Merit Matters Blog

In an ever-changing global marketplace, companies are looking for every opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and simultaneously grow revenue, profits, and customer loyalty. Meanwhile, new regulatory requirements, competitive pressures brought on by an increasingly connected global economy, and technologies that “level the playing field” for companies of all sizes are making it more difficult to stay ahead of the competition. However, keep in mind that every challenge also represents an opportunity to beat out the competition.

ERP software - once considered a necessary commodity in the IT infrastructure - is now viewed as a strategic asset for organizations that want to be able to quickly adapt to change and accelerate business performance. Responding quickly to business needs can be the key to gaining and keeping a competitive edge. But inflexible IT systems can get in the way. An ERP system that is flexible and easy to use can play a critical role in helping your business achieve the agility it requires to compete and succeed.

Having one flexible, comprehensive business management solution can help you increase efficiency and reach by bringing together dispersed employees and operations, even when they operate in different languages and countries. It can also enable companies to gather fundamental business information from multiple departments or subsidiaries and analyze productivity, profitability, margins, and trends to help decision-makers understand current operations and resolve problems earlier and more easily.

By integrating business information throughout your supply chain, you can improve the flow of information and gain the insight you need to streamline operations and take advantage of changing conditions. The ability to define and manage items in multiple dimensions and track materials and goods throughout the product life cycle enhances inventory control and enables you to meet the information demands of customers and regulatory bodies. By increasing the flow of information internally and with trading partners, you can improve customer service, improve supply chain coordination, and take advantage of changing market conditions.

Microsoft Dynamics AX can strengthen your position in the marketplace and provide the backbone of an agile, flexible system that helps your business grow, adapt quickly to change, and take advantage of new business opportunities. Simple to use, straightforward to implement, and quick to adapt, Microsoft Dynamics AX can be delivered in the way that works best for your organization—via the cloud or on-premises. You can add staff, enter different geographies, launch new products, and pursue additional lines of business with the assurance that your IT system is there to support and help drive your strategic initiatives.

Access Control Service is a Windows Azure service that provides an easy way of authenticating users who need to access your web applications and services without having to factor complex authentication logic into your code.

The following features are available in ACS:

• Integration with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF),
• Support for popular web identity providers (IPs) including Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook,
• Support for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0,
  
• An Open Data Protocol (OData)-based management service that provides programmatic access to ACS settings,
  
• A Management Portal that allows administrative access to the ACS settings.
  

Concepts

Windows Azure ACS is built on the principals of claims-based identity - a consistent approach to creating authentication mechanisms for applications running on-premises or in the cloud. Claims-based identity provides a common way for applications and services to acquire the identity information they need about users inside their organization, in other organizations, and on the Internet.

To complete the tasks in this guide, you should understand the following concepts:

Client - In the context of this how-to guide, this is a browser that is attempting to gain access to your web application.

Relying party (RP) application - An RP application is a web site or service that outsources authentication to one external authority. In identity jargon, we say that the RP trusts that authority. This guide explains how to configure your application to trust ACS.

Token - A token is a collection of security data that is usually issued upon successful authentication of a user. It contains a set of claims, attributes of the authenticated user. A claim can represent a user's name, an identifier for a role a user belongs to, a user's age, and so on. A token is usually digitally signed, which means it can always be sourced back to its issuer, and its content cannot be tampered with. A user gains access to a RP application by presenting a valid token issued by an authority that the RP application trusts.

Identity Provider (IP) - An IP is an authority that authenticates user identities and issues security tokens. The actual work of issuing tokens is implemented though a special service called Security Token Service (STS). Typical examples of IPs include Windows Live ID, Facebook, business user repositories (like Active Directory), and so on. When ACS is configured to trust an IP, the system will accept and validate tokens issued by that IP. ACS can trust multiple IPs at once, which means that when your application trusts ACS, you can instantly offer your application to all the authenticated users from all the IPs that ACS trusts on your behalf.

Federation Provider (FP) - IPs have direct knowledge of users, authenticate them using their credentials and issue claims about what they know about them. A Federation Provider (FP) is a different kind of authority: rather than authenticating users directly, it acts as an intermediary and brokers authentication between one RP and one or more IPs. Both IPs and FPs issue security tokens, hence they both use Security Token Services (STS). ACS is one FP.

ACS Rule Engine - The logic used to transform incoming tokens from trusted IPs to tokens meant to be consumed by the RP is codified in form of simple claims transformation rules. ACS features a rule engine that takes care of applying whatever transformation logic you specified for your RP.

