Nov 14, 2008
Nov 13, 2008
From the Blogs: Table Import in GP; Azure and CRM; Developer Tips for Dynamics AX
PUBLISHED: October 29, 2008
- azure
- BI & Reporting
- Customer Relationship Mgmt
- Data Management
- Dynamics AX
- Dynamics CRM
- Dynamics GP
- SharePoint Server
The (Surprising) Power of Table Import in Dynamics GP: Mariano Gomez, the Dynamics GP Blogster, provides a very applicable and detailed overview of how to fully leverage the Table Import function in Dynamics GP for more efficient streamlined integration. He walks users through an example that imports several customer records, with step-by-step instructions, screenshots, and a host of useful resources. While cautioning users to be aware of its parameters, Gomez writes:
"[Table Import] is considered by many at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to integration tools, the fact is, it still holds its weight in today's XML-plagued world... Table Import can be an effective way for the end-user with some tech savvyness to get some data quickly into GP. Don't let the overwhelming amount of tools out there shy you away from using it, especially when these tools are not able to address parts of the application you are interested in integrating data into."
Windows Azure and Dynamics CRM: A Future of Stronger Collaboration: Menno te Koppele, a CRM Freak, envisions a more complete business experience with Dynamics CRM and the Azure platform: "In the future, developers will have access to SharePoint & CRM functionality for collaboration and building stronger customer relationships. With the flexibility to use familiar developer tools like Visual Studio, developers will be able to rapidly build applications that utilize SharePoint and CRM capabilities as developer services for their own applications."
"The Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Azure Services Platform provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer web to enterprise scenarios and includes a cloud operating system and a set of developer services. Windows Azure is not an operating system but rather a complete cloud-based hosting management service built on Windows 2008."
Helpful Tips-n-Tricks to Fix "Errors" in Dynamics AX 2009: Solutions Monkey offers a 3rd installment of its Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Portal / Role Centers - Deployment Tips-n-Tricks. Each tip tackles a real problem scenario encountered when using AX 2009, and explains potential solutions. Here's tip #17:
"Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 RTM Enterprise Portal Site creation fails or the default page comes with unexpected error in the UI and with "A Progress Template must be specified on UpdateProgress control with ID 'AXProgressControl'" error in the event log. How to fix this?
.NET 3.5SP1 has a breaking change from .NET 3.5. So if you have installed .NET 3.5 SP1 instead of just .NET 3.5, EP will give "A Progress Template must be specified on UpdateProgress control with ID 'AXProgressControl'" error. There is a hotfix available for Ax 2009 RTM. This is also fixed in the upcoming Ax 2009 SP1. So either uninstall .NET3.5SP1 and install .NET3.5 or get the hotfix from Ax support or get Ax 2009 SP1. Either one of these three approaches will fix this issue."
On November 10th, 2008 dsforeman said:
Excellent article.
Dave Foreman
http://www.interactivelimited.com
Nov 7, 2008
The Microsoft Dynamics GP Demo Site
The new Microsoft Dynamics GP Demo Site is so cool, you just got to see it. Probably the coolest thing you will see all year!!
And, it goes beyond just cool, there is a huge value:
· Partners can use it with prospect and existing customers.
· People can download parts of it to display on their websites or use in presentations.
· Businesses interested in becoming a partner will get value from it.
· Anyone needing an overview of Dynamics GP, should see this.
The Microsoft Dynamics GP Demo Site
Please take a look at the site today and evangelize it.
Nov 1, 2008
With Dynamics, Microsoft's ERP and CRM Business Apps Go Head-to-Head with Oracle and SAP
ERP has been a two-horse race between SAP and Oracle for years. Microsoft's Chris Caren is battling to change that, with the company's Dynamics ERP and CRM products. Here's his take on what Dynamics is delivering to enterprises as compared with its entrenched rivals.
October 29, 2008 — CIO — Enterprise software analysts and industry observers usually refer to the competition in the ERP and CRM space as essentially a two-horse race between Oracle and SAP. The breadth of applications in both vendors' stables, their collective R&D budgets, and the fact that these giants aren't shy about buying up the competition cements that market reality.
But watch out, SAP and Oracle. While continuing to bludgeon and attack each other as they go after SMBs, both vendors now must look over their shoulders at hard-charging Microsoft and its burgeoning Dynamics set of business applications.
"Microsoft remains a relative newcomer to the business applications market," notes Warren Wilson, a research director at Ovum, in a report. "However, it is committing more and more resources to its Dynamics solutions, and its ability to integrate Dynamics with its ubiquitous Windows applications—especially Office—makes Microsoft a threat that neither SAP nor Oracle can afford to take lightly."
CIO.com Senior Editor Thomas Wailgum recently talked with Chris Caren, general manager of product management and marketing for Microsoft's Dynamics line of ERP and CRM products. Caren described the overriding strategy for the Dynamics line and how the software will take advantage of users' familiarity with the Office suite. He also explained why he thinks on-premise and cloud computing options won't hurt Microsoft's business, and offered his take on how Microsoft is competing—and winning—against Oracle and SAP in midmarket and large organizations.
CIO.com: What's been Microsoft's strategy with Dynamics so far?
Chris Caren: Whether it's us talking to our customers or analysts like AMR, or doing studies of the market, we view business applications—and I'd say this both applies to ERP and CRM—as long-existing categories of software that are woefully underutilized and underused inside of organizations.
I think AMR did a poll and found on average about 10 percent of employees are licensed to use a business application, and of those 10 percent, only about half actually access the application as part of their job. So, the footprint inside of organizations is incredibly limited.
Whether it's business applications or other categories of software like business intelligence, we really believe there's a huge opportunity to democratize the application and get it much more broadly used in organizations for both increasing the productivity of employees and letting them be more effective in their jobs. But also to give them, in the case of business applications, better information for decision-making—just to help them work a lot more intelligently and a lot smarter.
CIO.com: Does that tie into Microsoft's existing product sets?
Caren: The core approach to our product strategy is to overcome the inflexibility and the ease-of-use issues that have limited adoption of business applications, and for us that means really blurring the lines between what a business application is and what the world of Microsoft Office is.
And by that I mean not just Microsoft Office, the desktop suite of products, like Outlook and Excel and Word, but more and more the business server applications like SharePoint for collaboration, PerformancePoint for business intelligence, or Office Communications Server for instant messaging, presence, and voice over IP.
CIO.com: So making sure that the user interface and basic tools were easy to use has been a huge part of Dynamics' roadmap?
Caren: Yeah, one big part of it is just that: making the user experience really approachable, familiar. Part of our strategy is preconfiguring it to the types of things you'd likely want to do if you're a salesperson or a payroll manager or a marketing manager. So, we focus on kind of consumerizing the user experience so it looks a lot more like a consumer Web application, a lot less like business software. And we're building what we call these role-tailored user experiences, which is prepackaging what we think a vast majority of employees are going to want to do with the business applications.
CIO.com: Clearly you have a huge advantage in the SMB space, because people's familiarity with Office and Excel. But you also have to show some power behind those applications?
Caren: Yes, definitely. If you look, for example, at our CRM application, the majority of the revenue for that business comes out of the enterprise space. So, to your point, while our product strategy really resonates with mid-market customers, we're having a lot of success at the large enterprise and in the public sector where we have very large projects as well.
CIO.com: When I talk to CIOs, IT staff and users who have these big installed systems, privately many will tell me how much people revert back to Outlook or Excel and reject these new big systems that come in and seem too complex. You've probably heard that a lot?
Caren: I think that's very true. Actually, the experience that drew me to join the Microsoft Business Solutions group was an interesting one. It was out in the Midwest with one of the largest oil companies in the world, and they're a big SAP customer and a big Microsoft customer, and I was meeting with their senior IT leaders.
After a long discussion, just about how they think about Microsoft and how they think about SAP, one of the gentleman basically came to the realization and said: You know, we actually don't run our business with SAP; SAP is the place at the end of the week that we put in some high-level numbers to keep finance happy, but we run our business day-in and day-out, we make decisions, we do analysis, we collaborate with e-mail and with Excel.
Our goal is to let companies continue to collaborate and make decisions, share information using Excel and e-mail, but have it be attached to the kind of workflows and processes that companies want to have their employees follow, and have the data be in Excel, but have it be secure and current so that everyone has the same view of the business.
It's letting you stay where you naturally want to work and keep that flexibility, but get the benefits of having really efficient structured workflows and very secure and auditable information, and to be able to access and make decisions on.
CIO.com: Would you say that one of the challenges over the years has been to get the word out to these businesses that when they think of ERP and CRM, they should consider Microsoft?
Caren: Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest areas of focus for me is building category awareness, so that when a senior executive, whether IT or business, thinks about the business application purchase, they know Microsoft has really compelling solutions. It still is an area of work for us.
CIO.com: How do you sell them on Microsoft's business applications?
Caren: We talk a lot about the traditional experience of using a business application. So, you spend a lot of money upfront to buy the software, spend a lot of money to train your employees, and you spend even more over time maintaining the system and trying to evolve it to keep up with how you do business. And despite all those investments, the traditionally very narrow user population and the end value the company gets back in return on investment, it's a lot more limited than it could be.
Then we just talk about a world where business applications are self-service, are flexible, and are used by a majority of employees, and how much better that world is for IT, and how much better that world is for their employees and their management.
We talk a lot about Office as the user experience and we talk a lot about how well our business applications leverage the Microsoft server infrastructure to really minimize the cost of owning the application year-in and year-out, which traditionally is another big negative companies and CIOs have about CRM and ERP—just the incredible cost of maintaining the applications.
CIO.com: An article I just wrote in September was about a very small business that ended up purchasing SAP ERP applications, when in the past, they probably would have gone with Microsoft. I thought it was an interesting case because this company, who had like 10 users on the SAP system, was not what we generally think of as SAP ERP customer. So as SAP and Oracle start invading this space, where before there wasn't a ton of people going after the 12-seat companies and Microsoft applications were king, how do you see the competition playing out?
