Merit Matters Blog

In February, 2010 Forrester Research published a survey (Paul D. Hamerman: “Enterprise Apps Customers Have Issues”) that outlines the key challenges that enterprise companies face with their ERP solutions when trying to meet today’s business and IT challenges. The survey was done with business process and application professionals.

Not surprisingly, there are many similarities between the findings of this study and the key challenges and IT business trends we have discussed in previous articles. So let’s compare the top four challenges Forrester identified with Microsoft study findings:

• Finances
  • Forrester found that 91 percent considered high cost of ownership as their primary challenge. Microsoft studies showed the need to reduce operational costs. Both studies show that finances are a huge deterrent.
• Business infrastructure
  • Eighty percent told Forrester that mismatched applications were keeping them from realizing their business objectives. Microsoft found that organizations need business infrastructure support to align with their business objectives. Poor infrastructure is inhibiting rather than helping companies reach their goals. And finances and upgrade difficulty are keeping them from IT investments.
• Difficulty of upgrading
  • Forrester found that 87 percent did not upgrade because they thought it would be too difficult. Microsoft showed organizations needed to reduce IT operational costs. So organizations avoid upgrades that would reduce IT costs and add flexibility for change.
• Poor cross-functional processes
  • Eighty-six percent told Forrester that they had systems with poor cross-functional processes. So extending to external partners was out. As was collaboration using internal and external controls. On the other hand, Microsoft studies showed organizations were having difficulty getting partners to use their ERP software. With a first-rate ERP system, cross-functional processes, change, partner adoption, and collaboration would be much easier.

As you can see, the results Forrester surfaced with this study harmonize very closely with our own findings around the key business and IT challenges organizations face every day.

So what role is information technology playing in causing these issues?

For many organizations, the technology that’s still in use today originates from the 1980s. It’s complex and inflexible―unable to provide the power and agility businesses need to thrive, change, and grow. Let’s take a closer look at these systems.

• Application code and parameters are intertwined, tangled—like spaghetti. There’s no way to customize or integrate the software.
• Duplicated data structures complicate the task of focusing on what’s critical―extracting, transforming, and presenting accurate data in the most appropriate format to enable performance and ease of use for the user.
• Middleware and batch processes are often used as necessary workarounds to overcome the lack of integration and interoperability across implementations and business processes.
• Key work-related functionality sits in separate applications, so users have to access multiple programs to complete daily tasks. In addition when upgrading the systems, the customer has the challenge to solve the integration problem not the vendor.
• Business intelligence is an afterthought for many customers. They’ve continued doing business the way they’ve always done business, because despite the complex processes, they are still getting reasonable results. So the need for deeper insight into the business is not always an investment priority.
• The user experience is task-oriented, not role-tailored or process-oriented, and there is little or no opportunity to customize or optimize the user experience.

With this backdrop, it’s easy to understand many of the challenges we just discussed. Organizations are not set-up to cope with a changing economic climate and need new solutions to keep pace with current and future trends.

Organizations need new systems that will work for them–not against them! They need business applications to be an asset in the face of change. Not a liability. They need simplicity and agility without sacrificing power. Successful organizations need complete, packaged industry-specific solutions designed for their business needs. Not inflexible software that requires customizations. Organizations need powerful embedded analytics and business intelligence (BI). Not data overload.

These needs and more are met in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012–by introducing a generation shift in the way we think about the ERP model. Read the Top Ten Reasons to Buy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012!

• Cost pressures: As companies compete in a global market, they are under constant pressure to reduce end-item manufacturing costs as well as plant operating costs. This requires streamlining processes and increasing production efficiency. There is a continued need for insight into cost drivers of the operations.
• Time to market: Getting products to market faster than your competition gives you a competitive advantage. Reduction in product life cycles caused by technology innovation and changes in consumer behavior force organization to focus on reducing time-to-market of products. This requires a good insight into and grip operations.
• Product quality: It is no longer acceptable to deliver defective products. Not only does it damage your reputation but warranty and liability costs can quickly escalate to eliminate all profits.
• Inventory visibility: The risks thus costs of inventory are on the rise due to increasing product assortments, shorter product life cycles, and the importance of a healthy cashflow. The visibility into inventory across distributed organizations remains a challenge and continues to challenge the organization’s grip on inventory.

A world-class software solution should help manufacturers address these traditional challenges - but it needs to do more: it must also help them identify and respond to recently emerging challenges.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 was purposely built for Manufacturing Organizations.

