Microsoft Dynamics GP vs. Orderwave

It does accounting really well, it does payroll not so well. I say this because when you get into states that have complicated payroll laws like California, overtime calculations are hard to setup and get right. Same goes for other states when they do out of the normal pay structure like piece rate pay. It does HR, A/P and A/R really well and we have had no issues on that side; just payroll when it comes to certain states and how we do anything that is not salary or hourly.

Incentivized

If you manage orders of physical goods, Orderwave works just fine! They integrate with many e-comm platforms and are generally well-suited to those who sell products on their site, who want to send automated order receipts and confirmation emails, and for accounting purposes to tally up total sales (including taxes, shipping costs, etc.). The fact that they also integrate with our email platform makes it extra useful so I can really hone in on segmentation and order history. That's pretty invaluable to me, as an email marketer. If you don't sell goods, I can't see it being appropriate

Incentivized

• User friendly interface
• Able to be extended into multiple areas of your business
• One feature we have been using for a few years is EFT for payables - it has significantly reduced the time spent paying vendors and reduced our check printing and mailing costs. It is very easy to setup and use.

Incentivized

• Order management is clearly important when you run an e-commerce platform. As I can only speak from a marketing perspective (not business intelligence or finance), please know I may be limited in what I know/share. It's seriously a ridiculously useful piece of software. Anyhow. Orderwave allows me to pull in order information into Listrak, our ESP (email service provider). With this information, I can segment on SO many levels such as order total, number of orders, date of last (or all) purchase(s), what was purchased, over what period of time X items were purchased.... the options are limitless.
• Because I do a lot of testing with my emails - testing the whole customer experience from receiving an email to completing an order - I need the ability to review order information (name, address, items purchased, S&H info, tax info, etc. etc.). While our admin manages all the customization of that order receipt, I'm able to quickly make any changes necessary in the back end, like if I'm seeing a pricing discrepancy between what is advertised on our site and what the final order purchase was (usually due to the way we set up a bundle product and not an issue with the platform).
• It's really, really easy to see if we have available inventory of select SKUs that we are about to promote. It also gives me an idea if there is an issue with syncing between SAP and Orderwave, or Orderwave and Magento (our e-comm platform).

Incentivized

• Having an integration between Project Accounting and Field Service would be amazing! There are so many companies that have service technicians that perform work on a customer's contract but also have a need for project accounting functionality within that customer's contract. Right now those modules are separate so you either need to use one or duplicate some efforts if you need to use both.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP could do a better job documenting their new enhancements to the product. They realize great enhancements but the documentation about them, or new products, is lacking so it is difficult as a consultant to know everything a new feature can do for me and my customers.
• They could enhance their forecasting capabilities with a new forecasting tool within Management Reporter.

Incentivized

• I'm not the biggest fan of their email platform, but it does exactly what it needs to do... I just like drag & drop email builders. In addition, I've found that at times the code editor doesn't expand very large, so I often have to copy & paste into a separate code editor (such as Sublime Text) to edit a few lines of code. While the WYSIWYG editor opens in a new window allowing it to more easily expand, I don't get that with the code editor (at least not in Chrome on Mac).
• Support documentation is still a little difficult to manage, but I have noticed truly significant improvements and am more easily able to find the things I need. Our AM is able to help me when I can't find something, which is a big help. I'm sure in time it will improve more.
• The overall look and feel feels old. Like the email platform, it does exactly what it needs to do and it does it well without issue. But the innards feel like Windows XP in 2018. The walls are sturdy and supportive; it just needs a new coat of paint. :)

Incentivized

Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.

Incentivized

Overall usability of the older model is not quite so user friendly for the basic bookeeper, but at an accountants level we can generate all the necessary reports and create Sales Orders, Purchase orders and invoices - though it is a bit redundant to enter the sales and purchase orders separately instead of being able to convert a sales order directly to a puchase order by applying a price book like the newer versions can.

Incentivized

The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.

Incentivized

Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.

Incentivized

Because GP doesn't do CRM we have looked at D365 Customer Engagement for our field service, and F&O as a replacement. Vaporware, no direct upgrade path, and if you want to continue with GP for your back office and just use Field Service it's an insanely complex integration import/export. D365 F&O is a huge implementation cost, and without a direct migration path every bit of data has to be custom imported. There really is no straightforward way to stack up GP against these programs currently. Again, the future of GP is in some doubt.

Incentivized

I wasn't involved in the purchasing decision of Orderwave, but I am familiar with IBM Order Management (used in the past) and much prefer Orderwave. It's cleaner and the information I need is more direct an apparent. Despite it's 'old' look, it's far more effective and far easier to use. I need easy. My day is spent between 10+ applications and if something isn't easy to use, I just won't use it. Orderwave lets me do my job well

Incentivized

The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution

Incentivized

• If implemented properly, the product can save many hours of data entry time - specifically by setting up integrations of large data sets.
• Many times the underlying business process must be adjusted to accommodate software limitations. By being flexible, a company can leverage their users' skills in combination with GP to make data entry faster and more efficient. I have seen many companies eliminate the need for data entry personnel as well as reallocate employee hours to more skilled positions such as reporting and analytics.
• Poor implementations, on the other hand, can cause employees to hate their jobs and the software. This isn't specific to GP but to the software industry in general.

Incentivized

• It has really helped us with business intelligence and gathering more information on who our customers are, what they have (or haven't) purchased, and how we can more effectively market to them. The BI has also helped our telemarketing side (with the call center) better understand what products are most frequently ordered over the phone vs online.
• Managing stock levels is super easy and allows our marketing team to more effectively merchandise and promote products. Without this, we would just be guessing what we should promote.
• I think one of the biggest ROI pieces has been the customizability of the Order Confirmation email. We have a dynamic tool that our email provider offers that serves up products based on what the customer has ordered, viewed, and abandoned, so we can dynamically populate those products in the Order Confirmation email. Orderwave helped us create a custom variable that we could use with our ESP's dynamic code, and we've seen an increase (~3-4%) in sales from the Confirmation email.

Incentivized