Microsoft Dynamics AX – A complete business solution

Microsoft Dynamics AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX is the Microsoft’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution. It consists of almost all the business process software of all major industries. Before we start going into the detail of MS Dynamics AX, one should learn what makes a good ERP. If you don’t know ERP, please read the article Enterprise Resource Planning.

Microsoft Dynamics AX – An ERP system

Microsoft Dynamics ERP is a software that allows organizations or companies (small, mid and enterprise level) to manage their business and all the business process such as human resources, financials, supply chain management and project management. Since all business processes communicate with each other and get data from all the business process, the collected data then can be used for effective reporting, business analysis and to get business future insights and trends. This helps in getting the insights into where a business can gain cut costs, gain efficiency and utilize the human resources and get maximum output. As discussed in my article Enterprise Resource Planning, this is what is required from an ERP, which is to plan business in a way to get the maximum output and keep improving.

Why Microsoft Dynamics AX

Purpose-Built functions plus core ERP functionality

It provides comprehensive core ERP functionality for financials, human resources and operations management. The Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a purpose built foundation across multiple industries.

Extended Functionality

The Microsoft Dynamics AX partners have extended the core functionality to cope with the new business procedures and to keep providing customer with the proper solution to their problems. The good thing is that the extended functionality is available and is easily integrated with the core functionality.

Real-time information

The Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP allows organizations to update and share information across the company in real-time.

Supports cloud based

The Microsoft Dynamics AX can be deployed on premises on a server or it can be deployed as a cloud as the SaaS (Software as a Service). The future is cloud computing and has many benefits such as minimize initial investment of hardware and equipment, get your solution running quickly.

Integrated Financials

All the processes are integrated and communicate with each other and update data in all related or relevant processes.

Powerful Reporting

The Microsoft Dynamics Ax ERP system makes use of most of the existing state of the art Microsoft created technology such as IIS, web services, SQL Server to name a few. As I said in my previous article Enterprise Resource Planning that the purpose of using the software systems in the business is to get the reports and to make use to reports to analyze, measure and improve. This ERP supports the powerful reporting tool SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

Object-Oriented ERP

This is important for software engineers that Microsoft Dynamics AX is an object-oriented ERP system. For customers, it is also good since it is commonly accepted that every problem can be solved using Object-Oriented programming and this gives Microsoft Dynamics ERP an edge.

It is Microsoft

Be it Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, One Note; Microsoft products are really user-friendly and are used by majority for personal and/or office use. Being Microsoft gives Dynamics AX an edge as it uses other technologies of Microsoft and can be used by other software solutions of Microsoft. For example, it uses the Microsoft IIS server and SharePoint, and for exporting reports, it uses Microsoft Excel. Similarly, other Microsoft software, OS or devices or technology can use the data that lies with Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP.

The MS Dynamics AX is the most advanced ERP solution with the lowest cost of ownership. It is a great package having out-of-box functionality such as multi-dimension and multi-language capability.

Microsoft Dynamics AX – A complete business solution

Microsoft Dynamics AX is not a standalone system; it is a complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for enterprises. It is a business solution that supports both operational and administrative processes of organizations.

 

 

Meet your industry needs

The Microsoft Dynamics AX solution gives the customer prebuilt industry solutions for manufacturing, distribution, services, and the public sector. In addition to that Microsoft Partners all over the world are creating industry-specific solutions that are available for customers to buy.

 

The successful and best business solutions are Simple, Flexible and Powerful

Simple

The Microsoft Dynamics AX is just like any other Microsoft software in terms of simplicity, and usability. They are simple and easy-to-use and are quite user friendly. The software solution is designed in such a way that empowers the user.

Flexible

The solution is designed to be flexible and so it can be modified to cater future needs of the organization. The flexibility is achieved by building over the unified natural models that serve as a collection of business processes that reflects the real world processes.

Powerful

The Microsoft Dynamics AX suite has prebuilt modules or the solutions for industries such as manufacturing, retail etc along with the core ERP functionality that is Human Resources, Finance and operations management. It is equally powerful for the people who customize, modify or add a new dimension to the solution as well as powerful for the customer.

How you can implement Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP for your company

The business process re-engineering

Microsoft Dynamics AX is not a standalone software solution and not a small application that you just buy, run the setup and install by doing Next and Next. As I described in my previous post Enterprise Resource Planning that in order to implement ERP system, your business processes have to be re-engineered. Please read this article for a better understanding. The MS Dynamics AX implementation company analyzes your business by providing consultants and then they re-engineer your business processes or customize Dynamics AX to fit your business needs. This requires a lot of experience in business process and a huge amount of experience working with MS Dynamics AX.

Implementation and customization by the Microsoft Partners

There are companies all around the world (United States, Asia, Austraila and most importantly in Pakistan) that are implementing Dynamics AX for the small medium enterprises. They also customize the ERP system according to client’s requirement, upgrade from an older version of Dynamics AX to the latest version, migrate organization’s data from third-party ERP system to your new Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP and configure it. There are independent solution providers and vendors companies that creates new solutions on the Microsoft Dynamics AX. By new solutions I mean that are not either part of the core product or are not available as modules. Also there are companies creating industry specific solutions on Microsoft Dynamics AX.  Then there are companies that creates Add-ons for Dynamics AX to fulfill common needs for companies. There are companies that give training sessions to the end user or the consumer of newly implemented Dynamics AX.

What next? Where to go?

Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP system is a whole world that has lot to offer for the organization. To implement it is another big process. To learn to use it is another aspect. To understand the Dynamics AX for the administrator is another aspect. Microsoft Dynamics AX offers a great way for the application developers to create new code and customize existing functionality. It uses the existing .NET technologies and a mixture of other technologies specific to AX to create the best, for the customer, for the application developer and for the administrator. If you are planning to implement Dynamics AX for your company in Pakistan, or UAE, or USA, you can check with AxPulse, Maison Consulting and Solutions, and Systems Ltd. There is a detailed post about it “Companies offering MS Dynamics AX in Pakistan“.