We don’t have nearly enough time (or space!) to review all the capabilities built into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 that can help manufacturers meet the challenges they face and efficiently manage their unique set of manufacturing models across multiple sites and geographies. But I can provide a high-level overview. I’ll start by briefly noting the familiar user experience that fosters adoption and use, the robust set of tools that helps streamline workflow and business processes, and the pervasive interoperability that helps you optimize your investment in other Microsoft products and technologies. With that said, let’s look at some of the key manufacturing capabilities built into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

The following General Business Processes are utilized by all corporations independent of their business focus. They provide the corporate infrastructure needed to operate in a modern competitive business environment. These include:

Financial Management:

• General ledger
• Accounts receivable and payable
• Bank management
• Budgetary controls
• Shared support services
• Compliance management

• Organization and workforce management
• Recruiting and selection
• Development, training and performance
• Skill mapping
• Employee self-service portal
• Expense management

• Standard, ad-hoc, and analytical reports with Microsoft SQL Reporting Services
• Role tailored, pre-defined, multi-dimensional data cubes
• Dashboard views of KPI’s

The following Key Manufacturing Business Processes are purposely built to provide manufacturers with the tools needed to run their discrete, process, or hybrid manufacturing operations. These include:

Procurement and sourcing:

• Direct and indirect procurement
• Purchase requisitions
• Supplier relationship management
• Vendor self-service portal

• Material and capacity planning
• Resource management
• Job scheduling and sequencing
• Product configuration
• Shop floor management

• Inventory management
• Multi-site warehouse management
• Order handling with trade agreements
• Order promising
• Distribution planning
• Quality management

• Sales force and marketing automation
• Lead and opportunity management
• Telemarketing and telesales
• Sales management
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM connector

• Service orders and contracts
• Service calls and dispatching
• Repair management
• Service subscription

• Large enterprises utilize Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 as part of a Two-Tier ERP implementation: Large enterprises are striving to balance business agility and costs by standardizing on two ERP standards. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is used by these organizations in subsidiaries, divisions and specific HQ “workloads” (such as manufacturing plants or corporate purchasing) of large international organizations. These organizations often have a central corporate (Administrative) ERP and are seeking to standardize on a more flexible, lower-cost ERP for use in a variety of units. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is extremely well-positioned for this “tier”. Due to the differences in nature of these units (Retail, purchasing function, plant), the solution has to support these different needs with a single technology to take advantage of the standardization. In addition the organization will benefit from the interoperability with the Microsoft platform. A popular manufacturing scenario involves connecting local manufacturing sites to corporate HQ (see Two-Tier presentation for more details).
• Distributed enterprises support the organization end-to-end: This scenario addresses the needs of mid-market companies and small enterprises that operate global, multi-plant organizations and are looking for a single centralized ERP that can accommodate multiple entities in one or multiple countries. These organizations seek a good match of the ERP solution with the primary business processes. In addition they would like to benefit from the networking effect of ERP and extend the footprint of ERP within the organizations to more business processes and people. Examples of these are the deployment of Human Capital Management, Time and Attendance, Compliance and internal controls, etc….

• 53 percent say Food Safety is their first manufacturing priority in 2012.


• 45 percent say their companies are growing.


• 23 percent expect plant expansion.


• Less than 6 percent expect a decrease in production.


• 63 percent say they're optimistic going into the new year.

Microsoft Convergence 2012 is rapidly approaching! Make sure to register before January 26, because you can save $300 with early registration pricing!

Merit Solutions is thrilled for the opportunity to be a Bronze Sponsor at Convergence this year, and we hope everyone can stop by Booth #545 across from the Microsoft Dynamics AX Experience Center to learn more about our products and services!

We hope you are able to join us!

Microsoft Convergence 2012:
March 18-21, 2012 
George R. Brown Convention Center
Houston, TX

Pricing:
Early Bird Price = $1395 - Before January 25, 2012
Regular Price = $1695 – After January 25, 2012

Register now, or visit the Microsoft Convergence 2012 website to learn more.

After spending more than 10 years working with the smallest medical device manufacturers to larger pharmaceutical organizations, we understand the unique needs of the Life Sciences Industry. For that reason, Merit Solutions developed MAXLife ERP - to help our clients overcome the business challenges of today while building and remaining flexible for what the future brings.

Quality Management

Take advantage of a fully integrated Quality Management system that enables you to improve product quality and safety, reduce organizational risk, and increase customer satisfaction.

