• “Features don’t matter. In fact, focusing on features does nothing more than overcomplicate a message and reduce the adoption speed of a software product.”
• “Users care about a set of minimally viable features and a simple, user-focused design.”
• “Google is getting past focusing on features and working more on points of integration with other products.”

Please note:  I would NEVER refer to the industry leading feature set available in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 as “minimally viable” or say that they “don’t matter.” Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012’s features deliver rich, prebuilt, industry-operational functionality out of the box.  I would, however, agree that only focusing on features both bogs down the software selection process and detracts from the true areas of innovation behind Dynamics AX 2012 – its usability and its ease of integration.

Usability

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is a powerful tool because it empowers its users through its role-tailored user experience.  The role-based experience is familiar to Windows and Microsoft Office users and interoperates seamlessly with Office programs that users access every day, like Outlook and Excel.  Additionally, individual users’ are given immediate access to their top priority tasks and information critical to their own role through their individualize role center and dashboards.   By being role-tailored, Microsoft Dynamics AX provides better business intelligence, improves decision making, and empowers individual performance for the good of the organization.

Integration

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 was not a typical product release, it was an entire architectural redesign of a solution.  The essence of the new architecture is the system’s ability to interoperate with business and productivity applications, communications solutions, and the underlying technology platform.  Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 also includes Application Integration Framework enhancements and new programming concepts help IT professionals connect the solution while writing less code.

Unlike Google+, Microsoft Dynamics AX (previously Axapta) has been an ERP software industry leader for over a decade and the release of AX 2012 was widely anticipated with great excitement.  However, what Google+ and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 share is that their features are not nearly as important as their functionality – how they function for the individuals using them and how they function with other systems.

To learn more about the innovative release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, download the whitepaper:  Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – A New Generation in ERP

Unlike other product releases, Microsoft has completely rebuilt the architecture of the Dynamics AX software to create a solution that is powerful and agile, yet simple.

It combines comprehensive core ERP capabilities for financial, operational, and human resource management with prebuilt industry functionality to create a powerful solution for manufacturing, distribution, retail, services, and public sector organizations.

Dynamics AX 2012 promotes business agility by providing a set of unified, natural models that let you see, measure, and change your business in accordance with changing needs.

While its flexible configuration and customization make Dynamics AX 2012 simple itself, it also serves to make every process for both IT administrators and end users simpler, easier and more intuitive.  Its familiar Microsoft Office user interface which is based around over 40 different roles within an organization  makes it simple to adopt, learn and leverage to access information that is relevant to the work at hand while enhanced business intelligence functionality helps users uncover fresh insights faster and easier.

All of these factors combine to create an ERP product unlike any other on the market today.  To learn more about what makes this true, download the “Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – A New Generation of ERP” whitepaper today!

To see Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 in action, hear from companies already using it, and learn from Microsoft executives how it can meet your business needs, register today for the global virtually launch event on September 8th!

When reporting under IFRS, any changes to the standard will dramatically affect your business, processes, data, and systems.  Your system will need to:

• Have the functionality to meet IFRS requirements
• Handle more data and calculations on a different basis of accounting due to new disclosure and recognition requirements
• Support multi-GAAP accounting and parallel reporting requirements
• Adapt to system impacts at all levels: Source Systems, Sub-ledger, GL, Consolidation and Reporting
• Enable data adjustments and/or data conversions

In light of this, before you being an IFRS project, it is critical to your business to fully assess your system capabilities, functionality, and options, as well as identify any finance or IT projects that may be impacted.  If the changes needed to make your system IFRS compliant are overly complex and costly, consider implementing a solution that is already ready to comply with the standards and will adapt with the changing requirements, like Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Microsoft Dynamics AX supports IFRS compliance with robust tools, a flexible, adaptable foundation, and internal/external reporting transparency.  Implementing a Microsoft Dynamics AX solution now will prepare you for:

• A first time adoption of IFRS
• The presentation of financial statements
• Property, plant, and equipment requirements
• Changes in foreign exchange rates

Read Microsoft’s complete report on “IFRS for Microsoft Dynamics AX” to gain a better understanding of the implications of IFRS adoption on your business management systems and processes.

