Microsoft Great Plains Enhances eEnterprise Offering

FARGO, N.D., June 19, 2001 — Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions today announced expanded financial and distribution applications to Microsoft® Great Plains eEnterprise Release 6.0, its proven, robust global business solution for the midmarket. These application features, combined with eEnterprise’s expanded Premier Services, lower total cost of ownership and scalability, further define the solution as a high-value proposition for growing companies.

The new features enable midmarket organizations to more effectively manage financial and distribution activities through greater connectivity with their key business partners, automated processes that increase employee productivity, enhanced abilities to analyze key business data, and greatly expanded distribution capabilities. These enhancements complement the rich scalability and multinational capabilities of eEnterprise Release 6.0.

“With eEnterprise Release 6.0, we greatly enhanced our ability to deliver a solution that addressed the needs of multinational companies, had major increases in performance and scalability, and provided significantly lower total cost of ownership for customers,”
said Jeff Young, executive vice president of U.S. operations for Microsoft Great Plains.
“These latest enhancements, plus our expanded Premier Services, make a strong solution even stronger. eEnterprise is an extraordinary solution for midmarket companies seeking to thrive in an increasingly interconnected global economy.”

Microsoft Great Plains’ expanded Premier Services provides customers with dedicated account management and technical engineers, 24×7, 365 support, and elevated focus and responsiveness for mission-critical implementations. The program is highly customizable, personalized and proactive and is ideal for midmarket customers.

Released in October 2000, eEnterprise Release 6.0 is the most comprehensive release in the history of Microsoft Great Plains, addressing customer-driven enhancements in the areas of e-business, sales and purchasing, and multinational and international capabilities. Coupled with end-to-end integration of e-commerce, customer relationship management and back-office applications, eEnterprise Release 6.0 makes it easier for customers to operate and compete more effectively and efficiently.

Midmarket organizations need solutions that help them address total cost of ownership and enable them to make better business decisions faster.

“The speed of getting information to top executives, the saved time in training efforts and the reduction of needed staff and support easily equates to an annual savings of more than $1 million (U.S.),”
said Russell Kuteman, vice president of finance of Six Flags and an eEnterprise Release 6.0 customer.

With eEnterprise Release 6.0, Microsoft Great Plains delivered a midmarket solution with a much lower cost of ownership. This strategy continues with the significant enhancements added to the eEnterprise financial and distribution series.

eEnterprise Financial Series Enhancements

To assist midmarket companies in more effectively managing their financials, eEnterprise now enables organizations to extend online cash receipts processing, automate customer refunds, easily administer cash and expense deferrals, automate customer and vendor balance consolidations and scheduled payments, and provide a powerful tool for advanced financial inquiries. Additional details follow:

  • Lockbox processing automatically applies customer payment information in an electronic batch format from a transaction file provided by the customer’s bank. This alleviates the administration associated with managing high volumes of cash receipts.

  • Refund checks automatically reimburses customers, transferring their credit balances to eEnterprise payables management for voucher and check creation, while clearing the customer’s accounts receivable balance.

  • Revenue and expense deferrals enable users to defer revenues and distribute costs over a specified period by calculating and posting values spread over selected date ranges. This ensures more accurate accounting, realizing revenue and costs according to the rates they are applied to within the system.

  • Customer and vendor consolidation enables users to classify customers as vendors, integrating payment and cash receipt transaction-processing activities. This alleviates manual calculations and greatly diminishes any rework in managing customer and vendor relationships.

  • Customer and vendor scheduled payments creates payment schedules, calculates interest and amortization amounts, and performs
    “what-if”
    scenarios to determine the impact of various interest rates, pay-off options, frequency and installment number changes on payment amounts.

  • Account rollup inquiry builds and stores specific segment and digit-based inquiries for any range of account segments within the general ledger, creating various analysis options without increasing the size of the chart of accounts.

  • General ledger transaction matching matches different financial transactions for the purpose of
    “off-setting”
    or reconciliation, providing a final transaction balance often used in financial audits.

eEnterprise Distribution Series Enhancements

The distribution series updates enable midmarket organizations to automate purchasing and inventory replenishment processes, perform promotional and customer-based pricing, and better manage advanced inventory scenarios that involve multiple bins and advanced stock-status reporting. The details surrounding each enhancement are listed below:

  • Automated purchase order generation enables companies to set up any number of predefined parameters within eEnterprise Inventory Control to automatically replenish inventory items or groups of items. This automates the replenishment process, ensuring that customer orders are fulfilled on a timely basis.

  • Extended pricing supports promotional, tiered and customer-based pricing often used in complex sales ordering processing environments. Manual pricing calculations are eliminated and time is saved, providing an automated pricing model that benefits customers.

  • Historical stock status report capabilities calculate and report inventory stock status based on any historical date specified by the user. This enables distribution management personnel to better understand trends and movement of inventory items over time.

  • Multibin capabilities help businesses efficiently manage inventory across multiple sites and bins. In-depth reports track the movement and locations of various stock, ensuring that management is always up to date and inventory quantities are adequate.

Availability

The eEnterprise financial and distribution enhancements are scheduled to be released in phases beginning in calendar quarter three of 2001.

About Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions

Microsoft Great Plains provides business applications that help small and midmarket companies become more agile in today’s interconnected economy by extending specific information and procedures to employees, customers, vendors and partners. The business applications automate end-to-end business processes across financials, distribution, project accounting, electronic commerce, human resources and payroll, manufacturing, supply chain management, business analytics, sales and marketing management, and customer service and support. More information about the solutions offered by Microsoft Great Plains can be found at http://www.greatplains.com/ or at http://microsoft.com/business/greatplains/ .

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a

wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Great Plains is a registered trademark or trademark of Great Plains Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Great Plains Software Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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