Customizing Microsoft Dynamics GP? 5 Excuses You Will Want to Bury Once and For All!

In recent days I have been reading a number of articles on customizations, some from David Musgrave and Patrick Roth over at Developing for Dynamics GP, and multiple questions on the Microsoft Dynamics GP newsgroups, among others. All these articles and questions have a common theme: how and why we customize the system. The answer to this question may be apparent to many, but you would be surprised by some of the reasons companies engage in this practice.

When carefully planned, customizations can be the difference between a successful and smooth business operation and a system that only gets you 80% of the way, leaving you with exhausting manual processes and missing functionality. However, I have seen my fair share of customizations implemented for all the wrong reasons. Let's take a look at the typical reasons:

1. "This is how it worked in our old system". If you are customizing Dynamics GP because you want it to work just like the old system, you are already started down the wrong path! My next question would be, why did your organization even migrate from the old system to begin with? Investment in new ERP systems, such as your Dynamics GP system, should bring your company one step closer to its goals. Customizations that attempt to introduce past systems behaviors are a waste of time and money that could be better spent in R&D efforts, product development, or staff training.

2. "We need this customization, because this will save hours of processing time". Frankly, I am not against customizations to improve efficiency and productivity. However, when customizations are made to automate some dysfunctional process, then chances are you are investing in the wrong solution. Before customizing your Dynamics ...