Today, business opportunity can mean enlarging your customer base to include a worldwide audience or expanding across borders into new sites or branch offices. Unfortunately, global business has driven higher levels of product and service customization, both for individual customers and to meet the needs of different cultures, consumers, languages, distribution channels, and market requirements. As a result, manufacturers must juggle increasingly complex product line and supply chain requirements. In addition, retail competition is so fierce that retail customers can, and do, demand tailored products, services such as RFID compliance, and even the ability to specify the materials’ origin and other characteristics of product packaging.
Meanwhile, market conditions change faster than ever, and customers expect their suppliers to help them adapt. Traditional lead times have become irrelevant, orders may be changed at the very last minute, and as a result, traditional sales forecasting and demand planning no longer work. Customers also expect suppliers to provide complete traceability and chain-of-control management, no matter how complex the product or how many times the goods change hands. Meeting these demands requires unprecedented operational flexibility and the free flow of accurate data throughout the supply chain.
Fortunately, every headache of global supply chain management also represents an opportunity for astute business managers to seize an advantage over competitors. Many manufacturing firms are implementing strategies that include demand-driven supply chains focusing on greater real-time interaction, automated inventory replenishment, and increased manufacturing or logistics outsourcing. The successful implementation of such strategies can be greatly facilitated by an integrated business management technology that increases supply chain visibility, connects trade partners to speed interaction and collaboration, fosters greater efficiency, and provides the cross-organizational insight for confident decisions and actions.
Microsoft Dynamics AX is designed to manage the complexities of a global organization by consolidating and standardizing processes and providing visibility across your organization.
- Expand easily across international borders with country specific functionality, including capabilities for multiple languages and currencies; help support compliance with local financial requirements for more than 36 countries.
- Eliminate silos of data and utilize a single ERP software system enables companies to control the details of their businesses by linking all departments together - erasing information boundaries and delivering critical information needed for rapid, effective decision-making.
- Consolidate financial, operational, and customer data while preserving local information—to build your strategic edge and personalized customer, partner, and supplier relationships.
- Unify standards and help ensure quality by centralizing processes, automating standard operating procedures, sharing best practices, and extending supply chain management across multiple sites and divisions.
- Manage and monitor global and local performance with sophisticated yet straightforward reporting and analysis tools. Combine your solution with Microsoft Business Intelligence applications to enhance the analytic capabilities critical to managing a complex business environment.
- Give people access to real-time KPIs, scorecards, and data through Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX. And with Microsoft SharePoint, key decision-makers can work with critical information without logging in to Microsoft Dynamics AX.
- Help ensure efficient, consistent, and rapid deployments with Merit Solutions Rapid On and Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step - a standardized, global methodology and suite of tools that simplify implementation, speed deployment, and ease upgrade processes.
Removing barriers to international growth is essential for business development.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables you to expand your operations to new geographies with built-in, 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.
When you have a technological solution that provides closer integration and greater data accuracy, you can automate manual activities and eliminate redundant data entry throughout purchasing, warehouse, and logistics processes that cross organizations or are within a single company. The result can be fewer errors, lower costs, and reduced cycle times. An effective business management solution can also provide automated notifications to keep goods and data flowing smoothly and help ensure prompt actions on changes, delays, or unexpected events.
Read the following white paper for more information: The Value of Microsoft Dynamics AX for Manufacturers
