CRM Integration

On of the biggest advantages of MS CRM for UECORP was that it fit so well with our current Great Plains Solution. The integrator that came with it was based on the BizTalk Model, and while powerful, it was lumbering recourse hog. It might have been fine in a smaller environment, but with a 12 GB Sales database, we were constantly running into buffer overflows crashing the Queues in the integrator. We knew we would be looking for a better solution to the problem in the next year or so, but when Hurricane Ivan dumped 12 feet of water into my server room, we decided the future was now.

After months of searching for the right solution and looking for the right balance of speed and power, we settled on Scribes Insight solution. And the installation will Begin tomorrow. This selection process itself was not with out painful lessons.

Does anyone remember back at the turn of the century (1999-2000) when white papers were technical tools written by Software Engineers and Technical Writers? That’s not the case anymore as these things have become just more marketing fodder corrupted by the almighty sales push. You can no longer read a white paper with out seeing marketing sound bites like “much easier to install than other solutions” and “More powerful database Engine” these phrases wouldn’t be a sore spot for me, except that they often fail to backup these claims with any technical proof.

The main problem I found with Scribes white papers was that in the white paper for the MSCRM to Great Plains Connector was that it stated that certain add-ins or modules were part of the package, and only after the purchase did I find out that they were not, the financial impact of purchasing these modules separately and adding them to the package was significant, but not enough to push me in another direction. It did leave a bad taste in my mouth though. I really like the Scribe Dashboard and the product seems to be fast easily customizable, and much simpler to work with than the default Integrator that came with MSCRM.

They offer some training with the product to get you familiar with it. The don’t document in the training information that you need to have the product installed to get anything out of the training. So even if it’s just in a test environment, make sure you get it installed first or you’ll be behind the eight ball when the lessons start.

I’ll provide some more information after the install on my overall feel of the product, and document some of the pitfalls and sore spots we find while going live.