Wintivity

Today we embark on a journey to write a series of articles on integrating Business Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Accounting and Dynamics Point of Sale.

Our goal in this article series from the very beginning will be to provide a true Enterprise scale (CRM, Accounting and POS) environment to our clients at a fraction of the typical cost (literally). We will refer to the basic installation, articles and walkthroughs available online as much as possible so that basic single installations can also be learned but we are going to target our efforts at deploying multiple CRM/Accounting clients onto a company network.

What this means is adjusting the installation of each of the components to suit a shared database, reviewing (at length) the underlying technical documents behind this software and summing it all up to provide a solution to the Clients we serve here at WIGITAL.

A Brief Explanation: Office Accounting + Business Contact Manager + Point Of Sale have the potential to be installed on numberous client computers on your network (as many units as you want). Each installation points to a single database server (SQL Server 2005) on your network. Your entire company pulls the business data from the source database (just like big companies). Since everyone uses the same database, collaboration on a large scale becomes possible using all the features of each of the products combined and every user is empowered to serve the company “on the same software platform” based on their role (or have a limited experience based on permissions the Business Owner assigns). All this at a lower price than “high-end” CRM/Accounting solutions.

This target audience for this series is primarily Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners (with companies up to 100 employees) who want a great Contact Relationship Management (CRM) platform, full featured Accounting and Point of Sale at minimal costs.

How we got here:

In the corporate enterprise, CRM and Accounting costs $thousands$ per seat. It’s a fact. Look at the pricing of a combined Dynamics GP/Dynamics CRM deployment or other solutions at this level from SalesForce.com,  Sieble and others… If it’s Customer Relationship Management plus Accounting (full featured), then it’s a lot of money.

Some providers are moving to a service model (meaning the software manufacturer provides customers the software as a service over the internet) but it’s just as expensive in the long run and you never own it so you never stop paying. Take # of users times service cost and multiply times an indefinite number of months and you’ll start to gain an understanding of why software as a service is very appealing to the providers.

Enter Microsoft for Small Business

THE GOOD NEWS: Microsoft Office Accounting and Business Contact Manager for Outlook can be integrated at about $400 a seat. This is relatively low priced. These two products combine to offer a feature list worthy of comparing to high end CRMs, and… Outlook offers a familiar interface to run it all through.

• Outlook with BCM = $150
• Office Accounting Professional = $200

The way we deploy at WIGITAL, the cost goes down as you add more seats and settles at about $300/seat (including Client installation). This is 1/10 the cost of Enterprise CRM/Accounting (and you own the solution). This straightforward demonstration of value is what motivated us to take the time to provide this series. The whole package, deployed properly, really is of value to our clients.

The combination of Outlook, Businesss Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Accounting and also (potentially) Dynamics Point of Sale can provide everything a Small Business Needs to operate. By assessing Business, Operational and Technical prior to rolling it out, a company can achieve it’s mission, integrate CRM/Accounting/ and POS can even replace “industry specific” line of business applications (applications programed and developed for specific industries) that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

So, let’s take a quick look at each piece of the solution:

Business Contact Manager

Business Contact Manager (BCM) is a Contact Relationship Management software. In plain language, it’s an exceptional product. It’s $150/user. It really shines when integrated. BCM can be installed either locally (meaning on your computer only) OR it can be installed globally ( in one database shared on the network for all users).

WIGITAL specializes in installing Business Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Accounting and Dynamics Point of Sale globally in an integrated and shared collaborative workspace .

This provides all the benefits of the software to lots of users at once. Integration of CRM/Accounting/POS gives your company the following benefits:

Business Contact Manager provides:

• Shared Business Contacts
• Shared Marketing Campaigns
• Shared Project Management
• Shared Sales Environment
• seamless integration with Microsoft Office
• more…

Microsoft Office Accounting provides all of the Accounting

• General Ledger
• Sales
• Online Sales
• Products and Services
• Estimating
• Inventory
• Payroll
• seamless integration with Microsoft Office
• (etc….)

and the Accounting piece can full integrate with the CRM piece, see this article .

Dynamics Point of Sale provides the POS Terminal, Touch Screen ability and bar code scanning

• Saves Time
• Eases Inventory and Purchasing Tasks (Bar Coding Tools & Integration)
• Speeds customer checkout and provides a more professional experience for clients
• Integrates the Sales Floor with the Back Office
• Helps you better understand your customers
• Provides accurate real time Information to Business Decision Makers
• seamless integration with Microsoft Office
• (etc…)

So, now comes the heavy lifting. We begin writing the tech stuff about how integrating these pieces is achieved. Our goals are to demonstrate how each component is connected. We will demonstrate “technically” how to share the “Business data” using a single database on a  Remote Database Server (running Microsoft SQL Server 2005). We will do it all using an inexpensive suite of software tools available from Microsoft. We will help answer your questions by replying to comments and you can even buy the solution with us here at WIGITAL when the time is right for your team. Here is our article list at this point:

1. Phase 1 – article link to go here ( check back in a few days )
   
2. Phase 2 – article link to go here ( check back in a few days )
3. Phase 3 – article link to go here ( check back in a few days )
4. Phase 4 – article link to go here ( check back in a few days )
5. Phase 5 – article link to go here ( check back in a few days )

About us: WIGITAL is a Microsoft Partner and Business Technology Company. As a certified Small Business Specialist, we write about and study the serious business of best practices in installation. We also share our knowledge with the community. Whatever choice you make for your team in moving forward, today’s brief should help you better understand your options and the technical details of integration and deployment with Office Accounting, Business Contact Manager and Point of Sale.

• Microsoft BUY RETAIL – Office Accounting Professional
• Microsoft BUY RETAIL – Outlook with Business Contact Manager

Contact WIGITAL for discount rates and corporate deployment