Guiding You to the Best ERP For Your Needs

Question 1 of 10

Are you ready to move to the cloud?

Yes

Do you have multiple software applications from different vendors and you need them all to integrate?

We don't have any systems today that need to interact or pass data with each other.

We do make entries today manually between systems like payroll and general ledger and some on line orders to our invoicing system, etc. Although our volume is small today it could get greater in the future so we may want to look into this.

We have multiple integrations with other systems today and we would really want to make the processes easier to upgrade and even more flexible.

Are you looking to incorporate mobile technologies into your systems?

We have very few of our staff that work in a mobile environment and would not need to have information from our ERP system.

We have been using some mobile applications but they are standalone and we would like to get them integrated with our ERP system.

The ability to work in a mobile environment on tablets and phones is critical to our business and needs to be part of any ERP system we pursue.

Is it important to record all your activities with your customers or vendors along with quoting through billings and payments?

We have a different system for those functions and want to keep them separate, or we don’t use a CRM platform and aren’t interested in tackling that piece of our operations at this time.

We already use a CRM platform, and would like to integrate functionality to save on labor time and reduce redundancy and inefficiency.

We don’t currently use a CRM platform, but would like to learn how we can save on labor time and reduce redundancy and inefficiency.

Are there more requests from your users for real time data and information available from anytime and anywhere?

Our business is very basic and consistent thus simple reports from our accounting system give us just about everything we need.

Lately we've been using more spreadsheets and trying different tools to look at data differently but haven't made much progress.

We know the measurements and KPI's we'd like to track and would like to understand which tools would work best for us especially those we could access from anywhere, anytime.

Many people are looking for real time financials and financial data what about getting them anytime anywhere?

We would never want our financials in the cloud. We like to keep the data in house where we feel we can control the data and have fast access to it.

We've been getting reports via a web application and with more or our staff working remotely we are considering looking at the possibility of our financials in the cloud.

More and more of our managers and owners need access to their P&L's and operating information while they are working remotely often. We need our financials in the cloud.

In order to get faster and less expensive delivery of goods to customers does your inventory reside in many different geographical locations?

Our company only works out of one location but we do get inquiries from our clients at times asking about their inventory we hold for them.

We are getting more inquiries from our suppliers and customers about what we have and they may need at our location. We are also considering open more locations soon and will need to see our stock as though it is in one location.

Multiple locations and transfer management between them has been a long term problem and cost. Tracking shipments in real time to better predict delivery and availability are critical to our business.

Is your business based on quote to order to fulfillment being very responsive and at the minimal cost to deliver?

The vast majority of our orders come in via phone call or from our sales reps and we always have plenty in stock to easily fulfill order via Fed Ex, UPS, etc.

We are starting to prepare for taking order online and even looking at Amazon Marketplace and others. We want to start exploring options to take advantage of this venue.

We have been piecing systems together as our business has continued to change and we need to move ahead and pursue a single, flexible, web based solution.

Do you assemble or do simple manufacturing without the need for extensive shop floor control?

Some of our customer orders require we assemble items together to make a finshed deliverable and we usually have all the parts in house to complete the job.

Certain of our manufactured items actually have some other previously manufactured items as part of the finished product and we are considering manufacturing in more than one location.

More and more our customers are looking for manufactured items with options and they want to know where in the process we are in fulfilling their orders. Because of our increased volume we need better tools to make items to to order and start capturing labor costs to drive our pricing.

Are you manufacturing items made to the specifications of your customer and or do you let your customers select options while they order?

A few times a year we have to make a new bill of materials for something specific our customer wants. Otherwise our process is very consistent and predictable.

More and more our customers are asking for changes to the products we offer so they can better differentiate themselves to their customers. Our current systems are not easily adaptable and we are doing more manual adjustments and entries all the time.

Nothing seems be ordered as we have it right off the shelf and we need to look into systems that make us more efficient and cost effective.

