Did you get the memo?? Summit Group Software has moved!
Our new location has many great new benefits — perhaps the best one… Our new training room! We are putting it straight to good use and running a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Administration class for customers this week. It’s a full house in there and they are getting their training fix!
We are running a full calendar of training events - in our new West Fargo facility, as well as classes in Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City for the first time! And don’t forget our full schedule of webinars, too!
What better way to gear up for fall than by getting yourself some of that much needed training on Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft SharePoint, and others!
Check out the new training schedule today:
http://www.summitgroupsoftware.com/php/training.php
The pieces are starting to come together on what the next release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 11 is going to look like. There are going to be a number of changes coming in GP 11 that we will be giving you a sneak peak into. The first thing I’m writing about is the future of Business Intelligence. In GP 10, Microsoft opened up the door to more BI features and functionality. 75 SQL Reporting Services (SRS) reports out-of-the-box, SharePoint integration, and Business Portal functionality were just some of the new features. In GP 11, these features are expanded upon with the hope of greater usability.
The biggest piece in the enhanced Business Intelligence is going to be SQL Reporting Services 2008. In addition to the existing 75 SRS reports shipped with GP 10, GP 11 will include an additional 150 new reports! SRS 2008 is also going to be the underlying technology driving most of our Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and graphs in GP and Business Portal. The homepage of GP will now have SRS KPI of the GP metrics. These KPI’s will also be reusable in Business Portal and the executive center, meaning that now you only have to create them once, and you can reuse them in multiple places.
Another key feature with Business Intelligence is the addition of drill-back capabilities. This allows us to drill back into GP from an SRS report, our Business Portal page, or even a link that we send to people in our organization. Now when we’re viewing a KPI in Business Portal, for example, we will be able to click on a certain field, and it will pull up our customer card or sales document, depending on the window that report is linked to. To make sure that not just anyone can access this window in GP, however, you will need to have a copy of GP open in the background to utilize drill-backs.
As you can see, there are going to be some neat changes coming for Business Intelligence. Watch for the next article, in which we will talk about some changes coming in reporting (here’s a teaser – it involves Microsoft Word!).
Summit Group Software implemented a time and expense entry system for our consulting practice using xRM (Microsoft Dynamics CRM) as the platform.
It started out as a simple use of some additional entities for projects, time entries, expense entries in order to track our billable time and expense entries for clients. These entities have relationships to customers and are integrated (using Scribe Insight) over to our Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting for billing purposes. In the past couple of years since we have been working on this evolving functionality, two great benefits have been acheived over our legacy time entry system.
1) Natural linkages with all our customer data in CRM– account/contacts, links to cases for support incidents, etc. That insight to every person in the organization on who has been billed and for what has been a great thing.
2) REPORTS, REPORTS, REPORTS! Ah! Finally - instant insight to our billing data for clients, on a per-project basis, and of course our own utilization reporting. The old system left us with almost no insight. As the consulting team manager, every day I sing the praises of my instant reporting through CRM and SQL Reporting Services! It has changed the way I work.
A third benefit is one that we always talk to our clients about and it is really cool to see it ourselves — Flexibility with our changing business needs.
Summit Group has rolled out numerous changes to our business in the past year including the allowance of discounted, prepaid time and a Managed Services plan that really changes the way we look at billable services for our clients. xRM (CRM) as the platform for our time entry system has allowed for new entities, many-to-many relationships between all of them, and very fast changes to reporting through SRS to be agile and make our time entry and project tracking system bend to the needs of our business. When I think of the way we could think about turning parts of our business model upside down and just have the systems ‘work’ to support whatever changes we needed for our business… that is priceless. A ‘custom’ built time and expense entry system with the supportability of being built into the rest of our CRM system. What more could a consulting manager ask for?
Summit Group recently had the opportunity to work with one of our banking clients to utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a very unique way (xRM). Taking advantage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Scribe we built a reporting solution for easily calculating Loan Loss Reserve Adequacy. Nightly we push all loan data from their Fiserve solution into custom entities in CRM using Scribe. Along with this we have created the ability to track various factors relative to loans such as risk and economic ratings, guarantee information, and other values. The system allows for quick modeling to determine the impact on Loan Loss Reserves due to changes in various factors. It also freed up about 2 days a month for the person who previously figured this out by hand!
Not only was this solution delivered within budget but it also allowed this institution to free up a significant amount of cash that was being held in Loan Loss Reserves. Finally, this platform now is being expanded for more traditional CRM use with the added benefit of already having some vital customer information in the system.