• Cradle to Grave Lot Traceability
• Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA)
• Cost of Quality Management

Compliance Management

Enjoy extended Compliance Management features that support FDA requirements (including 21 CFR Part 11), Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs).

• Controlled Documents Management
• Audit Trails / Electronic Signatures
• ePedigree Tracking and Management

Learn more about Merit Solutions Life Sciences ERP Software, named one of the Top 15 Add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics AX by the site DynamicsWorld.

After spending more than 10 years working with the smallest medical device manufacturers to larger pharmaceutical organizations, we understand the unique needs of the Life Sciences Industry. For that reason, Merit Solutions developed MAXLife ERP - to help our clients overcome the business challenges of today while building and remaining flexible for what the future brings.

Quality Management

Take advantage of a fully integrated Quality Management system that enables you to improve product quality and safety, reduce organizational risk, and increase customer satisfaction.

• Cradle to Grave Lot Traceability
• Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA)
• Cost of Quality Management

Compliance Management

Enjoy extended Compliance Management features that support FDA requirements (including 21 CFR Part 11), Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs).

• Controlled Documents Management
• Audit Trails / Electronic Signatures
• ePedigree Tracking and Management

Learn more about Merit Solutions Life Sciences ERP Software, named one of the Top 15 Add-Ons for Microsoft Dynamics AX by the site DynamicsWorld.

Are you considering a new ERP solution? Not convinced that Microsoft Dynamics AX is the right choice?

Welcome to the Microsoft Dynamics AX ROI / Benefits Estimator!

This tool, based on analyst interviews and insight by Nucleus Research, helps companies calculate the potential annual savings they could achieve by implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX. Identified savings include: increased productivity, improved visibility, reduced administrative overhead, reduced inventory, improved supply chain, and more!

Don't wait - calculate your annual savings with the Microsoft Dynamics AX ROI / Benefits Estimator! Then sign up for your Microsoft Dynamics AX Free Trial!

Revenue is not a factor in selection and VARs are not rated. The No. 1 and No. 100 members of this list have equal standing. Factors taken into consideration included growth, industry leadership and innovation. There are very large and very small dealers in this list. An effort was also made to selects resellers who represent a broad range of products.

This year, VAR Star candidates were asked what they have done to respond to the economic conditions. Several common areas emerged from those VARs who commented (not all provided this information.) Few of these were surprising, but all are important.

They are as follows:

• Diversifying product lines.
• Holding onto talent.
• Maintaining or increasing marketing budgets.
• Performing mergers and acquisition.

Bob Scott’s Insights provides the mid-market reselling community with news and analysis giving them insight into the issues that affect the business of resellers and vendors alike. It informs and entertains, giving this critical market a quick-and-easy read that is both instructive and interesting.

About Merit Solutions

A Microsoft Dynamics Gold ERP Certified Partner with vertical ISV industry solutions for Food and Beverage and Life Sciences customers, Merit Solutions is AMR Research Industry Certified in Process Manufacturing for Microsoft Dynamics AX. We have recently been recognized as one of Accounting Today's VAR 100, had two products named in the Top 15 Add-Ons for Microsoft Dynamics, and is a Microsoft Excellence Partner for working successfully and collaboratively with customers and partners across the world.