Caren: That kind of leads to the second point that's core to our strategy. You mentioned overcoming the ease of use and inflexibility that limits adoption. The other one that is core to our strategy is working through partners to serve customers—meaning building a great, flexible application, but then relying on a really strong, healthy channel to build vertical and micro-vertical solutions that particularly for the mid-market help a customer not just buy an ERP system but buy an ERP system that, for example, works for frozen fish manufacturers.
It's a solution that's much closer to what you need, in the end, that's off the shelf—although off the shelf from a partner, so you get the solution faster and you spend a lot less money on it. It's also the local partner that can really augment or in some cases handle the needs of a company that doesn't even have an IT department. That local touch that our channel provides really gives a strong advantage in the mid-market.
So, to your point, despite Oracle and especially SAP talking about their mid-market focus, we really haven't seen a huge impact on our ability to win business there, and I think that's in large part due to our strong partner channel.
CIO.com: So, when you're going into the RFPs, who is your competition?
Caren: It's typically SAP or Oracle, and then it probably is a combination of two or three mid-market specialists, these firms like a Sage or an Epicor, and in the case of many international deals a local French competitor, a German competitor. In the enterprise ERP and CRM market, obviously there are a few players that have high share. In the case of the mid-market it's an extremely long tail and a very small head in terms of the share of markets from different ISVs.
CIO.com: You had previously worked on Duet, Microsoft's product partnership with SAP. What's the status of that partnership? It seems to me that, in the future, if you're going in and selling against SAP's product, to have kind of this complementary product, maybe that's not great for either of you.
Caren: I'd say Duet was one of the hottest products I think SAP ever saw when it showed it to its installed base, because of the great ease-of-use story it brought to their customers. Duet today serves a narrow set of scenarios. Of the hundreds of different workflows that SAP enables, probably a dozen, at most, are handled today by Duet. So, for some customers it's a great fit; for many it's a great vision, but not yet delivering on what they as an organization most need.
Duet is all about SAP's large enterprise business suite, and there we really don't focus our ERP business. Our ERP business is much more mid-market up through the enterprise segment and more like subsidiaries or divisions of global 2,000 companies. So, where SAP is [selling] at the headquarters of Global 2000, we're at the subsidiaries of those organization or in the mid-market.
CIO.com: As Microsoft expands its Live on-demand and cloud computing product lines, do you see those as just different product offerings for different types of businesses, on a different service? Or products at fundamental odds with each other?
Caren: For CRM, where we have obviously an on-premise business and we have CRM Online, which has been in market for nine months, we see the sort of same representation of customers using either offering—meaning CRM Online is not about small business where CRM on-premise is about enterprise and mid-market. We see the same representation across enterprise, mid-market and small business for our CRM on-premise business and for our CRM Online business.
The deployment decision tends to be secondary to the vendor decision from what we're seeing, versus customers saying I want to go on-premise or in the cloud, and then have a list that's just more mapped to those companies with those kinds of solutions.
CIO.com: So, in your mind and in Microsoft's mind, those two business models can coexist? Some of these pure SaaS vendors contend that these are like apples and oranges—they're so different that for Microsoft to offer both just seems not right or doesn't seem like it's good business.
Caren: We see a certain segment of customers that say: I want to be in the cloud, maybe because I don't have an IT department or I can't wait for IT to serve my needs. So cloud-based is the only way for me to go.
Other [customers] tend to have more of a traditional view of liking the on-premise deployment method for a number of reasons, whether it's ownership of the data inside their four walls or owning the application start to finish.
We see more and more customers that like that flexibility to be able to start with a hosted service and either over time stay there but always have the flexibility to pull it in-house if they end up wanting to do a lot of deep integration between the CRM application and the other legacy applications they have. That flexibility is more and more becoming a big selling point for our customers.
CIO.com: We know that Vista and operating systems and Office garner a lot of the attention from the press and certainly from everyone who thinks of Microsoft, but just how much going forward is Microsoft looking to Dynamics to contribute?
Caren: The aspiration is definitely to become a multibillion-dollar organization, and right now we're over a billion but not yet at multibillion, which means high growth rates. Right now I think our latest reported growth was 21 percent year over year, which is about triple the growth of the market overall.
For people like Steve Ballmer, it's an incredibly strategic business, because it really is the linchpin of the overall solution Microsoft hopes to deliver to customers. It's the application leveraged by our platform, if you look at our Windows and BizTalk and SQL platform business, and it becomes more and more a showcase application to be delivered to end users through the Microsoft Office business, which is just another very important core to our business strategy.
So the platform beneath it, the world of Office on top of it, makes it a really important part of the solution we're trying to encourage our customers to adopt.
Sep 15, 2008
Jul 23, 2008
The Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal Blog
Remove the ugliness
It was pointed out to me that I had made a small mistake on my previous post. There is an ugly gap between my toolba
r and the grid. There is actually some javascript code that runs when the page is rendered that will remove the gap which makes it look a lot nicer. Take a look at the before and after shots on the right. You can see that the gap is gone.
So what was the mistake? When I added the User Control Web Part to the page in Sharepoint I had added it to the Header web part zone. To make the gap disappear I had to move the web part to the Middle Column web part zone.
That’s it.
Published Wednesday, July 02, 2008 5:15 AM by jeppeoml
Filed under: UX
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The Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal BlogThe Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal Blog
Jul 11, 2008
Jul 7, 2008
An article for you from F A.
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AFTER BILL
Jun 26th 2008
Microsoft knows what it wants to do when Bill Gates leaves--but the
road ahead will not be easy
"DOES Microsoft still have a big, hairy audacious goal?" Not everybody
would presume to ask Bill Gates a question like that. But Mr Gates was
this week due to remove himself from the firm's day-to-day business, to
become its non-executive chairman, and Tim O'Reilly, a noted internet
guru, felt emboldened to commit LeSE MAJESTe. Putting "a computer on
every desk and in every home" had been the original mission of
Microsoft, which Mr Gates founded more than 30 years ago. But now the
job is pretty much done, at least in the West, and Microsoft is the
world's largest software company. What is its mission now, Mr O'Reilly
recently asked at a technological shindig, called "All Things
Digital"--other than just to sell as much software as it can?
Mr Gates (pictured with Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and
strategy officer, left, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, right)
is leaving Microsoft for the charitable foundation he set up with his
wife, Melinda, even as his firm is in some disorder. Windows,
Microsoft's all-conquering operating system, has become so complex,
some say, that it is collapsing under its own weight. Its latest
version, Vista, is not a complete flop, but it is a huge
disappointment. Many users prefer the previous one, XP, and Microsoft
is already hyping the next, Windows 7. Microsoft is also struggling to
keep up with Google, its main rival. It recently announced a product
that pays consumers money if they buy something through an
advertisement next to its search results--a gambit that smacks of
desperation. And the firm's aborted bid for Yahoo!, an online giant,
has done nothing to reassure investors. As a result, Microsoft's shares
continue to do worse than the industry average. Some observers have
started to wonder whether Microsoft should not break itself up--for
instance into a legacy business, containing Windows and Office, a
service unit, and games, where the company has recently been most
innovative.
Mr Gates's reply to Mr O'Reilly was not entirely reassuring. The firm,
he said, now has dozens of "quests"--revolutionising television,
automating data centres and creating software ten times faster. Perhaps
this fragmentation of Microsoft's ambition is only natural. In its 33
hectic years the company has swollen to nearly 90,000 employees (see
charts); revenues this year should exceed $60 billion and net income
reach almost $18 billion. Even Microsoft's own senior executives
struggle to grasp its growing empire. The firm now sells 75 different
products, many of them in lots of versions.
In fact Mr Gates could easily have given a more pointed answer. Of all
that Microsoft hopes to achieve in the post-Gates era, one goal
dominates all others--even catching Google. That is to become the
dominant force in the forthcoming era of cloud computing--or, to
refresh Microsoft's original mission: "to supply services to every
desk, to every home and to every hand". That ought to be big and hairy
enough to satisfy even Mr O'Reilly.
To understand what that means, and the difficulties it poses Microsoft,
start with the idea that computing is undergoing one of its great
periodic shifts. In its early days, most computing took place on
mainframes. Ever-falling costs led computing to shatter--first into
minicomputers, then into personal computers (PCs) and, more recently,
hand-held devices. Now communications is catching up with hardware and
software and, thanks to cheap broadband and wireless access, the
industry is witnessing a pull back to the middle. This is leading much
computing to migrate back into huge data centres. Networks of these
computing plants form "computing clouds"--vast, amorphous, delocalised
nebulae of processing power and storage.
SERVICE WITH A SIMILE
Marc Benioff, a cloud-computing pioneer and the boss of
Salesforce.com[1], which helps firms manage their customers on the web
thinks this will spell the "death of software". Rather than being a big
chunk of code sitting on a hard disk on your desk, software will come
"as a service" over the internet through a browser. This idea is also
espoused by Google. Although the online giant is best known as the
world's biggest online search and advertising firm, it now also offers
many other services--plenty of which compete with Microsoft's PC
programs.
Not so fast, says Mr Ozzie. He has been Microsoft's chief software
architect since 2006 and will steer its technology after Mr Gates goes,
while Mr Mundie will take over as the company's long-term thinker and
public face. "Whenever these things happen, people think that it is
going to be a complete extreme shift," Mr Ozzie says. "But in reality
customers are very pragmatic and figure out the right mix of old and
new stuff." This mix, he argues, will depend on where people are, which
device they use and what they want to do. Instead of the death of
software, Mr Ozzie speaks of "software plus services"--the title of
Microsoft's new strategy.
He thinks of cloud computing differently. Fewer people will put the PC
at the centre of their computing universe; it will be one of many
devices connected through the web, which Mr Ozzie calls the "hub". But
what sounds like bad news for a firm making PC software is in fact a
huge opportunity, he says--because this new set-up sits well with
Microsoft's DNA. The heart of its business has always contained a
simple, powerful idea: find a market that is global in scale--one that
is split between lots of vendors and so dysfunctional; then integrate
the various parts into a "platform" and develop its chief applications;
and finally, build an "ecosystem" of developers writing programs for it.
