Tuesday, June 21, 2016
The new Microsoft Dynamics AX has helped overcome the challenges faced by Dynamics AX ERP users in the retail, distribution, manufacturing, services, and public sectors enabling them to make smarter decisions faster with access to the real-time insights on any device and in any place. Not to mention, it is the first Cloud enabled product version to date.
Now let’s take a deeper dive into the new, exciting features of the most awaited and latest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX to see how it will help your business grow at its own pace.
1. Dynamics AX on Azure
The new Dynamics AX version will be a cloud-first application, which aligns well with the other Microsoft products, such as Office 365, thus making it easier to integrate the system across multiple devices globally as well as simplifying decision making on-the-go.
- Optimize cost and increase security with AX on Cloud infrastructure:
- Secure your Microsoft Dynamics AX data. With Dynamics AX on Microsoft Azure your data receives a level of Dynamics AX data protection and mirrored set-up that far exceeds typical on-premise protection.
- Optimize your spending for ERP. Move from buying Dynamics AX and the infrastructure required to support it to renting Dynamics AX. Pay only per-user-per-month to use your Dynamics AX on Microsoft Azure.
- Scale up and down easily. With Dynamics AX on Microsoft Azure take advantage of scalability that might previously have been cost-prohibitive. Increase or shrink both Dynamics AX and Microsoft Azure resources as needed, avoiding high capital investment.
- Access your Dynamics AX from any device. Having Dynamics AX on a Windows desktop is now a thing of the past. The new version of AX is HTML5 based, which enables the system to be accessible on any device (e.g. Android, iOS or Windows mobile platforms), from any place. This makes it much easier for different users operating from various locations to access the Dynamics database through a browser without having to install customized applications on different devices. This change will definitely transform your business collaboration, increase productivity and enable business owners to make more informed decisions while on the move.
2. Increased User Productivity
- Focus on a specific job activity and increase user productivity thanks to Workspaces. Previous Dynamics AX versions had Role Centres that provided a user‘s job functions overview within the organization. In the new Dynamics AX these are replaced by Workspaces that give a much narrower view on work, a summary of the activity for status, workload review and act as an indicator for user and system performance. Workspaces allows users to focus on the completion of specific activities and providing all the supporting tasks just a single click away. Workspaces inevitably increase user productivity. Also, you can create additional workspaces to satisfy the needs of your unique operational processes.
- Highly visual, intuitive and any touch screen friendly new UX. You will find the new user interface is highly visual, intuitive and any touch screen friendly. It has seamless integration with other Microsoft applications, such as: Dynamics CRM, Office 365, Power BI and etc.
- Get and give help straight from Dynamics AX:
- Access a comprehensive help manual in a single location. The Dynamics AX Help wiki is the primary source of the latest product documentation for Dynamics AX and offers different types of up-to-date content that supports your business processes, written by experts.
- Get or provide real-time guidance through tasks. Task recorder in the new Dynamics AX has improved functionality, usability and user interface. Now users are enabled to update, edit and/or add additional notes to each step before publishing a task recording. You may view task recordings not only within the AX application, but also as an exported file as well. Now task recordings can be played as step-by-step guides and videos as well as can be integrated into the Life Cycle Services document library and business processes, which make it much easier for any administrator responsible for teaching new employees.
3. Finance and Process Enhancements
- Export account structures straight to Microsoft Excel. Handling and maintaining account structures has never been easy. After moving to the new Dynamics AX, you will be able to select an account structure and export it to your Excel for easier filtering, making edits in bulk and importing the data back in the AX without any integrations.
- Create and edit layouts for budget plans and forecasts. With the new enhancements, now you have the flexibility to create and edit budget plans using both Microsoft Excel and the Dynamics AX client. Generate templates for Excel workbooks using Budget Plan Layout setup and combine selected financial dimensions, user-defined columns, and other row attributes in the layout. In addition, an unlimited number of budget plan and forecast layouts are available that can be switched on the fly or instantly exported to Microsoft Excel and edited by using any selected layout. The configuration of budget planning is simplified by eliminating scenario constraints and using layouts to define which data can be viewed and edited in each stage of the budget plan document.
