Merit Matters Blog

Improve financial management for your business by tracking, analyzing, and manipulating fixed assets to meet specific needs. Fixed Asset Management in Microsoft DynamicsTM GP delivers multiple features and reporting tools that help you manage company assets with minimal effort and tremendous flexibility.

With Microsoft Dynamics GP, you can:

• Put your information to work. Make changes to one or many assets easily and capture necessary asset data for tax or reporting purposes while performing depreciations, averaging, or comparisons across assets.
• Find the information you need. Access the data you need with an intuitive graphical user interface and convenient one-button access to userdefined information or other critical data, including asset maintenance, purchase, lease, and book information.
• Make depreciation easy. Manage asset depreciation with any of 16 depreciation methods, with the ability to back depreciation out, recalculate it, add additional depreciation, or project it ahead for any number of assets in your books.
• Integrate powerfully. Empower your business by combining Fixed Asset Management with other modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP, ensuring accuracy while reducing redundant data entry.

Save time and money by setting up assets quickly and easily. Use classes or account groups to optimize operations by setting defaults and making mass changes, such as retirement or depreciation, to large numbers of assets at the same time.

Another important factor in business productivity is Business Intelligence. What’s the point of having a business management system if it’s difficult to access, see, and use the data and information it contains? Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 makes Business Intelligence available to everyone in the organization and empowers employees with visibility across departments, real-time access to information, and comprehensive reporting tools. All of this adds up to greater insight and better decision-making.

For example, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 delivers 10 predefined data cubes for all major solution areas such as HRM, AP, AR, and CRM. This makes it easier for employees to do analyses themselves right from Excel or display key performance indicators and business overview in the Role Center. Employees are able to find, visualize, and understand key data with RoleTailored reports, performance dashboards, analytical views, predefined OLAP cubes, and integrated analysis and forecasting tools.

And the integration to Microsoft SharePoint delivers rich, enterprise-level BI capabilities. Reports can be customized more easily with a self-service tool that helps you organize, visualize, and share information. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is fully integrated with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and includes more than 120 rewritten or newly developed production SSRS reports.

And it’s easier for any user to extract and export data from forms in Microsoft Dynamics AX to Microsoft Excel and into pivot tables. Users can also export data from any list page in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 to Excel making analysis fast and the sharing of information more efficient.

In a lot of cases where SAP ERP is used at a company's corporate headquarters, we must demonstrate that it is often more cost effective to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX than SAP All-in-One in the company's subsidiaries and regional offices.

Microsoft has recently made this business case more compelling with a new Microsoft Dynamics two-tier connector for SAP business scenarios. This connector accelerates two-tier enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployments between Microsoft Dynamics AX and SAP Business Suite. The connector enables IT organizations to use Microsoft Dynamics AX across subsidiaries, divisions or branch entities to facilitate cost-effective business process integration and easily connect with SAP installations at the corporate headquarters.

Specifically, the Microsoft Dynamics AX two-tier connector will enable common business process integration scenarios for headquarters and subsidiary locations, including the following:

• Financial consolidation. The sharing and consolidation of detailed financial information from subsidiaries using Microsoft Dynamics AX can be automated and exposed through a central SAP installation, increasing visibility of financial performance across the organization. 
• Intercompany supply-chain integration. The integration of intercompany procurement and supply-chain processes between local and regional distribution with centralized fulfillment organizations helps facilitate automated order processing. 
• Plant automation. Integration of decentralized manufacturing operation processes into centrally orchestrated planning processes enables more accurate and responsive manufacturing planning across the organization.

According to a recent Software Insider’s Point of View survey of next-generation IT leaders, conducted by Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang, 32 percent of survey respondents are now considering a two-tier ERP applications strategy over a single application deployment in their organizations. The survey results highlight the key drivers behind moving to a two-tier ERP approach, including the need for purpose-built or industry-focused solutions coupled with the fact that existing systems are too expensive to implement and upgrade at the subsidiary level. Subsequently, companies are deploying Microsoft Dynamics AX for its flexibility in global and vertical customizations and low total cost of ownership through integration with other Microsoft products.

For more information on the two-tier connector, view the press release:
Microsoft Introduces Microsoft Dynamics ERP Two-Tier Connector for SAP Business Scenarios

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 provides a role-tailored interface that lets users access the data they need to make better decisions to manage and grow the business.

This demonstration of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 provides a look at the role-based interface design that enables users of Dynamics AX 2009 to navigate quickly to the functions that they need. Take a look at features such as the Dynamics Unified Work List, access to Business Analytics tools, and the Global Address Book.

View the demo:
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Overview