I have seen quite a few questions and solutions regarding Dynamics CRM's lack of an auto-numbering feature for fields. CRM offers this with its Case functionality (your case number is generated automatically), but no where else does it let you configure fields to generate an auto-number. When tasked with creating auto-numbers for one of our custom entities, I started doing a little searching. I found several solutions that required some light programming but nothing I found was "out of the box" ready, until I came across Counter from CRM Extensions. This is a free download, only requiring you to sign up for an account with their website (I guess they might should put an * before the word Free). Thankfully, the registration process is painless, and I have yet to receive a single email from the company. CRM Extensions has several other products that cost $ and are really just the same as other ISV offerings (Sharepoint Connector, Import Manager, etc.).
The Counter product is very easy to install and setup. My testing took me less than 30 minutes to have a counter up and running from start to finish. The instructions that come with the download are extremely precise and easy to follow. After the installation, Counter will add a "Counter" entity to your CRM system. This is where you will create your new counters for your entities. After you create the counter in CRM, Counter (am I saying that word enough?) requires you to make some minor edits of the files that were part of the install, but it really is quite simple. After editing the files, you will be ready to start auto incrementing your fields based on the prefix, number scheme, and postfix that you specified in the Counter entity.
This add-on has really been a gem! Thank you CRM Extensions for making this a free product.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Quoting Process
Sometimes I wonder how many people in the business world truly are in the "same boat" as I am when it comes to certain problems. One major problem that our company has is our quoting process. I do not know if we are like or unlike other companies when it comes to creating a quote for a customer, but outside of the simple line item quote we can quickly put together in Great Plains, I do know we have a disconnected and less than intuitive quoting process.
I do not think our quoting process is that different or even that much more complex than most companies quoting processes, but we just do not seem to have a great method generating quotes. If we need to send a customer a quote on "day to day" order material, Great Plains is fine to generate quotes. However, when it comes to our larger project quotes that require special pricing, package discounting, multiple revisions, and several people being involved in the process, this is when we run into quite a bit of problems.
We basically have two major quoting processes:
1. Irrigation Projects
2. Turf Equipment Projects
Irrigation Projects
The quoting process for irrigation jobs is quite a long process. Sometimes we will work a job for over a year before the final quote is submitted. You could see where keeping track of mulitple revisions for over a year could be tough even if you had a proper quoting process. You also have to factor in inflation over the course of a year. I know it doesn't sound like much, but how many of you out there (raise your hands) hate to see Q1 roll in due to all of the pricing updates you have to make in your systems? That many huh? Another obstacle we run into is who are we actually quoting this project to? Sometimes the contractor installing the job will buy the material, sometime the owner of the job will buy the material, and sometimes they both want a quote (typically displayed in different formats). We also have to deal with special pricing from our vendors. Depending on how deep the special pricing is, will sometimes lead to us selling product below our standard cost in Great Plains (which makes margin calculations all the more important). Currently, we are doing our entire quoting process in Excel. I hope you are starting to see where my concerns are coming from.
Turf Equipment
The turf equipment quoting process is very similar to that of a car dealership. "Do you want leather? How about a navigation system to go with that rear entertainment system and sunroof?". This brings up the idea of a sales configurator software (which are not terribly expensive, but they are not cheap either). I am pretty impressed with the idea of a configurator software and what it could mean in costly mistake savings. We just recently had a large order come through that was quoted by one of our experienced sales guys. Unfortunately, we are still finding items that were left off of the original quote that were required to make the piece of equiipment operate. This guy has been selling the same equipment for over 20 years. If we had a configurator in place, this would not have happened and the configurator would have come close to paying for itself on this one order! The turf equipment quotes will not go through the same (however they will go through some) amount of revisions as an irrigation project, but there are quite a few more turf equipment quotes generated in a year (quite a bit more margin for error as well).