1. Achieve Fast Time to Value. With prebuilt industry capabilities for manufacturing, distribution, services, retail, and Public Sector, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps you meet your business requirements by deploying your solution quickly and delivering results right away. Streamline your organization end-to-end with rich ERP capabilities, including human resources, financials, and compliance management. Support specific business requirements easily with packaged solutions from the worldwide Microsoft® Partner Network.
2. Grow Your Global Solution. Removing barriers to international growth is essential for business development. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables you to expand your operations to new geographies with builtin, country-specific localizations in a single solution to meet regulatory requirements for 36 countries. Enable entities across your multisite, global organization to share the same data, business rules, and processes in order to harmonize and streamline business practices. Also support your business growth by easily adding users and transactions, as well as configuring more complex business scenarios.
3. Work Smart and Fast. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can help you improve productivity by providing RoleTailored access to information, tasks, and business processes along with powerful business intelligence. Gain deeper insight into critical business data across your organization with relevant performance indicators, selfservice business intelligence, and reporting in key business areas.
4. Drive New Business. Take advantage of new business opportunities by improving the insight into your business, and having the ability to implement change more easily. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 offers unlimited views on your business, giving you the visibility you need. Enhanced modeling capabilities, such as the Organizational Model or workflow, then helps you manage changes in the structure and business processes of your organization, and fosters innovation with a central business process repository, including capabilities for five major industries. 
5. Support Business Today and Tomorrow. Choose a flexible deployment model that best supports your organization and can easily be adjusted to meet your changing business demands: on-premises or Microsoft Dynamics AX Cloud. Easily complement your installation with cloud-based services and take advantage of the flexible Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 solution architecture that enables incremental implementations, changes, or upgrades. Choose the governance model that best fits your organization: centrally managed, decentrally managed, or a combination of both. 
6. Gain a Competitive Edge. Differentiate your business from competition. The ability to rapidly implement and adapt your system to support your unique needs can give you a significant edge over your competitors. The model-driven, layered architecture allows you to develop and maintain unique business processes easily and enables a relatively easy upgrade to new releases. 
7. Get Everyone on Board. Employees want to use a solution with a familiar and intuitive user experience that makes their jobs easier, and is simple to use and learn. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables people to find, sort, visualize, and use information through an easy-to-use user interface that looks and works like Microsoft Office. Work easily with everyday tools by sharing data between Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Microsoft Office 2010. 
8. Connect and Collaborate. Easily connect employees, customers, suppliers, and partners through integrated self-service collaboration capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables you to streamline basic supply chain collaboration with self-service, Microsoft SharePoint®– based vendor, customer, and employee portals, and end-to-end business process integration through Sites Services. Simplify advanced supply chain collaboration with adaptable web services and share information easily by using collaboration tools such as Microsoft Lync and by creating SharePoint collaboration sites directly from within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.
9. Lower Your TCO. In addition to improved productivity gains, lower your total cost of ownership (TCO) through simplified life cycle management and quick installations. Use Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services to help ensure a quick and reliable setup and configuration of your ERP solution. In alignment with the RoleTailored design of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, the simplified Business Value Licensing model ensures that you buy the exact number of licenses you need—no more, no less—with options to easily add more licenses as your business grows. 
10. Leverage the Power of the Microsoft Platform. It’s our fundamental value proposition: The interaction of ERP, business and productivity applications, communications solutions, and the underlying technology platform—that works on-premises or in the cloud. We call it pervasive interoperability. With Microsoft Dynamics AX 2102, you get a business solution from Microsoft that is backed by an ongoing commitment to research, development, and innovation. Combined with a global ecosystem of specialized partners, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 uses the power of the Microsoft platform to deliver a powerfully simple solution.

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012!

Customer demands and regulatory requirements relating to food safety are accelerating every day. The bar is going up and everyone in the industry will soon be scrambling to find and implement systems that satisfy these new demands... that is, if they’re not already panicking!

One new requirement is the Food Safety Modernization Act signed by President Obama in January of 2011, which mandates that all food companies must have Food Safety Management systems in place, including document control, HACCP and recall. This is the biggest change to Food Safety legislation in over 60 years.

Another is The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), which is a collaboration between some of the world's leading food safety experts from retailer, manufacturer and food service companies, as well as service providers associated with the food supply chain. It is coordinated by The Consumer Goods Forum, the only independent global network for consumer goods retailers and manufacturers worldwide. It serves the CEOs and senior management teams of nearly 400 members, in over 150 countries. Most major retailers mandate suppliers follow one of the 8 protocols supported by GFSI, which includes SQF and variants of ISO22000. These standards are very similar to the FSMA recently set by the FDA.

The bottom line: you don’t want to be one of the food manufacturers caught without adequate Food Safety and Food Recall ERP systems!

That's why we're so excited about the MAXFood Recall Workbench.

The MAXFood Recall Workbench exists for one purpose – to go beyond lot track and trace to enable extremely fast recall functionality. A common challenge for organizations is the quick response to client requests for “test” recalls. Many companies are making the ability to perform a quick recall a key performance metric for their suppliers. You are probably subject to this testing from your customers. Non-performance during test recalls puts your customer relationship at risk. You could lose your customers if you are unable to perform.

We reduce risk to you if your firm is subject to recall testing from your customers. Imagine being able to answer a test recall within minutes – this should improve your vendor performance score and your customer relationship. The MAXFood Recall Workbench goes beyond the time consuming labor of either paper or system based lot track and trace functionality. It provides a Rapid Food Recall capability for:

• Recalling product shipped to customers.
• Stopping production for any affected in-process manufacturing orders.
• Finding and quarantining any on-hand batches subject to a recall.
• Quarantine and Vendor notification for problem raw material lots.

