Microsoft Dynamics GP seems to be going from strength to strength. I want to deliver a few reasons why I say this and what I believe the cause may be.
What makes me say that:
1. Growth: Every VAR I speak to – and I speak to plenty – are really busy and growing their teams. These VAR’s are adding to the people they employ to support Dynamics GP, because they are signing up new customers and are continually supporting the solutions for their existing customers.
2. Sales: eOne is selling more product than ever in our 12 year ISV history. I have always used SmartList Builder as a barometer of total GP sales – and if those ratios are still roughly the same then there is still plenty of GP being sold on a monthly basis.
3. ISV Sales: Sales into the GP customer base – Mid Market companies that use GP are still spending on their GP system via addons from eOne, other ISV’s, upgrades, consulting etc. The base would not be investing in existing systems to this extent unless they were planning to stay with Dynamics GP for a long time.
Why I think GP is going great and will be for a long time to come:
1. No Competition: It still amazes me that ERP’s really have not changed dramatically in the last 15 years and that there is still no truly credible competition. Think about it – have there been massive leaps since 2000? This is partially that Accounting underpins an ERP – and nothing changes slower than accounting practice.
There are some new players in the cloud space which are certainly doing okay – but from a functional perspective they offer little if anything that is better than GP. Netsuite have a clever integrated CRM with their ERP – but if you put GP and Microsoft CRM together (using SmartConnect of course) you get a way better outcome (albeit at a cost).
Tools like Intacct, Acumatica are good but are really the same old tools delivered differently via a browser. Functionality, which is what counts for the end users, in GP offers everything and more than any other horizontal product in the mid market space.
2. Mid Market: GP is in the mid market, the true mid market, which covers from the top of small to some really large companies. There are some amazing companies and brand names that rely on GP all day every day. The mid market need all the controls of a strong ERP. A mid market company needs all the reporting power of a strong ERP.
There is a huge push from tiny cloud players like Zero and Freshbooks. All good products but really targeted at a completely different business demographic. They are aiming up at quickbooks and sage – and not the GP space. These are perfect for small companies, but when you look at those tools they really provide very little in respect to functionality. These tools do not offer anything to any of the GP customer base that we work with everyday.
3. GP web client: Is actually pretty cool, eOne runs this in-house. It works and it works well.
4. eConnect: I am not sure that everyone at Microsoft understands it – but eConnect is one of the best things that GP has going for it. It is a great API – that makes GP a perfect hub repository for all the data form the many systems a business deploys. With GP 2015 coming along that will expose even more API functionality through Dex Next – this is exciting times for GP. The GP API is very strong, very robust and fully developed. There are many ERP’s and CRM’s that would do anything to have an API as good as eConnect.
5. Cloud: The cloud is re-introducing the best of breed software concept. There are vertical cloud solutions for just about everything. These solution do the one thing they do ‘really well’. Mid market companies do not want or expect an ERP to ‘do everything’. They want it to do its core functions really well and be very stable, but also allow for easy integration with all the best of breed applications they decide to deploy.
For Example – Many ERP’s build web stores and eCommerce platforms. But there are way better solutions on the market than what any ERP provider could deliver. When you look for a web store, payment gateway, etc. you are looking at Braintree, 2CO and any of the many web stores. You need these integrated – but you do not expect your ERP to handle this natively.
On the CRM side of things you have tools like Mailchimp/Constant Contact which do their one task really well. As long as the integration is strong – you do not need this functionality inside of your CRM. There is a huge world of great addons – and it is eOne’s job to make sure you can integrate them all to your core systems as easily as possible.
6. Community: A fully developed and broad ISV community. At eOne we are contacted just about every week from an ISV that is wanting to get into the GP space! These are companies that have vertical solutions but everywhere they turn they meet customers who use GP and need integrations. They also know that this is a massive market for them and they want a piece of what the GP ISV’s are getting.
GP has many great ISV’s. As business is swinging back to best of breed solutions – as opposed one system can do everything – it shows that the GP model has been right for a very long time. Microsoft builds the core solution, and experts in various fields build what goes around that core.
7. More with less: Microsoft is doing the right thing. This week Satya declared they will be doing more with less at Microsoft. This is something that has worked great for Dynamics GP. Over the last few years the GP team has shrunk – and as a result the GP team have actively looked to be cleverer and smarter – doing more with less. I think Microsoft has seen GP’s success and decided to try that model across the entire company.
Have any questions or comments regarding Microsoft Dynamics GP? Feel free to comment below of email Martin at martin.olsen@eonesolutions.com!