This problem has prompted me to start looking into quoting/configurator applications that can integrate with Dynamics CRM (since that is what the sales guys are used to working in). We will also be able to push CRM generated quotes into Great Plains using our Scribe integration software. I will let you know my findings after I am done evaluating applications.
I do not think our quoting process is that different or even that much more complex than most companies quoting processes, but we just do not seem to have a great method generating quotes. If we need to send a customer a quote on "day to day" order material, Great Plains is fine to generate quotes. However, when it comes to our larger project quotes that require special pricing, package discounting, multiple revisions, and several people being involved in the process, this is when we run into quite a bit of problems.
We basically have two major quoting processes:
1. Irrigation Projects
2. Turf Equipment Projects
Irrigation Projects
The quoting process for irrigation jobs is quite a long process. Sometimes we will work a job for over a year before the final quote is submitted. You could see where keeping track of mulitple revisions for over a year could be tough even if you had a proper quoting process. You also have to factor in inflation over the course of a year. I know it doesn't sound like much, but how many of you out there (raise your hands) hate to see Q1 roll in due to all of the pricing updates you have to make in your systems? That many huh? Another obstacle we run into is who are we actually quoting this project to? Sometimes the contractor installing the job will buy the material, sometime the owner of the job will buy the material, and sometimes they both want a quote (typically displayed in different formats). We also have to deal with special pricing from our vendors. Depending on how deep the special pricing is, will sometimes lead to us selling product below our standard cost in Great Plains (which makes margin calculations all the more important). Currently, we are doing our entire quoting process in Excel. I hope you are starting to see where my concerns are coming from.
Turf Equipment
The turf equipment quoting process is very similar to that of a car dealership. "Do you want leather? How about a navigation system to go with that rear entertainment system and sunroof?". This brings up the idea of a sales configurator software (which are not terribly expensive, but they are not cheap either). I am pretty impressed with the idea of a configurator software and what it could mean in costly mistake savings. We just recently had a large order come through that was quoted by one of our experienced sales guys. Unfortunately, we are still finding items that were left off of the original quote that were required to make the piece of equiipment operate. This guy has been selling the same equipment for over 20 years. If we had a configurator in place, this would not have happened and the configurator would have come close to paying for itself on this one order! The turf equipment quotes will not go through the same (however they will go through some) amount of revisions as an irrigation project, but there are quite a few more turf equipment quotes generated in a year (quite a bit more margin for error as well).
This problem has prompted me to start looking into quoting/configurator applications that can integrate with Dynamics CRM (since that is what the sales guys are used to working in). We will also be able to push CRM generated quotes into Great Plains using our Scribe integration software. I will let you know my findings after I am done evaluating applications.
Friday, March 21, 2008
How It All Began
On a cold rainy day in December (or so it seemed)...
The Dynamics journey began for me in 2006. My company, anticipating quite a bit of growth in the near years to come, decided to take the leap, leaving our ever beloved Quickbooks platform behind, into the ERP pond , err OCEAN. Boy were we in for quite a surprise! Not only did we not have a clue about ERPs, we chose a partner who, at that time we obviously did not know this, had absolutely no clue about about them either (I will talk more about our implementation woes later). This left us with a $40,000 Microsoft Dynamics GP product that we really had no clue how to use. I know this is a rather small number for a Great Plains implementation, but after divorcing canceling our contract with our partner, we ended up doing the conversion and implementation in-house (i.e. I did it).
After 2 years of struggling to figure out that we had not made a HUGE mistake on purchasing Great Plains over MAS 90 (and my recent trip to Convergence 2008), we are finally to the point that we are happy with the choice we made. We are so happy that we are currently in the process of implementing Dynamics CRM. More on CRM later (I can't blog it all in one post now can I?).
Many of you may think that after only 2 years of Great Plains, I am too young in the Dynamics platform / ERP arena to be blogging about it. Normally, I would have to agree, but given my implementation experience, I feel that I am much wiser than most 2 year veterans. I also have gained quite a bit of insight into the problems with Great Plains, and ERPs in general. This has lead me to do quite a bit of research on my own figuring out how to make this application work for my company.
