Merit Matters Blog

We recently asked the CEO of a large multinational organization why they were changing their ERP system. “To improve our business processes,” he replied, stating one of the most widespread drivers companies have to change their ERP systems. As you evaluate your ERP system with regard to business processes you should first assess the level to which any bad business processes are forced on you by your ERP system; and then identify the number of disparate and sidebar systems users have created to work around your ERP. If you find significant process issues in these areas, a change to a modern ERP system that can help you differentiate your business may be beneficial to your organization.

The functionality and capabilities inherent in your ERP software have a big impact on your business processes. As you assess the effectiveness of your current system, you must first review your core business processes to determine if they enable maximum efficiency and productivity. If they do not, investigate whether the software system imposes constraints on your processes. Are your users saying “I do this because that’s the way the system makes me do it”?

When ERP systems were introduced 20 years ago, they were rigid in their functionality. They forced companies to conform business processes to the dictates of the software, or required them to significantly customize the software to meet their specific requirements. However, business processes evolve over time while the software remains static. This causes a disparity between the way the software was originally implemented and the new requirements of the business. This evolution continues until you get to the point that the processes in the system actually constrict the ability of users to efficiently run your business. In common with the CEO mentioned above, this is a major reason why your company might end up implementing a newer, innovative, and proactive ERP system.

New enterprise ERP software applications like Microsoft Dynamics AX offer flexible business processes based on best practices and process tools such as workflow. Workflow is the ability to set up and change process flows within the system. It includes many capabilities such as electronic routing
of documents, event notification, and automated processes based on triggers. Many ERP vendors offer flexible rules-based workflows
that allow businesses to create custom processes based on their operations. These workflows can be changed as their preferences and requirements evolve. In some of the more sophisticated systems, power users are even able to diagram and implement new workflows with drag-and-drop technology. Such flexibility allows the ERP system to evolve with changes in business processes and practices in your company and industry.

As you assess the effect of your current ERP software on your business processes, you should consider the following questions:

• Do your current business processes decrease efficiency and productivity?
• Are they in place to make up for inefficiencies in the ERP system?
• Have they been dictated by the system because of lack of functionality?
• Have your business requirements changed over the years making the reasons you selected your current system no longer valid?
• Have users created many sidebar and workaround systems outside the ERP?
  

Implementation of a flexible ERP system like allows your company to take advantage of new capabilities, functionality, and fresh ideas. An implementation partner that understands business process optimization and is industry expert is an excellent resource for efficiently implementing the system and effectively setting up your business processes. Selection and implementation of a modern ERP system can reduce manual processes, eliminate redundancy, and reduce paper documentation giving your company the opportunity to:

• Review all business processes in place and determine which are required, which can be modified, and which can be eliminated.
• Identify and eliminate redundancy and manual data entry.
  
• Standardize business processes across all departments.
• Adopt the best practices available in new software to obtain greater efficiency over the current ways of doing business.
• Make use of flexible workflow functionality to take advantage of automated business processes, document routing, events, and alerts.

All businesses at one time or another have to weigh the costs and benefits of retaining an older ERP system against the costs and benefits of selecting and implementing a new one. Legacy systems, although on older technology, provide companies a level of comfort—comfort that is likely at the sacrifice of increased relevant functionality and technology.

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.

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.

Many Life Sciences companies we talk to today need to define solid business strategies and goals in order to satisfy investors and secure future funding.

As these companies secure funding and look toward long-term planning, they’ll need access to data to provide business insights and help guide strategy. Therefore, they require an enterprise resource planning solution that goes beyond the basics of planning, budgeting, bookkeeping, and managing cash flow. These organizations need the ability to explore their own data to extract insights for strategic planning and to provide reliable financial forecasts. They require a solution that can extract added value from financial data to help improve decision making and better guide the business.

