Great Plains Enterprise Software

[blubomber]

My company is exploring the purchase of a new enterprise management software solution or a big program to run the business. The name Great Plains has come up to conversation by our CFO. It used to be a lone company but was bought out by microsoft in 2000.

I was wondering if anyone has heard of this software and might have used it. Also, i am finding it difficult to get a list of hardware qualifications to run this software. Would anyone be able to help in this area?

Thank you.

[dustyrun]

I personally have not heard of them but that doesn't mean a thing.

Here is where you can read about the software.

Great Plains

luck

Rick

[blubomber]

Thanks for the link dustyrun.

[dustyrun]

no problem

Rick

[cadetstimp]

I've worked with it in two forms ....Great Plains in pervasive SQL and MS SQL.

If you have a choice MS SQL 2000 would be the best way to run it. (The pervasive ver needs reindexing every so often which isn't fun when month or year end balancing is in progress. Active links are a must)

Even though the software is Mid Enterprise sized software..the software is highly client AND feature modularized for licensing reasons (cha ching $$$). Because of the expense, a better wide scale and all inclusive package would be JDE Edwards or SAP. They have better scalability and supply chain support than Great Plains for not much more in OVERALL price.

Also, some of the Great Plains modules (such a MICR, check printing, and fixed asstes) are not easy to setup even though they cost extra. Customization will be required to get a lot of the reports and modules (depending on how many you're running) to work the way your company prefers.

If it is just going to be payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable with simple sales/inventory then QuickBooks Enterprise would be a better cost effective/time effective solution.

In any case, as an IT guy I always push for SQL based back end no matter what the package is. This allows for better resource management, disk space management, backup compatibility, administration, expandability, etc.

Also, whenever any new proposed software is presented to me I always ask the sales rep for access to their online knowledge base BEFORE the purchase takes place. The first thing I do is run searches for phrases like "known issue" and "limitation" to see how many hits exist for the current version of the software. I also check if any of the current known issues would pose a problem for any of the key features that would be needed. Also, it allows you to see how often the software gets updated and if a new version may be on the horizon (i.e. Why spend a lot of time setting up one version just to do a migration a month later?) If the salesman doesn't want to allow knowledge base access before the purchase then BEWARE!

[Steve R Jones]

http://www.bestsoftware.com/products...b/3/customer/2


Might check these out. Previous employer converted from Great Plains (older dos version) to Business Works. BW is a lighter version of the Mas90...

[DVNT1]

MS also owns Solomon which usd to compete against Great Plains. I'm not sure which MS will keep around long term.

I also agree that SQL based is much better.

[blubomber]

Well, a planned install would not be until around 8-12 months. Currently we are using a custome AS/400 solution for our Accounting, Purchasing and payroll. And we have also just purchased a new iSeries sever from IBM that is being used to run our hotel system. As far as the accounting goes, the new iSeries has enough power to also run Infinium, a back of the house program used alot in the casino industry. Infinium was going to be the program we were going to go with but our CFO heard about Great Plains and has been asking alot about it. so i have been doing some light research on it.

Thank you all for the replies.