Access Control Namespace - A namespace is a top level partition of ACS that you use to organize your settings. A namespace holds a list of IPs you trust, the RP applications you want to serve, the rules that you expect the rule engine to process incoming tokens with, and so on. A namespace exposes various endpoints that will be used by the application and the developer to get ACS to perform its function.
 

How does it work?

1. The client (in this case a browser) requests a page from the RP.

2. Since the request is not yet authenticated, the RP redirects the user to the authority that it trusts, which is ACS. The ACS presents the user with the choice of IPs that were specified for this RP. The user selects the appropriate IP.

3. The client browses to the IP's authentication page, and prompts the user to log on.

4. After the client is authenticated (for example, the identity credentials are entered), the IP issues a security token.

5. After issuing a security token, the IP redirects the client to ACS and the client sends the security token issued by the IP to ACS.

6. ACS validates the security token issued by the IP, inputs the identity claims in this token into the ACS rules engine, calculates the output identity claims, and issues a new security token that contains these output claims.

7. ACS redirects the client to the RP. The client sends the new security token issued by ACS to the RP. The RP validates the signature on the security token issued by ACS, validates the claims in this token, and returns the page that was originally requested.

What do you need to get it running?

• An active Windows Azure account:
  If you don't have Windows Azure account, you could obtain free trial.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Visual Studio 2012:
  If you want to use latest feature of ACS 2.0 it is recommended using VS2012, but VS2010 could also work with little bit of work.
• Identity and Access tool:
  This tool is great add-on for VS2012 which significantly ease connecting ACS with your application.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

After few simple steps you should be ready to authenticate users to your application using Windows Azure ACS with identity providers like Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc.

Traditional business applications evolved as passive, backward-looking systems of record.

Microsoft Dynamics AX already changes that model today, introducing embedded, declarative workflow that brings an understanding of business process optimization into the application and helps guide users forward through their work. When this is combined with pervasive embedded business intelligence that transforms the data captured in the system into insight empowering better decisions, the system becomes a more active, forward looking partner for the people who drive a business toward success.

Microsoft Dynamics AX also delivers innovative application scenarios today. These include, for example, a solution in retail that offers out-of-the-box connection from point of sale to the headquarters business system, and that unifies web and brick and mortar commerce in a single view of customer and transactions; as well as a system for manufacturers that supports discrete, process and lean manufacturing models in a single system instance, with planning and costing capabilities that work across all three models.

This is only the beginning. Microsoft Dynamics AX will evolve to embed constraint optimization and machine learning to deliver even more advanced, forward-looking capability to Dynamic Businesses. For example, Microsoft is currently developing systems that combine transaction history with information about key factors like weather, traffic, local event calendars and demographics to optimize daily order quantities for a retailer, minimizing out of stock and waste to drive greater profitability.

The four IT megatrends of the next decade - “Big data,” social connectedness, cloud computing, and mobility - will present new opportunities for business applications insight, and open up a whole new range of possibilities for business. Modern business applications won’t just make individuals and organizations smarter, but will go beyond this to new directions and new levels of impact we are just beginning to imagine.

Driving impact has always required insight but most systems today only focus on retrospective views and data. They are passive, reactive, and backward looking. Modern business applications will at the onset be proactive. They will inform with insights and possible actions while constantly evolving to point to what comes next.

Data continues to grow exponentially as does the ability to derive meaning from it. Social commentary has accelerated the pace of the review cycle, with likes, links and tweets providing instant clues to success or failure. Capturing this data and being able to tap into its rich and valuable insight is a new requirement.

Microsoft Dynamics AX helps people not only integrate and understand these new data sets, but also get to better answers with suggested actions so they can continually improve business performance. It achieves this by enabling people to calculate and/or recalculate business possibilities in real time. By focusing on connected, forward-looking systems, we can allow people to access actionable information with greater speed and agility – enabling businesses to respond more efficiently, effectively and proactively to changing market conditions.

An added feature of our new Merit Solutions website is our Resources section which provides free access to a lot of great Microsoft Dynamics and Merit Solutions information! Today we wanted to highlight our Microsoft Dynamics AX Demos page.

Our demo lab contains a variety of demonstrations and tutorials so you can see for yourself how you can grow and transform your business with Microsoft Dynamics AX. And best of all, we don't require you to fill out any forms to view these videos! Demos include:

• The Dynamic Manufacturer
• The Dynamic CFO
• The Dynamic CIO
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Supply Chain Demo
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Workflows demo
• ...and more!