August 2011 – The much anticipated release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 will take place.  AX 2012 is designed to “empower people to anticipate and embrace change” through enhanced business agility and simplified decision making.   

May 1, 2011 – Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2 will become available, featuring significant business intelligence capabilities geared to make businesses more agile. 

April 11, 2011 – Today marks the official launch of Microsoft Dynamics SL 2011!  This new release promises a faster realization of the value of the software for users via a direct integration with Microsoft Project 2010.  Dynamics SL 2011 is currently available for purchase or upgrade. 

Ballmer and Tatarinov stressed that the enhancements made in these releases, as well as all of the Dynamics products now and going forward, are geared toward making businesses more dynamic through simplicity, value, and agility.

They also announced that this release will feature an entirely rebuilt architecture.  The goal of the new architecture is to meet the needs for agility and simplicity that help fulfill the requirements of customers operating in today’s rapidly changing business conditions.  The next generation Dynamics AX architecture promises:

A model-driven layered architecture which will accelerate the application development process, enabling partners and users to build solutions more quickly, to write less coding, and to deliver the solution more quickly.

Unified natural business process models that can be set up when implemented for an organization and more importantly can be kept up-to-date and support the changes in business requirements, without having to modify the software source code or even implement different ERP systems.

Seamless, pre-built interoperability between ERP, Microsoft Office productivity applications, and application platform technologies which offers productivity and familiarity by design.

Simply stated, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is being built to adapt easily to custom industry-specific solutions like Advanced Distribution Software for Microsoft Dynamics AX.  Download the Advanced Distribution Software Product Specs Brochure. 

The forthcoming Microsoft Dynamics AX “6” will feature:

A unique model-driven, layered architecture – This innovation accelerates software development, requires less coding than building from scratch, and eases maintenance and upgradability.

Pre-built interoperability with the Microsoft stack – By enabling this interoperability with the Microsoft Application Platform and other Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, developers will spend less time on technical integration and compatibility.

A unified ERP solution with pre-built capabilities for five industries and 38 countries – This solution provides a rich foundation that allows ISVs to rapidly expand their solutions to new verticals and geographies.

What does all of this mean to you, the Microsoft Dynamics AX user or prospective user?  It means that the next generation of Dynamics AX will be easier than ever to mold to the unique needs of, not just your industry, but your specific organization. 

Learn about a complete Microsoft Dynamics AX solution for the distribution industry:  Advanced Distribution Software

Leaders in this area demonstrate a clear vision and the ability to execute against this vision.  Midmarket ERP leaders must:

• Have deep and robust functionality that address a range of core user requirements
• Be straightforward and simple to use
• Be designed or streamlined for low total cost of ownership
• Be prepared to evolve their products with tools for embedded analytics
• Have user interfaces that allow for easy adoption by different types of users
• Have compelling strategies for addressing the ongoing market changes related to emerging technologies and extending their systems with industry-specific solutions.
• Cultivate a broad and generally overwhelming level of customer satisfaction in a number of geographies and industries

According to Gartner researchers, Microsoft Dynamics AX has proven its unique ability to execute through its long track record and above-average growth rates in the midmarket, its Microsoft Office-like user interface making it both easy to learn and intuitive to use, and its joint innovation model which provides both strong out-of-the-box functionality for select industries along with partner-built industry specific functionality.

Microsoft Dynamics AX boasts an equally high completeness of vision by developing six industry functionality layers that are being built into the core solution and continuing to develop integration with other components of the Microsoft technology stack.

Microsoft Dynamics AX is joined in the Leader’s Quadrant by SAP Business All-in-One.  To see how the two solutions stack up side-by-side, read our comparison of Dynamics AX vs. SAP Business All-in-One.

