|
|
| Strategic Planning Information |
|
||
|
|
Microsoft Great Plains Implementation: Pharmaceutical Corporation Specifics ? overview
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains serves mid-size and large clients in horizontal and vertical markets. Historically Great Plains Software was encouraging ISV partner to write third party modules and later on ? Great Plains Software had a chance to select the product for incorporation into their core set of modules: Manufacturing, Project Accounting, Purchase Order Processing, Collection Management, etc. Today we'll consider Microsoft Great Plains implementation specifics for large pharmaceutical corporation. ? Product Research cost. New product research and testing could be grouped into cost center and Microsoft Great Plains offers several Project solutions. The most reliable way is to deploy Great Plains Project Accounting. This module could work in the multicurrency environment, when you incur R&D cost in multiple countries. Then in the first year of product release you can track P&L by your product. There are certain restrictions, however ? you typically have one customer, who pays your Project bills. Obviously it is not the case for new product. However you can consider your organization as an association of internal customers ? Multinational Payroll. In each country you have to implement Payroll solution. In the case of Microsoft Great Plains you can have separate company for each local subsidiary and implement US, Canadian, Brazilian, Middle Eastern Payroll modules as well as Payroll custom solutions for most of Latin American countries, South Africa and Australia ? Intercompanies Transactions. In Great Plains these transactions are automated and the transaction results in parallel transaction, involving due to and due from accounts. You can also do it manually ? GL consolidation. This was popular approach in Europe with sophisticated multicurrency and strict tax regulation issues back in earlier 1990th. Nowadays you can use reporting tools to achieve the same goal. FRx could do the job, consolidation Great Plains companies. ? EDI. Typical case when Purchasing is automated via EDI. In Great Plains you have multiple options to implement it. The simplest would be SQL queries with strict EDI formatting ? Internal Audit. Internal Audit requires you to have random samples. Good example is AP checks and payments. The solution lays in using external reporting tool, based on MS SQL Server stored procedures, such as Crystal Reports. The random selection itself is Transact SQL routine. We are raising this question, because we saw the company struggling to implement this reporting with no luck We encourage you to analyze your alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Financing Business Expansion for Your Small Company How you finance the expansion of your business is important. Borrowing and understanding the consequences of borrowing for your financing is extremely important. If you are going to borrow the money to finance the expansion of your business, you need to make sure that you are not going to get yourself into a cash crunch situation. This is where you are going to have a lot of money coming in from new business completed and invoiced but not have enough current cash flow. When you borrow you will be financing new equipment, locations, signage, or perhaps a new work truck on a credit line, lease or loan payments. The initial payments are going to be due before you get your increased income from the expansion in. This can be a major critical problem and we do not want this to happen to you. The Importance of Value Mix ( * - the word 'product' can be substituted to mean 'service' too; and vice versa ) 19 Questions to Supercharge Your Business Plan Whether you are seeking capital for your company or are optimizing your business strategy, the most important element - particularly for outside investors - may be your written business plan. You can tune-up and supercharge your plan using this 19-step checklist. When your written plan firmly answers yes to each of these 19 questions, your market/product strategy is in terrific shape plus you increase the odds of attracting investment capital. Succession Planning: Problems Getting Started A survey released by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in the spring of 2005 illustrates a widespread problem on the lack of succession planning [deciding who will take over running the firm when the current managers die or retire]. The survey found that 60% of responding certified public accountant (CPA) firms have owners who are in the 55-to-62-year-old age bracket, and more than half (56%) have at least one partner who will retire in the next five years. However, according to the survey, 81% of these firms still do not have a written succession plan in place. Among those firms with annual revenues under $150,000, the percentage rose to 96%. If we polled small businesses in other fields, the percentages would be comparable: around 80% of small business owners have no succession plans. Benefiting from Strategic Thinking I recently took an organizational behavior class where my professor conducted a strategic thinking exercise in which groups of students were to be a part of a scholarship committee. The purpose of our committee was to use strategic thinking on allocating a scholarship budget to reward several incoming freshmen to our university. I, along with some classmates represented freshmen candidates who would receive the scholarship. Expanding your business in a franchise system If you are a successful franchise of a large franchise brand or chain, chances are you will wish to expand. The most important thing to do is make sure you are on the most positive terms with your franchisor. You should tell your franchisor at the earliest point of your plan to expand. It is important that you ask the franchisor for help when you are expanding. Growing your business is not an easy task. It requires systematic checks of your business. The kind of checks your car does electronically such as sensors telling you: 6 Changes You Can Make to Increase Business Profits I read once that something like 30 percent of all drinkable water gets wasted on the way to the consumer by leaky pipes. Likewise, your business may be letting potential revenue drip away, to be lost forever, all over the place. Use this checklist to make