This article describes food ingredient distributor ERP implementation, customization & reporting. ERP system is built on the base of Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains 8.0, new name of the product is Microsoft Dynamics GP. If you are mid-size and large business you typically have two options in MRP selection: rich or standard functionality ERP. Rich functionality ERP, such as mySAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards usually has a lot of vertical solutions in the existing modules, however price is typically higher (the chances are high that you are paying for the bundle of available functionality and use only few percent of it). As opposite standard functionality ERP might have lower price, but should be considered as a platform for customization, software development and reports tuning. In our case standard functionality ERP – Microsoft Dynamics GP was chosen.
• Industry Specifics. Profit margins for such a distribution are usually low and distributor has to watch and control closely the cost. Usually it is impossible to know the cost upfront, due to the fact that items might be shipped from multiple locations, shippers/freight forwarders might have various delivery cost – these and many other factors make cost vary. Salesperson is always inclined to sell more and cheaper to get commission on volume, at the same time system should trigger the case when we are potentially selling below the cost. Company has several brands of product and each invoice should have chosen brand logo.
• Estimated Costs. The approach taken was to identify and maintain several estimated costs for the Item/Site (Warehouse) in Great Plains. The costs associated with the Item/Site are for profit estimation on the invoice. They are used to print Invoice profit report, realized as GP inquiry screen and as Crystal report to provide paper copy. Profit watch was so important that company has full-time employee who updates estimated costs, based on the resent sales and delivery data.
• Logo Reports. As you know Great Plains ReportWriter has three Invoice forms in Sales Order Processing (SOP) for you to modify and you have to select which one to print if you would like to change default form for the invoice or the batch of invoices. To allow logo selection logic, based on marketing code of the product, Crystal Reports for Quote, Order, Invoice and Return were created. The logo itself was realized as OLE object with picture selection logic.
• Purchase Receiving Scheduling. To facilitate warehouses receiving personnel stable workload and avoid overloads and overtime, delivery dates selection logic was associated with Calendar screen, showing warehouse receiving schedule for the proposed dates, by clicking on the calendar date you can see the list of scheduled shipment for the day.
• Price Negotiation. As company doesn't have official price list – price for the customer is based on historical sales of the item. Dexterity trigger was created to log item price lines and another one – to supercede price logic with the last price for the customer.
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About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.
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