As your company grows, so does your use of specialized business applications that serve your industry. Manufacturers and companies serving the medical, hospitality, or educational markets often depend on line-of-business (LOB) applications built to serve the unique needs of the industry or specialty. Connecting you to vendors and customers, LOB applications save time but also can separate the information that you depend on to make decisions.

Smart decisions require full information

Typically LOB applications provide excellent functionality, fulfilling the operational needs of a specific business requirement. LOB applications support everything from engineering drawings to patient management to student services, delivering functionality that is critical to the organization.

But there is a price for that tailored functionality. The data gathered and stored by the LOB application is not connected to your ERP system. Summary data often has to be reentered from one system to another, with accompanying loss of detail and productivity. Manual processes to import data from one system to another are error prone and not real time.

Integration is the answer

In today’s fast-paced economy in which customers’ needs change on a dime, your organization can’t afford to have limited information to drive decisions. Only real-time integration between your LOB applications and ERP system will give you the information you need — when you need it.

While most ERP systems can be programmed to automatically import information from other systems, few are easy and inexpensive. The ERP system that you choose should offer multiple options for integration of disparate systems to meet the varying requirements of LOB applications. You may require integrations from web-based applications as well as those housed on your own servers.

With full integration across all the applications in your organization, you can serve customers better and respond quickly to change. Let’s get started today, connecting your systems for better insight.

Supporting your Microsoft Dynamics software is a priority for us and we continually look for new and better ways to serve you. Starting this month, we have to make a change that is not a positive. Every year InterDyn – Remington Consulting spends thousands of dollars on a support plan with Microsoft that provides us priority support from senior technical experts at Microsoft. In the past we were able to not pass this cost on to you. But, with the recent support plan changes by Microsoft, our cost for support is $259 per incident. This is the same price you would pay for an incident if you do not have a support plan for your Microsoft Dynamics, except you do not have the priority or senior level support.

With this change our consultants will inform you if we need to take a support issue to Microsoft. Our support consultant will determine if you have any support incidents on account with Microsoft and ask you if you would like to use them or if you would like us to bill you for an incident. In some cases, due to our priority and senior level support access it may make more sense to utilize our support. If you have any questions or concerns please contact: Tad.Remington@InterDynRemington.com.

March 15, 2012, noon 12:00 pm PDT

BI360 provides a complete Excel-based Business Intelligence solution that includes reporting, budgeting, dashboard and a pre-configured data warehouse. With out-of-the-box integration to Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, SL and CRM, as well as Sage MAS 500, X3, Epicor Prophet 21 and many other ERP solutions, it takes only a fraction of the time to implement as compared to other BI suites. With the reporting and budgeting modules based on Microsoft Excel, the dashboard module based on Microsoft Silverlight, users have a completely Microsoft-based solution that takes minimal effort to learn and to maintain. The BI360 data warehouse module is built on the popular Microsoft SQL Server platform; therefore information from any of your organization’s data sources can be centralized and made available for reporting, modeling, budgeting and dashboards. The BI360 modules can be used mix-and-match; allowing you to start with reporting, and add other modules if and when your business needs change. The modules automatically work together, as they were designed to as an integrated BI suite. Using BI360, your management team can help your entire organization create a performance-driven corporate culture supported by world-class business intelligence.

Join us for an informative webinar and see how BI360 can maximize performance through world-class planning, reporting and analysis!

The presenter of this event is Nils Rasmussen, CEO, Solver, Inc., the developers of BI360. As the CEO of Solver, Nils Rasmussen is responsible for the development of both overall company strategy as well as software & services delivery. Nils founded Solver, Inc. in December, 1996. Since then, he has led the Solver team to complete close to 1,000 implementations world-wide. Prior to this he worked in international sales and consulting roles in various countries. He is the author of numerous BI books and a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

InterDyn – Remington Consulting is a Solver BI360 Certified Partner and Microsoft Dynamics ERP Gold Certified Partner.

Is your accounting department wasting valuable time creating reports using spreadsheets and manual processes? If so, it may be time to check out a centralized reporting system to reduce costs and wasted time. With better business intelligence provided by a robust reporting system, you’ll be in a better position to make sound decisions based on accurate, timely information – as well as easily comply with business regulations – and that's always good for business.

While Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can transform your business in many ways, the time savings that your accounting department will realize may be the most surprising. As organizations grow, the need for coordination of resources and departments is clear. An ERP system supports that growth.

But smaller organizations often spend as much time on accounting as large ones. An ERP system may return productivity rewards more quickly that you imagined.

Automate reporting

It's no surprise that your accounting team spends many hours each month reporting profit and loss. But how much time are they spending on manual spreadsheets for each of the following?

• Making adjustments to inventory and vendor pricing
• Maintaining budgets for multiple departments
• Providing individual reports to departments with data from payroll to supply costs

Assure compliance

No one wants the IRS or any other regulatory agency looking over their shoulder. The best way to keep them out of your business is to provide prompt, accurate reporting to meet all agency regulations your industry requires. Most starter accounting packages don't give your finance team the flexibility to build the reports they need to comply.

To determine if it is time to evaluate ERP systems, have your accounting team track the time spent searching, compiling, and manually entering compliance report data for each of your required filings. The time savings with an automated system that pulls data from multiple sources to consolidate information could be well worth the investment.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP provides more options for reporting than any other ERP system on the market. Let us show you how flexible reporting can be.

Healthcare organizations have many analytics and metrics that they need to monitor including Financial, Budget, Patient, ERM/Billing revenue, Labor costs and Government Compliance reporting. These details tend to reside in disparate systems on various technology platforms. For many Administrators, Finance and Operation executives, getting this data into consolidated reports can be quite a difficult technology exercise each reporting cycle. Then beyond this, there is budgeting, planning and forecasting needs.

“Gartner defines business intelligence (BI) as an umbrella term that spans the people, processes and applications/tools to organize information, enable access to it and analyze it to improve decisions and manage performance.(1)

BI platforms enable users to build applications that help organizations learn and understand their business. BI platforms are software platforms that deliver certain capabilities of integration (BI infrastructure, metadata management, development tools, collaboration), information delivery (reporting, dashboards, ad hoc query, search-based BI), and analysis (OLAP, interactive visualization, predictive modeling and data mining, scorecards). (1)”

How do Healthcare organizations efficiently provide for their respective operational needs and increasing healthcare systems demands, while streamlining their reporting across many systems? One option can be to change and implement new systems, minimize number of systems or consolidated onto a single platform. Another option is to purchase an expensive and complex BI solution and consolidate the data into a central reporting repository.

While these may be investments worth considering, the alternative and cost effective option is to use a robust BI tool like BI360 from Solver. BI360 helps healthcare providers better manage their performance through user-friendly planning, budgeting, reporting, dashboard and data warehouse tools running on a cost efficient Microsoft platform. The BI360 datawarehouse can contain all the data from these various systems using familiar Microsoft Excel as the front end for reporting, dashboards and budgeting. Executives find an easy-to-use interface and IT leverages existing Microsoft technology.

As the Healthcare industry is undergoing many changes, the need for performance reporting and analytics is going to be in high demand. Executives are looking for cost effective options to get to the reports they need. BI360 is one investment our healthcare clients are finding adds value. We are recommending adding this BI tool as their reporting solution. Join us for webinars on BI360: www.InterDynRemington.com/Events

Carol Livingston, Senior Dynamics Consultant

For Year End close, users have many questions. But spending a little time ahead and do some planning will make all the year-end close steps go easier.

1. Plan to make a backup before beginning any year end close process.
2. Some year-end processes require exclusive use, so make sure to schedule time when users will not be on the system.
3. Setup the new Fiscal Year calendar. This must be created before you start the close process.
4. On the GL Close, create a Smartlist of posting types (Balance Sheet and Profits & Loss) and the opposite range of accounts. If this produces no records, then you have correctly setup all accounts and the year-end close will produce the correct results.
5. Before GL Close, check the General Ledger Setup window and make sure that both Maintain History buttons are selected. This will keep all your transaction history and not just the GL Summary balances.
6. If using Unit Accounts, the accounts roll forward balances just list Balance Sheet accounts. There is a SQL script that can be run to clear out beginning balances, but you can also use a manual JE to reverse the balances. Let us know if you would like to have assistance with this process.

