At present with news of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen coming in thick and fast, my client has decided to do its bit for the environment, and to this end we have stopped all business travel between our international offices. This was not necessarily seen as a cost cutting exercise, but more to see if it is possible until the end of next quarter to use the phone, internet, or video conferencing rather than going to a physical meeting.

 

The technological opportunities abound. The best thing is that as a GP Super User it finally means I got to work out whether or not it is actually possible to collaborate with my colleagues using a mixture of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Business Portal for those colleagues who insist on being continually out and about. The good news is that it works to an extent. We are not a large IT user company, we have about 2000 direct and non direct sales people who we engage to sell third party products to predominantly home based customers. It is literally door to door and as a result the opportunities to take bulky laptops or less bulky notebooks does not really abound.

 

Therefore we have been working for a year on the delivery of a mobile solution which involves sales data being uploaded by the sales staff and sent to regional managers, who then collate this information and send it through to my team, where we produce reports for the Directors and Senior Managers.

 

This system has worked well through GP as it is easy to understand and there are no huge installs or training courses that need to be undertaken by the users. So it was not without trepidation that we took on the challenge of the integration to SharePoint and Business Portal, but it has to be said that never has “point and click” been a more appropriate phrase. We have been able to ensure that the business has lost none of its functionality and it is has never missed a beat in terms of reporting.

 

Even the regional managers, who traditionally have complained if just the email font is changed, have accepted the new way of working without protest. For me, I will miss the interaction with people as our head office only consists of 8 staff, but we have made major savings financially and the time savings for our regional managers mean that they should be able to spend more time with their direct sales teams and customers, which can only be good for productivity and revenue generation.

 

Sometimes there has to be a step backwards before you can take a step forward, but the seamless integration with GP10 and SharePoint 7 is more like 2 steps forward, I would happily recommend it to any business to try it and reap the benefits.