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06.03.05
Microsoft Great Plains Implementation: Restaurants SCM Example
 By Andrew Karasev
Microsoft Great Plains serves the majority of US based horizontal
and vertical markets.
Being relatively flexible and customizable, it can fit
your specific business requirements with light or deep customization.
You can have a portion of the system customization done
by your in-house developers (such tools as Modifier with
VBA, MS SQL Server stored procedures, Crystal Reports do
not require unique expertise) and the most critical and
difficult part could be subcontracted - especially Great
Plains Dexterity.
In this small article we would like to give you a good
example of customization scenarios, where the client needs
warehouse management, random weight purchasing and by-pond
resale to end clients, barcoding.
· Warehouse Management. If your company needs logistics
and warehouse management automation - you should research
supply chain management applications available on the market.
Usually they are expensive and targeted to large logistics
clients. You can use Microsoft Great Plains inventory module
features, such as locations or sites, serial/lot number
tracking, inventory count, inventory transfers and combine
these with simple VB-based barcoding to feed documents from
your barcode scanners to Great Plains directly.
· Variable Weight. In the case of a food supplier
you may be purchasing food in cases or other variable weight
units and reselling them in pounds or kilograms to the end
customer. So, you need parallel quantities tracking with
probably serial numbering for each case. This is typical
customization for Inventory, Sales Order Processing (SOP)
and Purchase Order Processing (POP) modules in Great Plains.
It should be done in Great Plains Dexterity to provide seamless
interface for GP users. In addition to parallel weight measures
(cases and pounds) you may also need average weight control
to prevent issues with your warehouse workers.
· Repetitive Orders. You may figure out that the
majority of your customers order the same items each time
with regular intervals. In this case you can have a customer
typical order screen to automate order taking. Plus, you
may have associated and replacement items logic incorporated
in this screen.
· Delivery Automation. If you sell on consignment,
you may simply send trucks to your customers every day with
recommended combination of items, based on historical data
- day of the week, holidays, seasonal variations, etc. And
barcode could help you in automatic picking ticket printing
and allocation
About the Author:
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum
Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft
Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, California,
Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida and having locations
in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com),
he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft
CRM SDK developer. |