Merit Solutions believes that many organizations are at a point of profound transformation that won’t be sufficiently addressed via a patchwork of business solutions. That's why we are committed to helping your business be ready for what’s next with the most comprehensive range of integrated solutions today and the most complete vision for the future.

Empowering Your People

For your people, we offer an unparalleled range of integrated, connected solutions that help provide a seamless experience across people’s personal work lives. Our approach is to deliver solutions that are integrated by design across devices and services. From productivity, collaboration, and business apps, to devices and security, our goal is to deliver a connected experience that works together seamlessly and naturally, the way people expect it to work. The result? Get more done, faster, without limits.

We live in an amazing time for technology. At home, when we use our personal devices, we’ve become accustomed to a highly connected experience where all of our apps and information are at our fingertips and the experience has become highly intuitive. It’s easy to watch movies, read books, play games, and share photos and documents. We also know that people consume information in a different way depending on the device they are using—tablets, PCs, or even business whiteboards. In each case, the Microsoft business platform makes it easy to personalize the experience and get it just right. By choosing the Microsoft platform, your company's devices and applications will truly work together - and these connected devices will give you the same version of the truth regardless of the device you are using.

Maximizing IT Flexibility

Our IT customers are entering a new era - a new era for the way they manage and deploy applications and devices. Between the consumerization of IT and the move to the cloud, a lot of what IT provided, from deployment to systems integration, is being radically revised and simplified. Throughout this transformation, we are here to help our customers maximize the return on your IT existing investment and best position you for the future. Our goal is to enable people to use the devices they want to use in the places they want to work - while also enabling enterprises to protect corporate information.

At the same time, we know that you will have more than just Microsoft solutions in your business, and so we are experienced at building bridges across technology. We believe this builds choice, drives innovation, and creates opportunities.

Accelerating your Business

Finally, we’re committed to helping you maximize the return on your investments in Microsoft solutions. Whether that means saving money, growing revenue, attracting and retaining customers, or driving innovation.

In today’s business climate, people expect the technology they use at work to be as simple as the technology they use at home. Today’s technology is expanding the possibilities for connecting people and helping businesses be more proactive and dynamic to change. For example…

• Across your business, we can help you foster a culture of innovation with a connected supply chain platform that embraces today’s social trends and makes it easier for people to communicate, whether through text, voice, or video.
• We can also help you maximize business performance with technology that enables people to make smarter, faster decisions with democratized business analytics tools and the power of big data. And this same technology can also help you reduce costs.

In summary, Merit Solutions offers companies an unparalleled experience across today’s devices, while maximizing IT flexibility and providing the business platform and process optimization services that can truly accelerate your business.

Please comment below if you have any questions or comments as we’d certainly like to continue this conversation and find more ways that we can continue to help companies differentiate their business.

Based on reports from industry analysts and the many conversations that our team has with clients, we believe four megatrends will radically change how businesses view enterprise IT over the coming decade.

• Mobility and social are the driving forces for change in business today, particularly as employees (and customers) increasingly expect to use mobile and social technology to interact in new ways. These two elements are becoming a competitive differentiator for business - for recruiting and retaining employees and for attracting and retaining customers.
• The cloud and big data are quickly becoming enablers for business success. The tremendous scalability and agility enabled by the cloud and the new insights made possible with big data can help businesses today get ahead of the competition and tap into new sources of revenue.

These trends represent not only what is most important to our customers today, but also what we feel are likely to be the dominant forces of change in the coming decade.

• The proliferation of new device types, along with the connectivity of the cloud, is making us more mobile and changing the way we work and play. Mobility answers the growing expectation from your employees to be able to work from anywhere, with the device that they choose. Mobile technology also delivers a great mobile experience to customers, bringing your business to them wherever they are through their mobile phone or tablet.
• As technology becomes more immersive, we also expect it to help us develop more personal and social connections with our colleagues and customers. Social networks build strong work communities, enhancing collaboration, information sharing, and productivity.
• The connectivity that the cloud offers is changing what we expect from technology. With an always-on connection, apps can provide innovative new services with instant scalability and attractive economics.
• While business intelligence (BI) has been important for a great number of years, the explosion in connected devices and apps is generating an exponential growth in data and the need to get better insights from “big data.” The challenge for today’s businesses is to make that data useful—to put it into the hands of their people to drive informed, forward-thinking decisions.

