Sometimes the best way to evaluate a new ERP/Accounting software system is to see it in action. In this case, a video demo of a real life scenario that your finance department could experience while running your business. For a more personalized Dynamics GP demo with your specific company information on the screen, contact us at CAL Business Solutions. In the meantime, watch the video below.
Video Transcription
Microsoft Dynamics GP is a solution that helps you with what matters most, effectively managing your cash, improving your margins, increasing control, and growing your business.
In this scenario, you’ll watch as a finance manager is tasked with analyzing why the company is over budget in a key variable expense category. We’ll see how Microsoft Dynamics GP helps this user quickly analyze the situation and then gather the right information to make an informed decision.
Here at Contoso Entertainment Systems, a distributor and service provider of name-brand electronic equipment, all installation services are outsourced to contract vendors. Lately these service contract costs are running over budget and we’ve been asked by our CEO to investigate why. We’ll begin our analysis in the Microsoft Dynamics GP role center by using customized graphs to track metrics such as top vendor contract expenses. We can see that we’re well over budget in service expenses year-to-date. With one click we can get more details. This chart breaks down our spending on installation services by vendor and indicates the average profit margin we earned on the work these vendors performed. Let’s take a closer look at home theater services as our year over year spending with this vendor has significantly increased.
This Microsoft Excel report provides a detailed list of the services this vendor has performed. To learn more about why this vendor’s expenses are higher than average, we can drill down for more information. In this Microsoft Dynamics GP vendor maintenance window we have accessed the supporting information about the vendor that will be useful to our analysis. In this list of notes about the vendor is an entry that may help explain why spending is so high. We’ve discovered that this vendor is classified as the preferred vendor for all customer installation services. This helps explain the increased spending, but the lower profit margin we saw earlier may indicate that we’re not managing our vendor service expenses as efficiently as possible. Perhaps a change in preferred vendors is necessary, but this is not a decision we can make without evaluating additional information. In this part of the demo we’ll see how Microsoft Dynamics GP can be easily customized to track the important information an organization requires to make informed decisions. In our evaluation of vendor service expenses, tracking our customer satisfaction with our vendors may give us additional insight to help make a decision about changing preferred vendors. Without writing a single line of code we can create a new set of windows to track exactly what we need. This window helps us track important details about each customer service job performed by our vendors, including the job satisfaction rating they receive when the work is complete. Thanks to the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics GP we’ve made the changes that will enable us to begin capturing additional information that will help us make a more informed decision regarding our vendors.
Now some weeks have gone by and we’ve collected valuable information about how well our vendors are performing in the eyes of our customers. Let’s take a look at the results:
We created a new set of performance indicators that help us quickly analyze how each service vendor is performing. Unfortunately our preferred vendor, Home Theater Services, seems to have low job satisfaction and a lower profit margin compared to some other vendors. The next click shows us that this vendor’s average billing rate has increased as well. By comparison, Ruby Electronics has a high job satisfaction rating and profit margin yet a lower billing rate. We are interested in learning more about this vendor. In the detailed information provided by Microsoft Dynamics GP we noticed that Ruby Electronics is being utilized consistently by Pam, one of our senior project managers. Getting her feedback on this vendor would be helpful. With one click we can see Pam’s contact information for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Since Pam is online and available we can start an instant message asking for her feedback on working with this vendor. We’ll ask about her experiences with Ruby Electronics and if she believes they have the capacity to handle more work. Her feedback assures us that this is a quality company and an excellent candidate to become our new preferred vendor. Armed with enough information to make an informed decision, let’s begin the process of switching preferred vendors.
Still in our Microsoft Excel report we will open the Ruby Electronics vendor maintenance window in Microsoft Dynamics GP. We’ll begin by changing the vendor class assignment to the preferred class. We cannot make this change in isolation, however. So, we’ll submit this vendor record change through a workflow to make sure the proper actions and approvals take place. After providing our supporting evidence for making this change in the workflow comments, we can submit our request. The workflow routes our request to the appropriate people in our organization requiring either their direct action or approval before this vendor status change takes effect. Here we see a quick visual representation of the workflow steps that are required to complete the process. With features like this, Microsoft Dynamics GP helps us maintain consistency and control over important business processes. Our workflow request was quickly approved and for two months we’ve been promoting Ruby Electronics as our preferred vendor for all service contract jobs. Let’s take a look at the impact to our business:
We can quickly see that our contract expenses are no longer above the budget threshold and that job satisfaction for Ruby Electronics has remained high, even with an increased workload. Going one level deeper, we verify that our actual service contract expenses are back within budget tolerance as well. With this issue now behind us we can continue to focus on managing the bottom line. Microsoft Dynamics GP delivers the right tools at the right time to simplify your business every step of the way. Thanks for watching.
By, CAL Business Solutions
