Re: Conversions
To answer the other questions: I would gain ODBC access with MS Access to the Invoice Header/Line Tables, Customer and Product Tables. I would maintain in Access a table of those Invoices already converted. I would then create a CSV export of the new Invoices and current Customer/Product tables and then have a UD process import them. This process could be run any time and often. This client is too cheap to purchase the ODBC connection for UD. That is, they don't want to pay for my or the VAR's time to install it. Penny-wise. thanks. Mark, Technically Overview: Using some sort of a schedule, you identify new and modified data on the Great Plains system, and move just that data to the MV system, converting the layout and data. That leaves you with the following discreet tasks: How do you identify new or modified data in Great Plains? How do you move and transform the data? How fresh does the data have to be? (i.e. what is the User's expectation weighted against the network overhead of 'shipping' the data.) How do you schedule that move and transform? Management Overview: Tax law (in the US, I believe you are in the US) will require you to keep records going back at least 5 years. Therefore, the old system needs to be available. Since it will have to be up and intact, you see a major cost and performance savings in using that already paid for hardware and already developed software to act as a data warehouse. If they want to move those reports in the future, they can do it in a controlled manner, without having a loss of productivity or information. Not using the older system as a data warehouse will apply pressure to complete these functions now, adding cost and delaying the needed flow of information. -- Sincerely, Charles Barouch www.KeyAlly.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Johnson wrote: This sounds very tempting, using MV as a data warehouse to a non-MV (or MV) primary application. Does anyone else have any insight on how this flies, management-wise or technically. I like it as all of the original reports are already written and tested and it keeps the customer a MV customer. Thanks Mark Johnson -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: Conversions
I had a client that attempted just what you are doing. After 2 years, and a little over 2 million dollars spent, they went back to their home grown UniVerse system. I will not go into the gorey details of the nightmare, but will summarize with this: limited customization, double billing, double shipping, lost customers, lost revenue, etc. Granted, most of their problems occurred with the integration between Front office and Back office. Microsoft even had a team of it's brightest techs on site at their cost for almost 3 months... No resolution. I think one of the biggest things to me, was to see 6 state of the art servers in a rack system trying to do what ONE 10-year-old server was doing by itself. Just to say, I feel you pain. They will go back. Once a client is used to their ability to customize ad hock, they cannot let go of that, nor should they. MS has sold a real bill of goods with GP. I know hardware vendors and Microsoft support companies love it. GP will always need more hardware and more support. My 2-cents... --Glenn. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 10:05 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Conversions Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both the company and its employees during a conversion/migration from one system to another. I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a traditional Order Entry system. I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen 75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've installed over the last 6.5 years. I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer categories and a whole truckload of sales reporting fields that simply don't exist. Am I wrong in concluding that Great Plains is just a glorified shopping cart application. Has anyone else experienced this kind of mis-match, especially with great plains. At least i could inform the users that others have these growing pains. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for them. thanks in advance. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: Conversions
This sounds very tempting, using MV as a data warehouse to a non-MV (or MV) primary application. Does anyone else have any insight on how this flies, management-wise or technically. I like it as all of the original reports are already written and tested and it keeps the customer a MV customer. Thanks Mark Johnson I have one client that uses Great Plains. Although an old version I felt that the system was not as aligned to the work flow as many PICK systems are. There was also a trap similar to the old spreasheets in the report generator, where the calculations are directional ir verticle or horizontal. Ie if you calculate horizontal then April's Open Bal is calculated from March's Closing Balance before March Closing Balance has been calculated. We currently suck data out of the Great Plains General Ledger and build it into a Multidimensional Warehouse based on Universe and actually do all the forecasting, Budgeting and Reporting from Universe. One application allows users from Excel spreadsheet to view the journals in Great Plains related to the line item and this is through Universe. We do this online through the SQL features in UvBasic. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: Conversions