For more information and checklists to assist with the Year-End processes, please refer to CustomerSource Knowledge Base (KB) articles.

• Year-End closing procedures for General Ledger in Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Inventory Year-End closing procedures in Inventory Control in Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Year-End closing procedures for Receivables Management module in Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Year-End closing procedures for Payables Management module in Microsoft Dynamics
• The Year-End closing procedures for the Fixed Asset Management module in Microsoft Dynamics GP
• The Year-End closing procedures for Analytical Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Service Pack 2 and in later versions
• Year-End closing procedures for Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll-US

Is the tool your sales professionals use to track and manage their leads, opportunities and customers in its own silo completely separate from your ERP system? Does your staff have to update two systems anytime a customer changes location or phone numbers? The answer to these questions doesn’t have to be “yes.”

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an easy-to-use, yet robust Customer Relationship Management solution that provides your sales professionals the ability to manage their leads, opportunities, pipeline, customer accounts and contacts. With the familiar look and feel of Microsoft Office and the convenience of using it within either a browser or directly within Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also provides useful functionality for your sales managers, such as goals, metrics, dashboards and powerful reporting capability.

Beyond being a fantastic CRM system, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also fully integrates with Microsoft Dynamics GP & AX, eliminating the need to perform double-entry for such things as contact or account address changes. In addition, if you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to generate quotes and orders, you can also automatically create invoices in Microsoft Dynamics GP & AX, saving time and the need for entering sales into two systems.

Whether you are a distributor or manufacturer for medical devices or any other industry, I hope you find this information helpful.

Todd Bowlsby, MCP, MCTS, Account Executive ERP/CRM & Senior Dynamics Consultant

Calculating the total landed cost for international goods can be a time-consuming experience. Fortunately the Landed Cost capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics GP Inventory series can simplify this activity leading to a drastic reduction in the receiving and invoicing effort. This in turn can lead to more accurate costs, increased timeliness of information and better accounting practices.

Microsoft Dynamics GP allows a user to define an unlimited number of landed cost elements based on the extended value of the item, such as Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF) and Duty percentages, then mix and match these elements to reflect the group of landed costs which should be associated with each item. It also allows the user to identify flat fee and fee per unit based elements.

During the purchasing and receiving activities those default landed costs flow through automatically, reducing the need for manual input. Within the Receiving Transactions Entry window, the user can edit the line item landed costs if needed as well as enter the receipt level landed costs (e.g. freight) which are more appropriately handled as a total against the entire receipt. These receipt level landed costs are easily pro-rated across the line items using Weight, Value or Quantity. By using the combination of line item specific landed costs and transaction level landed costs, the user is able to accurately represent the true cost of an item as it moves into inventory.

These landed costs are associated with the receipt transaction and are subject to the Enter/Match Invoices activity. This ensures both good accounting practices and accurate inventory costing via the Revalue Inventory mechanism which can be enabled on the items and landed cost elements.

Whether you are a distributor or manufacturer for medical devices or any other industry, I hope you find this information helpful.

Sunny Mattoon, SCM Practice Manager

Convergence, Microsoft Dynamics’ annual Customer Event, will be held March 18-21 this year in Houston. This year’s event promises to be especially worthwhile, with user groups, deep dive, and concurrent sessions covering an exceptionally wide range of topics related to Dynamics- GP, -CRM, and –AX. And if that wasn’t enough to make the trip worthwhile, Colin Powell is a keynote speaker. Please see the link below for more information about Convergence, or feel free to contact Kristina Vatne (e-mail: Kristina.Vatne@InterDynRemington.com; phone: 503.222.4600 x303)

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Renew your service plan within 90 days of your anniversary date and receive up to 20% off* your next qualifying license purchase, add users, purchase new modules or transition to Business Ready Licensing. Discount is based on tenure of customer and consecutive years of being current on Microsoft Dynamics Service Plan.

Some terms and conditions apply to this offer. For more information about it, please contact Kristina Vatne, (e-mail: Kristina.Vatne@InterDynRemington.com; phone: 503.222.4600 x303)