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Not Just Widgets, Incorporated—a sample company
We are going to introduce a company called Not Just Widgets (NJW) to use as an example throughout this book. NJW resells software and hardware products, and offers some limited services to its customers. It is currently using a combination of an old small accounting package and many Excel spreadsheets. Let's go through the list in the previous section for NJW:
- Start at the beginning: What does the company do? NJW has been in business for five years and it resells software and hardware products that it purchases from other companies or distributors. It keeps many smaller or faster moving items in a small warehouse on premises, and larger or infrequently sold items are drop-shipped directly to customers. Some consulting services, such as system audits, network planning, and implementations are performed either by employees of NJW or independent contractors hired as needed.
- Understand the vision: What is the plan for the next few years? There are currently no plans to do anything differently. NJW will offer the same products and services. However, as the volume has been growing steadily over the last few years, NJW anticipates that steady growth to continue.
- Identify current issues and limitations: What is driving the Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation? NJW currently has a few major complaints/limitations:
- The current system often crashes or performs extremely slowly when multiple users are in it at the same time.
- The current financial reporting is not adequate for management.
- The current inventory and sales reporting is not adequate for management and users.
- Sales commission reports are currently put together manually and take a long time every month.
- The existing system has no fixed assets functionality, and fixed assets are currently tracked in a complex Excel spreadsheet.
- The existing system has no budgeting ability.
- See the finish line: What are the deliverables? Here are the goals that NJW has set for their implementation, with priorities on a scale of 1 to 5:
- Allow up to 10 concurrent users in the system to start, with the possibility of up to 15 or 20 concurrent users within three years (Priority = 1).
- Track fixed assets in the new system, not in Excel (Priority = 3).
- Start using budgets (Priority = 4).
- Allow some employees to access the system remotely (Priority = 5).
- Create better reporting to help key personnel manage the company. This includes financial reporting as well as management and commissions reports (Priority = 1).
- Create better numbering schemes for inventory items, vendors, and customers. There are currently many duplicates and some cleanup is needed (Priority = 2).
- Document the workflows and gaps: What are the steps taken for each transaction type and are there any gaps? Four gaps were identified for NJW:
- Sales commissions are currently not entered as a payable or expense until the end of the month. Using the commissions functionality in Dynamics GP would allow commissions payables and expense entries to be recorded with each sale. NJW has determined this should be fine and will stay with the Dynamics GP functionality without any workarounds.
- Customer invoices and statements available out-of-the-box in Dynamics GP will not meet NJW's requirements. Custom invoices and statements will be created in either Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services as part of the implementation.
- For internal management purposes and collections, NJW wants to see the Receivables aging reports by due date. They also need to be able to send monthly aging reports to their lending bank, and the bank wants to see the aging by invoice date. Both cannot be set up at the same time in Dynamics GP—aging is either by due date or invoice date, but not both. As NJW internally may need variations on the aging reports and the bank report is static and once a month, the suggested solution to this is to set up Dynamics GP with aging by due date and create a custom report for the bank using either Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services.
- While drop-ship functionality exists in Dynamics GP, it does not allow for invoicing a customer prior to posting the vendor invoice. This does not work with NJW's workflow. A tool called Shipment Notification is available from Microsoft to allow transferring drop-ship sales orders to invoices prior to receiving the vendor invoices. The tool will need to be tested, but should address this gap. Your Dynamics GP partner can help obtain this and other similar tools on PartnerSource: http://bit.ly/13TIhe7 (requires PartnerSource access).
Depending on the length and complexity of the deliverables list that you identify during your planning, you may decide to split up your implementation into phases. For NJW, the implementation will be a success without budgeting capability and remote access. While they should plan for both budgeting and remote access, they can add them later after Go Live. In addition to this, while the fixed assets functionality is a priority, they can add it as a separate phase after Go Live.