Bullseye. The client already experienced a month-end (Mar31) and the VP of Marketting was in a snit as most of her reports could not be completed in Great Plains either directly or with Crystal Reports which everyone believes is a magic pill. I visit this client once per week and each week since the migration has been uncovering one shortcoming or another of GP. Everything seems to be an add-on. I've added so many features in the 6-1/2 years of my tenure that they think that today's shopping cart systems will do the same. Sales Tax, Customer Lookup, Product Lookup, Invoice Print, Check Print, Order Print, Job Cost and many others are all too generic and need help. The client is too stubborn to revert back to their legacy MV situation. Thus, damn the torpedos and continue hacking at GP to get the job done. Thanks. - Original Message - From: Results [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: U2 Users Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 12:55 PM Subject: Re: Conversions Mark, Technically Overview: Using some sort of a schedule, you identify new and modified data on the Great Plains system, and move just that data to the MV system, converting the layout and data. That leaves you with the following discreet tasks: How do you identify new or modified data in Great Plains? How do you move and transform the data? How fresh does the data have to be? (i.e. what is the User's expectation weighted against the network overhead of 'shipping' the data.) How do you schedule that move and transform? Management Overview: Tax law (in the US, I believe you are in the US) will require you to keep records going back at least 5 years. Therefore, the old system needs to be available. Since it will have to be up and intact, you see a major cost and performance savings in using that already paid for hardware and already developed software to act as a data warehouse. If they want to move those reports in the future, they can do it in a controlled manner, without having a loss of productivity or information. Not using the older system as a data warehouse will apply pressure to complete these functions now, adding cost and delaying the needed flow of information. -- Sincerely, Charles Barouch www.KeyAlly.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Johnson wrote: This sounds very tempting, using MV as a data warehouse to a non-MV (or MV) primary application. Does anyone else have any insight on how this flies, management-wise or technically. I like it as all of the original reports are already written and tested and it keeps the customer a MV customer. Thanks Mark Johnson -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Humour: was Re: Conversions
In a message dated 4/2/2004 10:06:39 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tony, Stupid question... If you and I built a company which was strictly Hey my name's not Tony but if there's money involved you can call me anything you want. Will -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: Conversions
Thanks to all who have provide some good ideas. The conversion has occurred and is in the growing pains. Still a mistmatch but there's no going back. Perhaps I'll take this approach to learn Crystal Reports or MS Access reports. There are many previous reports and downloads that can't possibly come from these wizard oriented facilities and I will have to re-create them using their tools. One question. Many of the MV reports that I've created were consolidations of multiple sales/customer/product files into concise reports. They enlist databasic to create a temp file and populate it with the report-related sub-categories that don't consolidate easily in MVQuery. Thus the temp file is then query-able. I've been told that Crystal Reports doesn't allow for the creation of temp tables while Access can. Is this true and should I develop their replacement reports in Access. One strange thought occurred to me that may not fly. Export all the sales/customer/product data back to the MV system and use the existing reports. At least they're already tested finished. Thanks again. - Original Message - From: Dawn M. Wolthuis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'U2 Users Discussion List' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 9:50 AM Subject: RE: Conversions Mark -- I don't have experience with Great Plains, but can definitely sympathize with your situation. I have been on both the technical and management side of such conversions. Given that it sounds like the decision has been made, money has been spent, and work has been done, you could tackle it by coming through with a this is how we COULD accomplish what is desired set of chats and formal meetings. --Document (if it isn't already) precisely what the goals are for the implementation of the new software so that it is clear what needs to be accomplished from the perspective of Bob the owner. Include goals of what we don't want to impact and not just what we do want to change (for example, is a negative impact on profitability acceptable for 1 year, 2 years?) --Collect all issues/concerns that those in the trenches have related to this project; back these up with metrics/facts where you can --Ask this same trenches group how they think these obstacles can be removed or mitigated --Discuss the issues and possible solutions with mid/upper management and request their brainstorming as well on how to mitigate the concerns --Interview other Great Plains users and ask them how they addressed similar issues --Prepare a report (put in writing in some format, perhaps ppt) that has the angle of how we can accomplish this and does not have an underlying tone to indicate that you disagree with the decision to move forward with this software. The report can still indicate that there are costs to the conversion and perhaps even that there were unanticipated costs that were found once those who work with the software became familiar with the software --Work with all parties to choose the approaches for handling the obstacles in the path of a successful conversion and then implement those. Of course, it is never as easy as following bullet points. I would also suggest having a good inventory of those with whom you have a good working relationship and build on those relationships to help the project run smoothly to completion. Best wishes. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 10:05 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Conversions Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both the company and its employees during a conversion/migration from one system to another. I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a traditional Order Entry system. I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen 75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've installed over the last 6.5 years. I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer
Re: Conversions
Mark, Tell them you are re-purposing the old MV system as a data warehouse as a cost savings measure. That they'll understand and hopefully appreciate. Then do what you suggested: One strange thought occurred to me that may not fly. Export all the sales/customer/product data back to the MV system and use the existing reports. At least they're already tested finished. Because that's the first step in creating a serious data warehouse. -- Sincerely, Charles Barouch www.KeyAlly.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Conversions
Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both the company and its employees during a conversion/migration from one system to another. I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a traditional Order Entry system. I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen 75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've installed over the last 6.5 years. I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer categories and a whole truckload of sales reporting fields that simply don't exist. Am I wrong in concluding that Great Plains is just a glorified shopping cart application. Has anyone else experienced this kind of mis-match, especially with great plains. At least i could inform the users that others have these growing pains. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for them. thanks in advance. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: Conversions
Mark, As a Business Process Consultant (one of my hats), here's how I would approach it. 1. You are already moving in the correct direction by pointing up productivity loss, but you have to frame the argument correctly: 1. We have implied and explicit deadlines in serving our customers. We will fail to meet them due to lost productivity unless we act now. Acting now will require either major changes to the new system to add critical functions, or a significant increase in staffing (with all the related costs). The first option will take a great deal of time and will be expensive. The second choice will take less time but will permanently decrease profitability by increasing staffing levels for an indefinite period of time. Doing nothing will cost us customers and that decreases revenue. 2. The changes are producing a morale problem. This will resolve itself over time, but combined with the current drop in productivity due to feature loss, it can become a major problem. 2. Understand that management may have reasons other than the pretty GUI: 1. The reporting at *their* level may be perceived as better (it might even be better) in the new system. 2. GUI is much easier for *occasional* users. Managers tend to be occasional users. 3. The business model may bee changing and management hasn't chosen to share the details at your level. The new system may be part of a larger plan. 4. Someone might have bought for non practical reasons: (my son sells this, my competitor has this, my accountant said it was good, etc.) Saying it is bad may become emotional for the person who recommended or authorized the new system. 3. Build details: 1. Get the people (lower mgmt) who are getting hurt to give you stats (we had xxx Orders completed per hour before, now we have yyy). 2. Depending on your audience, you might be better off showing Pie Charts - especially if management thinks GUI is pretty. 4. Be on their side: 1. This sucks, why did you do it is a bad tactic. 2. We are seeing a drop in accuracy and the customers are noticing is much more inclusive. 3. Tone, attitude, and word choices will have a huge effect on your success. 4. Choose your cc:s carefully. Bob the CFO might have taken your side if you'd let him bring the case to the Bill the CEO, but you cc:ed the CEO. Mary the A/P manager might have ignored you, but you cc:ed Alice the A/R manager, so she has to reply and appear clever in her reply. Don't play politics, but don't dare ignore it. If you need more, I'll have to charge you by the hour. :) -- Sincerely, Charles Barouch www.KeyAlly.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Johnson wrote: Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both the company and its employees during a conversion/migration from one system to another. I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a traditional Order Entry system. I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen 75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've installed over the last 6.5 years. I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer categories and a whole truckload of sales reporting fields that simply don't exist. Am I wrong in concluding that Great Plains is just a glorified shopping cart application. Has anyone else experienced this kind of mis-match, especially with great plains. At least i could inform the users that others have these growing pains. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for them. thanks in advance. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: Conversions