Normal lot track and trace works just fine, and is an improvement over paper-based lot tracking systems. But lot track and trace doesn’t save time when customers have to be notified or on hand inventory must be quarantined. It just gives you a list of orders or inventory – then someone has to print the list, and enter transactions.

The MAXFood Recall Workbench saves companies time and money by automating and streamling the entire Food Recall process!

Microsoft Dynamics Customers and Partners come to Convergence from all corners of the globe to experience all that the event has to offer. Loaded with a wealth of informative sessions and other creative ways to learn, customers discover how to extend the power of their solution across all areas of their business. They also get a first look at new product releases and hear about future plans for their software. Convergence is the annual event where connections are generated, best practices are shared, and business relationships are built and renewed.

Merit Solutions is thrilled to be a Bronze Sponsor because we have had a very exciting year - one that has seen multiple product launches, experienced an increase in customer satisfaction, and received numerous awards / recognition within the Dynamics Community:

• This year, we announced MAXCloud ERP, our Microsoft Dynamics AX Cloud Solution. MAXCloud enables companies to take advantage of the industry-leading capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 at a decreased cost - without sacrificing security or functionality.
• One of the main benefits of MAXCloud ERP is our Rapid On Deployment and Fixed Price Packaged Services. With Rapid On, you can take advantage of a 30 Day Deployment and the freedom to select only the implementation services you require - all at fixed prices.
• We also had exciting announcements for our Microsoft Dynamics AX industry-specific products, MAXFood ERP and MAXLife ERP. Earlier this year, MAXLife passed the Certified for Microsoft Dynamics AX Software Solution Testing. More recently, it was named one of the Top 15 Add-Ons for Microsoft Dynamics AX. 2011 also witnessed the launch of MAXFood ERP, a Microsoft Dynamics AX Food Safety solution. We are pleased to announce that both products are now available in the cloud! Learn more about MAXLife Cloud and MAXFood Cloud.
• At WPC 2011, we launched the Merit Solutions Partner Program, designed to provide partners with the sales, service, and product support needed to present competitive industry bids and win more deals. We invite you to join the Merit Solutions Partner Program!

We hope you are able to join us this year to celebrate the Microsoft Dynamics Community!

Register now!

MICROSOFT CONVERGENCE 2012
March 18 - 21, 2012
Houston, Texas
George R Brown Convention Center
Early Pricing = $1395 – Before 11:59pm Pacific Time on January 25, 2012
Standard Pricing = $1695 – After January 25, 2012

We believe that acceptance of Cloud ERP will begin to accelerate as organizations increasingly discover that security is no longer a barrier to the many benefits Cloud ERP systems can provide. We believe that companies will soon begin to understand the efficiencies of cloud applications and will begin to demand that their ERP applications be delivered through the cloud as well.

MAXCloud ERP is a single, powerful solution that is simple to learn and use so you can deliver value faster, take advantage of business opportunities, and drive user involvement and innovation across the organization.

RAPID, FIXED PRICE DEPLOYMENT Take advantage of MAXCloud ERP’s Rapid On Deployment to get your business up and running in less than thirty days. Choose the service options that are right for you based on your business requirements, resource availability, and budget.

SECURE AND RELIABLE
Located underground in a multimillion dollar state-of-the-art facility, our data center is SAS70 Type II Audited, guarantees 99.9% uptime, provides 24/7/365 live technical support, performs nightly data backups, and offers advanced disaster recovery services.

COMPLETE AND INDUSTRY SPECIFIC
Rich core ERP capabilities across the entire solution efficiently support end-to-end business processes of mid-sized and global organizations. Prebuilt industry specific functionalities support safety, quality and compliance, track and trace, document management, and more.

MAXCloud ERP shifts the burden of ongoing software management from your team to ours, freeing up your staff to focus on value-adding tasks. Other benefits of MAXCloud ERP include:

• Real-Time Visibility Into Critical Business Data
• Support for Global, Multi-Site Organizations
• Complete Supply Chain Integration
• Compliance Support and Validation
• Automate and Optimize Business Processes
• Low Total Cost of Ownership
• Powerful Embedded BI and Analytics
• Agile and Flexible Deployment Alternatives
• Simple, Familiar, and Intuitive User Interface

We invite you to take some time to view our interactive, click-thru MAXCloud ERP Demos. Or, better yet, feel free to sign up for our Free 30 Day Trial of MAXCloud ERP.

Welcome to the next generation of ERP - Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a new ERP model enabling new levels of usability and business application productivity. Let’s take a look.