We’re not alone in identifying these megatrends. According to IDC, “In 2012, the ICT industry's shift to its third major platform of growth—built on mobile, cloud, social, and big data technologies—will accelerate.” In contrast to what IDC refers to as the first (mainframe) and second (PC/server) platforms, they estimate that by 2020, “…enterprises’ highest-value leverage of IT will be driven by these third-platform technologies as well as an explosion of new solutions built on the new platform and rapidly expanding consumption of all of the above in emerging markets.”

It’s amazing just how fast our world is changing today. Just think…

• Within 15 years, a little startup named Amazon has gone from transforming the book industry to changing the face of retail.
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. In less than nine months, Facebook reached 100 million users. And in the space of just a few short years, social networking services have significantly changed people’s expectations of how we interact with each other and with businesses, particularly for the millennial generation.
• Within just two months of its launch, Kinect for the Xbox 360 changed the face of gaming and became the world’s fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever.

Each of these examples reflects the tremendous impact that the megatrends are having on our world - and the pace at which it is all changing. As we enter this new era in the enterprise, the question is - what can your business do to make the most of it?

Of course, technology trends on their own aren’t going to revolutionize your business or help you stay competitive. How you adopt new technology and put it to work in your business will ultimately be the responsibility of IT. We know how important it is to ensure that your technology solutions truly empower your IT professionals to deliver what the business needs. What are those needs?

• Integrate new devices and applications with their existing line-of-business apps, for a seamless experience that keeps people productive and connected to the business.
• Help maximize end user productivity, with solutions that put the tools users need at their fingertips, wherever they happen to be working from, and that connect them with the people, information, and content they rely on to do their jobs well.
• Ensure that corporate data and resources are protected and secure, even as access to those data and resources becomes possible from an increasing number of devices and apps.
• Fully manage all devices on the network, both local and remote - a task that is becoming ever more complicated as users bring more and more devices into the enterprise and work from more and more locations.

At Merit Solutions, our goal is to deliver ground-breaking technology solutions that empower IT to take advantage of the latest trends without compromise. By achieving this goal, we are able to provide your IT professionals with the tools they need to help you innovate and compete while meeting the core needs of the business in all new ways.

Learn more about how Merit Solutions can help you transform your business!

A while back we discussed some global business and IT trends that are slowly but steadily reshaping the ERP landscape. With our emerging economic climate, these trends are posing additional challenges for business and IT professionals who are struggling to improve profitability and retain IT agility.

Global market trends are creating the need for businesses to:

• Achieve operational insight and better decision making across the organization with faster, easier, and more pervasive access to relevant business information.
  
• Need for business agility to stay ahead of the competition and accelerate business growth.
• Reducing the cost of doing business by optimizing processes and driving productivity.
• Align business objectives with IT priorities and investments to ensure that IT systems and tools are enabling and supporting strategic business priorities and that they address changing business needs.

At the same time, shifting IT trends are creating the need to:

• Increase ERP adoption and access to ERP data across a broader subset of the workforce.
• Reduce IT operational costs by investing in systems that are more flexible and scalable, and simpler to configure, maintain, and upgrade.
  
• Put solutions in place that enable broad business strategies, and that enable IT to respond quickly to specific line-of-business (LOB) requests and industry needs.

When you frame this discussion with the research conducted by Forrester in 2010 detailed in our article, Key Challenges Companies Face with ERP Solutions, you can see how the needs produced by market and IT trends are affecting customers’ expectations of their ERP application.

Today’s world is increasingly flattened by technology, global complexity and new global competition - making it critical for a business to be able to rapidly see and react to signals, threats and opportunities. Going one step further, in this world where the pace of business accelerates, imagine being able to anticipate rather than react to those signals. Success today and tomorrow increasingly depends on information insight and efficient business processes.

So what would the next generation of ERP look like? See for yourself!

Nenad Simeunovic, Vice President of Services for Merit Solutions, was recently featured in the PM Network's March 2013 issue discussing using Agile Project Management techniques for ERP implementations.

Here a short excerpt from the article, titled Big Delivery in Small Packages:

Eliminating Waste: Agile is based on lean processes that remove non-value-added activities such as downtime. As a result, agile components such as daily stand-up meetings can help project teams deliver ERP-related functionalities faster. "During the 15-minute meeting, each team member says, 'This is what I did yesterday, this is what I'm going to do today and these are the obstacles I need help with,'" says Nenad Simeunovic, vice president of services at global IT services company Merit Solutions, Wheaton, Illinois, USA. "If there's a challenge, we can address it on the spot and move on. As a result, there are fewer distractions, and progress is being made on a more consistent basis."