This has been Microsoft's approach to its largest products--with
Windows as the most successful. Versions of this operating system run
on over 90% of the 1 billion PCs in use, because Microsoft has excelled
at building an ecosystem around its platform, in particular by giving
developers the tools for their job. This supercharged what economists
call "network effects": the more applications run on Windows, the more
attractive it becomes for users; that, in turn, attracts more
developers, and so it goes on. Although Mr Ozzie hesitates to put it in
such terms, his goal is to create a kind of Windows in the cloud. "If
you were to build an operating system today," he explains, "it would
not be a single piece of software that operates a single computer."
He is first tackling device integration. In a recent internal memo,
which Microsoft made public, Mr Ozzie talks of "a personal mesh of
devices--a means by which all of your devices are brought together,
managed through the web as a seamless whole." This mesh will make sure,
for instance, that devices automatically synchronise important files,
such as an address book, and that one device can control the others.
Windows has other similarities with the platform Microsoft wants to
build in the cloud. The firm plans to provide developers with tools to
weave services together into new offerings. And it will give them
ready-made routines, such as checking a user's identity, tracking his
location and processing payments.
THE CLUB IN THE CLOUD
As with all big ideas emanating from Redmond, Mr Ozzie's vision has
provoked strong reactions. Here we go again, says one side, who think
they have spotted a monopolist's latest plan for world domination.
Welcome to the club, comes the retort from the other. Google, Facebook,
Salesforce.com and others are already building similar
platforms--Microsoft is just a Johnny-come-lately hedging its bets.
Needless to say, things are a bit more complicated. Mr Ozzie's plans
amount to more than a dominant software company trying to protect its
franchise. Building a platform for the cloud does not seem such a bad
idea, since it is precisely what many in the industry are trying to do.
Yet the cloud will be based more on open standards than on proprietary
technology. It is too big and too diverse to be dominated by one
provider. And governments would be unlikely to allow one firm to
control such an important infrastructure.
As Mr Ozzie rightly points out, it is the very essence of the shift
towards services, that computing now allows for applications and data
to sit where it is technically most appropriate--or, just as important,
where users prefer. And people are not about to throw out their
powerful PCs or other "client" devices anytime soon, not least because
they will sometimes be offline. Even Google is now offering software
that allows its applications to be used off the internet.
The problem is that, so far, Microsoft does not have much to show for
its plans, says Brent Thill, director of software research at Citi
Investment Research. Take Windows Live, a collection of online services
that in 2006 Mr Ozzie called the "hub to bring it all together". Many
of Windows Live's services are derivative and few have a lot of users.
Recently, Microsoft said that it will shut down some services,
including Windows Live Expo, a listing service for classified
advertisements.
Worse, Microsoft has not got much to show for its huge investments in
online search, the killer application in Google's cloud. The firm's
market share in search is only 8.5% in America, compared with Google's
share of more than 60%. As a result, Microsoft's online-advertisement
platform has not succeeded either. That matters, because even if
companies pay for their cloud services, most consumer services will be
funded by advertising. This explains why Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's
boss, was prepared to pay $47.5 billion for Yahoo! The online giant
would have been an "accelerator" in its quest to catch up with Google
in search and advertising.
But those setbacks should not obscure that Microsoft has a plan--and is
willing to put a lot of money behind it. It is spending billions to
build a network of data centres, a huge infrastructure to cope with the
expected demand for all its software-plus-services business. The
company does not disclose how many computers now populate its server
farms. It says only that it is adding 10,000 servers a month, which is
roughly the total number used by a company like Facebook.
What is more, Microsoft has already spent the past couple of years
writing software for its new platform. In April Mr Ozzie presented a
first chunk, called "Live Mesh"--in his words, the "connective tissue
that brings together devices in the cloud." It will enable users to
synchronise files on lots of computers as well as to a web desktop in
the cloud, for instance. More will come in the autumn, when Microsoft
is likely to publish some new tools for developers.
Microsoft is further along with its new services than most think.
Health Vault, launched in October, is not just a place where people can
store their medical details online, but a service that can connect to
all sorts of monitoring devices, as well as software used by hospitals
and doctors. Microsoft is likely to come up with combinations of
consumer and institutional data in other areas, such as education. It
hopes they will become the killer aps of the new platform, rather as
Word and Excel were for Windows.
Microsoft's familiar products are also being recast for the cloud.
Sometimes the change is modest. The latest versions of Office, the
software package that includes Word and Excel, enable users to share
files and collaborate. Mr Ozzie argues there is no demand for a fully
featured web-based version, (though, it has to be said, the old
desktop-bound Office is one of Microsoft's biggest money-makers and one
of the main reasons for people to use Windows). Other overhauls are
more ambitious. Customers will soon have the choice of running
Microsoft's business programs, such as its mail-server software,
Exchange, on their own computers or in the cloud. Chris Capossela, who
oversees this shift at Microsoft, expects half of the mailboxes managed
by Exchange to be online.
This flurry of activity in Redmond does not guarantee Microsoft success
in the cloud. Top of the list of Redmond watchers' worries is the
firm's culture and management. Mary Jo Foley, a long-time Microsoft
correspondent, thinks it will lose something vital when Mr Gates walks
out of the door. She concludes in her recently published book
"Microsoft 2.0" that if "Microsoft were still the company it was ten or
20 years ago, with the simultaneously ruthless and cautious Gates at
the helm," she would have "no qualms" about predicting its success.
The firm has become bloated, insiders say. "It's a huge problem.
Microsoft has so much raw potential, but it needs extreme leadership to
break out of the bureaucratic morass it encumbered itself with," says
the book's foreword, written by "Mini-Microsoft[2]", an anonymous
blogger-cum-employee who is required reading for Microsoft watchers.
If Microsoft has made one excellent hire in recent years, it is Mr
Ozzie. Although he is unlikely to become a public figure in the mould
of Mr Gates, he is more in tune with a style of computing in which
everything is connected. He understands that a take-no-prisoners
attitude will get you only so far. Mr Ozzie is also level-headed,
hands-on and a brilliant technologist. He himself wrote much of Lotus
Notes, an early collaborative program, and came to Microsoft when it
bought his latest start-up, Groove Networks, in 2005.
Yet some think Microsoft needs more fresh blood in its upper echelons.
Although some veterans have recently left and some new executives have
been hired, many senior positions are still filled by people who have
been with the company for more than a decade, says Michael Cusumano, a
professor at the MIT's Sloan School of Management and the author of a
book on the inner workings of Microsoft. Can a veteran leadership team,
he asks, foresee how the software business will change? And can it
attract a new generation of employees to the company?
BILLET DOUX
Microsoft is no longer the chosen workplace for many young geeks.
Second-generation internet firms, such as Google and Facebook, have
more "mind share". The same is true for investors and users, which is
partly why Microsoft will launch a $300m rebranding campaign later this
year. To make Microsoft hip again, the firm has hired one of America's
coolest advertising agencies, Crispin Porter+Bogusky.
Microsoft's image is still tarnished by the antitrust saga of a decade
ago, when it was judged to have abused its Windows monopoly. That would
prove a more serious stain if it stops consumers from trusting the firm
with their personal data, a necessary part of many cloud services.
After similar antitrust woes, IBM took decades to shed its reputation
for being overbearing and arrogant. It managed partly by becoming a
champion of industry standards and open-source software.
Microsoft is treading a similar path. The firm has already
changed--whether the American and the European antitrust actions have
tamed it, or customers want different behaviour, or Microsoft has just
grown up. It has become more open--it no longer wants to lock the world
into its own proprietary technology. "We have matured a lot," says Mr
Mundie, who spearheaded this opening-up.
Microsoft has indeed done many things that would not have seemed
possible a few years ago. It has embraced industry standards, published
"interoperability principles" that guide its developers, and released
thousands of pages describing how its programs work together, so that
rival products can join in. To boot, Microsoft has accepted that
open-source software is here to stay. It has adopted some of the
techniques of volunteer developers, given them code and even put some
open-source code in its programs.
Still, many do not believe in the new Microsoft. When INFORMATION WEEK,
an American computing magazine, surveyed some 500 technology
professionals, more than half said they thought that Microsoft's
openness was mostly a publicity campaign. In a recent speech that was
widely interpreted as taking a swipe at Microsoft, Neelie Kroes, the
European Union's competition commissioner, said that governments and
businesses would do well to use software based on open standards. And
Matt Asay, a blogger and executive of Alfresco, an open-source software
company, speaks for many in the open-source movement when he says that
Microsoft "is the only major software company other than SAP that has
not fully engaged with the open-source community."
Microsoft's approach to open source hints that the firm has not yet
made up its mind what it wants to be. Even as the company seemed to
have made peace with the other camp, signing licensing deals with
open-source companies, it accused open-source software fans of
violating 235 of its patents and threatened legal action.
The defining test of Microsoft's openness will be whether it tries to
use its monopoly on the desktop to gain an unfair advantage in the
cloud by tightly integrating--or "bundling"--software and services.
Critics say the firm has already tried to favour its online search
service in its Windows Vista operating system, but backed off when
Google complained. Mr Mundie, however, is eager to offer reassurance:
although Microsoft will make its software and services work well
together, it will do nothing unlawful, he says: "The company has been
quite clear how we are thinking about interoperability."
Microsoft is in transition. "The Road Ahead" will not be as straight or
as smooth as it was on the cover of Mr Gates's bestseller, written in
1995. Yet Microsoft is unlikely to hit a wall, as IBM did after Mr
Gates steered his own big shift in computing all those years ago--if
only because Microsoft has a clearer view of the future. And if the
worst happens, watch out for Mr Gates returning to put his creation
back in the fast lane.
