PerformancePoint Planning vs. FRx Forecaster

As the company I work for is also a Dynamics GP partner with Microsoft, one of the questions I get a lot is how does PerformancePoint Planning compare to FRx Forecaster.  In a nutshell, here is how I explain the differences:

FRx Forecaster is more of an out-of-the-box solution.  Since you are working within a predefined  budgeting/forecasting framework you can deploy finalized solutions within a matter of weeks — as long as your models can fit within the framework.  It is a more mature product and therefore has some nice features (albeit not life or death) that PerformancePoint Server Planning v1.0 currently lacks.

PerformancePoint Server Planning is a blank slate when you begin and therefore can be whatever you like — the sky is the limit.  It ultimately has more power and more flexibility than FRx Forecaster, but that equates to longer deployment times and greater implementation costs.   FRx Forecaster is being phased out and will eventually disappear while PerformancePoint Server is the go-forward solution from Microsoft.  PerformancePoint Server also has the advantage of providing the additional functionality of Management Reporter and Monitoring & Analytics whereas FRx Forecaster is only budgeting/forecasting.

After giving the synopsis above I am usually asked for more details. 

TGO Wins Microsoft Canada IMPACT Award

I should have posted this a while ago, but TGO Consulting recently won the Customer Experience Award in the annual Microsoft Canada Impact Awards.   Here is a description of the award:

“The Customer Experience Award recognizes a technology partner that has provided an outstanding customer experience to elevate the reputation of Microsoft with the customer (via product, relationship, ease of doing business, etc.).  This award goes to a solution provider that has exemplified customer satisfaction and customer intimacy.  A customer testimonial/reference is required to be submitted along with this entry.”

It was for TGO’s work implementing an ERP solution (specifically Dynamics GP) for The Allan Candy.   A lot of people worked very hard on this implementation, so congratulations to all.

 A link to our press release can be found here and the list of all award finalists and winners can be found here.

Best (or Maybe Worst) Software Analogy Ever

OK, here is the deal.  This post could be one of the most insightful commentaries I have ever made and it could go down in the history books as being truly brilliant.  Or it could be a complete and utter pile of steaming garbage and a waste of everyone’s time.   Continue reading at your own risk.

So last week, the family took a week long trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.  We stayed at a brand new (open for 2 weeks) all inclusive resort.   Now whoever designed this place decided to go completely trendy and stylish with the bathroom (i.e., toilet) area.  It had all straight lines with steel and glass – very contemporary.  You walk into the room and when you first see the bathroom area you think “wow that looks really cool”.   You could say that it had all the bells and whistles you would expect from a 5 star resort.

Planning Alerts and Lotus Notes

We did a proof of concept of PPS Planning for a prospect and one of the items we had to test was the concept of alerts being delivered via Lotus Notes for email.    This prospect has Domino at the back-end and Lotus Notes for the email client.  To make our lives easier we just set up the SMTP service on the POC box.  I was told by their Domino/Notes administrator we could have also done SMTP via Domino/Notes functionality directly, but he felt this was easier and had no problem supporting SMTP in their environment.

So we sent out the alert for some test assignments and they rendered perfectly within the Lotus Notes email client interface.  This was nice to see, but wasn’t really that big a surprise.   I was pretty confident this part would work.

What was a surprise, and a very nice one at that, was that within Notes you could click on the link that PPS generates in the email and with no problem Excel would launch, PPS would connect and the user’s assignment would render. 

So from an end-user point of view, PPS alerts in Domino/Notes is just like using Exchange/Outlook, only with a lot uglier interface.  Now if only we could change the text within the email itself…