posted on 9/9/2011 2:22:45 PM
The pioneer of office productivity software offers its latest ERP software package, touting employee self-service and cloud-based capabilities in Dynamics AX 2012.
Microsoft’s Dynamics AX 2012 ERP offering arrived this week in general release, bringing with it new tools for employee productivity and organizational agility.
Originally announced in April, the Dynamics AX 2012 ERP system features core capabilities for human capital management (HCM), financials, and general business management processes, said Kirill Tatarinov, president of the Microsoft Business Solutions division, in a Webcast presentation Thursday.
Tatarinov touted the ERP system’s agility not just for business users, but also for the IT personnel who work behind the scenes to tailor it to a business’ needs. Microsoft engineers, he said, created tools within Dynamics AX “enabling our customers to model very complex organizational constructs in the product, and then manage the change through manipulating models instead of writing code.”
Christian Pederson, general manager of the Dynamics AX unit, displayed some of that functionality in a video demonstration. Pederson used the example of a company that had recently made an acquisition and planned to make the acquired company’s production processes part of the larger organization. Once the production processes are mapped in the ERP software, they become an object that can be efficiently manipulated, he said, using the “cut/paste” function to move that process set to the primary business.
Microsoft is also talking up its role-centered views, which have become popular in other ERP software packages. These out-of-the-box aggregations of KPIs are dedicated to certain roles within an organization. One CEO’s view, for instance, shows financial, customer, and production KPIs, and charts that rate delivery performance and the company’s top 10 retail customers at any given moment.
In the HCM and general-productivity realms, Dynamics AX features a self-service portal where ERP users can access a range of everyday business processes and information. In Pederson’s demonstration, an Expenses section offered selections for creating a new expense report or travel requisition, reviewing past expense reports, or requesting a cash advance, while a Time & Attendance grouping included absence requests and an electronic time card. An Order Products section gave employees access to purchase orders, shopping carts, product receipts, and other information.
In addition, Dynamics AX 2012 includes cloud-based services built on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-based application development platform. The RapidStart Services feature aims to mitigate one of the common complaints about ERP systems, namely, the time it takes to implement them. Using a questionnaire-based framework, RapidStart users can more quickly configure Microsoft Dynamics ERP for production, the company said.
With the Site Services feature, users find wizards that help them create and publish business scenarios that help them collaborate with partners, vendors, and customers, all integrated with Microsoft Dynamics ERP. Commerce Services and Payments Services enable e-commerce and credit card payments. At the time of Dynamics AX’s general availability this week, the services are available only in the U.S., with RapidStart and Payment Services also available for customers in Canada.
Microsoft drew attention this week for its aggressive promotion of Dynamics AX against rival ERP systems. For customers of Lawson Software’s M3 or S3 ERP systems, Microsoft will offer 50% license discounts on Dynamics AX, the company announced. The folks in Redmond also recognize the value of winning converts to the company’s indirect sales channel. Channel partners will receive revenue credit “for each Lawson-certified consultant that obtains Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 certification,” the company said. The offers expire in June 2012.
For more information on ERP software, its implementation challenges, and how to measure ROI, take a look at the TechMATCH ERP Buyer’s Guide.