sure you are taking best advantage of all the opportunities for earnings that would be arriving safely if you only plugged up those holes. Getting Started with Succession Planning: Part II Succession planning requires the owner of a small or medium-sized business to plan for what the company will look like and how it will operate after the transition to new owners is complete. Unless the owners have succession goals in mind, they won't achieve them. Once these goals are in place, the owners should backtrack and identify the process that will get the firm from its current status to the targeted status after succession. Some of the people involved in the process of transforming the company should be retained as future managers. Others are best utilized just for the transition but not in a managerial or ownership role after succession. What Every Service Provider Ought To Know About Writing A Business Plan It's easy to lose sight of what needs to be communicated to prospective investors when writing the various sections of a business plan. Successful business owners/entrepreneurs use each section of their business plan to work up interest, to present arguments and, most important, to build trust and confidence. How Copying the HBO Schedule Can Boost Your Business I'm not talking about posting the HBO schedule on your website or sending a Xeroxed copy around to all your customers. When HBO came onto the scene they were innovative, fresh, and willing to do things other people were not. Six Key Areas For Evaluating A Strategic Alliance Strategic alliances are increasing at a rapid rate. It is good for business, good for the consumer. A strategic alliance is similar to a joint venture. Everyone remains in his or her own entity, yet come together for a single purpose or period of time to create something that could not otherwise be created. To Go or No Go, That Is The Question Last week we talked about a few of the ways to test the feasibility of a business idea to help determine if the idea really had merit or just looked good on the surface. To recap, I said don't bet the farm on the opinions of friends and family, consult with knowledgeable business experts, and conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis. This week let's take it a step further and talk about the creation of a formal Feasibility Plan which will help you determine the true feasibility of your big business idea. Your Business: Will It Have A Happy Ending? "Begin with the end in mind," says Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits of Successful Living. Those who have created a successful business know it does not happen without planning, hard work, and a little luck. Yet most have no plans for leaving their business, ever. Invalid Excuses for Poor Business Results - The Economy Note to Rite Aid and CVS: It's not about the economy In Business Planning, Competition is Good When developing the competition section of your business plan, companies must define competition correctly, select the appropriate competitors to analyze, and explain its competitive advantages. Microsoft Great Plains in Aerospace & Defense industries ? implementation & customization highlights Microsoft Great Plains fits horizontal markets clientele and in case of Aerospace and Defense industry we'll talk about contractors ? parts and subsystems for government contracts. We do not necessarily talk about large corporation, however models described could be implemented for large publicly traded company. As a rule ? market is represented by established companies with long history, including long history of its ERP and Computer Business System. It is difficult to stake on the computer operating systems future, however you may try to give high level of trust to the ERP coming from Microsoft Business Solutions, especially considering the fact of acquisition of such market leaders as Great Plains Software and Navision Software. Family and Friends Referrals Make the Best Franchisees As a franchisor it is imperative that you seek, find and recruit the best franchisees to maintain a strong franchise system. Your current Franchisees are your very best sales people, sometimes without even knowing it. As a franchisee starts making more money, it will show. Soon they will be moving out of their apartment or home into a nicer area. They will be driving a nicer car. They will be frequenting nicer eating establishments. A female franchisee's husband will tell the guys at work in a bragging way how great his wife is doing and that he plans on quitting his job to help her. A male franchisee's wife will brag to her friends that she is planning a vacation of that they bought a new indoor four-person Jacuzzi. Her friends will entice their husbands and boyfriends to look into the franchise, franchise companies should encourage this scenario and spend more time and money on referrals than straight sales. Sure mass marketing works, but throwing spaghetti at the refrigerator until something sticks is not very becoming of a star rated franchise system. Many times people at the franchisee's old job will start talking, "Hey, did you hear about Skip?, He's really doing well with that new franchise thing he doing." "Yah! Have you seen his new Corvette." Pressure Washing Entrepreneurs Can Help With Government NPDES Permits If you own a pressure washing business one of the smartest things you can do is get involved with the local and regional enforcement for storm water environmental laws. The reason being is they do not understand the washing process of the industry and you can assist them with pertinent information. Secondly you learn about opportunities in the market and third, you can prevent really bad legislation which could potentially put you and your business out of work. Is Your Company Growing Fast Enough for You? Are you frustrated by the lack of growth in your firm, or the effort required to squeeze any up-tick in performance? Are inadequate policies and procedures a root cause? To find out, take this simple self assessment to see if this may be inhibiting real growth at your company. Elite Positioning Brings Higher Profits Imagine spending the same amount of money on marketing and performing the same amount of work to deliver your products or services, but earning more money and keeping more after your expenses. That's what happens when you institute elite positioning for your business.
|
