Microsoft Business
Solutions Tuesday said the latest version of its software to serve
supply chain management, e-commerce and customer relationship management
companies is ready for the public.
The Fargo, N.D. business unit of the Redmond, Wash. software concern
released an improved Business Solutions-Great Plains 7.5, which
organizations use to manage chores such as accounting, payroll and online
transactions. Great Plains 7.5 includes enhanced supply chain management and
manufacturing features that help businesses deliver better customer service,
as well as distribution and order management improvements.
For example, the new Available to Promise features help businesses maximize
net profits, take control of their inventory with complete stock views and
offer employees easy access to the information. The
Advanced Distribution features help businesses improve distribution, manage
inventory and respond to customers faster. The Advanced Picking
features help increase order-picking productivity, manage order-picking
processes, minimize overhead, meet specific needs with configurable picking
routines, and integrate with other distribution functionality.
Great Plains 7.5 also boasts new expense management characteristics,
including better project accounting reporting capabilities to keep workers
up to speed on budget revisions and revenue projections, and flexible
expense management capabilities that allow employees to create offline
expense reports from remote locations. These features eliminate paper trails
and shrink expense processing costs with electronic receipt imaging.
Great Plains 7.5 also features enhanced integration with other Microsoft
Business Solutions applications such as Microsoft Business Solutions
Customer Relationship Management, Microsoft Business Solutions Retail
Management System and Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal. Great
Plains 7.5 also integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office
SharePoint Services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft set its sights on the $10 billion SMB business application market
about two years ago when it purchased
Great Plains for $1.1 billion and then Danish
firm Navision for $1.3 billion in 2002. It competes fiercely with SAP, Siebel and Oracle in the space.
With a single-user financial solution starting at $7,000, Great Plains 7.5
is available immediately in the United States and Canada through Microsoft
Certified Business Solutions reselling partners. The software will be
released in certain countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia
Pacific and Latin America beginning in May 2003.
The company is offering a midmarket package, priced at $4,500 per single
user, called Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains Standard. This
version of Great Plains is designed to meet the requirements of companies
that have 25 to 99 employees. annual revenues of $25 million (U.S.) or less,
and up to 10 licensed users.
In related news, software service provider Apptix launched an on-demand
service over the Net for Microsoft’s Windows SharePoint Services. Using that
service, customers, service providers and resellers will be able to deploy
Windows SharePoint Services, which will be available in mid-2003.
