Released on = April 10, 2006, 4:09 pm

Press Release Author = Alba Spectrum Group

Industry = Computers

Press Release Summary = Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 Great Plains Beverage production &
distribution - implementation & customization highlights

Press Release Body = Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 Great Plains Beverage production &
distribution - implementation & customization highlights

Alba Spectrum Group, USA/Canada: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, Europe: +44 20 8123
2580, +45 36 96 55 20, Mexico: 52-55-535-04027, Brazil: 55-11-3444-4949,
help@albaspectrum.com skype: albaspectrum

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has many years of successful
implementation in multiple horizontal markets. In today's small article we'll share
our experience of implementing and customizing Microsoft Great Plains, formerly
Great Plains eEnterprise/Dynamics in beverage production and distribution
industries. These examples will cover two scenarios: US regional distribution and
International fruit punch production and sales in US, Latin America and Europe.
We'll try to be industry specific and at the same time technical - using Microsoft
Great Plains technical & customization terminology to address both - decision makers
and technical consultant / programmer.

. Concentrate and Output. Usually company sells concentrate to small and mid-size
production facilities, where fruit punch or soda is produced and company control the
produced volume in Gallons or Liters. In Great Plains you should have light
production customization, the natural way is to build it upon Bill of Materials (BM)
module. This production is very simple - you put some labor units and portion of
concentrate or powder to produce one Gallon / Liter of punch/soda.
. Marketing Reports. Beverage produces are fiercely competing with each other for
the market share. In the case of fruit punch or soda - competition moves to
emerging markets, such as East Europe or Latin / South America. Company has to
control sales dynamics via monthly marketing reports, where marketing people can
compare sales comparing to the same period of the last year. You have two options -
first is to create data warehouse on SOP30200 and SOP30300 tables (Great Plains
Sales Order Processing module) using MS SQL Server Datawarehousing, Cognos or other
datamining tool and second - use set of Crystal Reports. Datawarehousing approach
requires user training and might be a bit less precise, Crystal Reports are very
precise - but might be less flexible.
. EDI. Electronic Document Interchange - in the case of US regional beverage
distributor/wholesaler (beer, wine, soda, strong lemonade), we usually see UNIX
ordering system, working with EDI orders. In this case Great Plains has to be
integrated with this IBM AS/400/RS6000 box and as company manager you should be
looking for Microsoft Business Solutions VAR/Partner, who has experience dealing
with multiple platforms: UNIX/Linux/Windows/Oracle/Sun Solaris
. Advertisement Expense Allocation. Beverage producer usually launches TV ads on
local markets, especially difficult is to track ads efficiency on the emerging
markets: Central America, Caribbean, Africa, South East Asia, Russia. You need to
establish variable or fixed allocation accounts mechanisms for ads expense tracking

About Alba Spectrum Technologies. Alba Spectrum Technologies is joint venture of
several IT and business consulting companies, now operating as single business
entity. We have local presence in the Houston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San
Diego, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, New Orleans, Minneapolis, San
Francisco, LATAM & Brazil, Germany, Russia, South East Asia and Oceania. We believe
in the coexistence of Java (J2EE, EJB, Linux, Unix), Oracle and Microsoft (.Net, C#,
VB) platforms and systems and specialize in several product lines and cross platform
integration, customization, heterogeneous report design, plus we provide ERP/CRM
systems comparison and reviews, not being committed to just on MRP platform. We also
stake on XML cross-platform data interchange to be advanced in the coming decade.

Alba Spectrum Technologies websites:
http://www.albaspectrum.com
http://www.greatplains.com.mx
http://www.enterlogix.com.br
http://www.ronix-systems.de


Web Site = http://www.albaspectrum.com

Contact Details = Alba Spectrum Group, USA/Canada: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918,
Europe: +44 20 8123 2580, +45 36 96 55 20, Mexico: 52-55-535-04027, Brazil:
55-11-3444-4949, help@albaspectrum.com skype: albaspectrum