I hate to stop my thoughts in the middle of this post, but it is time to head out and get something to eat...I will finish my thought on implementation in my next blog.
Ron
The Dynamics journey began for me in 2006. My company, anticipating quite a bit of growth in the near years to come, decided to take the leap, leaving our ever beloved Quickbooks platform behind, into the ERP pond , err OCEAN. Boy were we in for quite a surprise! Not only did we not have a clue about ERPs, we chose a partner who, at that time we obviously did not know this, had absolutely no clue about about them either (I will talk more about our implementation woes later). This left us with a $40,000 Microsoft Dynamics GP product that we really had no clue how to use. I know this is a rather small number for a Great Plains implementation, but after divorcing canceling our contract with our partner, we ended up doing the conversion and implementation in-house (i.e. I did it).
After 2 years of struggling to figure out that we had not made a HUGE mistake on purchasing Great Plains over MAS 90 (and my recent trip to Convergence 2008), we are finally to the point that we are happy with the choice we made. We are so happy that we are currently in the process of implementing Dynamics CRM. More on CRM later (I can't blog it all in one post now can I?).
Many of you may think that after only 2 years of Great Plains, I am too young in the Dynamics platform / ERP arena to be blogging about it. Normally, I would have to agree, but given my implementation experience, I feel that I am much wiser than most 2 year veterans. I also have gained quite a bit of insight into the problems with Great Plains, and ERPs in general. This has lead me to do quite a bit of research on my own figuring out how to make this application work for my company.
I hate to stop my thoughts in the middle of this post, but it is time to head out and get something to eat...I will finish my thought on implementation in my next blog.
Ron
First Post
Hello All,
I would like to welcome you to the first post on my Real Life Dynamics User blog. The purpose of this blog is to talk about the trials, tribulations, and absolute joys of being a Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM user.
I am an IT / Operations Manager for a small to medium sized company. I know, I know, an IT AND Operations Manager??? Well, in my opinion the lines between IT and Operations have grown ever so blurred. We live in a time where your day to day operations almost completely depend on your IT infrastructure and applications present in your environment.
Our company distributes product in and around the irrigation industry, but, as you might expect, is very similar to any other distribution company in its day to day operations. We are a small company, employing only about 40 people. We are made up of primarily outside sales and service, which makes that daily operations that much more difficult.
In this blog, I plan to discuss how the Microsoft Dynamics platforms help us run our company. I will also be discussing what other products and technologies we use to make our life easier when the Dynamics products fall short (and they do quite a bit...well maybe not quite a bit...but they do fall short). I hope that you enjoy what I have to say, because I promise you that it will always be my HONEST opinion.
I look forward to blogging with you more!
Ron
I would like to welcome you to the first post on my Real Life Dynamics User blog. The purpose of this blog is to talk about the trials, tribulations, and absolute joys of being a Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM user.
I am an IT / Operations Manager for a small to medium sized company. I know, I know, an IT AND Operations Manager??? Well, in my opinion the lines between IT and Operations have grown ever so blurred. We live in a time where your day to day operations almost completely depend on your IT infrastructure and applications present in your environment.
Our company distributes product in and around the irrigation industry, but, as you might expect, is very similar to any other distribution company in its day to day operations. We are a small company, employing only about 40 people. We are made up of primarily outside sales and service, which makes that daily operations that much more difficult.
In this blog, I plan to discuss how the Microsoft Dynamics platforms help us run our company. I will also be discussing what other products and technologies we use to make our life easier when the Dynamics products fall short (and they do quite a bit...well maybe not quite a bit...but they do fall short). I hope that you enjoy what I have to say, because I promise you that it will always be my HONEST opinion.
I look forward to blogging with you more!
Ron
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