You have my sympathy/empathy, and I'm sure that of many others here. I have some thoughts that may seem common sense, but they may be worth mentioning: Document everything. -- Downtime -- Delays -- End-user complaints -- Discussions with management and software vendors -- Missing features, reports, inquiry screens -- Limited access to end-users who should have authorization to access specific data -- Situations where the software forces a change in business practices This is good for many reasons. -- Ass coverage in case someone starts blaming you. -- Good morale for end-users to see you care about their concerns. -- Provides a metric regarding what vendors are doing or not. -- Helps with progress reports for management. -- Helps in tracking cost overruns, It sounds like the company switched over to the new apps cold turkey. That wasn't a good move. Running in tandem is preferred even if it means double entry for a while. It also sounds like the move was made a little too quick, without full understanding of the business requirements or buy-in from the end-users. End-users need to be consulted before-hand and treated as partners during the migration, otherwise you get people gossiping around the watercooler about the clueless computer guys. If they're involved in every step then they can't point fingers either unless they're totally ignored along the way. Running a company isn't a democracy but you don't need a mutiny from the ranks when people start asking why things aren't being done properly anymore. Bottom line here: Listen. If you're caught in the middle and being asked to manage the decisions someone else has handed down then keep channels open and maintain frequent but not annoying dialogs with management and vendors. The last thing you need are inquiries about why didn't we know about this? or how long has this been going on. Keep on top of issues so that you aren't involved in damage control. Have manuals and phone numbers for support handy, identify usenet forums for GP. See if you can get a couple key end-users into classes so that they can front issues before you have to. Create a pseudo first-tier support group out of a few of these people and delegate responsibility. This goes along with the partnering thing - and buy them lunch now and then, they're working overtime here. Encourage all users to report issues to your or your support group immediately so that issues can be resolved rather than sitting on them until they become serious. Some people don't want to make waves and you find out about stuff way too late - like in the middle of closing the month-end. A big issue is, have you been given the authority to do what's required, or have you been given the responsibility without the authority? IT usually gets the latter. If you have authority, keep on top of your support providers and make sure they don't sit on issues. Escallate unresponsiveness to their management and yours as required before technical issues explode on you. If you don't have authority then hopefully you have the ear of someone who does. Once people in a new implementation like this realize that no one is in authority, the feces really strikes the rotary oscillators: Front-line end-users start using words like FUBAR as your project turns into yet another migration horror story for Pick people to smugly enjoy. HTH, Good Luck. Tony Nebula RD -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 8:05 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Conversions Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both the company and its employees during a conversion/migration from one system to another. I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a traditional Order Entry system. I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen 75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've installed over the last 6.5 years. I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer categories
Re: Conversions
Please IGNORE last post. It was meant to be private. I was meant to be asleep. Sincerely, Charles Barouch -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
RE: Conversions
Smooth bro. Real smooth. Excuse us ladies and gentlemen as I escort our colleague out by his ear and smack him around a little. Please IGNORE last post. It was meant to be private. I was meant to be asleep. Sincerely, Charles Barouch -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Universe Date Conversions Using the SQL.B.INTDATE
I've been trying to get a date conversion to work for data being inserted into a SQL/Server table with no success. When I use the SQL.B.INTDATE and SQL.DATE parameters in the SQLBindParameter statement, I get the following error: Status for SQLExecute call is: -1 SQLSTATE,NATCOD are:S1C00 0 Error text is: [IBM][SQL Client][ODBC][Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Optional feature not implemented I've tried multiple formats and combos with no success. I'm running on IBM/U2 Release 10.0.10 As always with this group, that's for the great help.. Mark Warner attachment: winmail.dat-- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