-----
[1] http://www.salesforce.com
[2] http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
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Jun 19, 2008
AX central development book
You can access it at the following url:
http://www.axaptacentral.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=0
Jun 11, 2008
The ultimate integration of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office
The ultimate integration of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office
Use Microsoft Dynamics and the 2007 Microsoft Office system together for best results
Better together: Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office make a powerful pair
Seamless integration between Microsoft Dynamics business applications and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity tools is now within reach.
In summary:
•Tight integration between Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office gives users a familiar interface
•Other Dynamics features, such as SmartList and Snap, bring deeper functionality
•Standard programming technology makes custom integration even easier
Every IT staffer with any amount of experience knows the ramifications of deploying applications from multiple vendors that must exchange critical business data. It means more time spent integrating or customizing the applications within IT, more training for workers, and more technical support calls. Such issues are especially prevalent when one of the applications involved serves the entire company, such as an ERP or other core business application. Because these applications tightly integrate multiple modules relating to various departments such as finance and human resources, individual workers might not have the perspective to understand why the process for accessing information seems complicated or non-intuitive.
Having seamless integration is a huge advantage. Other systems may say they integrate with Outlook, but they may only synchronize the data once a day. 
Jim Veraldi
MicroStrategies
One way of solving the challenge is to give workers a familiar interface in which to work. That's why Microsoft endeavors to integrate its Microsoft Dynamics business management applications (which include Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and its ERP line consisting of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Microsoft Dynamics SL, and) so closely with its Microsoft Office applications (including Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). Such integration keeps workers productive and minimizes calls to IT. For instance, employees can export Dynamics data into Microsoft Office Excel to for easier analysis and sharing.
There are three key ways Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office applications work together. Besides their basic integration in terms of interface and workflow, Microsoft Dynamics also offers SmartLists and Snap applications, which simplify the task of exchanging information between the applications.
Built-in integration between Dynamics and Office
The Microsoft Dynamics application most closely integrated with Office is probably Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which handles customer relationship management including sales, marketing, and customer service. "This is a very advanced back-end integration, where employees or administrators simply need to define the data that need to be exchanged or integrated," says Dr. Michael Pachlatko, CEO of smartpoint IT consulting GmbH, a Microsoft Certified Partner in Linz, Austria. "All this happens without any programming, because it's just configuration of standard features."
In fact, to many employees, the interface to Microsoft Dynamics CRM is exclusively Microsoft Office Outlook. They can look up customer information through the Contacts feature, contact customers by e-mail, schedule meetings through the Calendar feature, and capture customer discussions through the Notes feature. In addition, by adding a Microsoft Dynamics CRM toolbar within Office Outlook, workers can access other folders within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.
"No one wants to maintain separate contacts and calendars," says Jim Veraldi, executive vice president at MicroStrategies, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Denville, N.J., that focuses on Microsoft Dynamics and infrastructure. He cites transparent, real-time synchronization as an enormous advantage. "Other systems may say they integrate with Outlook, but they may only synchronize the data once a day."
Another part of the Office family where Microsoft is improving integration: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which handles collaboration and workflow. Employees working in Microsoft Dynamics CRM can create custom reports to automatically post on an appropriate SharePoint site for immediate access by everyone in the organization.
Tools and applications to get to the next level
SmartList for Microsoft Dynamics GP
Beyond the basic integration, another option is the SmartList feature within Microsoft Dynamics GP. SmartLists encompass several dozen reports that employees can click on from the toolbar, such as that day's purchases, back-ordered items, or inactive customers. They can then export the reports into either Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Microsoft Word documents. "The finance people love this," says Mike Gifford, professional services director at Stanley Stuart Yoffee & Hendrix, Inc., a Maitland, Fla.-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in Microsoft Dynamics deployments. "They can dump data into Excel and then play with it."
As for exporting data into Word, employees can craft templates for thank-you notes, updates, or even collection letters. Using contact information from the SmartList report and a pre-defined template, they can create personalized letters for e-mail distribution soon after an order is received or an account deemed past due.
Microsoft Dynamics Snap
For the Microsoft Dynamics AX and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications, Microsoft Dynamics Snap applications allow for better integration with Office applications (Snap applications are packaged as part of the Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office). These applications allow workers to interact with Microsoft Dynamics business information from within Office. Currently, six "snap-ins," as they're called, are available:
•Business Data Search Snap-in (search data across SharePoint, Dynamics AX, and Dynamics CRM)
•Business Data Lookup Snap-in (insert business data into Word, Excel, or e-mail)
•Custom Report Generator Snap-in (create custom reports in Excel)
•Timesheet Management Snap-in (use Calendar appointments to create timesheets)
•Vacation Management Snap-in (use Outlook to submit vacation requests)
•Expense Management Snap-in (submit and approve expense reports in SharePoint)
•Customer Journal Snap-in (capture open orders and credit history in one document)
Employees can use these applications without IT assistance, however, the IT department will need to install and manage the applications. Even so, they go a long way toward improving productivity for IT by eliminating time spent doing specialized programming, according to Pachlatko.
Custom integration
Naturally, there are times when the IT department still needs to develop custom integration between applications. These can relate to specialized needs based on customer or partner requests, compliance or regulatory issues. Manufacturers, for instance, may need to report what they imported through certain international ports over specific time periods. Gifford notes that Integration Tools for Dynamics GP or the Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 allows you to build Microsoft .NET-based solutions, customizations, and extensions. These tools give the IT department familiar programming interfaces to ease the process.
Each of the [Dynamics] products has integration capabilities, according to Gifford. "You can take other applications, such as a medical billing application, and pull that data into the accounting module of Dynamics," says Gifford. "You can pull data from many sources, but still use the same code to request the data." This lets you automate processes more quickly and easily.
The result for IT staffers is the ability to do more in less time. Because Dynamics applications use industry-standard development tools such as Component Object Model standards, ActiveX, and C++, it creates a wealth of possibilities for integration and functionality," according to Gifford: "There's almost no limit to what you can do in terms of either creating new modules or setting up new interfaces."
Silicon Valley-based freelancer Howard Baldwin writes regularly for the Microsoft Midsize Business Center. His work has also appeared on AllBusiness.com and in CIO.
The ultimate integration of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office
Jun 6, 2008
Selecting ERP System
This is an article Mr. Andy Pratico wrote for APICS on selecting ERP systems. I hope you pull out a few nuggets.
Andy Pratico
Infor
C: 801-602-9246
An ERP Selection Process that Guarantees Results!
There are over 1,000 manufacturing systems in North America and yet The Wall Street Journal has stated that 73 % of all manufacturers are dissatisfied with their current ERP systems.
Why?
There are a number of theories why implementations have problems:
- Poor planning or no planning at all
- Top Management not involved or did not commit to the project- Unreliable data
- Lack of training or implementation assistance
- Poor selection process
- Lost project momentum- Business processes are not corrected
But the main reason that implementations fail is the legacy selection process commonly used is flawed.
The Budget Approval Dance
The first step in any selection process is expenditure approval. Middle managers spend days defining their selection process plan. The more detailed the budget approval request is, the more detailed the selection plan is, the more due diligence is assumed and therefore perceived risk is lessened. The legacy selection plan usually contains:
- A multiple page, detailed system requirements definition (sent to a short list of vendors for confirmation), and submitted as a Request for Proposal (RFP)
- Multiple, onerous sales demos with various systems
- Telephone reference calls on the selected vendor
The middle manager can get so obsessed with budget approval; and, the upper manager can get so consumed in confirming the selection process is sound, that the most important objective in selecting a new system can be overlooked. The most important goal should be to ensure your company is successful with the new system! Any other consideration should be secondary.
Systems Today Are Function-Rich
The more you evaluate systems, the more you recognize that all have an abundance of functionality. The reason they fail is not a lack of information, it is the exact opposite. They are too cumbersome and too difficult to learn.
Then why do we devote our entire search to evaluating which system has the best and/or most functionality? Is it because new systems are purchased only every ten years, therefore, no one individual has the experience to learn from their mistakes?
Let™s review the legacy selection approach described above.
1 - Issue a detailed multi-page novel called the system requirements list to all software vendors to fill out (honestly) thereby confirming which match. However software companies want to remain in consideration, and are motivated to answer each question with a carefully worded, yes we do that!
2 - The selection team then shoulders the arduous task of reviewing sales demos in an attempt to decipher the differences. Sales demos are designed to look good. If the sales demo did not look good, the software company would go out of business. Software companies hire professional presenters who know precisely which keystrokes will present their software in the best light.
Remember the first day you looked at the system you use now? How difficult did it seem then versus today? How many months did it take before the haze lifted and the system became second nature? Is it possible to recognize the pros and cons of a system you are reviewing for the first time in an 8 hour, sales demo?
3 - You now call references to confirm that companies are happy with their systems. Where did you get the references from? Did the software vendor carefully select bullet-proof customers that swear the software turns water into wine?
4 - And voila ¦ you have selected the very best system for your company. Or have you?
A Fresh Approach To Selecting ERP Systems
If time is money, then speed is profit. How can we speed up the ERP selection process, yet not fall into the same traps as the majority do, which fail?
The most important factor in selecting a new system is: to make sure your company is successful with the new system. If 73% of manufacturers are not satisfied with their current ERP system and used the same selection process as you, why will yours be different? Maybe a different process should be investigated.
Not to mention that the step-by-step, due diligence process historically used, costs $10,000s of internal resource time.
This 3-Step Plan is only common sense. But best of all, it will take far less time to complete and your results will be guaranteed!
Step 1 " Define the critical requirements that are unique to your company and match to the vendors on your short list. Please note: Critical requirements only. You have to assume that all systems will have an Aged Trial Balance. This list should not be longer than two pages. Only continue to step 2 with those that sufficiently match.
Step 2 " Visit a company using the system, preferably one you can drive to, in a similar industry and size as your own. You may not get all criteria matched, but ask. With these demands, it is more difficult for the vendor to select who you visit.I once heard of a manufacturer who was paid to be a positive reference for a software firm, yet they did not even use the software.A visit is so much better than a phone call that in fact, it can take the place of the sales demo entirely.
