How To Do a Project Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis is a strategic planning tool to help understand where a project is, where it needs to be, and how to get there.
For a simplistic take, here is a project chart showing project status:
January 11, 2016
Tag: KTL Solutions
How to Utilize Dynamics CRM: Five Tricks for a New Salesperson
Joining a new company is always exciting: new people, new opportunities, and new systems to learn.I have the opportunity to learn Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a new CRM software that we sell, and because of my entrepreneurial background, to see it through two lenses: one of a user trying to learn a new system and one as a salesperson utilizing a new tool to sell more efficiently.
January 8, 2016
How to Avoid a Bad Project
Do you ever feel out of control of your project?
Over the past 27 years, I have worked on over 500 large scale projects. Within these 500+ projects, I have taken an interest in listening to client’s and other project professional’s previous experiences about projects that have gone bad. In these conversations, we can learn from failures and plan for better success in the future. But to be quite honest, I will do anything I can to prevent a project that I am working on from “going bad”. With that being said, there are some things that are outside of my control. As much as I want the project to be successful—I do need the client to be in control of the right things.
January 6, 2016
Real Time Data Warehouse ETL
To implement my Service Broker ETL API, I started with the basic code/framework provided by Eitan Blumin in this blog post:http://www.madeiradata.com/service-broker-asynchronous-triggers/. He provides a good basic framework for the setup of Service Broker and an explanation of the installation scripts. To learn more on the basic framework and scripts to implement Service Broker please refer to his post.
January 4, 2016
Filtering, and Find Information with a Click of Your Mouse
Excel is the tool of choice for getting data ready for import. Data is brought into Excel directly from the legacy program, or it is imported as a delimited file created by another application. Once the data is in Excel there are several strategies to prepare it for import. This article shows how easy it is to filter data with just the click of a mouse.
December 30, 2015
Back-office vs. Front-office Pros and Cons; Four Points to Think about When Implementing a Professional Services Solution
Back in the day when computers first became common in businesses, accounting was the first part of the business that became “computerized”. Many reasons caused this, but as time passed and computational complexity increased, these first accounting systems morphed into “Enterprise Resource Systems” (ERP) that allowed businesses to build on top of these first accounting systems in order to automate their other functional areas. Inventory, Sales Order Processing, Purchasing, Service Management, Manufacturing and Professional Services functions were added as modular pieces of functionality that used the core accounting system as its base. ERP systems proliferated and became the automation standard for businesses to scale, become more efficient and glean visibility into complex costing and other financial metrics.
December 22, 2015
How to Set Work Hours for Dynamics CRM Users
The most overlooked setting during CRM user setup are the work hours. Setting up the work hours for a user/facility/equipment record has always been an afterthought (at least for me). Then again, this setting becomes more relevant and important to setup when you are scheduling resources., This is especially true in setting up the service module or as part of any project management/field service module where appointments are being setup for tasks. For those who may not know where this setting exists, it can be found by navigating to ;Settings->Security->Users.' Open any user record, and in the navigation for the user record, you can find the “WORK HOURS” navigation tile. You can access the resources work hours by navigating to ;Settings->Business Management -> Facilities/Equipment.' The resource entity still uses the old CRM form layout so the work hour navigation can be accessed from within the form.
December 18, 2015
Setting Up and Running Recurring Transactions in Acumatica Cloud ERP
Last month, we discussed how uploading journal transactions in Acumatica Cloud ERP was one way of solving the problem of hand-keying large, multiple line journal entries into your general ledger each month. Having to make entries for depreciation expense, expensing pre-paids, allocating costs or making accruals can be tedious, while the exposure to error exists as well. The other way of combating these entry dilemmas is to create and run Recurring Transactions.
December 16, 2015
How to Set Default Parameters in SSRS Reports Based on CRM Roles
I enjoy working with SSRS reports and learning new things to help me build out reports that meet our clients’ needs. When a client comes to me with an interesting way they want something displayed or a request for a feature that is unknown to me, I jump at the chance to do it. I love a new challenge and it acts as a learning experience as well. A recent request came to me that required a little creativity on my part. It was to modify the default value of certain report parameters based on the security role the User had in CRM.
December 14, 2015
KTL Holiday Party
Maryland in December brings with it an almost whimsical atmosphere. From the crisp winter air, the carolers in small towns, and the busy streets filled with holiday lights, it makes every moment have a feeling of happiness towards another successful year. The KTL Holiday party is no different. Employees from across the country fly in to celebrate 12 months of team success with a party in their honor.
December 9, 2015
