It is not the job of the IT consultant to discourage the technology, it is the job of the consultant to embrace it and provide it. Many times I see business go elsewhere simply because the company was ill equipped to adapt to the client’s changing needs or request, and the competitor could.
Well – if you remember old-good-days SAP, People – Soft, JDEdwards, Oracle ERP systems implementation – you would agree that they required a lot of programmers and developers participation. The same is applicable if you look at Microsoft Great Plains – however we need to make some remarks, related to our new time. First of all – Developers are mow concentrated in the development centers, dispersed across the USA and especially internationally in so-called offshore zones India, Philippines, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine. We are not talking about China here, because Great Plains is not very popular over there. So, normal situation should be when your have nation-wide consulting company here in the States with regional project managers and Great Plains Dexterity, VBAModifier, Integration Manager, e – Connect, Crystal Reports, VB. Nowadays technology tries to move us toward the ideal world when you as end-user in Denver could be supported by consultant or developer in Brazil through web session, remote desktop connection, VPN, Skype, VOIP, or other tool. Following globalization tendency, Microsoft Great Plains partners have to outsource their call centers to India, however Philippines is probably also very good option, considering the historical fact of Match – Data Project accounting acquisition by Great Plains Software and turning it into its subdivision in late 1990th, prior to being in turn acquired by Microsoft. Let’s look at the options and challenges for you, potential customer and your MBS servicing partnero Centralized Call Center. Yes, this is what is usually meant, when MBS partner has to switch away from group-of-consultants-cowboys type of model to CRM driven servicing organization. Imagine – you can call your MBS partner anytime, when you have an urgent or regular issue and always get somebody technically and functionally trained and experienced on the phone the same minute, who can pull your records and begin serve you right away. Such a call center might not always be economically feasible to be hosted in USA, but with the current technological advances in VOIP and IP telephony – incoming calls might be reasonably easily redirected to the offshore or nearshore location as needed. You should also be ready to adopt such cost efficient worldwide calling solutions as skype to make your life as IT manager easier. But businesses today are still cautious on where they will invest their technology dollars. They require a solution that provides everything they need, it must be affordable and it has “to work better than predicted,” says Amy Babinchak of Harbor Computer Services, a Microsoft MVP in Security. Solutions need to have value be full of benefits and provide the business owner with a tool to assist them in performing their tasks and services and to be competitive in the marketplace. Small businesses do not have endless IT budgets, so they need to do more with less. They need reliable solutions that work, without paying through the nose for IT support services. Small business owners today are too busy trying to stay a step ahead of their competition to worry about computer systems.
Microsoft Great Plains: Large Scale Implementation 