E-commerce and Online Business Reference

eCommerce existing websites with shopping carts, customer specific price lists and items catalogs integration projects are in rapid expansion mode, especially considering huge number of Great Plains Dynamics GP installations USA and Canada nationwide and internationally: Spanish Speaking Latin America, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Oceania, English speaking South East Asia.  This small article targeted to mid-size businesses IT departments, considering complete or partial ecommerce application integration to Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise:

1. eCommerce integration technologies.  Dynamics GP eConnect is perfect tool for Microsoft Visual Studio ecommerce programmer, it has scenarios and code samples in C# and VB, so feel comfortable to deploy your programming language of choice.  In eConnect you probably want to program real time ecommerce shopping cart and customer invoice integration.  If you are OK with batch level integration: one time per day or every hour or even every twenty minutes, please consider Dynamics GP Integration Manager.  In this article we would like to share our philosophy, where we are trying you first to consider out of the box tools and modules, before you begin considering Dynamics ISV Partners Add-Ons and Custom Modules.  eCommerce is not an exception from general Corporate ERP Implementation rule, where you stay away from customizations and third party products and try to consider native functionality and technology on the first place.  As you know Dynamics GP ERP application requires customer participation in MBS Dynamics annual enhancement program, and each Dynamics GP ISV partner has its own annual enhancement program, and this simple fact may make your life really dependent on membership extension dates

2. Dynamics GP ISV Partners eCommerce Solutions selection process.  If you think that Dynamics GP Integration Manager does not do the job for your ecommerce shopping cart integration, and eConnect SDK is too complex for your IT department programmers, or learning curve is too long, please consider Great Plains Partners maintained Add-ons, sometimes referred as GP Satellites/  Let’s talk about Dynamics GP ecommerce add-ons.  Alba Spectrum offer wide range of products:  Dynamics GP Posting Server (allowing you to post GP batches directly from ecommerce application code, as the reminder – eConnect cannot post Great Plains Batches, this logic is reserved architecturally to GP user), Great Plains Order Connector (where we are adding new Accounting and Corporate ERP applications to the list of connectable systems).  Order Connector has multiple popular ecommerce templates and shopping cart integration plug ins, please check with us for details

3. B2B ecommerce integration via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  Here you have out of the box functionality, which allows you to integrate Customer Quotes and Sales Orders directly to Dynamics GP Sales Order Processing Module.  There are add-ons for MS CRM, allowing you to run it as simple B2B ecommerce portal.  If you do not have MS CRM implemented in your organization and you are not familiar with MS CRM as a user, please go on to the next paragraph

4. Dynamics GP Business Portal.  We are enthusiasts of Microsoft Dynamics Business Portal.  Even if at this time it is limited in its functionality and Dynamics GP ecommerce ISV partners could offer better logic, in the long run we are staking on native Microsoft Dynamics Business Portal solution.  At this time, October 2009 we feel that we are one of the leaders pushing Dynamics GP Business Portal Modules: Electronic Document Delivery, Order Management, Requisition Management (with Requisition Approval Hierarchy), Human Resources Employee Self Service (Pay Stubs and W2 reports printing).  There are several competing clones to Dynamics GP Business Portal Requisition management and Order Management modules from Dynamics GP ISV partners, we recommend you to take conservative approach.  In GP Business Portal, please review Order Management module, as it is intended for B2B ecommerce

5. Dynamics GP ecommerce for legacy Great Plains Versions.  If you are without Microsoft Business Solutions Annual Support and you still use old Great Plains Dynamics versions 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 3.2 or Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Mac (often referred as Macintosh), we strongly recommend you to upgrade first to Dynamics GP Version 10.0 or 9.0, where eConnect SDK came to its maturity.  In our opinion it doesn’t make sense to program Great Plains eCommerce to pull data from GPA for DOS Btrieve tables.  However we respect your opinion and case, if you have old Great Plains version, please give us a call: 1-866-528-0577

6. How to get help?  Please, feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, outside of USA: 1-630-961-5918 or email us help@albaspectrum.com  We are very technical and real Dynamics GP Dexterity, SAP Business One SDK programming gurus.  We have Great Plains Software Development Factory and could support unlimited Dynamics GP Customization and Programming needs.  Plus we speak English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and not only as native speaking sales folks, but as real technical consultants.  If you prefer skype: albaspectrum



By: Andrew Karasev

About the Author:

Mohammad Sarfaraz Khan asked:

The best e-commerce business solutions are out in the market. Because the Internet has become a potent market venue where businesses operate and transact, there is no wonder that there are now numerous e-commerce business solutions competing with each other to get your attention and interest.

As mentioned, there are too many e-commerce business solutions in the market. Because the competition gets so intense, there is a need for users and buyers of such computer systems to be more discerning and more thorough in their search and choice of e-commerce business solutions. Thus, just like when finding and buying other products and services, there is a need to determine and find the best there is in the market.

If you are not quite too familiar with selection and operation of such computer applications, there is a need for you to check out a simple guideline for the selection of the best and most functional e-commerce business solutions there are. The following guideline is set to help you carry out that too important task of identifying the best e-commerce business solutions in the market.

1. The e-commerce business solutions are popular and are coming from trusted names and brands. As always, branding and association to best names in the industry can be a good start in the search for the best e-commerce business solutions in the market. There are too many entrants and players out there, but those e-commerce business solutions coming from the best and most trusted names and brands are those that will come across and make a difference. As much as possible, when finding the best e-commerce business solutions, stick with the best and most reliable names.

2. Aside from the reliability of the brand, the best e-commerce business solutions are also well and heavily advertised. The producers and distributors of really useful and functional e-commerce business solutions are confident and sure that advertising and promotional activities for their e-commerce business solutions will be offset and would be covered with the excellence of the products. They are confident that they just need to introduce the e-commerce business solutions to customers, who in the end will do the rest.

3. The best e-commerce business solutions are able to integrate functions of distributors, suppliers and consumers. Of course, specific segments and functions of such computer programs are segmented. But the stand outs among the rest of the e-commerce business solutions are those that are able to discern and provide the significant difference between each other.

4. Good e-commerce business solutions are not too costly. Affordability is an important factor as far as sales of e-commerce business solutions are concerned. Needless to say, cheaper e-commerce business solutions are more patronized and in-demand. However, despite their lower price tags, the best e-commerce business solutions are not compromising quality. If you could have cheap and at the same time high-quality e-commerce business solutions, you have succeeded in your endeavor to find the best there are in the market.

5. The best e-commerce business solutions do not disappoint. There are many e-commerce business solutions that are best and very functional at first. But as you keep on using them, you are able to slowly uncover and unveil different flaws and limitations. Nothing is perfect, but if inabilities and limitations are heavily lowered and reduced, your e-commerce business solutions are truly worth the time finding. You should also keep on patronizing and buying such e-commerce business solutions to spare you from the troubles of setting trial and error activities, which can be too tedious and exhilarating at the same time.



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