Step 3 " After the first 2 steps, you should have a favorite system. If you are still not comfortable enough to take the plunge, this final step eliminates any further risk. Ask this vendor to bring in the trainer you will work with after the sale is complete, not the professional presenter. Trainers have to live with their promises after the sale, and will be quite forward about what the system can, or cannot do.
Have the trainer set up the software around your requirements and enter a sub-set of your data. The intention will be to present the system as if it were live at your facility. Offer to pay for this service. Trainers are not offered to prospective clients because existing customers are paying them to implement their projects. This proof of concept pilot may cost a few thousand dollars, but will be far less expensive than the time-consuming step-by-step method.
The most important factor in selecting a system is to make sure your company is successful with the new system. This 3-step process will guarantee results. Why would you use any other method?
Remember, if you fail to implement, why do you care what the software does?
Jun 5, 2008
Key Success Factors for ERP Implementation:
Key Users Time |
Users Adaptability |
Dedicated Project Team |
Effective Communication |
Steering Committee Involvement |
Direct involvement of Stake Holders |
Balance Resources/Time/Cost Triangle |
Users Willingness |
Healthy Data Collection |
Less Customization |
Acceptance of Change Management |
Wish/Must list agreement |
Integrating Other Applications with Microsoft Dynamics AX
©2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Developer Help
Integrating Other Applications with Microsoft Dynamics AX
The ability to integrate Microsoft Dynamics AX with other systems inside and outside of the enterprise is a common requirement. There are a variety of technologies you can use to integrate Microsoft Dynamics AX with other applications and exchange data, which include the following:
- Application Integration Framework (AIF) – Exchanges data with other internal or external systems.
- Business Connector – Enables external applications to access Microsoft Dynamics AX data and invoke business logic.
- Common Language Runtime (CLR) – Provides interoperability with external .NET components and enables you to create and execute managed components from within X++ code.
The integration components in all these methods interact with Application Object Server (AOS) as shown in the following figure. Therefore, integration between Microsoft Dynamics AX and any other system is done only through AOS.
.gif)
Reproduced by permission from Greef, Pontoppidan, et al, Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 2006)
Microsoft Dynamics AX integration technologies
For more information about the integration technologies available, see Greef, Pontoppidan, et al. 2006. Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. 190-192. Redmond: Microsoft Press.
AIF
AIF provides an extensible framework within Microsoft Dynamics AX that enables the exchange of data. Data is exchanged in the form of XML documents. AIF replaces the Commerce Gateway for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions—Axapta 3.0) This framework provides a more secure business-to-business (B2B) and application-to-application (A2A) integration between your system and trading partners or other software systems.
AIF has the following types of exchanges:
- Adapter-based exchange – An asynchronous document exchange that uses an adapter in Microsoft Dynamics AX and does not require the installation of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). In this type of exchange, documents are moved through the system by using queues. Adapter transports supported by AIF are Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ), file system, Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, and outbound Web services.
- Web service exchange – A synchronous document exchange that uses Web services and requires that IIS be installed and configured to send and receive data. Because this type of exchange is synchronous, queues are not used. The Web services are generated automatically from the Microsoft Dynamics AX business logic. Developers with limited Web experience can easily create their own Web services. The Web service exchange differs from the outbound Web service adapter exchange in that it is synchronous, and it can accept requests. In contrast, the outbound Web service adapter cannot.
For more about AIF, see the Application Integration Framework Overview [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496535(AX.10,printer).aspx ] .
Business Connector
The Microsoft Dynamics AX Business Connector enables external applications to access Microsoft Dynamics AX data and invoke business logic. The Business Connector consists of the following components:
- .NET Business Connector – Provides interoperability with the Microsoft .NET Framework. Use these components for integration with external applications that are written in managed code and are built with the Microsoft .NET Framework. The .NET Business Connector requires the installation of the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.
- COM Business Connector - Provides interoperability with Microsoft COM. Use these components for integration with external applications that are compiled to the COM specification.
For more information about the differences between the .NET Business Connector and the COM Business Connector, see Differences Between the .NET and COM Business Connectors [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa589564(AX.10,printer).aspx ] .
CLR
CLR provides interoperability with external .NET components and enables you to instantiate and execute managed components from within X++ code. This interoperability is achieved with X++ language statements. These statements enable you to instantiate objects within Microsoft Dynamics AX and set them to objects in managed assemblies. In X++, the CLRObject and CLRInterop classes are used to wrap external objects. Calls can be made to external object methods through the object wrappers.
For more information about CLR, see Greef, Pontoppidan, et al. 2006. Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. 110-113. Redmond: Microsoft Press.
See Also
CLRObject Class [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa632606(AX.10,printer).aspx ]
CLRInterop Class [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa892320(AX.10,printer).aspx ]
Application Integration Framework Overview [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496535(AX.10,printer).aspx ]
Business Connector Overview [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496526(AX.10,printer).aspx ]
Jun 3, 2008
Interesting read from MSDynamicsWorld.com
Interesting read...
by News Editor
May 19, 2008
What SAP Knows but Won’t Admit: Scaling Down Harder than Scaling up
Good blog read: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/sbp/?p=281 nailing SAP’s issues with BBD and the NetWeaver platform dependencies
Posted by Ann All on May 9, 2008 at 10:49 am
When re-engineering business processes, moving from simple to complex is usually less of a challenge than the other way around.
During my stint as a reporter covering the automated teller machine industry, I interviewed a major player that took a bath on a deal with a partner that was, for lack of a better word, dicey. Why had it ever gotten involved with such a partner, I asked an executive.
Simple, he said. His company couldn’t figure out how to cost-effectively modify its manufacturing processes to produce the low-cost machines the other company churned out. Even if it could, it had no idea how to sell to the kinds of customers who bought those machines.
Such discomfort with courting smaller business seems to be plaguing SAP, with its ill-fated Business ByDesign, its first effort at software-as-a-service and the product that was supposed to help it tap into the SMB market.
A Gartner analyst last summer called it “a big bet” for the German software giant, one upon which it was betting its profitability. So far, it’s not paying off. SAP announced that it expects to sign fewer than 1,000 Business ByDesign customers this year and is scaling back the rollout of the software. It will also cut back spending on Business ByDesign.
Part of the problem, writes InfoWorld blogger Bill Snyder, is that Business ByDesign is too closely tied to Netweaver 7.1, “SAP’s latest iteration of the big honking platform that nobody likes.” SaaS is designed to reduce complexity, but SAP spent nearly four years developing
Business ByDesign — and precious little of that time apparently went to coming up with a workable license model. Writes Snyder:
SAP set a price of $149 per user and tried to work backward to a cost structure that allowed for a reasonable profit, but hasn’t been able to do it.
An even bigger issue, notes Snyder, is that SAP doesn’t seem to understand that SMBs don’t necessarily want an entire software stack from the same vendor. He writes:
The wave of consolidation that has swept the enterprise software world since Oracle bought PeopleSoft has been accompanied by a drive on the part of the largest survivors to build and sell complete software stacks. Although there are reasons that the stack strategy offers benefits to the enterprise customer, it clearly doesn’t serve the interests of the little guy.
If SAP really wants to win SMB business, Snyder suggests it should consider buying Salesforce.com, which has legions of SMB fans. He doesn’t think that will happen, though, since it would be a tacit admission that SAP doesn’t know how to develop and sell software to SMBs. This isn’t something that SAP — or large competitors like Microsoft and Oracle — appear ready to acknowledge.
Unfortunately for SAP, the much-delayed Business ByDesign launch roughly coincided with the tanking economy. SAP’s financials took a hit in Q1, according to IT Jungle. In addition to ramp-up costs for the new software, the company is faced with an unfavorable euro-U.S. dollar exchange rate and acquisition costs related to its purchase of Business Objects. On the latter front, SAP is looking to eliminate software with similar functionality as it combines its products with Business Objects. Further slowing the ramp-up for Business ByDesign is “as much about cutting costs as anything else,” notes IT Jungle.
May 11, 2008
Consultants! Tool that really helps
It’s amazing, it’s something that I've been looking for years. The team has done a great job. I agree with BG comments that it may be the next networking tool.
Download and install, trust me, you will love it.
Thanks
Dynamics AX - Human Resources Users and Roles
—Maison Consulting & Solutions
—HR Organization Chart
—HR Manager
—Is responsible for strategic HR Planning & Budget. He establishes workplace compliance policies and assesses workforce trends. Claire works with individuals company wide and oversees sensitive investigations. In many organization, manages the entire day to day HR function.
—HR Assistant
—Provides Administrative support to the HR Office with recruitment and maintenance of worker information. Also coordinates special events.
—Training & Development Manager
—Develops and maintains training plans to achieve workforce skill and knowledge goals. Facilities career and succession planning
—Training Specialist
—Drives Training Programs. Notifies attendees, record attendance, manages follow up and maintains training Vendor Relationships
—Staffing Recruitment Manager
—Manages recruiting and prepares key staffing metrics. Works with vendors to handle recruiting tasks. Knows what is happening at each stage of the process.
—Staffing Specialist
—Assists with staffing programs. Tracks candidates through all recruitment stages and coordinates interviews and followup communications.
—Compensation & Benefits
—Conducts compensation and benefits analysis. Maintains fairness in pay structures and ensures job analysis is tied to compensation planning. Handles preferred HR vendors relationships
—Compensation and Benefits Specialist
—Manages compensation and benefits plans. May be involved in maintaining job descriptions and analyzing salary surveys. Responds to benefits and attendance requests, conducts benefits sessions and verifies billing accuracy
—Payroll Administrator
—Collects information to process the payroll and posts to the GL
—Takes care of Tax calculation and reporting
—HR Generalist
—Performs daily HR activities and overseas HR and compliance policy. Supports the management team on training and development, performance management and employee relations.
—What to be done by who?