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Acumatica

Dynamics GP

Dynamics 365

Cloud
0%
Acumatica was born in the cloud. And unlike other competitors you have options as to how you license it (purchase or pay as you go) and where you deploy it (public cloud like Amazon Web Services or Azure) or private cloud - a data center of your choice. And although multi-tenancy is available, your environment is more single instance or a hybrid, which gives you greater data access and flexibility.
0%
GP can be hosted in the cloud. If all you need or want to outsource your environment and have someone else responsible for server availability and access, this is a good option. But it is not a true cloud application. You will remote connect to the cloud environment.
0%
Dynamics 365 is a true cloud platform. And it is a multi-tenant environment, meaning upgrades are done automatically and at no charge. That may or may not be the best for you, depending on your needs.
Integrations
0%
One of the strongest benefits to Acumatica is its platform and how flexible it is with regard to integrations. And unlike other systems, these integration tools are included with Acumatica at no additional license cost. But that's not to say they are easy or cheap. It just means if you want a solution that is built to talk to other systems, Acumatica has it built in. And you can integrate in more traditional batch basis (e.g. nightly) or real-time using industry standard SOAP and REST web service calls.
0%
GP is written on an older platform, and you typically need third party tools in order to integrate with other systems. These tools are widely used and proven. And they make developing the integrations more visual and graphical. But they do come at an additional cost and you still need to spend a fair amount of time designing the mappings, testing and validating results.
0%
As a developing application, D365 is focused more adding ERP functionality first. And other integrations tools will likely come later. Keep in mind that D365 is only a multi-tenant solution, so there may be some challenges in developing complex integrations. But it is a true could solution and needing to interconnect with other systems will continue to be in demand. So you can expect these capabilities to become more robust over time.
Mobility
0%
Acumatica has one of the most compelling mobility stories for an ERP solution. It is HTML5 designed so access via a browser automatically adjusts to the device you are using - be that a smartphone, tablet or laptop. But they provide a free mobile app for both iOS and Android to give you quite a lot functionality. But even better, they also offer a mobility development platform - which makes it easy to change or add to those existing mobile apps. Really slick.
0%
GP is lacking in the mobility arena. However depending on your specific industry and need, some ISVs have included mobile apps in their portfolio of solutions. And you will find this in industries and ISV solutions where mobility is most critical - such as Field Service.
0%
Dynamics 365 has Field Service mobile app that is quite feature rich. You can work online or offline. It includes a dashboard for a quick overview, along with drill down into Accounts, Bookable Resources, Contacts, Products, Agreements, Time Off Requests, Map, Activities and your Calendar.
CRM
0%
Acumatica's CRM is not nearly as robust as something like Salesforce. But it is reasonably priced and very tightly integrated. It gives you Sales Force Automation and basic Marketing Management and Customer Service. But if you have the need for more robust CRM, you can integrate Salesforce. Acumatica includes a Salesforce data provider to allow the two systems to "talk". But you still need to define the integration points and mapping. And if you need more robust Marketing - there is a similar integration with HubSpot.
0%
Dynamics GP itself does not include a CRM solution. For the last few years, you could integrate Dynamics CRM with Dynamics GP via one of the widely used integration middle ware tools such as eOne's SmartConnect or Scribe. With the advent of D365, those pieces are changing somewhat. But you can expect similar tools to be available as CRM becomes part of D365.
0%
CRM in Dynamics 365 is a scaled down version, coming in the form of two apps: D365 for Sales and Marketing. They aren't available now, but will launch in Spring 2018. If you need full CRM features, you'll need to purchase the Enterprise edition of D365.
Analytics / BI
0%
Acumatica has made a big bet on the importance of Business Intelligence. They have embedded BI tools that allow you to create dashboards against any data in the system. These visualizations are defined via widgets that can show tables of data, charts, scorecards (single values), trends (change from previous periods of time) and even Wiki document references. And you can leverage Microsoft's leading Power BI platform and include Power BI tiles in any Acumatica dashboard.
0%
GP offers many standard reports. Smartlist is an easy tool to get basic lists, filter them, export them to Excel. You can create custom reports via either or GP Report Writer or SQL Reporting Services (SSRS). But for true dashboarding and visualizations, out of the box GP is lacking. However Power BI is a tool that can be used against GP data, and with that you can leverage a true enterprise visualization tool.
0%
Dynamics 365 is part of the ever growing Office 365 family. And so is Power BI. You may get basic charts and graphs within D365. But expect Power BI to be the tool of choice for more sophisticated dashboard and visualization development.
Core Financials
0%
Acumatica provides a built in tool called Analytical Report Manager or ARM. It is similar to Microsoft's FRx and Management Reporter - which have been midmarket industry standards for year. But it is a bit less powerful. Yet you can design simple or complex reports, and schedule them to run when needed. And you can distribute by emailing or allow users to access - with full security in place so no one sees something they shouldn't.
0%