Business Process Library:First, the Business Process Library consists of the core ERP capabilities, industry-specific capabilities (for 5 industries), and any additional capabilities that customers need to implement to address specific needs. All these capabilities coexist in one cohesive solution, offering customers a solution that fits their needs today and tomorrow.

For example: A manufacturing organization that decides to start a retail operation can easily support that with the same solution. Or an organization that is primarily active in one industry, but has some operations with characteristics of a different industry (e.g.: IT service provider with small assembly line for hardware) can still support all their critical business processes without having to implement a second solution.

So, no duplicated data structures or functionality in different applications. All capabilities are in one solution by design! This will help to minimize integration efforts, ease configuration, and utilize a single tool set – UI, Security, platform support - to interact with this single business logic. And all this while driving down costs.

Role-based Security:Role-based security enables you to quickly create and re-use standard security permissions for individual roles within your company, which helps simplify implementation and ongoing maintenance. The security can also be applied to the customer and partner extension since these are included in the same solution. No separate system is required.

Single sign-on for users enables easier, more secure access to relevant functionalities and information from the different UIs. The security settings have only to be maintained in Microsoft Dynamics AX, and will be enforced by single sign-on when information is accessed outside the ERP environment or through a different client (Office client).

Microsoft Application Platform:Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is relying more and more on the Microsoft Application Platform and their ecosystems. Here are some of the more important tools:

• Database – SQL EE
• BI/Reporting – SQL EE + Office
• Workflow – Windows Workflow Foundation
• Development – Visual Studio (also X++)
• Integration services – Biztalk (in addition to AIF)
• Windows Communication Foundation

These are tools that most of the customers are already familiar with and use for other applications today. More over MBS is leveraging the R&D investments from other groups for the development of these tools and can re-allocate these investments into ERP application development.

Easy-to-use UI:The user will have multiple choices on how to interact with the solution – thru the ERP client, a SharePoint-based client or from Microsoft Office (Excel and Word). So based on the user’s preferences and activities the user will select a UI driving up adoption of the system.

An enhanced RoleTailored user interface includes additional Role Centers and enhanced data visualization, and preview and navigation features. It also provides a more consistent user experience across the Microsoft Dynamics AX Windows client and Microsoft SharePoint® Client for Enterprise Portal access. These improvements help drive productivity and business insight through the familiar Dynamics user experience and integrate them with key business processes. Finally, bidirectional interoperability with familiar Microsoft Office products enables users to access and refresh data in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 without leaving Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Word.

As with previous Microsoft Dynamics AX releases, simplicity has been a primary design theme and development tenet for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. This constant emphasis has put simplicity at the center of everything: The way we develop and architect the solution; the way our partners can augment and enhance the powerful capabilities available in the solution for particular industry, vertical, or individual customer needs; and of course the way our customers can use and interact with the solution to drive business agility on a daily basis.

In AX2012, the Application Object Data files have been replaced with the model store, which resides in the Microsoft Dynamics AX database with all other application elements. It contains all core and customized components together with layer and model information. At runtime, the Application Object Server (AOS) retrieves information about any forms, reports, classes, etc from the model store.

Importing the model store directly affects the application immediately. On the other hand, importing logic through XPO files or model files requires compiling and CIL generation after installation. The model store can be exported and imported through either PowerShell or through AXUtil. ID’s are fully preserved with this approach; however, two downsides of this deployment method are that model store files cannot be signed as model files and the files cannot be uninstalled once they get deployed.

For all those reasons, Microsoft recommends that all modifications of a production environment should be deployed through the export of the model store from the staging environment and importing it into the production environment.

As we work with more companies to realize the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, we are seeing that many organizations have been hindered by the inflexibility of their current business systems. Also these organizations have difficulties responding to changing business needs – for example, due to lack of insight into the operations of their business. Let’s take a look how Microsoft Dynamics AX addresses these pain points.

Agility is one of the main focus points for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Solution agility enables and expands business opportunities. It also enables you to more easily modify your business processes to streamline and differentiate your business and reduce business risk.

Here are a few key areas that Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can help you plan, operate, and change your business with agility:

• Unified natural models let you plan, see, and change your business.
• Flexible deployment alternatives (including on-premises and Cloud ERP options) support your business today and tomorrow.
• Model-driven layered architecture makes company-differentiating changes easy.

From enhanced financial capabilities to a model-driven layered architecture, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 provides you with what you need to make your business agile. It can help you gain both the insight and the ability to quickly adapt to changing business needs and opportunities, free up development and IT resources, and streamline deployment, maintenance, and upgrades.