Agile's benefits are especially appealing in the current volatile economy. "The departments are reluctant to tackle large-scale projects as one big initiative with scope, time and resources locked. Instead, they are looking more to deliver functionalities in iterations, where flexibility is allowed - even expected - due to rapid changes happening in the marketplace and in the organization. We can longer guarantee that our planning for today will be applicable in nine months," says Mr. Simeunovic.

View the digital release of the magazine, PM Network - Governing Creativity: Marrying Project Management with Innovation. The Agile ERP Project Management article starts on Page 60.

For the Lotus F1 Team, acceleration is a critical component of their success. Now, for a limited time, Microsoft Dynamics AX can help you accelerate your business performance with the same thrill only a BOGO offer can deliver!

For a limited time only, buy one Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 Enterprise CAL, and get one Functional CAL FREE.* And there is no maximum to the number of licenses you can buy with this special offer!

Boost your business performance with a lower investment! You can transform your business by delivering value faster. Give your team a competitive edge by adopting immediate business insight functionality for better decision-making. You can deploy one or several business scenarios, tackling your most urgent needs first, and add functionality when you're ready with "instant-on" capabilities.

Contact Merit Solutions today for more information on this promotion. Offer ends June 20, 2013!

We can't believe it - Convergence 2013 is only a week away! We always get excited seeing so many Microsoft Dynamics Partners, Customers, and enthusiasts in one place at the same time!

The past couple months have been busy for us here at Merit Solutions:

• Last month we were asked to present at the Microsoft Dynamics AX Industry Summit in Phoenix. We presented two sessions specific to Microsoft Dynamics AX Life Sciences Software: Selling to Midmarket Pharmaceuticals and a MAXLife ISV Showcase! We received great feedback from attendees and are excited to continue helping Partners and Customers in the life sciences industries.
• Last week we also launched a brand new corporate website. After months of designing, coding, and testing, we are very proud of our new site (and hope you are too!). Please feel free to browse around and leave your feedback below! The most significant changes include:
• Updated UI provides a fresh new look and feel meant to enhance the user experience and encourage further exploration.
• Streamlined navigation helps get you to the most relevant content - easier and quicker.
• Additional resources help you understand the value of our offerings - and most are completely free (no forms to fill out)!
• Now, we are excited to be a Bronze Sponsor at Microsoft Convergence 2013 next week. Merit Solutions will be exhibiting in Booth #2523 and we will be moderating a couple Life Sciences and Customer events. Please contact Josh Richards for more information on these events!

If you would like to meet with the Merit Solutions Team at Microsoft Convergence 2013, please don't hesitate to reach out to us ahead of time - or simply stop by Booth #2523! We will have some prizes to give away - so make sure you stop by for your chance to win!

Today’s social connectedness, mobile devices, and growing opportunities for interaction “any time any place” have changed the way many live and work. People are increasingly dependent on connections across the global network—interlocked in this connected reality.

In order to gain the insight needed to make better decisions, organizations need an end-to-end business solution that integrates all areas of their business and provides managers - as well as individual team members and contributors - with the information they need to make the right decisions at the right time!

Modern business solutions like Microsoft Dynamics AX not only connect people inside and outside the organization, they also give them context and insight which drives better decisions and boosts productivity. An important focus of Microsoft Dynamics AX is to drive connections with people, with customers and with business partners across processes, data and the ecosystem in which organizations operate. This focus on connected organizations includes the vision of anywhere, in-context collaboration services that links people and companies to the right people in the right place, in the right context, at the right time, across multiple avenues of communications.

By implementing a fully integrated ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics AX - encompassing everything from sales and marketing to production and accounting - organizations can improve the accuracy of the information upon which decisions are based because each module of the software is tied together and information flows freely among them. Everyone from the top floor to the shop floor can have access to the business intelligence information they need to drive business success across the organization:

• Keep current on changing business conditions - Accurately monitor current business activity, and compare it to historical activity and future plans to give people the contextual information they need to keep performance on track. Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers many integrated monitoring tools to help your people access the most relevant, accurate, and timely information about your business.
• Gain insight into your business - It's not enough to gather accurate and timely data—people need powerful and easy-to-use analysis tools to help them understand context and trends. Microsoft Dynamics AX business intelligence functions provide people with the insight they need to take quick action and pursue opportunities.
• Budget, forecast, and plan effectively - Microsoft Dynamics AX offers flexible planning tools to help you compare budgets, forecasts, and plans to actual performance. It also gives you the ability to update budgets and plans on the basis of new data and analyses to help your business stay competitive.