—Manage Organization
—Plan Organizational Elements
¡President
¡HR Manager
—Manage Work environment
¡HR Manager
¡Compensation and Benefits
¡HR Generalist
—Manage Workforce
¡HR Manager
¡HR Assistant
¡HR Generalist
—Off board workers
¡Sales Manager
¡HR Assistant
¡Compensation & Benefits
¡HR Generalist
—Recruit Workforce
—Source Jobs
¡President
¡Sales Manager
¡HR Generalist
—Manage recruitment
¡Sales Manager
¡HR Assistant
¡HR Manager
¡Staffing Recruitment Manager
—Onboard Workers
¡HR Assistant
¡HR Generalist
—Retain Workforce
—Manage Training
¡HR Assistant
¡Training & Development Manager
¡HR Manager
—Manage Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
¡Training & Development Manager
¡HR Generalist
—Manage Time & Attendance
¡Staffing Recruitment Manager
¡Compensation and Benefits
—Motivate workforce
—Manage Performance
¡Sales Manager
¡HR Assistant
¡Training & Development Manager
¡HR Manager
¡HR Generalist
¡Super Sales Rep
—Manage compensation
¡HR Manager
¡Sales Manager
¡Staffing recruitment Manager
¡Compensation and Benefits
—Manage Benefits
¡Compensation and Benefits
—
—
Apr 25, 2008
GP update from Partner Source - Security Planning for GP
Dear All,
Please see the attached “Planning for Security” for Dynamics GP, please read it carefully and you will understand security implications in GP.
Warm regards,
Usman Manzoor
Manager Projects, North
Apr 24, 2008
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX
Microsoft Dynamics™ AX
Implement Best Practices, Gain Insight, and Promote Efficiency with Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX
White Paper
Date: March, 2006
Table of Contents
Recipe or Formula Management 3
Costing for Co-Products and By-Products 5
Multiple Containers, Packaging, and Variations of a Main Item 6
Lot Disposition and Status with Quarantine Management 8
Multi-Dimensional Inventory Views 9
Rebates and Trade Merchandise Spending 9
Trade and Merchandise Allowances 10
Defining Data for Rebates and TMA Programs 10
Reporting and Documentation 11
An Integrated Business Management System 11
A Flexible, Scalable Platform 13
Faster Return on Your Investment 13
Microsoft Quality Assurance and Support 13
Introduction
Today's process manufacturers face enormous pressures. In order to remain competitive, these businesses need to convert raw materials efficiently and cost-effectively into final products, while addressing a broad range of regulatory and customer requirements. They must constantly review and evaluate their internal processes to keep their operating costs low while controlling the variability of raw materials at each stage of production. Regulations may change, trading partners and suppliers may be replaced, and raw material quality may improve or degrade, all of which potentially dictate adjustments in formulas or recipes.
Process manufacturers require solutions that combine the planning and reporting capabilities of traditional business management systems with the unique tracking, control, and multi-dimensional inventory requirements of process manufacturing. Using these capabilities they can integrate the entire process manufacturing life cycle and increase the flow of information internally and with customers and trading partners. As a result, process manufacturers can better manage all the variables required to make and deliver high-quality products to custom specifications, gain visibility into production and supply chain activities, optimize capacity, comply with regulatory requirements, and drive continuous process improvement.
Designed specifically for the process manufacturer, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, formerly Microsoft®
Business Solutions–Axapta®, can help companies increase the speed and efficiency of their manufacturing operations, communicate more effectively with their extended supply chain, and provide real-time information to gain deeper insight into their businesses. This white paper describes the unique requirements of process manufacturers and discusses how Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can address those needs.
This white paper contains an overview of Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX and a summary of key functions and concepts. Process manufacturing encompasses a wide range of operations. For example, chemical companies often use formulas, while most food and beverage manufacturers use recipes. Likewise, manufacturers in different process industry segments configure products for customers differently. Food, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies tend to use containers and packaging, while basic metals and pulp and paper companies often use variations of end items. For the purposes of this paper, the terms "formula management" and "recipe management" are synonymous.
While the unique characteristics of certain process manufacturing segments may seem important to differentiate, the underlying management and planning techniques used in all segments are similar. A single software solution can address most of the collective set of business requirements. The differences, however, between process and discrete manufacturers are fundamental and cannot be addressed well with a single software solution.
Recipe or Formula Management
Discrete products are assembled from a fixed quantity of components included in a bill of materials and are produced in a relatively linear, predictable manner. On the other hand, process industry products result from a series of mixing operations, chemical reactions, extractions, or other actions that transform raw materials into a final, sellable product. Recipes generally include more variations than the typical discrete bill of material.
In addition, variations in intermediate results and material flow are much greater in process than in discrete manufacturing. Some raw materials used in a recipe may be lost through evaporation, spillage, and the like. Process industry manufacturing personnel often must make adjustments in quantities, ingredients, and production steps as the result of unanticipated outcomes. In many companies, managing actual production variances is considered an art and frequently represents the key to ensuring manufacturing efficiency and profitability.
A recipe has three forms:
- Standard Recipe: The standard recipe defines the basic formula or listing of ingredients for an item and includes raw materials, quantity or volume of those ingredients, the routing the product follows through the plant, and the standard or anticipated costs of production. Most manufacturers freeze the standard recipe for some period of time, such as a year, a quarter, or a month.
- Adjusted Recipe—as planned: When production is planned using the exploded recipe, the production manager makes on-the-fly adjustments to the recipe, such as increasing the amount of raw materials required, changing the raw material itself, or selecting alternate routings. Generally changes such as these are made because the production manager has evaluated the production environment, condition of on-hand materials and equipment, and similar information not available to the system. From this information the production manager determines which variations must be made to achieve the desired result. At this point the production order has not been released to the floor, so these one-time changes are made to process and recipe details included in the production order itself. An example of this sort of decision is increasing the amount of flour in a recipe for a batch of bread based on the relative humidity of the plant.
- Adjusted Recipe—as produced: The adjusted recipe–as produced describes the actual combination of ingredients used in production. It differs from the standard recipe and bill of material, and from the adjusted recipe–as planned, because of any additional unplanned events that may have occurred such as:
- Using non-standard amounts of raw materials
- Completing more product than planned (due to a better-than-expected yield or a larger-than-needed shrinkage factor)
- Consuming more or less time at a work center or in the overall schedule than anticipated
- Obtaining unexpected co-products and/or by-products that, in turn, can be considered raw materials or finished goods
- Changes in production factors such as degrading machine tolerances or environmental changes
Using the example from above, the production manager adjusted the amount of flour in the bread recipe at the time the order was planned and released. When the operator actually begins to mix the dough, the relative humidity has changed again and a different amount of flour must be used. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a flexible approach to formula and recipe management. Not only can Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX manage multiple variations of a recipe, the system can also maintain and employ alternate recipe attributes, such as whether ingredients are defined as a percentage of the recipe size or as a fixed quantity.
Raw Materials Management
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a flexible approach to handling raw materials, including:
- Managing and tracking co-products and by-products.
- Analyzing the costs associated with co-products and by-products.
- Managing multiple containers and packaging variations of a main item, including two-level recipes and catch weights for package variations from a single main item.
Co-Products and By-Products
Production processes can yield materials other than the planned end item. These additional outputs, called co-products or by-products, may be reused, sold at a profit, or disposed of at a cost. Co-products and by-products are symptoms of the volatility that can occur while manufacturing process items. Generally, co-products are desirable secondary outputs from the manufacture of the planned product which can be sold or reused profitably. By-products are unavoidable secondary outputs that may be sellable or usable, or they may be waste that must be disposed of at a cost. Occasionally by-products can be sold for a profit, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables manufacturers to efficiently manage, track, and account for the costs of multiple outputs from a single production run, as shown below.
Figure 1. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can help you plan and manage multiple co-products
and by-products resulting from the same item or process.
Costing for Co-Products and By-Products
While each process manufacturing company handles the costing of co-products and by-products in a slightly different way, the process generally focuses on three best practices:
- No cost
- A manual, hard-allocated cost
- A pro rata cost based on a percentage of the weight of the total recipe
Costing for co-products and by-products can be determined by the percentage of the total cost of the recipe allocated to them. If producing a by-product results in a material that can be used or sold, the cost allocation is positive. However, if the manufacturer has to pay to dispose of the by-product, the cost allocation will be negative. For example, the main item might cost 10 percent more to produce because of the cost of disposing of a by-product. As a result, the main item carries 110 percent of the cost. A negative value would be applied as a burdened cost on the remainder of the items in the recipe, based upon percentage.
Co-products always result in a positive cost allocation. Consequently, a co-product can assume part of the recipe costs. For example, if a co-product weighs 10 percent of the total production output, then the main item costs 10 percent less, or carries only 90 percent of the cost. To make this allocation, a user must select a pro rata cost-allocation option instead of the no-cost option when creating the recipe for the product.
A recurrent co-product or by-product is both a raw material in the formula and a result of production. For example, if 10 percent of a raw material does not dissolve when it is mixed with other ingredients, this quantity can be recovered at a later stage in production and received back into inventory as a co-product to be reused in a subsequent production run.
Multiple Containers, Packaging, and Variations of a Main Item
Process manufacturers generally handle packaging in one of two ways:
- As end items of a main item: In most cases, an end item is a main item that is produced and stored in multiple containers or variations.
- As separate stock-keeping units (SKUs) packaged with a specified unit amount: End item functionality manages the situation where each case or container has a different actual weight compared with its theoretical or standard weight.
Defining different item codes and recipes for each of the various end items is not necessary because each end item derives from the same main item, follows the same recipe, and probably results from the same production run. In a discrete manufacturing system the only alternative in such a situation is to assign every container/variation combination a unique finished-goods SKU and, in turn, create a separate bill of material for each combination.
Process industries manufacturers consider these end items as products produced in different containers (such as 10-lb. versus 20-lb.), different packaging types (such as private label packaging), or simply as variations of the main item (such as various widths). Using the enhanced configuration capability of Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the user can capture multiple variations for a main item without creating unique item codes and recipes for each.