If you strictly look at what the software companies have to say about their products, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of what the solutions are really all about.  SAP’s messaging is very focused on promoting their proven implementation methodology.  Despite also having a proven implementation strategy behind its products, Microsoft Dynamics AX is implemented by the trusted partner that you select thereby freeing Microsoft to focus on the user experience with the product post-implementation.  

At Socius, we believe that implementation is just the beginning of your journey with an ERP solution.  Therefore, we want to compare how Microsoft Dynamics AX and SAP All-in-One compare functionally:

Ease of Use
A recent Keystone Strategy research paper revealed that Microsoft Dynamics AX end users on average rated their experience with Microsoft applications more favorably than SAP users rated their experience with SAP.  In fact, Dynamics AX beat out SAP by 8% – 27% in every category, including transactional efficiency, business insight, collaboration, familiarity, and flexibility.  Users ranked Dynamics AX as 17% more usable than SAP.  This is most likely due to the familiar and intuitive interface that reduces the learning curve and training costs for new users. 

Role-based User Interface
Both Dynamics AX and SAP provide role-specific user interfaces, but they go about it in slightly different manners.  SAP offers a family of user interfaces, each having its own role structures which can add extra work for IT to deploy and upgrade.  On the flip side, Microsoft delivers role-tailored information directly to Role Centers which are personalized home pages for each user, enabling people to cut through the clutter and delivering just the information they need, where and when they need it.

Portals
SAP All-in-One provides a portal experience via SAP Enterprise Portal (EP) which requires that user access must be set-up separately in the Portal in addition to security set-up within All-in-One. Microsoft Dynamics AX offers out-of-the box portal capabilities that do not require customers to re-implement security features.

Ease of Customization
Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a layered architecture where partners and customers each have a layer where they can make customizations without disrupting each other’s work, making on-going changes and upgrades more manageable. With SAP All-in-One, while customers and partners can each have separate object ranges for customizations, they are still on the same layer which can lead to additional testing and expense.

Self-service Business Intelligence (BI)
With self-service access to information and analytical tools, you can improve productivity and reduce demand on valuable IT resources. Some self-service BI exists within SAP, but often companies are required to deploy SAP Business Warehouse which requires its own server, database, and security scheme.  Microsoft Dynamics AX meets the spectrum of BI needs by delivering a flexible and adaptable business management solution with integrated analysis, communication, and collaboration capabilities that don’t require costly add-ins or a separate analytics program.

Learn more about this topic by downloading the complimentary “Empower Your People with Self-Service Business Intelligence” whitepaper.

In order to be eligible for inclusion in the Order Management Hub Wave, software vendors had to fulfill the following criteria:

• demonstrate an ability to provide support for market-leading industries
• demonstrate a broad business process footprint
• target organizations with 500 or more employees

Each product was evaluated based on 112 different criteria on the current offering, product strategy, and market presence. 

Learn more about how Microsoft Dynamics AX can serve as your Order Management Hub.

If your business is looking for the right tool to keep you in the competition or to take your organization to the next level, this week is a great time to score a Microsoft Dynamics business solution.  On Friday, some of the most aggressive promotional offers that Microsoft has ever released on their ERP and CRM solutions expire. 

Line up the best shot for your organizations’ success by taking advantage of one of the following offers today:

3 for a $1 – With the initial purchase of Microsoft Dynamics GP, buy up to your first three (3) users (foundation pack user and two additional users) for $1. Offer applies to both the Advanced Management and Business Essentials editions.

Stimulate Your Business– Trade Up to Microsoft Dynamics ERP (GP & SL) from NetSuite, QuickBooks, or Peachtree for less with a special trade-up offer.

Business Ready Flexible Pay – Reduce your upfront investment through three predictable and affordable annual payments which can help optimize you cash flow and improve IT budget management.

A Better Together Offer – Save 20% on Microsoft Dynamics SL users when you purchase them with Microsoft Project user licenses.

There are also some fantastic offers available to existing users of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. 

Contact Socius to take advantage of these great savings opportunities and win big against your competition.