  
Great Plains Accounting Software
An overview of the Great Plains Accounting Software system.
The Great Plains Accounting Software system was originally developed and marketed by Great Plains Software until
Microsoft acquired the company in late 2000. Great Plains is now one of four accounting packages that share
the Microsoft Dynamics name.
The package is basically a mid-market business accounting software package that runs under a Microsoft SQL
server database and has the advantage of integrating with and having the same basic layout as other Microsoft
Office products such as Outlook, Word and Excel. This package was also one of the first in the USA to
incorporate a multi-user function and run under Microsoft Windows.
The latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP is version 10.0 which was released in June 2007.
Company Information
Great Plains software was an independent company formed in Fargo, North Dakota by Doug Burman. The acquisition
by Microsoft was reported to have cost 1.1 billion dollars. Microsoft now markets the product under the Microsoft
Dynamics name.
Product Description
Full Featured Business Accounting Software Package
Price
Varies depending on modules chosen, after sales support etc.
Customer Reviews
'I am a reseller of MAS90 accounting software which is a competitor to
Great Plains -- so naturally what follows is biased and you should take the comments as a starting point for your
own research.
When we are competing against different brands of accounting packages, Great Plains is usually right in there in
terms of features, functionality and pricing. What can usually tip the scales in our favor is the absence of a
local reseller for the product or one or two features that MAS90 might perform better. There have also been
instances where Great Plains has a feature that MAS90 doesn't.
One thing that is a little misleading is the number of users that Great Plains may quote as using their software. I
recently read (November 2000) that they have 120,000 end users. That number sounds high. I believe they may be
counting in some way the software packages that they've acquired which include Solomon IV and RealWorld. But in any
instance, Great Plains is definitely a market leader so you shouldn't worry about buying this package and seeing
Great Plains going out of business.
Things we see Great Plains doing well:
a) Technical support is very good
b) Product is very full featured
c) Loyal and large number of resellers
d) Integration with products like Siebel
Things we thing Great Plains is weaker in:
a) We hear from other users that it is more complex to implement than MAS90 -- may take more hours to implement and
that not all the features work.
Overall if you have a good reseller, I do not think you will go wrong with Great Plains. They are a big
organization and you can expect them to back their products'.
Wayne Shulz, Glastonbury CT
'In the last two years, I have had the opportunity to review 4-5 of the
top midrange accounting systems. In those reviews, I have found all product wanting of something to some
degree:
Peoplesoft / Oracle / Baan -- Very pricy and lack of local support.
MAS80 / Solomon / Quickbooks -- Too under-powered or technical support staff not very helpful.
GP Dynamics was a solid product, granted, not very glamorous, but solid, and had a reputation for a top-notch
support team that could deliver what I needed most.
An item that really caught my eye is a slow product upgrade cycle. While some may find this strange,
upgrading/updating an ERP system is not always an easy chore, so 1 major release a year was fine (and plenty) to
me. Plus, it says something about their stability as a vendor.
Microsoft purchased Great Plains about a year ago now, but the product hasn't changed much since then. The product
itself is full-featured and has better ISV support than anything else out there.
Since the purchase of the product, I cannot say enough about their support team. I usually get an email response
within an hour, sometimes faster. Not only that, but the quality of the information sent to me is well thought out
and appropriate, not a stall tactic as I've had with other providers.
What would be my concerns? The feature set of the product does take some getting used to, especially if one has
become familiar with another package in the past, especially if it was one of the low-transaction-volume
systems.
What are it's strengths? Dynamics has 80% of the market share. While this doesn't guarantee a good product, it does
guarantee a future product line...something that concerns me about other products in this product space.
Overall, I feel that the quality, support, and stability of the product and the vendor were the deciding factors
that lead me into this purchase. Something that I'm still happy with today'.
J Manley, Fargo ND
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