B2B,B2C,ecommerce,for,Dynamics computer B2B, B2C ecommerce for Dynamics GP notes for IT and consulta

----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc

First of all, you should think about dilemma to chooseecommerce product, of build ecommerce website internally or program it withsoftware development partner firm.  Inour opinion, if your are small ecommerce channel reseller, then you shouldstick to your franchisor ecommerce recommendation:  eBay, etc. However, if you are trying to start up new technology selling businesswith ecommerce emphasis, and you have backing capital - you may find that yourecommerce requirements are too unique and existing shopping cart/ecommerceproducts are too simple to fit your business - the you consider assembleecommerce in Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB.Net web project (purchasingecommerce libraries or SDK from trusted ecommerce vendors).  If you are large corporation, you should doyour homework as the final answer depends on various factors.  Again, in our opinion, ecommerce at this timeis not ready to be considered as simple choice, it is rather painstakingprocess of selection, reselection, implementation and reimplementation: 1.       DynamicsGP Business Portal with Order Management Module.  Here you are working with existing GreatPlains company Inventory items, and you create orders that end up in GP SOPtables: SOP10100 and SOP10200.  You canhave active catalog, which is outside of GP - in separate BP Catalog tables inyour Company database.  In B2B scenario,you have BP module Electronic Document Delivery which enables Sales and othertypes of documents emailing to your business partners.  Outside of ecommerce, if you need to save onPayroll stub postage, you can implement HR employee self service (assuming thatyou are deploying GP Payroll module). You should definitely review Business Portal and if it fits yourrequirements, perfect, we are happy to sell and implement it for you.  Some remarks we heard from our customers andprospects - Dynamics GP Business Portal is not very flexible in customizations,besides color schema and pictures or logos uploading.  We may agree and disagree with these comments,as you should probably be more open to adopt the technology of the future, asMicrosoft is likely very committed to its Dynamics products BusinessPortals.  Good example is Microsoft CRMSDK, where in the initial versions 1.2 and 3.0 you had very slow customizationinterface and restricted programmability and now with CRM SDK 4.0 you canvirtually do whatever you like as programmer. We believe that Business Portal for Great Plains Dynamics GP willimprove dramatically in the short future and third party ecommerce add-ons willhave hard time to compete with it, however for now you may decide to implementthird parties, as they are several steps ahead of Dynamics Business Portal 2.       OK,now to third party modules, such as Alba Spectrum Order Connector, PostingSever or Autopost.  At this time we arelaunching multiple ecommerce GP dedicated products, in fact by repackaging ourformer customizable solutions to become out of shelf type of products, plus weare expanding our Microsoft Dynamics GP ecommerce Software DevelopmentFactory.  We assume that you already didresearch on the competition.  In B2Cscenarios, we recommend you to consider our Order Connector product - it is forsimplified ecommerce integration to Dynamics GP SOP module: Quotes, SalesOrders, Invoices, Returns.  We arewriting these lines in August 2009, and we are in very rapid progress, so forcurrent offering, please visit our website or call our office 3.       DirecteConnect programming.  If you have C#, orVB.Net software developers in stuff, we recommend this direction.  If your ecommerce web application is coded inhouse, then you should have complete control with eConnect SDKprogramming.  We do not discuss in thisarticle specific eConnect objects, however you should expect as coderreasonable familiarity with Dynamics GP tables structure and object model.  If you feel that you need additional help,please install Dynamics GP SDK from GP 10.0 CD #2.  Talking about eConnect for GP versions 10.0and even 9.0 we heard mostly positive opinions from third party programmers,Dynamics GP ISV and consultants 4.       GreatPlains Integration Manager.  If you areOK with Great Plains operation initiated integration, or in advanced IMscenario with scheduled integration, this approach is worth to consider, as IMis rewritten in eConnect for GP 10.0.  Ifyou are on older version of Great Plains, IM requires OLE Server to be runningin integrating time, meaning that you have to consume open Great Plains UserLicense if GP workstation is running 24-7 5.       GreatPlains Dexterity in eCommerce coding. Dex is initial architecture of Great Plains Dynamics.  This development tool has no limits in addingnew or altering existing object in Great Plains.  In fact we use Dexterity Source Codeprogramming to develop our products, that extend eConnect limitations (such asposting GP batches directly from ecommerce applications) 6.       eCommercefor older Great Plains Versions.  eConnectis in our opinion reliable for Dynamics GP 10.0 and in most of the areas for9.0.  If you are on older versions ofDynamics GP Great Plains or eEnterprise: 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0, 3.2or Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or MAC, please consider upgrade toDynamics GP 10.0.  If upgrade isexceeding your budget, and if you are already on Dynamics GP on SQL Server 2000or 2005, we are ready to help you with Order Connector product 7.       NonMicrosoft ecommerce platform.  If you areon Linux, Oracle, DBII, PHP platform, please review ODBC connections options toMicrosoft SQL Server, where Dynamics GP is hosted.  If you are comfortable to create and supportthese connections (including JDBCODBC bridges), then we can help you tointegrate you ecommerce application with Dynamics GP 8.       Howto get help?  Please call us:1-866-528-0577, outside of USA 1-630-961-5918, email [email protected]  We speak English,Spanish, Portuguese, including Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Filipino,Arabic.  Please, be aware that DynamicsGP is not UNICODE compliant application, and if you need help in having GPScreens to be translated to Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and other hieroglyphbased characters language, this is not possible.  We would be happy to create Chinese CrystalReports out of your Dynamics GP system with the help of third party Dynamics GPISV tools, such as NJ Star.  If you aretrying to consider Great Plains for your Brazilian subsidiary, we would have todiscourage you and ask you rather to consider SAP Business One, which islocalized for Brazil.  Great PlainsDynamics GP is also not localized for Russian market, we invite you to call usto help you understand ecommerce and Corporate ERP options in RussianFederation, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldova, Lithuania, Poland,Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Uzbekistan