Merit Momentum

July 2009 Newsletter

Inside this Issue:
Product Spotlight: Microsoft Dynamics AX
Merit Solutions Attains President's Club
Register: MeritCare Training Session Tomorrow
Dynamics GP SSRS Training On-Demand
Microsoft New Customer Offers

Product Spotlight: Microsoft Dynamics AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner Inc. Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier-2 Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies, a research report that evaluates global ERP products and that is specifically tailored for product-centric, midmarket companies with 100-1,000 employees.

Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies addresses the needs of product-centric companies or divisions of enterprises with between 100 and 999 employees, and with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion. These enterprises have limited IT resources and seek ERP systems that support their differentiating business processes well with deep functionality, but do not require significant overhead in the nondifferentiating business areas (meaning the systems must minimize total cost of ownership [TCO] and complexity).

Although some see this market as large and mature, Gartner sees this market as undergoing a "changing of the guard," with older, established systems with deep functionality being displaced by more modern and agile systems. The key trends driving changes in this market are:

  • The packaging of industry-specific functionality.

  • Technology modernization using service-oriented architecture (SOA).

  • The need for global deployments.

As this change continues, Gartner concludes that only one offering qualifies as a leader in the market at this time: Microsoft Dynamics AX. The product is robust, it delivers low TCO through integration with other Microsoft products, and, most importantly for the midmarket, Microsoft is adept at managing its channel of resellers.

(Source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies)

For more information on Microsoft Dynamics AX, visit our Dynamics AX 2009 webpage and view the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Press Overview.

Merit Solutions Attains President's Club 

Our 10 Year Anniversary Celebration continues!

Merit Solutions has been named to Microsoft's President's Club for the second time in our 10 year history. This recognition from Microsoft reflects outstanding customer commitment and sales achievement by Merit Solutions.

The official recognition will come later this year during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. The elite club recognizes the top five percent of Microsoft Dynamics partners worldwide and their constant dedication to delivering solutions that meet their customers’ unique needs, active pursuit of product and technological advancement, and impressive sales performance.

About  Merit Solutions:

Merit Solutions is a leading business consulting and software development firm helping mid-market clients plan and leverage their technology investments to gain a competitive advantage. Merit Solutions has been twice recognized as a Microsoft Excellence Partner for working successfully and collaboratively with customers and partners across the U.S. In addition to providing consulting and support services, Merit Solutions develops and markets business applications built on the Microsoft platform to efficiently automate the business processes of companies in regulated industries.

MeritCare Training Session: SharePoint Practices: Usage of Content Types

Join us tomorrow for our next MeritCare Training Session:

Site content types in the Microsoft Office SharePoint platform are defined as a reusable group of settings for a category of content. In this training session, we will present their usage to manage the metadata, templates, and behaviors of items and documents consistently. We will show you how to organize the content of your collaboration portal in a meaningful way and associate the same capabilities to your content across your document management solution. 

Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am CDT

Register now for the free web training.

Also - view other upcoming events below:

Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Costing: Tips and Tricks

Costing in Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10 enables manufacturers to accurately track and manage product costs. With understanding, Dynamics GP users can analyze their costs, distribute costs to the proper accounts in the General Ledger, and better understand their true margins. In this session, we cover basics of the Actual and Standard costing methods available in GP, some setup required in GP to properly cost items, and Standard Cost Revaluation. Following review of the prerequisites for costing, we review accounting transactions resulting from manufacturing activity such as Component Issues, MO Receipts, and Labor Data Collection. We conclude with a review of the MO Variance windows to analyze product costing issues.  

Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CDT

Using FRx for Multi-Company Consolidations

Scenario: You have three companies in Microsoft Dynamics GP and one company in QuickBooks. To make matters worse, all four of these companies have different GL account structures! What to do to get them all on the same financial statement? Move the QuickBooks company to Dynamics GP of course! Short of that, FRx allows Dynamics GP users to consolidate financial information from systems outside of GP into one consolidated statement. Attend this informative one hour session to sharpen your knowledge of FRx in general, and learn some specific tricks related to multi-company consolidation.

Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CDT

MeritCare Training On-Demand: Dynamics GP 10 SSRS Reports

A video of last month's MeritCare Training Session is now available On-Demand:

Dynamics GP SSRS

Microsoft SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) offers a powerful report writing capability for any SQL Server based system. Specifically for Dynamics GP 10, Microsoft has created a library of over 200 pre-built reports to use. These reports can publish on your internal website just like any SQL Server Reporting Services reports you might already have, and also include report models that make it easier to create more reports. In this session, you will learn how to access and leverage the SSRS Library that is provide by Microsoft and to upload it to your Dynamics GP system. Also, you will learn the basics of using SSRS to create reports on your own.

Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CDT

Sign up for the On-Demand video.

Microsoft New Customer Offers

Business Ready Flexible Pay

Microsoft is pleased to introduce Business Ready Flexible Pay for Microsoft Dynamics. This offering reduces your upfront investment through predictable and affordable annual payments which can help optimize your cash flow and improve IT budget management. Microsoft is listening to you and actively enabling you to preserve capital resources while making strategic investments in their future. Implementing Microsoft Dynamics and taking advantage of their Business Ready Enhancement Plan helps you increase their productivity and maximize your return on investment.  

Redeem By: 12/23/2009

Oracle JDE Compete Sales Offer (AX, GP, NAV & SL)

New customers migrating from Oracle JDE to Microsoft Dynamics can receive up to a 50% discount on Advanced Management (AM) or Business Essential (BE) users. In addition new customers can receive a service rebate of up to a 25% discount of the Suggested List Price (SLP) to apply towards implementation costs and/or services, with a maximum amount of $25,000 USD.

Redeem By: 12/23/2009

Advanced Demand Management for Microsoft Dynamics AX Sales Offer

Promotion for additional named users of Advanced Demand Management for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Received a 50% discount on every named user starting with 6th user and above.

Redeem By: 12/23/2009

Breadth for Advanced Management Sales Offer (GP, NAV & SL)

New customers are invited to take advantage of a special pricing promotion when purchasing one of Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, or Microsoft Dynamics SL products Advanced Management (AM) edition. The promotion is comprised of one (1) no charge AM user license for every three (3) AM user licenses purchased with a limit of three (3) no charge licenses.

Redeem By: 12/23/2009

Don't see any offers for you?
Visit
www.microsoftincentives.com for more great offers!

Merit Solutions, Inc.
1749 S Naperville Rd., Ste. 200, Wheaton, IL 60189
info@meritsolutions.com (630) 614-7133
Follow Us Online:
Merit Matters Blog Merit Solutions on Twitter Merit Solutions on LinkedIn Merit Solutions in the Dynamics Community
 

Monthly Quote

“The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”

- Steve Ballmer


/