change the traditional partner reselling model, let’s see what it is and why (this is our personal opinion: we are trying to envision the future of generic ERP VAR)
or Remote Support. This means you don’t have to be at the customer’s office to troubleshoot, install and even train users, to be more direct and dare you say, deploy the system remotely. Of course, in the near future it will open the doors to consulting companies abroad, but in this article we will limit ourselves to the US and Canadian markets and consultants at the national and Canadian level. For Microsoft Business Solutions, it means that if the customer is technical enough, you can serve the customer from your customer center by increasing the number of service technicians.
o Decreased software sales margin. If you can serve the customer yourself, you can probably lower your software sales margins. We see this happen with the new line of Microsoft CRM – it’s generally harder to get new customers (new customers tend to buy the software directly through MBS and then yell about needing to help them). We are seeing more and more new customers buying Microsoft CRM from Microsoft for a pilot project or just putting it on the shelf.
or “Open Technology”. Microsoft CRM SDK can be downloaded from Microsoft website and used at will, if you are a C# or VB.Net programmer. This is the opposite philosophy – remember the good old days of Great Plains Dexterity – you couldn’t get this EDI for free and you needed to buy a training class to gain skills in this proprietary programming language. This trend probably indicates the maturity of the industry and the decline in consulting prices.
o Go nationally and internationally. Yes, this is what we have to do, following the path of Microsoft Business Solutions. In addition, we will have to try to reduce our expenses by opening facilities on the high seas. International business is very difficult culturally and the sooner you jump in there the better. Right now, we see companies from India and the Philippines trying to get subcontracts from the US – these are their potential partners.
o Cross-platform integrations. We believe that the introduction of XML launched a new era of integration and harmony of computing platforms: Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, IBM DB2/AS400/RS6000, Oracle. Corporate customers, including manufacturing, logistics, shipping, international business, and distribution, will take advantage of the multi-platform strategy to decrease risk and increase ERP/MRP longevity.
Good luck with your selection, implementation, and customization, if you have any issues or concerns, we’re here to help! If you want us to do the job, give us a call at 1-866-528-0577! [email protected]