Management Reporter is a very powerful financial reporting tool. You view and drill down into details, through a MR viewer or a web browser. With GP you get unlimited MR viewer and designer licenses. And if all some users need is to see financials, even just for their department, they can do that without requiring a more expensive GP user license.
0%
D365 financial reporting is basic right now. But don't expect that to last very long. This will certainly be enhanced over time.
Inventory
0%
Acumatica offers a strong inventory control and management solution out of the box. It works well for one or many warehouse locations. This includes replenishment and automation, but it is limited to moving average demand planning. However third party solutions can take this to the next level. One example is NetStock. You can control what should be included in "available" inventory.
0%
Dynamics GP has strong inventory control capabilities. This area has been built out over the years and can meet the needs of most mid market companies.
0%
Basic inventory management is available in Dynamics 365. But many features found in typical midmarket inventory are still in development. This includes lot / serial tracking and robust return processing. It's coming… it's just not there yet.
Distribution
0%
Acumatica was designed for an interconnected world. Of course you can handle phone orders. But integration with ecommerce sites and marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay are more and more needed. All the tools are there to do that. And third parties are providing integrations that come close to all you need. But expect some customization and tweaking to be needed. Shipping integration with common carriers (UPS, FedEx and USPS) is out of the box. But third parties expand on this and add other services (LTL, International, etc.)
0%
Dynamics GP has very strong distribution capabilities. This includes Available to Promise, Advanced Picking, and Returns Management modules. Integration with carriers can be provided by third parties. If you need to have an eCommerce site integrated or integrate with Amazon or Ebay marketplaces, you will likely use third party middleware integration tools. These are at additional cost and do require some configuration and customization to your order processes.
0%
Again this is not quite where it needs to be but it will get there. And the progress that Microsoft has made in releasing new functionality on Dynamics 365 has been impressive. Look for these features to be rolled out in Spring 2018.
Light Manufacturing
0%
If you don't want to move to full manufacturing, Acumatica allows you to define kits. These can consist of other parts but also non stock items that could be services like labor. You will need to assemble these kits to mimic the manufacturing of these goods. It won't include any shop floor control but can give you basic assembly costing.
0%
GP offers some light manufacturing via kitting. But it does go a bit further in that you can define an inventory based Bill of Materials. So you can handle some light manufacturing without having to implement full manufacturing.
0%
You may get some light manufacturing capabilities in the future in D365. But I wouldn't expect this to go too deep.
Advanced Manufacturing
0%
Acumatica's Manufacturing capabilities started fairly basic with Bill of Materials / Routings, Production Management, and MRP. But this recently has been expanded to include Manufacturing Configurator (selecting options to be added during manufacturing) and Estimating. Coming soon is Advanced Planning and Scheduling which includes Capacity Planning including Finite Scheduling.
0%
GP has quite a complete manufacturing suite built over the years. You can everything you expect but also Engineering Change Management and Quality Assurance
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Payroll
0%
Acumatica gives you two options for Payroll. There is a third party Payroll module that is embedded - that is it becomes a seamless part of Acumatica. You can also chose Infinity HR which is a cloud payroll system that is integrated with Acumatica. And of course if you prefer to use a payroll service, you can easily integrate your payroll entries to the general ledger.
0%
GP has a payroll module that is actually part of its Starter Pack - so no additional cost. It will handle all the standard payroll needs. There is more functionality delivered via the Payroll / HR extended pack, including Benefits Management, PTO Manager, etc.
0%
There are no payroll features currently in Dynamics 365, but there is a payroll integration that is part of the core Business edition functionality.
HR
0%
If you need more than payroll and want HR functionality, you will want to consider Infinity HR. This is an integrated solution and provides a robust set of HR features. Pricing is on a Per Employee Per Month charge.
0%
GP provides nice HR capabilities. This basic functionality is part of the starter pack, with some additional features available by adding the optional Extended Pack.
0%
Nothing yet for HR for the Business edition of Dynamics 365. Microsoft "Talent" is core functionality of the Enterprise version of D365 (AX). We expect Talent to be available as an app/add-on purchase to D365 Business edition in Q2 2018.
Field Service
0%
Acumatica offers Service Management. This includes Service Orders, Service Contracts, a drag and drop graphical Dispatch Board, Equipment Maintenance, and Route Management (with Google Maps integration). Service Orders can also be integrated with Projects. And Warranty Tracking is available on Equipment Maintenance. You can also leverage the free mobile app for service techs to start / stop service calls, take pictures and attach to their service record. But these modules can be fairly expensive - especially if you have many service techs.
0%
GP offers some Field Service modules - including Service Call Management, Contract Administration, Depot Management, and Preventive Maintenance. But it is not widely used. More people in this industry opt for third party solutions such as Key2Act or others. also CRM and D365 are building out their functionality in this area.
0%
Field Service is available in the Enterprise version of D365. Not yet available in the Business edition. We expect it to be live in Q2 2018.

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