IT department skills to support Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft CRM

Microsoft Great Plains as an ERP and Microsoft CRM as a customer relationship management system is a very robust combination and could serve medium to large corporations as a business system. As VP of IT or Director of IT, you should envision the positions you will have in your IT department to provide internal support for MS Great Plains and MS CRM.

Let us guide you, based on our research and consulting practice.

1. Microsoft SQL Server Specialist – Especially, we do not call this position as MS SQL DBA, because both Great Plains and MS CRM are not very complex from the point of view of database administration, they do not use index optimization, referential integrity, probably they do not require complex transaction log backup/recovery. scenarios. On the other hand, this position requires table structure analysis from Great Plains and Microsoft CRM and some primary Great Plains data fixation skills via SQL queries, outlined in MBS Customer Source Technology Knowledge Base . The best candidate should have a background in accounting, to be able to address current MBS technical support issues.
2. Network administrator with good Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory skills. Microsoft CRM uses all of the latest Microsoft technologies, and Exchange is a workhorse here. To install and upgrade MS CRM, this guy needs to understand the underlying Microsoft technology. At best, you should know the security structure of Exchange and probably program the Exchange drivers, due to the fact that the CRM/Exchange connector is not yet a perfect tool.
3. C# or VB.Net programmer with excellent SQL skills– if you are a medium or large company – you must have this position – you will need web publishing and MS CRM customization and support. Microsoft CRM SDK currently has C# samples, so C# programmer would be best suited, I may have more VB code in the future, so C# – VB balance can be restored.
4. Crystal Reports Designer/Programmer – Crystal Reports is the best tool available on the market to address the reporting needs of Great Plains and MS CRM. This position can be merged with one of the previous ones.

These people should probably be cross-trained in Great Plains programming, Microsoft CRM, Crystal Reports, SQL, and C#, so it’s not reliant on one person’s unique skills. In our opinion, based on our long-term consulting practice, these skills will allow you to keep the cost of IT support reasonably low and avoid paying a high consulting price to your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner.

Happy hiring and training! But in any case, you must select Microsoft Business Solutions Partner/Var/Reseller to be your official representative. This is how MBS has its pipeline running: it ensures that Microsoft Business Solutions products are implemented correctly. If you would like us to be your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner, give us a call at 1-866-528-0577! [email protected]