When an item is defined in this way, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX displays the total inventory balance by the base unit of measure (UOM) and the breakdown by container type at the same time, on the same screen.
This view enables a salesperson to accurately assess inventory levels and quickly suggest substitute products when the exact type requested by the customer is not available.
Catch Weight
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, a number of weight values are defined on the item master, including normal minimum weight, absolute minimum weight, normal maximum weight, and absolute maximum weight. Process manufacturers must capture the exact weight for packaged products, because the packaged weight often varies from the standard or anticipated weight. Catch weight represents the actual weight of a product in a container, as opposed to the anticipated or theoretical weight of a container or item.
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a conversion factor for calculating the difference between the weight of the product's base inventory unit and that of the packaging configuration. Still, the actual weight of each case must be recorded accurately in order to evaluate pricing, generate invoicing, determine inventory valuation, and generate reporting.
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the warehouse staff scans or enters the actual weight of each case, skid, or batch when inventory is picked, packed, and shipped. The total actual weight—the catch weight—is updated for the order, and the customer is invoiced for the actual quantity shipped. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX also maintains an additional unit identifying the pack quantity for catch weight items. This permits more accurate finished-goods management and enables manufacturers to cost and sell by container/variation combination for each main item.
Two-Level Recipes
After a user defines a recipe that can be produced and stored in multiple variations—a two-level recipe—Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX automatically populates the list of raw materials specified whenever a particular packaging configuration is produced.
Each time a main item is produced and a corresponding packaging type is selected, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX designates the appropriate amounts of raw materials for that packaging type, without having to create multiple item numbers or recipes for each main item/end item combination. In addition, multiple packaging types can be produced at the end of a single production run.
Lot Management
Many process manufacturers need extensive lot management capabilities. Lot management functionality in Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX goes well beyond simple lot tracking. For example, process manufacturers must be able to track materials:
- From a specific supplier
- As intermediate and finished goods
- When created during production
- As sold to specific customers
Production Date Tracking
For accurate reporting and tracking, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX captures the production date, as well as the lot number, of raw materials received from a specific vendor.
Using the production date of each raw material or finished good, the system calculates the shelf life of the given lot. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can also manage shelf advice date (for example, "best before" date), and the retest date for every lot of a particular product. (Often a product must be retested on a regular basis to ensure the quality of the product is still acceptable.)
Production date and shelf life are used to determine which lots to pick, employing either first in/first out (FIFO) or first expired/first out (FEFO) rules.
Lot Picking Options
In process manufacturing, different lots of the same product can have different chemical attributes. Consequently, when a customer reorders a given item for the same use, the product from the original lot must be sold or used in production to ensure the identical result. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables the user to specify whether the material or product may come from any lot, must come from a full lot, or must come from the same lot that was shipped to the customer on the last order. As a result, the customers can request a specific lot to match specifications and parameters used in previous orders.
Although most manufacturers provide their customers with specifications for standard products, some customers order products with more precise requirements or formulas that differ slightly from the standard formula or recipe. To fulfill these orders, the manufacturer either must produce a special lot that meets the customer's request exactly or find a lot already in inventory that meets those requirements. If a lot meeting the customer's needs is already in inventory, locating and pulling it to fulfill the customer order usually is quicker and more cost-effective than producing a special lot. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps the manufacturer maintain exact lot location information and accurate specifications by lot, making it easy to quickly determine if a lot meeting the customer's requested specifications is in stock or whether one must be planned and produced.
Shelf Life Management
Process manufacturers manage shelf life and the selection of products for sale or use in several ways:
- FIFO
- FEFO
- Best Before ("best if used before the given date")
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, manufacturers can choose a picking option and link that option to the quality control (QC) system for each product. By using this capability, those lots that have been tested and those requiring retesting because they have been on the inventory floor too long can be quickly identified. Managing material shelf life helps ensure that products used or shipped still conform to specifications and have not changed or degraded over time or from exposure to air, moisture, or other environmental factors.
Lot Disposition and Status with Quarantine Management
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the user can specify one of two main inventory dispositions—available or unavailable—for a given lot, and then define multiple statuses per disposition.
A product is considered unavailable in Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX after the lot has been moved to a quarantine area or designated as quarantined. Users can define multiple quarantine areas within a warehouse, such as separate testing or damaged goods locations. After a lot has been quarantined and flagged as unavailable, the user can record multiple reasons why the particular lot was quarantined.
Reasons include:
- QC hold
- QC failed
- Returned
- Damaged
Tracking lot status provides manufacturers with information about why a product is unavailable and supports correct disposition decisions based on whether the lot is simply waiting for testing to be finished or has been tested and failed.
Multi-Dimensional Inventory Views
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX also enables manufacturers to define and monitor their inventory in various dimensions. While systems intended to manage discrete manufacturing data provide one or two inventory categories, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can capture and track up to five. These dimensions enable items to be grouped into a number of categories based on specific attributes. By assigning multiple identification criteria or descriptive data to a given item and by making specific inventory data easier to track, find, and manage, manufacturers can improve production and significantly enhance customer service.
Rebates and Trade Merchandise Spending
Many process manufacturers, especially those in consumer packaged goods and commodity industries, use rebates and trade spending programs to promote their products. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides users with effective tools to monitor and manage these promotional programs.
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX calculates rebates in the same way it calculates sales commissions. However, the system credits the amount to the customer rather than to the salesperson. In most cases rebates are cash payments or discounts taken against a customer's invoice. On the other hand, trade merchandise spending programs usually involve an amount of money accrued by a customer to be spent for events and promotional items.
Figure 2. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables a manufacturer to define specific rebate
and trade credit policies for each customer.
Rebates are typically defined by a customer code and item code, and can be calculated in several ways:
- Amount per kilo or pound
- Amount per case
- Percent of sale
Rebates are calculated at invoicing, posted to the general ledger, and accrued. Rebate amounts are not shown on the customer invoice, but the rebate can be paid to the customer in the form of an account credit or a cash payment. Calculation methods used by Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX are:
- Rebates by customer by product
- Rebates by customer group by product
- Rebates by customer by product group
- Rebates by groups of customers by groups of products
Trade and Merchandise Allowances
In addition to rebates, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX supports trade and merchandise allowances (TMA). Trade and merchandise allowances are defined in the same way as rebates, but TMA amounts are posted to general ledger accounts. TMA amounts are typically defined by product category and may vary by customer or customer chain. For example:
Chain | Product A | Product B | Product C |
Store A | 3.0% | 3.0% | 2.0% |
Chain C | 2.5% | 3.0% | 1.0% |
Customers usually spend TMAs on promotional items offered by the manufacturer. With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, multiple rebates or TMA programs can be defined and applied to a single order. However, the system calculates and applies all rebates and TMA amounts individually.
Defining Data for Rebates and TMA Programs
In using rebates and trade merchandising, users can specify several kinds of data, including:
- Rebate type or trade merchandising allowance type.
- Calculation as a percentage of gross sales, percentage of net sales, dollars per case, or dollars per UOM.
- Definition by all, group, and table for customer and item.
- Effective date and expiration date.
Payments and accruals can be calculated at several intervals:
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Yearly
In most rebate and trade promotion programs, the manufacturer pays different customers in different ways. Some customers will have the rebates or merchandising allowances credited to their accounts, while others will request direct payment.
Reporting and Documentation
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides easy-to-read reports reflecting actual sales amounts (the invoice amount after all discounts, rebates, and trade spending allowances). With this report, managers are able to assess the true margin generated by specific items or programs.
The system also provides a monthly report by customer showing:
- Opening accrual amount
- Additional accruals
- Payments and accounts receivable (A/R) deductions
- Closing balance
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX also creates a rebate and TMA statement for each customer. Using this report, the customer and the manufacturer's salesperson can see what credits the customer has earned over a given time for various products and programs, helping to keep salespeople informed and strengthen customer relationships.
An Integrated Business Management System
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX combines a proven, tested business management solution platform—Microsoft Dynamics AX—with powerful process manufacturing and distribution capabilities. This means that although Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX is designed specifically for process industry companies, it also integrates tightly with core Microsoft Dynamics functionality, providing a complete end-to-end business management system.
Solution Map
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides the industry-specific capabilities manufacturers need to optimize their operations. The following solution map shows the major functionality provided by Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX.
A Flexible, Scalable Platform
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX has built-in flexibility and scalability to help manufacturers to expand operations or extend their solutions. The layered solution architecture enables businesses to customize one tier without affecting functionality on others. As a result, the potential risk of customization and upgrades is reduced, helping to ensure a long-term solution with a low TCO.
Maximizing IT Investments
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, employees can count on a familiar user experience, one that looks and works like other Microsoft applications and exploits the capabilities of the full range of Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office Word 2003. Close integration with powerful Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, and Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 can help maximize existing IT investments.
Faster Return on Your Investment
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can also provide a quick payback on investment. According to a research study by Nucleus Research, Inc. conducted in 2004, 75 percent of participating Microsoft Dynamics AX customers achieved a positive return on investment (ROI) within an average of only 23 months. The remainder had used Microsoft Dynamics AX for periods of less than two years and expected to achieve a payback within a few more months. More than half of respondents reduced staffing costs as a direct result of their Microsoft Dynamics AX deployments, while 44 percent reduced IT costs in moving from their legacy systems. Other positive results cited in the study ranged from more inventory turns and improved delivery times to productivity gains and increases in working capital.
Microsoft Quality Assurance and Support
The reliability, connectivity, and performance of Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX are backed by Microsoft quality assurance and support. To provide high quality and excellent value, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX has been reviewed by Microsoft's internal development and quality assurance staff and is supported by Microsoft Support Services. A manufacturer can count on the overall assurance of receiving support for its entire solution from one place, rather than having to contact different people and organizations for different support needs. In addition, technical review of the solution prior to launch and throughout the product life cycle helps ensure greater overall quality, performance management, and stability through service packs or major releases.
