Is The Grass Greener?

After spending a week down in Tampa at the GP User Group, I came away with two very distinct thoughts. 

1.       Tampa has much better weather than Fargo. 
2.       I am always amazed about the passion of GP customer’s - and how much they love their systems and are always eagerly wanting to learn more about getting the most out of their GP ERP investment. GP users love how configurable GP is and that they can really tailor it to their businesses. 

On the down side - I also spoke to resellers, and read press releases about partners who are starting to pick up and sell other ERP products to complement their GP offering. I have no issue with this at all on the surface, as all businesses need to do what is best for their owners, customers and staff. In fact eOne will be also be looking to expand our product base outside of the pure Microsoft arena. 

I do want to ask the question – is the grass really greener on the other side? GP is still a really good ERP product. I am yet to find anything in the cumulonimbus world that comes close to matching it for functionality, flexibility or even cost of ownership (for what it offers).  

Sure you can go for less functionality for a low monthly price – but how is that going to meet the specific needs of your business? Online solutions by nature have to provide a cookie cutter approach to ERP which comes cheap – but rarely comes clever.The technology that makes it work in the cloud is clever, but the business functionality seems to provide the same approach for all types of business.

I recently spoke to a reseller that is investigating a cloud ERP. The functional consultant loved it because it just did what it did, and was easy to understand. The technical consultant hated it, as he could not make it ‘do anything’ clever. What VAR’s have been doing brilliantly in the GP space for a long time is delivering ‘clever’ solutions that make a real difference in a customer’s business. This ensures happy customers who are happy to pay for the systems and functions that make their business better. 

Now if you are a ‘boring’ partner that still sells GP the way we did 15 years ago, (basically out of the box), then yes you should go to an alternate solution. If you are passionate about being clever and making a real difference - then get deeper into GP and all that it offers by itself and through the ISV community.  

GP is a great tool, the Web client is getting better rapidly, there are many awesome implementers and fantastic add-on’s that make it fit your business better. The team in Fargo are still doing their very best to improve and enhance GP – they are passionate as always.  I sense that Microsoft is starting to realize how good GP really is as well – and are starting to throw some more money and resources GP’s way. 

So before investing heavily on new ERP products – I urge all VAR’s to look at their GP business and decide if they have invested heavily enough in it first. Imagine if you threw $200K in investment into your GP team.  A couple of areas to explore:

1.      Training Up New and Young Consultants in GP: These are the guys wanting to work hard and get ahead by coming up with great ideas and new ways of doing things. 

2.       Presales:

a.   PLEASE invest in presales. Why do you lose a GP deal – it is usually because your presales stinks (now I am being frank). You would never let a sales guy start consulting – but so many people are happy to have a consultant do the presales. That is just silly.Consultants are good trainers – terrible demonstrators.

b.    Give your presales guy a chance and time to investigate new ideas and new products. He or she should be the most creative member of your team – hanging together awesome solutions.

c.    Challenge your presales guy daily.  “Was that your best possible demo?”, “What did you do to make sure we beat Sage, NetSuite, etc”. If they do not have an answer then you need someone new.

d.   If you want help in this space – contact me (martin.olsen@eonesolutions.com). 

3.       ISV’s: Embrace them and love them. Pick the ones that support your expertise, train your people and really go hard and sell plenty of that solution. There are $’s to be made. 

4.       Keep Existing Customers: Letting a customer disappear is criminal. I hear every day “They are not using GP anymore...but we do not know where they went”.WOW. Know your customers, stay close and keep them onboard. Invest money into keeping these customers.
 
5.       Ask Microsoft for Help: Go on. Call and keep calling. Don’t let them hide. Prove that if they help you, you can sell more product for them. They will listen (eventually). 

So let me know how you go. Rather than voting with your feet, see if you can make all the good things that you have, work in your favor.  

Tech Tuesday: Negative Values in SmartList Builder

This week's Tech Tuesday article is from our very own GPUG All Star Nominee, Nicole Albertson!

After spending a week at the GPUG Summit, I wanted to talk about a little known feature in SmartList Builder.  There is a Field Option called Negative Values that allows you to display a field value as negative based on the value of another field that has the field type of drop down list or yes/no.

