When you watch Netsuite videos poking fun at Dynamics GP-you realize how threatening GP is to its competition. They are making fun of Fargo and it is a little funny-but there’s a bigger purpose to the teasing.
Microsoft’s competition is trying to make their point about cloud computing, and maybe have some fun too at Fargo’s expense (like the movie). The impression I was left with is that competitors want to appear to be harmlessly teasing; they are however poorly hiding their fear of the Microsoft competition.
Below are the reasons I believe GP still unsettles competitors:
1. Dynamics GP has 42,000 active organizations using GP and paying maintenance on the product. This is an enormous number considering that hundreds of thousands of individuals come along with this number. There is very little churn of people moving off of GP once they have implemented.
2. Accountants, more so than most, need to see compelling payback before they will change products. “Cloud computing” alone is not enough of a reason to switch if the deep functionality inherent in GP is not bested by quite a bit in a new product.
3. The ISV (Independent Software Vendor) community is the largest and broadest community in the history of accounting and ERP software. Walking down one of many aisles at the Microsoft’s Customer Conference (Convergence) exhibition hall, will show you what I mean.
You would see hundreds of booths of firms that have created products in the GP toolset for everything from credit card processing to simplified project accounting. You would also see many more booths of firms that wrote products that integrate with GP-but in different toolsets such as .net, java, perl-in some cases simply consuming the nice web services that the Dynamics GP group created starting in version 10 for bilaterally sharing validated data.
4. The GP Support Network has for 25 years had the best reputation in the broad ERP space for high quality. Microsoft requires its resellers to conform to high standards for certification on their products and the platforms that they run on.
5. The software, while having fewer customization capabilities than other Dynamics and competing products, seldom breaks. Dynamics GP needs little support which in turn makes resellers and users even more loyal.
