3 Ways I’ve Customized Dynamics GP to Streamline Business

A majority of our clients have every intention of leveraging vanilla, off-the-shelf software during their software selection process.

However, as project teams get into the details of the software during the implementation cycle, requests to make one or more customizations to the software are inevitable.

The top our things to consider when customizing and developing solutions for Dynamics GP:

1. Create a solid business process first, and apply your software solution second
2. Document the scope of the project you wish to accomplish and create a Use Case to communicate your requirements to your Dynamics GP partner
3. Create a test environment and have your users test the customization with real data
4. Be creative! If you think a process can be improved with a customization, you are probably right!

Successful organizations have competitive advantages to protect.

The concept of an off-the-shelf vanilla ERP/CRM software implementation assumes that an organization has no competitive advantage, making it easy for any company to replicate their competitors’ competitive advantages by simply implementing the same software.

For companies to sustain their competitive advantage, they need solutions that work with their business process and enhance their advantage moving forward.

Every company is different and will find its own blend of no customization to heavy customization. The right answer for your organization most likely depends on your business needs, how established its business processes are, and how open to change the organization is. Keep in mind that customization has its risks, but reducing customization simply puts more pressure on your team to effectively manage organizational change and resistance. The key is to find the right balance.

Simple Customizations

Simple customizations that can make a world of difference in efficiency, lowering overhead costs, and increasing your business’s productivity:

• Adding or hiding fields
• Defaulting data into specific fields (Batch ID’s, Buyer ID’s, GL Accounts, Document Numbers, and more)
• Integrating Dynamics GP with your other applications, databases, spreadsheets, and API’s
• Pushing data to other applications and/or pulling data into Dynamics GP
• Integrating with on-premise or cloud-hosted applications and eCommerce websites
• Connecting Dynamics GP to Windows desktop applications
• Creating new Dynamics GP Windows for data entry that’s currently in a spreadsheet
• Automating your repetitive processes or reducing the number of keystrokes
• Customizing reports using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Excel, Management Reporter and Power BI
• Customization Applications or Integrated Software Vendor (ISV) Applications

Many businesses have unique advantages that set them apart from the competition. We understand that you may have practices that can’t be replicated by an off-the-shelf software solution.

Some of the best applications for Extending Dynamics GP functionality is eOne Solutions’ Extender. Extender is the tool that ensures your Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation fits your business perfectly. Extender ensures that you can always capture the data you need to capture at the exact time you need it. You can add fields, build extra windows and brand-new data entry screens to Microsoft Dynamics GP all without writing a single line of code.

I had a recent request from a client whose current third-party salesperson commission software wasn’t working for them anymore – it just wasn’t able to do the things that they needed it to. And, their business was at a disadvantage because of it.

So, we did a needs analysis to identify a solution. During my discussion with the client, we outlined the following requirements:

• Provide a place to store up to five additional salespeople per customer maintenance address card.
• At the time of sales order integration, associate the current five additional salespeople with the sales order.
• When a sales order is transferred to invoice have the salespeople associated with the sales order transferred to the invoice.

The client already owned eOne Solutions Extender software, so we proposed the following solutions:

• Create Extender window on Customer Address Maintenance window for the additional salespeople.
• Create Extender window on Sales Transaction Entry window for the additional salespeople.
• Create Extender solution view of Customer Address Maintenance and Sales Transaction Entry window data.
• Create SQL trigger on SOP10100, Sales Order Header table, to transfer sales order salespeople to sales invoice.
• Create SQL trigger on SOP10100, Sales Order Header table, to handle sales order creation and copying current salespeople from customer address maintenance record sales order.

Find the complete solution here.

Customization Reporting

Business intelligence results when employees and management have the tools they need to transform data into insight. You have a lot of tools at your disposal with Dynamics GP – SmartLists, Jet Report, BI360, SQL Reporting Services, Excel and Power BI just to name a few.

KTL Solutions has helped our clients rapidly access the rich business intelligence contained in their ERP, CRM and custom solutions and make that information available online to your executives and decision-makers. Here are some of the ways we have used Power BI for our clients:

• Enhancing Our Inventory Reorder Point Analysis in Power BI

• Analyzing Dynamics GP Procurement Transactions with Power BI

• Powerful Dynamics GP Field Service Reporting with Power BI: Part I and Part II

• How to Create a Better RMA Dashboard For Mammoth Saving

Power BI Sales and Inventory Analysis Updates

Recently, I’ve made some modifications to my Power BI Sales and Inventory Analysis reports. On the Sales analysis report, I’ve added the ability to segment my sales revenue by growth rate over the previous period selected. Here are the steps I used to add the changes to the report.

1. First, I clicked on the “Enter Data” icon from the Home tab in Power BI Desktop and entered the following information.

2. I then created add Sales Growth measure.
Sales Growth = DIVIDE([Sales CY],[Sales LY],0)-1

3. Created another measure to segment the data based on the Sales Growth Groups that you created in step 1.

Sales per Growth Group =
CALCULATE (
[Sales CY],
FILTER (
VALUES ( Customers[Customer Class] ),
COUNTROWS (
FILTER (
‘Sales Growth Groups’,
[Sales Growth] >= ‘Sales Growth Groups'[Min]
&& [Sales Growth] < ‘Sales Growth Groups'[Max] ) ) > 0
)
)

4. Next, I modified my Product by Sales and Customer Class by Sales visuals to use the Sales per Growth Group measure by dragging the Segment from the Sales Growth Group table into the Legend field, Sales Growth into the Tooltips and Sales per Growth Group measure into the Values field.

5. Below is a screenshot of the end result. You can now clearly tell which segments are performing better or worse than last year.

My next modification was to my Inventory Order Analysis report. This one was just a small change.
1. I added an additional DAX measure for slow moving inventory
SM Inventory Value =
VAR SumOf =
CALCULATE(
SUMX(
Inventory,
Inventory[Quantity on Hand] * Inventory[Unit Cost]
)
)
VAR Range = DATESINPERIOD(Dates[Date], EDATE(TODAY(), -12), -24, MONTH)
RETURN
CALCULATE(
IF(
COUNTROWS(
INTERSECT(
VALUES(Inventory[Last Sale Date]),
Range)
) > 0,
SumOf, 0
)
)

2. Then I added the following columns and measure to a table visual to show my slow-moving inventory.

3. Below is a screenshot of the modification.

Ready to Do Even More with Your Data?

Start organizing, knowing and executing on your data today with Power BI to provide a self-service data lake in the future. KTL Solutions works with business leaders every day in helping them lead their organization into becoming a data-driven organization. Need help executing on your data? Get in touch with us today.