Office & Dynamics GP “Better together” – deal with business problems faster
As mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago about the inherent BI available in Dynamics GP thanks to Office, Dynamics GP and Office are undoubtedly “better together”. In my second post on this topic I’m going to give an example on how everyday tasks are made easier and faster (or, dare I cite that over-used phrase, “more efficient”) thanks to the duo.
This particular example refers mainly to the integration of Lync (part of the Office 365 package) and GP 2010. I recall fondly watching for the first time, as our partner manager Guy Orridge, walked some clients through a demo of the Instant Message/presence awareness integrations. It went something like this… Sally notices on her personalised Dynamics GP home-page, that returns of Product X are reporting higher than normal, she drills down to quickly find that these returns have been happening over quite a specific period and – you guessed it – all can be linked to one specific parts order from a particular vendor.
The great thing is Sally is now able to instantaneously query and solve this issue. From recognition that the problem comes from a particular vendor, she can instantly click down to vendor details, and see if her contact there, Theresa, is ‘available’ thanks to federation with them through Lync (see point 16 on this post for an explanation). Luckily for Sally, today’s problem is going to be solved super pronto, as her AM Theresa is in fact ‘available’ (as can be seen by the green ‘jelly-beans’ in this screenshot below).
So she instant messages her – ‘Hi Theresa we seem to have a problem with the goods in order XXXX, is now a good time to sort this out? To which Theresa replies “that’s no good, I’ll give you a call”. With one click, Theresa then elevates the IM message to a VoIP call, and they chat through what the problem seems to be, and organise some replacement goods free of charge, as compensation.
Great huh?? It’s also really super when I want to chat with one of the guys at Microsoft, who we are federated with – why email when I can chat?
Dynamics GP really is growing ‘better together’ with Office. Stay tuned for more such posts over the next couple of weeks.