Conclusion
To remain competitive, process manufacturers must overcome many challenges, including local and global competitors, increasing regulatory requirements, inventory and resource availability and allocation issues, and operational inefficiencies and constraints. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides powerful, flexible tools for process manufacturers to streamline their front-office and back-office operations, maximize the return from their current customer bases, win new customers by becoming an effective competitor, and more quickly react to market shifts and new business opportunities.
Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can be tailored easily with add-on functionality while still maintaining low total cost of ownership, so manufacturers can adapt and upgrade their solutions over time with less risk and expense. The highly flexible, layered architecture enables Microsoft partners to provide valuable customizations and extensions to the Microsoft Dynamics AX product line to fit unique process manufacturing requirements.
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, manufacturers can invest in their futures by using a solution backed by a vast network of Microsoft Partners and independent software vendors, all dedicated to helping ensure that their Microsoft Dynamics AX solutions change and grow in pace with their businesses.
Microsoft believes that the key to helping businesses be more agile is empowering individual workers with tools that improve efficiency, enable them to focus on the highest-value tasks, maximize the impact of employees and workgroups, and drive deeper connections with customers and partners. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can help process manufacturers identify more efficient ways to implement best practices, communicate with their extended supply chains, gain deeper insight into their businesses with real-time information, and more quickly take advantage of new business opportunities.
Features Summary
Feature | Feature Description |
21CFR11 | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables users to more easily comply with FDA regulations such as 21 CFR Part 11 in the use of their enterprise systems by providing support for electronic signatures as well as complete audit control of the changes made throughout the system. |
Actual recipe | The actual recipe captures true raw material, machine usage, and labor consumed during production. While the standard, adjusted, and actual recipes may be the same, most often changes have been made during production and captured through shop floor reporting. |
Adjusted recipe | The adjusted recipe is a one-time change made to a standard recipe while the production batch is in planned status. This change enables the production manager to substitute raw materials or specify different direct amounts of ingredients than the standard recipe specifies. Such changes usually are made because of conditions unique to the given batch run. |
Assay/Potency concentration | Some items must be tested for the concentration of their contents in order to determine the actual quantity of the product to be consumed or sold. Concentration is the ratio of the quantity of the ingredient being measured to the total volume of the sample. For example, if the potency of a given item is 80 percent, a greater quantity of product will be required to reach the desired inventory levels than would be required if the potency concentration were 100 percent (for example, a bottle of alcohol at 40 percent indicates that it has a greater concentration of alcohol in the bottle than one at 5 percent). |
Best Before | The duration (measured as a number of days, months, or years from the production date) used by the system to calculate the date before which a given lot should be used. |
By-product | A by-product, like a co-product, is a secondary item resulting from a production run. Unlike a co-product, a by-product is considered by Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX as a product that is not planned or that may be disposed of, potentially at a cost. Regardless of final disposition, by-products are the result of a product run and are tracked as an item when received into inventory. |
Campaign scheduling | Ability to schedule similar products together and sequence the schedule in order to minimize setup and changeover time. |
Catch or nominal weight | Catch weight is the actual weight of an item or a group of items considered together, as opposed to the standard or theoretical weight of a container or item. For example, the theoretical weight of a case of meat is 10 pounds, but the actual or catch weight of the same case at time of production is 9.5 pounds. |
Computer-aided formulation | Computer-aided formulation (CAF) provides users with advanced scaling and management of dependencies between raw materials while making changes to an existing recipe. |
Continuous manufacturing | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can manage and plan production for a discrete manufacturer that is operating an environment without work orders. In this environment, work is planned and managed as a flow or a rate of production rather than as the completion of individual items. Production in continuous manufacturing environments generally is reported by period in either days or shifts based on finished-good production, and backflushing is used to relieve raw materials and components. |
Co-product | A co-product is a secondary product that is planned for in addition to the main end item in a production order. In certain industries, such as meat processing, co-products are actually just multiple items that will come out of a production order at the same time (since there is no main end item). Other industries with this outcome include pulp and paper, metals processing, and chemicals. A co-product can either serve as a raw material in the production of another end item or be sold as a finished good. |
Freight pricing and costing | Especially in bulk process industries, transportation represents a major component of receiving or shipping inventory costs. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX tracks costs for receiving or shipping and determines the transportation costs of products. |
Item substitution | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables users to substitute equivalent or replacement items for finished goods or raw materials, including "use-up effectivity," while maintaining complete tracking and history. |
Lot control | The Lot Control parameter determines if the product will be managed and tracked as part of a specifically identified grouping (a lot). Available options are By Lot (multiple units will make up a lot), By Unit, and Not Applicable. |
Materials Data Sheet Safety (MSDS) management | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX manages the following parameters:
Is it the first time a customer has ordered the product? Has there been a change to the recipe since the last time the product was ordered? Has it been three years since the last change to the product?
In each scenario, a message to the user will be prompted in order to help ensure that the MSDS sheet is sent to the customer. |
Network routing | In manufacturing planning systems, routings have traditionally been sequential (that is, processes follow each other in a linear way). A routing that accurately reflects true process manufacturing sequencing requires a network structure. This structure includes parallel and Y-type operations all within one production order. A network routing will include products being consumed throughout the production process as well as multiple outputs at different operations various. |
Percentage recipe | The Percentage Recipe parameter defines how the ingredients or materials of the recipe are defined. If this field is set to Yes, then some materials can be entered as percentages (raw material quantities must equal 100 percent). If the field is set to No, then raw materials can be entered only as absolute quantities. |
Quantity non-dependent or constant | This parameter indicates that material requirements are not affected by the size of the production batch. If a batch quantity is changed, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX adjusts the raw material quantities proportionally. |
Rebates and trade spending | Many process manufacturers, especially those in consumer packaged goods and commodity industries, employ rebates and trade spending programs to promote their products. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables manufacturers to define rebates and trade merchandise allowance programs, pay the participants, and account for the results. |
Recipe size | Recipe size defines the default quantity of an item to be produced, as specified in the recipe. For example, no less than 500 pounds of an item may be produced in a single batch. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables the user to define production constraints such as maximum batch size. In the above example, if the manufacturing order requires 1,000 pounds be produced, the system will launch two 500-pound orders to fulfill the requirement. |
Regulatory reporting | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX manages various environmental reporting requirements (such as OSHA reporting) and the necessary usage information as dictated by the government. |
Rework work orders | A rework work order is a production order for repeating specific production steps to correct or remanufacture an item that has failed quality tests. The item is reworked through the production process to help ensure that it meets quality specifications. A rework order differs from a regular production work order because the raw material and the finished good are the identical item, but additional costs for either the reprocessing or additional raw materials are added to the reworked finished item. |
Sales pegging | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables users to link a specific sales order to a specific manufacturing order. |
Scalable | The Scalable parameter indicates that if the quantity or amount of a particular raw material is changed, then the system should also adjust the batch size proportionally to the change made to the quantity of the scalable raw material. If the Scalable parameter equals Yes, then Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX will adjust other scalable quantities in the formula. For example, if a scalable raw material is increased by 10 percent, then the batch size will be adjusted accordingly, as will the quantity of all other raw materials that have the scalable flag set to Yes. |
Shelf advise | The number of days, months, or years after which a lot should be retested to ensure that it is still good. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX flags the item and notifies the user that retesting is required. |
Shelf life | The period of time a product remains effective, as measured in days, months, or years. Reports and picking strategies are determined based on the shelf life for a particular lot, using first in/first out (FIFO) or first expired/first out (FEFO) rules. |
Shrink factor | The Shrink Factor defines the percentage of the raw material that is lost because of evaporation, absorption, and so on. Shortages of raw materials can be prevented in production by assigning a shrinkage factor to a specific item during planning. Based on the shrink factor, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX will recommend greater material quantities (for example, if the shrink factor is 5 percent, then 5 percent more than the net quantity will be allocated to production). |
Specific gravity | The unit of measurement conversion for weight to volume and reverse. |
Split lots | In some circumstances, a lot of material or items may be divided into two or more new lots. When a lot is divided, each of the resulting smaller lots inherits or assumes the characteristics of the original lot. That is, the new lots retain the history and relevant qualities of the original lot. For example, in paper and basic metals processing, the manufacturer often produces a master roll that is then slit into sheets or rolls of different widths. Each narrower roll (or lot) inherits the characteristics of the original lot (master roll). |
Standard recipe | A standard recipe is defined as the set amount of raw materials, containers, co-products, and by-products to which all actual usage will be compared. Planning and costing engines use the standard recipe, although there may be several one-time changes to a recipe at the production batch level. |
Total Quality Management | Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX includes a Total Quality Management (TQM) module that enables a manufacturer to ensure that its operations meet the quality standards defined by the company. TQM includes both Quality Assurance and Quality Control functionality. |
Unit of measure (UOM) | Although every item defined in Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX must have a base UOM for inventory valuation, most process items are packaged, stored, and sold using different types of containers and, therefore, different units of measure. For example, bulk materials can be purchased in pounds or gallons and later sold in kilograms or liters. A company's standard UOM—used to value inventory, establish recipe quantities, and so on—must be linked to other units using a conversion factor. In Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, all UOMs are stored and maintained, rather than calculated each time they are used. |
Unit of measure (UOM) types | There are six types of UOMs: weight, length, volume, piece, area, and general. At various stages, a given material may be maintained in different UOMs. When the product changes from one UOM to another, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX uses a predefined constant, or conversion factor, to translate the actual quantity from one unit of measure to another. For example, to convert from a volume UOM to a weight UOM, the system uses the specific gravity field maintained in the item master record. |
Yield percentage | The yield percentage is the ratio of usable output from a process to its input. (For example, if the yield percentage is 95 percent, then usually 5 percent of a batch will be lost to spillage, evaporation, and so on.) |
For Additional Information
More Microsoft Dynamics AX information: www.microsoft.com/dynamics/ax.
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, this document should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.
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© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Axapta, BizTalk, Microsoft Dynamics, and the Microsoft Dynamics logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation or Microsoft Business Solutions ApS in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft Business Solutions ApS is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation.
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