For example, if you are looking at the Sales Transaction Work, you may want to display the Document Amount as a negative value if the SOP Type is a Return, but as a positive value for any other SOP Type.  The Negative Values option can be used for this.

I have seen many people create a calculated field with a Case statement in it to look at the SOP Type and if it is a Return, to take the Document Amount * -1.  There is a much easier way to do this.

If we take a look at the SmartList Builder setup below, we can see the Document Type field. If we select it and then hit the Field Options button (blue arrow) next to the Display Name, it will open the Set Field Options Window.

In the Set Field Options window, there is a tab called Negative Values.  If we look at the tab, it gives us the option to "Display as negative based on field".  In my example, I will select the Sales Transaction Work table and the SOP Type field.  Then I get the option to select the values I want to use to decide when the Document Amount is going to be displayed as a negative value.  I mark the Return and save the SmartList setup.

Now when I run the SmartList, you can see that the Returns are showing as a Negative and the rest of the SOP Types are positive still.

This can be extremely helpful if your end goal is to export the data to Excel.  As you can see, the data comes into Excel as a negative value, so when I try to do a calculation on it, it is already negative and I don't have to format it as such.

Did you know eOne will be taking SmartList Builder back January 2014? If not or if you have any questions for Nicole or our team regarding SLB please let us know at slb@eonesolutions.com!

Send Your SmartList Builder Feature Requests Our Way!

It has been a great week with our friends here in Tampa, at the GPUG Summit. If you weren't able to make it to the Summit this year, please do consider joining us at Convergence or at next year's Summit in St. Louis, MO.

In Tampa, we've loved hearing about your excitement around SmartList Builder and all it contains - Excel Report Builder, Drill Down Builder, and Navigation List Builder. (It's always fun to have to add 3 rows of chairs to a room already packed with 105 people waiting to learn more about the Builder tools!)

With SmartList Builder coming home to eOne starting January 1st, 2014, we want to make sure you know that now is the time to send in feature requests! Start asking yourself:

1. If there's any change in SmartList Builder that I'd like to see, what would that be?
2. What addition to SmartList Builder would help my daily processes?
3. What SmartList Builder feature could be enhanced or added to save me time?

So, if you have a feature request to send our way, please don't hesitate to let us know! It's easy to do. Just head to our website and enter your request in our forum dedicated to learning more about what customers want!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Tech Tuesday: A Simple Class for Accessing your SmartConnect REST API

This week's Tech Tuesday is from our Web Developer, Jason Frueh who hopes to save some of you from reinventing the wheel - or at the bare minimum help you get off to a good start connecting to your SmartConnect API. Below is a C# class that you can drop right into your Visual Studio web project and utilize by changing just the variables related to your configuration.

The code is commented well, so I don't think I'll share too much detail in this post. We hope that this can save you some time when coding your integrations. If you have questions, please just let us know and we'll be happy to help!

Happy coding,

 
Curious to know more about what SmartConnect has to offer? Need some assistance with your project? Feel free to reach out to us at sales@eonesolutions.com for more information!

Join eOne at the GPUG Summit in Tampa

We are only a few days away from heading on down to Tampa for the GPUG and CRMUG Summits. The question is: WILL YOU BE THERE? If your answer was yes - that's awesome! We are looking forward to connecting with you! We'd love to have you attend our sessions:

1. Extender Training: Join Nicole all day on Monday, October 21st for Extender training and become an expert. Email sales@eonesolutions.com for details.

2. What are the Builders?: Confused by which builder is which? Learn what they are and when to use them! Wed, October 23rd at 10 am.

3. Excel Report Builder - Your Miracle Tool: We use ERB every single day in our business for our sales reporting. Find out how ERB can be the best reporting tool for you out there. Wed, October 23rd at 2 pm & Friday, October 25th at 11 am

4. Making GP Your Super ERP: This is session will be unlike any you've heard from us before. We will tell you how we make GP our internal Super ERP and share how we use all of our products to make our business run efficiently. Thursday, October 24th at 9:30 am

5. Extender & What it Means to You: Extender gives you the power to make GP do what you want. Find out more by joining us at our session. Thursday, October 24th at 2:30 pm

6. Going Deep with SmartList Builder: Over 13,000 GP customers use SmartList Builder for their reporting needs. Whether you own it or want to, this is a session that you'll want to join to go deep with SLB. Thursday, October 24th at 4 pm

7. Excel Report Builder/SmartList Builder Panel: Want to hear about using ERB and SLB in real life? Come to the panel discussion and hear stories of using ERB/SLB in every day life. Friday, October 25th at 2 pm

Beyond the sessions, you can find Martin, Nicole, Chris Dew and myself at the eOne booth (#218) during expo hours. We'd love to give you a product demo, discuss your project and generally catch up with you!

