It’s time we cut the chase – the time has come to throw away Integration Manager and move up to SmartConnect.
‘Extraordinary user experiences should be the goal of every interaction you deliver to your users at any level.’ (www.Uxmag.com). The five key principles we, at eOne, follow to improve your customers experience is to: Make it Faster, Remove Stuff, Do My Thinking For Me, Delight the End User, and First Impressions Matter. The time has come to move your customers across from Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Manager to eOne’s SmartConnect.
If you leave your customers with software solutions that fall short in any of these 5areas then you are doing them a disservice and over time they will go elsewhere and switch software. If you have clients that still use Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Manager then apply these five tests to determine if you are offering them the best solution: (see the full discussion in this list here: http://uxmag.com/design/five-low-hanging-ux-tips)
1. Speed: The worst thing about Integration Manager is that it is too slow. The best thing about SmartConnect is that it is so fast.
2. Remove Stuff: While SmartConnect has a mass of functionality, 90% of things are driven from the single main mapping screen. The end user should know nothing about SmartConnect other than they hit a button and the data ends up in the right place in Dynamics GP.
3. Do My Thinking For Me: SmartConnect’s auto email templates, after hours schedule, real-time triggers, and change data sources do the hard work for you. In fact, once configured, no user should ever touch SmartConnect at all – all the integrations just happen when they should.
4. Delight the End User: This is easy as with SmartConnect the users get to spend more time at home, rather than waiting for integrations to complete. Show me an accountant that does not smile when they can do fully validated data entry into Excel.
5. First Impressions Matter: End users of SmartConnect get a configured solution that works. You should never have to explain away the fact that Integration Manager really just types all the data in the front end in a big macro. End users should never be confronted with or bothered with the technical layers underneath.
I know it costs money to change software and we want to make that easy as well. From September 1st we are running the Integration Manager trade-in promotion. This means if your customer already owns Integration Manager they are able to take advantage of the following:
1. $1000 off the price. This means fully functioning SmartConnect for just $3,500 + maintenance.
2. Free attendance at 2 hours of online IM trade-in Training. (Run twice per month)
3. Access to our out of the box Excel General Ledger Journal Entry for Dynamics GP.
4. Option to buy SmartView for just $1,000. (If you have not seen SmartView, then check this out: (http://www.eonesolutions.com/download.aspx?filename=SmartView_3_minute.wmv)
To make things easy for our partners to keep your customers happy, you are able to take advantage of:
1. Template email you can use for email campaigns.
2. One Scheduled demo dedicated just to your customers.
3. Access to eOne’s demo servers with everything configured and ready to go.
4. Ability to use eOne’s implementation team to assist with the roll outs.
Take a look at this document linkFAQ document which will help answer any questions you may have and those questions of your customers. We look forward to helping you delight your customers and keep them loving Microsoft Dynamics GP for a long time to come.