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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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Up-to-date sample ERP data for external application

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Posted on by 10

I work for a company which has developed a platform used to build custom solutions that extend our customers' ERP-system. Improved reporting. budget/forecast, better user experience and customer specific applications are some examples of the value our solution gives our customers. In short, our solution connects to the customer's source systems (accounting, salary, invoice management, energy, issue tracking, etc) and combines this data into information that can not be provided in the individual source systems. 

Many of our customers use Microsoft Dynamics, which is why I turn to this forum.

Of course, we have a demo solution used mostly to sell our idea to potential new customers, but also for internal training. One of the challenges to build this demo solution is to generate relevant sample data that would represent data from the fictitious ERP/accounting system. We cannot use real data from any our customers for obvious reasons. I know there is the CRONUS International Ltd. demonstration database, but as far as I understand it, it is "static", i.e. it only contains data up to a specific date - we need a data source that can easily be refreshed so that it contains sample data (actuals) up to the current month. 

Can anyone share some ideas on how we can get access to such a data source? Note that we don't need (and actually would like to avoid) to install/use Dynamics,or any ERP - we only want the data (chart of account, general ledger, other dimensions etc) to import into our demo system. As mentioned, the data needs to be easily refreshed so that it contains up-to-date data.

Thanks!

/Fredrik

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  • Suggested answer
    JAngle Profile Picture
    133 on at

    If you already have a sample database I would look at creating SQL stored procedures that insert up to date sample data i.e. journal postings (G/L Entry table), invoices (posted sales/purchase invoice header - there is a line table for each too), G/L Budgets, Cash Flow Forecast Entries.

    The rest of the static data will then play into your hands.

    If you can't do it by SQL you could look at power automate and use a RPA to post all the mentioned data by using a set of excel sheets updated during the RPA or manually.

  • FredrikG Profile Picture
    10 on at

    Thanks for your reply, Josh!

    This is similar to what we do today, we have developed our own sample database (which somewhat resembles the structure of Dynamics), but we haven't had time to make the database complex enough to represent a realistic company (very simple chart of account, few dimensions etc).  Also, generating realistic data (journal postings), invoices, etc is really time-consuming.

    Ideally, we would be able to access a "sample data generator" which implements this already. A virtual company which uses Dynamics, or similar. I have searched for this, but found nothing.

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