If you'd prefer to have a sit down meeting over coffee, lunch, or dinner - we do have a few slots still open. Let me know (email abbey.cooper@eonesolutions.com) and we'll set up a time to meet.

Again, we really look forward to seeing you!

Introducing eOne's newest team members

eOne is growing, growing, growing and we'd like to introduce you to our two newest team members:

Alicia Bement



Alicia joins us as the Business Manager of our Fargo office - focusing on internal processes, accounting, and HR. As partners and customers, you'll still get to spend plenty of time interacting with her through the invoicing process and your internal account queries.

After graduating from NDSU with a degree in Business Administration, Alicia worked in the dental industry for 6 years and most recently as the Business Manager for her local church. Alicia brings a great toolset to eOne and we are excited to have her as part of the team.

In her spare time, Alicia loves doing anything outdoors with her two children and husband and, as a former NDSU sprinter, loves to get out and run!

Please join us in welcoming Alicia to the team! Drop her a line at alicia.bement@eonesolutions.com when you have a moment.


Jared Dux

Jared is part of our Quality Assurance team in the Fargo office. He will work very closely with our development team to test and ensure we are releasing the best possible product builds.

A grad of Minnesota State University Moorhead, Jared brings a great set of skills to the eOne team - as he's spent time as a multimedia designer, web designer focused on email marketing and has worked for the US Post Office.

As you may have guessed, Jared is passionate about fishing - with a main focus on the catch and release of musky. He's also passionate about motocross and his 2 "kids" - miniature Pinschers.

Please welcome Jared to the team! Drop him a line at jared.dux@eonesolutions.com.

Tech Tuesday – Adding Extender Nodes to SmartConnect

This week's Tech Tuesday is from Lorren Zemke, our Director of Professional Services. He discusses a new feature that has been added to the latest SmartConnect 2013 release which is available to download here.
 
With the latest release of SmartConnect 2013 Service Pack 1, there are now multiple ways to add Extender Nodes to a SmartConnect integration.  You are now able to add a node using the standard method in SmartConnect through Node Maintenance and also during map creation. The other awesome feature that has been added is the ability to add the same node twice, so if I have more than one Extender Window attached to a Dynamics GP Document I can update the data for both objects in the same map.

For example, I have created two Extender Windows attached to the Sales Transaction Entry window to enter some additional ordering information.

When I save each window, I answer ‘Yes’ to the question to create the Extender View as required by SmartConnect and include all of the fields as part of that view.

I will now add the Extender Nodes to my map for integration to Sales Documents.  I am using an Excel Workbook that has one sheet for the header portion and one sheet for the line portion. In SmartConnect, I use an ODBC Connection and join the Header and Lines in the Query.

Below is the header portion of my Excel file that includes the Extender fields in the same row.

The new method for adding the Extender node to SmartConnect is to use the Add Extender Object button as part of the SmartConnect Destination mapping.

Click on the Add Extender Button to open the Add Extender Objects window.

Click on the Plus button to open the Add Extender Object window.

Select the appropriate Extender Type, Node Type and Extender ID. After clicking Save on the Add Extender Object window, I can add my other Extender window as an additional node using the same process as above but choosing the other Extender ID. The new nodes will appear at the end of the list within the Destination Type.

Now the process of mapping the Extender Nodes is the same as mapping any other SmartConnect node.

You will note the Window ID will default to the proper value and the actual Extender field names are shown within the destination columns so mapping these to the source is a much easier process than in previous version.

Once the Extender windows are mapped, I can import my documents and review the data has been successfully imported.

Until next time, happy integrating.
Lorren Zemke

Interested in learning about what other awesome features have been added to SmartConnect? Feel free to reach out to us at sales@eonesolutions.com for more information!