I have architected many systems over the past 15 years. I have a very specific methodology that uses the “off the shelf” back office to operate the financial perspectives of a system. Microsoft Great Plains has been the back office of choice fro many reasons.

I like Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Great Plains has Visual Basic for Applications as a development tool. Microsoft Great Plains also has an Application Programming Interface (API) called eConnect. eConnect is an outstanding API. I recall the days before eConnect and to integrate into Great Plains from either a custom application or a third party system you would have to manually write the code to push or pull data from Great Plains to include the enforcement of business rules and logic. This was an amazing undertaking that is now apart of eConnect.

Microsoft Great Plains also has very easy user interface development tools. Making it very easy to modify a user interface based on how a client used the software. I usually lighten up the user forms based taking out functionality that the users were not using making the training and usage of the software much easier.

Having Great Plains and eConnect I can develop an “Operational System” that is specific to a business. My definition of an Operational System is a specific system that contains all of the businesses required work flow that is outside of the back office. This concept is very simple however a lot of system architects do not fully understand this concept. I have seen countless systems where companies try to make a financial system handle a very unique business process. This always results in a very expensive and poorly architected system is a nightmare to administer and to maintain. Not to mention a disaster in flexibility overall strategy.

The most efficient system architecture for a company that has offices all over the country or world is to develop an “Operational System” that extends the functionality of the financial system with precision information based on the user’s functional requirements. I like to build the Operational System to tightly integrate all financial aspects back to Great Plains and to handle the business specific operational functionality in a .Net web deployed application. Having a web deployed operational application to extend your back office and to enforce your business processes allows you to not to have to buy a lot of users in Great Plains and you can have 100% control of your organization from a centrally deployed system that is easily administered. The field offices only need a web browser and internet access and are fully integrated. All of your system code is deployed from an Internet Information server (IIS) that is included with a server operating system. As you update the application you only have to update the IIS servers and the enterprise is automatically updated just by logging in through the web browser. For remote access to the full back office we use Citrix it is not my favorite concept but the only current way to remotely deploy Great Plains and for accountants in the organization they can easily access Great Plains using Citrix and by deploying an Operational System the number of actual back office users is greatly diminished.

Operational Systems will allow organizations it control there business processes with absolute precision. This also means that only functionality that is required would exist since the Operational System is designed specifically for the usage of the organization. Usually when we are designing Operational Systems we are able to automate a lot of the various system operations that once again create massive return on investments and competitive capabilities for the organization that did not currently posses.

I could write a book on this subject matter and have seen companies really grow when they had a real technology strategy not just buying modules from various software vendors with no real plan or understanding on how to create a world class enterprise with innovative cost effective software architecture. Check out this site http://www.evisionsys.com/customdev.htm or call me at 713-807-9555 if you need any help.