MAXLife for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps Life Sciences companies meet the needs for early stage funding, while enabling them to position themselves for later-round funding by bringing together people, processes, and technologies to help drive business success:

• Take advantage of new market opportunities or fend off new competitors to gain market share.
• Plan current and future capacity relative to planned growth.
• Quickly analyze all aspects of the business to enable better business decisions in high-risk situations.

With MAXLife for Microsoft Dynamics AX, Life Sciences companies have access to accurate, real-time information about product costs, sales trends, and profit margins. This enables more informed strategic decisions about where to spend money, how to grow revenue, and how to strengthen margins.

And with MAXLife Cloud ERP, you can give your employees real-time visibility and anytime, anywhere access to the critical business data they need to be successful - without compromising functionality or security.

Increasing global competition, customer demands, and costs are making today’s business environment tougher than ever before. As these trends continue to negatively impact your organization’s bottom line, it is becoming even more essential for executives to know exactly what is going on in their business - not last year, not last quarter - but right now, at this very moment.

However, most executives we talk to are unable to view business critical data in real-time. Instead, they have a mixture of disparate business systems - for financial management, CRM, shop floor, etc... The problem with this approach is that it takes quite a bit of time (often up to a month!) for information to make it from one system to another, hindering their ability to react and make informed business decisions. And by the time decisions are made, the chances are it’s already too late!

In order to gain the insight needed to make better decisions, these organizations need an end-to-end ERP 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!

Microsoft Dynamics AX enhanced business intelligence (BI) capabilities help people at all levels of your organization transform data into actionable insight. With the robust, out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can get quick access to personalized BI information using familiar, easy-to-use tools. As an end-to-end business management solution built on the proven Microsoft technology stack—including the performance and services affiliated with Microsoft SQL Server—Microsoft Dynamics AX can solve today's business intelligence challenges with integrated information and tools, custom BI access, flexible viewing and analysis capabilities, and scalability for future growth.

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.

• Get immediate notification about business activity. With Microsoft Dynamics AX, users can set up Business Alerts to automatically notify them about business changes. The Business Alerts feature monitors the Microsoft SQL Server database for conditions you specify.
• Track and report on business financial performance. Microsoft Dynamics AX helps people understand how the business is doing financially—without having to wait until the books are closed. You can also easily create, manage, and distribute business financial statements.
• Receive RoleTailored information. Role Centers within Microsoft Dynamics AX provide people with business intelligence information relevant to their jobs.
• Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers standard business metrics that allow managers to easily determine the real-time health of the organization. These KPIs can warn people when specified values reach a certain point above or below a target value.

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.

• Get immediate notification about business activity. Microsoft Dynamics AX allows people to organize and display data from the system in a way that makes sense to them and to then search those records according to specific criteria. People can save their searches as favorites or export data to Microsoft Office Excel or Word.
• Unleash the power of Excel. Out-of-the-box, Microsoft Dynamics AX provides hundreds of Microsoft Excel reports that give you access to real-time data and are customizable. And, with Microsoft SharePoint, you can access reports from anywhere you have an Internet connection!
• Look up and analyze data in innovative ways. Analysis Cubes in Microsoft Dynamics AX give people standard, preconfigured, online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes through Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services that offer virtually unlimited ways to look at data. The powerful, interactive analysis can serve as the basis for Reporting Services reports, Office Excel PivotTables, balanced scorecards, or interactive dashboards built with the Office Excel Add-in for Analysis Services.

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.

• Create, forecast, and adjust budgets. With Microsoft Dynamics AX, people can build budgets that incorporate market conditions and specific business objectives. And, when the business environment changes, you can adjust forecasts and budgets so that managers can respond effectively.
• Plan more effectively. Create accurate, high-level plans instantly, using up-to-date data pulled directly from the General Ledger in Microsoft Dynamics AX. And end-to-end integration across departments gives you access to all of the data, from summaries to transactions.
• Empower decision-makers. Integration between Microsoft Dynamics AX and industry-leading tools, such as Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, and Microsoft SharePoint, gives your people the information they need to forecast, analyze, and make business decisions.

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 information they need to drive business success across the organization.