Several years ago Microsoft purchased Great Plains Software, then Navision (Denmark based software development company). At this time Great Plains Software already was active ERP applications consolidation player - it already acquired Solomon Software couple of years prior. Then in 2002 Microsoft released Microsoft CRM (Client Relation Management system). Also Microsoft decided to attack retail marked and acquired QuickSell (now Microsoft Retail Management System/ Microsoft RMS).

At this time Microsoft had robust package to automate business processes for small, midsize and large company and it formed so-called Microsoft Business Solutions (at the earlier stage the official name was Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions - later Great Plains words were dropped)

We would like to make brief review of customization options for such products as Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft CRM and Microsoft RMS

Technology overview. Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft CRM and Microsoft RMS have similar database platform - Microsoft SQL Server. There are differences in the tables design between three - due to the fact that they were originally developed by three different companies. Great Plains has Great Plains Dexterity core (this is Great Plains Software proprietary c-language based technology and development environment), and as it was primarily targeted to be platform independence - Great Plains has old-fashioned UNIX style of tables names: RM00101 stays for customer master file, GL00100 - account master file, etc. At the same time Microsoft RMS and Microsoft CRM have more natural language based names: Microsoft CRM: Account, Activity, Contact, Lead; Microsoft RMS: Customer, Transaction, Tender, Register - we believe that these structures are self explanatory.

Now to the Customization Options:

• Great Plains Dexterity - please install Dexterity from CD #2 and take a look at its manuals - this is again legacy and proprietary Great Plains technology. We have described it in this article: http://www.albaspectrum.com/Customizations_Whitepapers/Dexterity_SQL_VBA_Crystal/DexterityCustomizationOptions.htm

• Microsoft CRM Customization - this is the whole topic - we would like to reference you to our posting: http://www.albaspectrum.com/Customizations_Whitepapers/Dexterity_SQL_VBA_Crystal/MSCRMCustomizationOptions.htm

• Microsoft RMS. Please review this article: http://www.albaspectrum.com/Customizations_Whitepapers/Dexterity_SQL_VBA_Crystal/GPRMSIntegrationOptions.htm

Happy customizing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies