How a Global Logistics Company’s Internal Assessment of Microsoft Dynamics GP Led to the Formation of a User Group

YRC Logistics, a global provider of logistics services based near Kansas City, has been a user of Microsoft Dynamics GP to manage its finances for the last ten years.

But with $1 billion in revenues, it began wondering last year if it might have outgrown Dynamics GP. With the coming introduction of GP 10, it decided the time was right to investigate if other large companies were also using Dyanmics GP as a long-term solution before automatically making the decision to upgrade from GP 8, says Tim Thorpe, Manager, Information Solutions at YRC Logistic IT group. It was an investigation that would lead as well to the formation of the Kansas City chapter of the GP User Group.

"For us to do an upgrade from version 8 to version 10 is a much different order of magnitude effort compared with a $5 million company doing such an upgrade," says Thorpe. "For us, it's a six-month project, while for a $5 million company it might be done in a weekend."

So during the last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of this year, Thorpe reached out to other GP users for input on their experiences going through the upgrade to GP 10 and then using the software. Microsoft helped facilitate meetings with other large Dynamics GP customers in private meetings and also in at the March 2008 Convergence conference in Orlando. As part of his outreach, Thorpe learned about Dynamic Communities, the support organization for the GP Users Group.

"We had a specific agenda of topics" covering the issues and questions that large companies face with Dynamics GP, says Thorpe. "A ...