Microsoft Dynamics AX removes the impediments that generate friction within the organization and provides people with a broader array of insights and actions across internal and external connections. With greater transparency, agility, and insight, your people can make better, more informed decisions - enabling you to transform into a Dynamic Business.

Last week we wrote about the release of the Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer for Windows 8. This week we thought we would share a quick demo of the app.

We hope you download the app and let us know what you think!

Microsoft Convergence 2013 is rapidly approaching! Merit Solutions is once again honored to be a Bronze Sponsor of Microsoft Convergence - and we hope you stop by Booth #2523 and join us during this great event. It’s been an exciting year for Merit Solutions clients and the Microsoft Dynamics community – so I hope you join us and learn why!

Just like our commitment to customer satisfaction, we do as much as we can to make your conference experience a little less stressful and more exciting. As an example of this, here’s what happened in our booth last year:

• Putting contests
• $100 gift cards handed out
• Two 24” monitors won via Booth contests (one via Twitter: follow @meritweb)
• GRAND PRIZE: Long Putt for $10,000 – one person attempted a 50ft putt for $10,000 (unfortunately, he missed)

Of course, we also found time to talk about our ISV products and development services and the benefits of our Reseller Program; but we wanted to make sure we all had fun at the same time! 

So...what do we have in store this year? We hope you stop by Booth #2523 and find out!

Please comment below or send an email to info@meritsolutions.com if you would like to arrange a one-on-one meeting with a Merit Solutions representative at Convergence 2013!

Merit Solutions is proud to be sponsoring and presenting at the Microsoft Dynamics AX Industry Summit next week in Phoenix, Arizona. During the event, Merit Solutions will be on-stage presenting two topics:

Selling to Mid-Market Pharmaceuticals - Wednesday, 2:30 - 3:30pm in the Mesquite Room

During this presentation, Merit Solutions CEO Bill Burke will discuss selling the Microsoft platform into the mid-market pharmaceutical space. After discussing the target market (who, what, where), we will present current business drivers, compliance requirements, and specific terminology for pharmaceutical executives. We will wrap up by presenting the Microsoft platform solution, combining pharmaceutical Quality + ERP + Document Management capabilities in one integrated, cost-effective solution.

ISV Showcase - MAXLife for Pharmaceuticals - Thursday, 9-10am in the Mesquite Room

During this session, we will present MAXLife - our Life Sciences software solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft SharePoint. MAXLife is a complete pharmaceutical ERP, quality management, and controlled document management solution. With MAXLife, you can track product quality, proactively see and respond to manufacturing variability, meet GMPs, Sarbanes Oxley, and 21 CFR Part 11 and Part 820 requirements, and simplify computer systems validation.

Please let us know if you are attending the Summit and would like to schedule a meeting with Merit Solutions CEO, Bill Burke, or Director, Mike AuBuchon.

If you cannot attend but are interested in a copy of either presentation, please reply below or send an email to info@meritsolutions.com! Otherwise, we hope to see you next week!

Last month Microsoft announced the launch of the Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer for Windows 8 – the first Windows 8 App available for Microsoft Dynamics ERP clients.

The Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer displays business intelligence (BI) information from your Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution, including Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2, Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, and Microsoft Dynamics SL 2011 FP1. Users of the Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer can display reports from their ERP solution, interact with the reports using a variety of actions (such as copy, edit, view, and refresh), and open Microsoft Lync ( for Windows 8 ) directly from a report to initiate a conversation with someone about the report. This can all be done from any of your Windows 8 devices!

The launch of this new app is a milestone in the road to enterprise business mobility for Windows 8 and Microsoft Dynamics ERP clients. In today’s increasingly global and interconnected world, customers need to have quick, easy access to their business data – and they need to be able to access it from a variety of devices. The Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer for Windows 8 is the first of what is expected to be even more enterprise business mobility apps to deliver this value to clients.

Merit Solutions is honored to have played a significant contributing role in the development of the Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer app. While this milestone signifies a great achievement for Microsoft and its clients, it also represents Merit Solutions’ ability to build and deploy innovative, leading edge Windows 8 and mobility solutions that can help clients get more value out of their Microsoft Dynamics ERP investments.

The Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer is free and available for download from Microsoft on the Windows Store: Microsoft Dynamics Business Analyzer for Windows 8. We encourage everyone to go download and use the app - then rate it and let us know what you think!