evaluating Customer Relationship Management and Ecommerce options
Our company (small, growing to mid-sized manufacturing firm) is evaluating
Customer Relationship Management and Ecommerce options and looking to optimize
our current investment in SBF 8.0
Any help regarding any or all of the following questions is much appreciated:
1. Is SBF considered to be Great Plains from a technical / integration
standpoint?
Specifically, we're looking at Maximizer Enterprise (9.0), and have found a
third-party module (see www.accmax.ca ) which will integrate Maximizer with
Great Plains. I understand SBF to be an app that was / is part of the Great
Plains group, but am not positive. Please advise.
2. Can SBF directly import orders / customers from Yahoo! Store?
Currently, we literally print out those orders, and have someone re-enter
them in to SBF manually (inefficient, to say the least). If they can't be
exported / imported, is there any kind of a workaround (or suggestion / idea
you may have) that might improve efficiency?
3. Customer / Receivables Data & Sales Data in SmartList Seems Siloed - is
there any way to customize / integrate views?
When selecting columns to view in the SmartList, the available fields seem
to be different - and data that can be selected in the Sales view is not
available in the Customer view, and vice-versa.
For instance, I was recently seeking to create a report which show a
customer's sales history, along with their payments. Under "Find Customer
Documents", I can see it all -- but under SmartList - I can't find a way to
pull up PYMT documents (payment records) in the Sales view, and can under
Customers - but under Customers, can't pull up certain key sales data (i.e.
products by line item, etc.).
Can anything be done?
4. Finally, customizing fields in SBF seems to be a pain - as does adding
any fields (if it's even possible).
For instance, we want to turn User Defined Field 2 in the Order form into
Actual Ship Date - but the two of us at the company who know SBF pretty well
can't get it to work - even following Help instructions.
Also, just as important - is it possible to add fields, and/or extend their
size?
Thanks very much for any help you can offer.
1.This question is really several questions and they need to be asks just
right to get the correct answer!
Is SBF considered to GP? Whatever it is considered it IS GP with some
features removed. Microsoft's GP team is the team that developes SBF. (at
least they did last year) It appears that Microsoft for sales/marketing
reasons keeps it seperate: for example it is NOT included in the new
Dynamics branding and some other anomolies.
Related to your specific addon, ask the ISV whether they support this
product with SBF. That is the only way to find out. I have worked with GP
ISV products that actually worked with SBF that the ISV would not SUPPORT on
SBF.
2.
Can it? Yes! How? There are many ways to approach this. You could write
integration or there are several out there. There is one from
binarystream.com that mentions Yahoo in there brochure. But there are more:
theworldon-line.com's missinglink product and smartrabbits import tool.
There are probably more out there. The answer to your question is that it
can be done, you and your freindly reseller/consultant work out the
specifics.
3.Not sure I understand this one. Having a report that shows payments recieved
and item line items seems a little odd to me. If this is a really a custom
thing there are several approaches: Smartlist Builder (eonesolutions) may
help, or build a totally custom report. Pretty much if what you want is
logical it is possible...
4.Changing exisiting fields in any accounting system is dangerous activity!
This is a fundamental change that may change things you never thot of.
Consider a new field intead.