Microsoft swallows own medicine for major ERP release
1 min read
In an apparent bid to up the stakes for ERP dominance among manufacturing SMEs, Microsoft has launched Dynamics AX 2009 as a major new release, harnessing core Office, SharePoint and SQL power.
The spiel is al about improving compliance, records management, risk management and the rest – and the foundations for all that do appear to be there. But the real, and more instantly obvious, deal is about role-based productivity, collaboration, workflow-driven business automation and knocking down departmental walls.
It’s also about expansion – with multi-language, multi-country localisation for 36 countries, transactional support ramped up from 1,000 now to 3,000 users – and all the business intelligence and enterprise performance analytics of beefed up SQL Server 2008.
Look beneath the covers and you’ll find, for example, Windows Workflow Foundation, with pre-defined templates and rules-based tools for building roles and enabling escalation, delegation etc – with automatic language translation where organisations cross national boundaries.
That’s a clear nod to the increasing requirement among manufacturing SMEs to outsource at least some aspects of production. Language and localisation support go a long way, but Microsoft’s investment in ‘presence’ detection, through its unified communications, is more than just icing on the cake in today’s global supply chains.
You’ll also find a new concept for Microsoft – a Compliance Centre, which Dynamics AX product manager Fiona Nolan explains “provides the ability to document risks and controls in one central place”.
Although most obviously useful for financial management and governance, she expects the approach to be far reaching. “It wasn’t impossible before: you could monitor in SQL and there were workflow alerts, but now users can go on to document and monitor best processes right across the piece,” she says.
Nolan also cites improved integration with other core Microsoft technologies as also changing the face of AX 2009. “Users can now take advantage of the entire strengthened Microsoft stack – for example, business intelligence tools, PerformancePoint, Excel 2007 and Office 2007,” she says.
And she points to its embedded web services, particularly online order processing, as well as its mobile technology improvements – which, in combination with Microsoft’s Unified Communications, are much more than gimmicks.
“Think about drivers in warehouse operations: operatives evening call centres can check their presence indicators and immediately see how to communicate with them to react to events and changes,” observes Nolan.
