Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Beyond: Managing the Future of an ERP Product in a Shifting Landscape

With a December release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 confirmed,  five TAP customers already live, and at least five more expected to be live on the web client before the release, where does a Dynamics GP product manager go from here?  We put that question and a few others to Dynamics GP director of product management Errol Schoenfish at the GPUG Summit in Seattle to get his perspective on not only the release, but partner sentiment, release cycle plans beyond 2013, and his views on the evolution of ERP in the SMB space.

MSDW: What is the timeline for the phased release of Dynamics GP 2013 web client functionality, and how do you envision partners deploying it to customers in the early phases?

Errol Schoenfish: With many thousands of forms, there's simply a volume of testing that has to be done . We have had really good results  so far but can't release things before their tested.  We are estimating 3 to 6 months [between phases], but we'll know the timing of the phases more after we get past the first one.

What are you focusing on now beyond GP 2013?

The first thing is just getting everything to web client.  But that opens us up to what other functionality you might consider to be light functionality for customers that we can build into the core and expose as a web form out to customers.  So today we have some functionality in the biz portal solution and what do you do with that? What parts go into our core solution as a web form, what parts make sense as a Windows 8 app for non-heavy ...