4. Retail Process Improvements
- Modern cloud Point-of-Sale (POS) retail solution. Cloud-based MPOS is optimized for mobile and tablet devices. With an instant access to customer data (sales history, wish list, purchase patterns and preferences), sales assistants can make more informed recommendations and guide customers through their purchasing decisions.
- Manage orders and process payment. POS-based order support tools allow on-the-spot creation of orders and quotes. Get total visibility of the business processes that facilitate price, inventory checks, manage inventory reservations as well as track, fulfill, and accept standard and/or special orders.
5. Power BI - Instant Access to Real-time Data & Improved Reporting Capabilities
The new AX version has been integrated with the Power BI, which is Microsoft‘s business intelligence platform that allows users to create interactive visualizations and dashboards. This integration enables:
- Building complex nearly real-time data analytics and self-service reports online from your Dynamics AX database. Power BI can connect to multiple data sources (on-premise and in the cloud) and create combined reports and dashboards, which can be accessed on the move from any OS mobile device.
- Accessing Microsoft‘s pre-built Power BI Content Packs including: financial manager, practice manager within service industries, retail and manufacturing. You can leverage these Content Packs for reporting or build your own Content Packs as intellectual property to make them available for consumption by customers.
- Get a snapshot of how the business is doing at any point in time with in-memory Power BI capabilities.
- Estimate future demand with the power of Azure machine learning. It combines historical data and calculations with user-defined variables (e.g. weather, traffic conditions, etc.). Predictive intelligence can anticipate potential issues in the supply chain or possible delays in product availability and delivery.
6. Implementation and Project Support
- Book work centers as a resource for the project. Previous AX versions allowed to the designation of only workers as project resources, but the new Dynamics AX lets you designate organizations, operations resources and non-human resources (e.g. location, tool, vendor, machines, etc.) as project resources, scheduling them on the project and tasks under the project.
- Get more visibility and manage your AX projects easier. Manage the entire lifecycle of a Dynamics AX implementation from pilot phase through to go-live, and even extend further to implementation and project support. Based on the seamless integration of Dynamics AX and Lifecycle Services (LCS), LCS is the center entrance for support project implementation activities, application management, system diagnostics and many other features. This means better quality and reliability of Dynamics implementation in any business as well as easier roll out of new custom features.
7. Always Stay Current with Incremental Updates
- Just like many other cloud first applications, the new Dynamics AX too has incremental updates rather than version based releases. Microsoft will replace the versioning system with a deployment platform based approach. Every dynamics platform will receive updates automatically when necessary and there will be no re-release of the entire software. New Dynamics AX has been enabled to receive software updates, which eliminates compatibility issues.
Discover more new features and functionalities added to the new Dynamics AX.
Are You Ready to Move to the NEW Dynamics AX?
To upgrade to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX, there are now several possible options. However, no matter your chosen upgrade path, the most important factor to a successful upgrade is a trustworthy and experienced upgrade Partner that will help you lower your projects risks.
Thanks to our experience from executing more than 40 Dynamics AX Upgrades, together with our own unique upgrade tools, tested processes and professional project planning, it is reported that working with 1ClickFactory on upgrades considerably improves the quality and shortens the time to market of your upgrades. We provide Dynamics Partners with free upgrade estimates. To request your free upgrade estimate, visit our website: partners.1clickfactory.com.
Are You a Dynamics AX Customer? 1ClickFactory works directly through Microsoft Partners only. To purchase our Microsoft Dynamics AX Upgrade, please contact us at service@1clickfactory.com and we will reach out to you and your Partner with guidance on how to enroll.
For Dynamics AX Partners: We also deliver What’s New Training during which you will accelerate learning the new Dynamics AX from weeks of self-education to only a few days of training. Check out our latest training topics on the new Dynamics AX: