Your Partner for Microsoft AX
Brilliance by Design
Jan 18th
A belated Happy New Year to all readers of the Ardent Solutions Blog, it’s astonishing that we are already into the third working week of the New Year, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun.
During the Christmas Break I exchanged laptop for paintbrush and dutifully got on with the jobs assigned to me by the lady of the house. Overindulging in a little too much festive food and wine, I was grateful returning to work on the 4th of January ready for anything the New Year had in stall for me.
The first job of the New Year involved reconfiguring a customer’s System, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, to support up to 6 decimal places for purchase prices and standard stock costs. On face value this sounded like a fairly simple task. Once I had delved a little deeper the change also needed applying to the costing version, stock transaction file, GRN file, ledger journals and so on. The list of database tables affected by this change grew and in an ordinary ERP system this change might have taken hours or possibly even days. But Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 isn’t an ordinary system, quite the contrary. It is an extraordinary system! Common fields that are referenced on many tables (such as the purchase price) are assigned an Extended Data Type. Think of an Extended Data Type as a template, which can be applied to many different objects, or in this case fields. The benefit this brings is efficiency when making changes of this nature. The change is made once against the Extended Data Type and the new format is inherited by any tables referencing it. To put this rather bluntly, a job which might have taken hours in other systems was achieved in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 in less than 2 minutes. This efficient design is reflected throughout the system. Considerable planning definitely went into the architecture of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. As the title of the blog suggests “Brilliance by design” is in the DNA of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.
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The cost of quality in manufacturing
Nov 29th
The cost of quality, or perhaps costs associated with poor quality, is a common discussion point within many UK board rooms today. With unrivalled manufacturing growth in the Far East, mass produced items do not always represent the best quality but do very often tempt customers with very low prices. How can we compete in the UK? One approach is to offer a higher quality product, that is more durable, reliable and with a potentially longer service life.
The management of quality within production environments is not easy, all too often regarded as a cost to the business, rather than a potential saving when the cost of product failure and returns is taken into consideration. The experience at Ardent Solutions when implementing business systems into organisations is that quality systems typically grow out of necessity, perhaps driven by a specific historic failure in the process. All too often this can result in quality systems that are isolated from core business systems, introducing duplication of effort maintaining data, and a lack of visibility to the business as a whole.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 features a quality module, embedded into core business processes of the system. Rule driven quality associations automatically create relationships between specific system transactions. Throughout a complete supply chain, the quality module within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 has the ability to automatically create quality orders, holding specific transactions and requiring specific quality operations to be completed. Consider a supplier that consistently delivers sub standard materials that sometimes inadvertently get released into production. This can be controlled at the point of receipt, automatically quarantining the raw materials until the quality process has been carried out. Consider a specific operation on your shop floor that has the potential to introduce reliability issues to the finished product. Again, this can be controlled within Microsoft Dynamics AX2009, automatically generating quality orders for specific production operations or processes. Where quality orders identify a problem, this can be documented as a non conformance with corrective actions to address the quality issue. All of these transactions can then be reported upon, providing the information to continually engineer higher quality into your products. The question isn’t how much quality costs but how much quality improvements can increase profitability. This functionality is available as standard within Microsoft Dynamics AX2009.
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In economics what will be the impact of the emerging BRIC markets?
Nov 8th
The new acronym BRIC’s stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. BRIC’s was coined by an investment banker who was looking for a quick way to sum up the geographical spread of investment opportunities in the emerging economies.
With the growth in these emerging new markets could this change the patterns of world trade? Are they the next big investment prospects? Will they outperform the old traditional established economy of the West? These are the questions of leading analysts at the moment.
Should we fear or embrace these emerging markets? Analysts agree that one thing is constant – if your customers are still looking for good products and good service then surely we all have something to offer.
Good product and good service is still a key pillar in business today. So will you choose to work with a local partner in these countries to get a foothold in these emerging markets or will organisations shy away from what is happening in the new world order - asks economists today.
On the basis you have a strategy, how do you collaborate with your new found partners or agents? Is your company geared to manage and support such a change?
Do you have the right infrastructure to support these ventures remembering that infrastructure doesn’t just revolve around IT, it is people as well!
Are your business processes and strategies able to cope and sustain long-term business relationships?
Analysts discuss how established businesses need to plan and embrace these new markets. They talk about decoupling – this is where these emerging markets are no longer dependent on the markets of the economic clout of the West, but as we all climb out of recession the traditional markets are still needed and still play a major part of the global business arena.
Many agree that with the value of a pound at the level it is an increase in exports into traditional markets is still needed whilst looking at theses emerging markets.
Luis Alberto Moreno – Presidents of the Inter -American Development Bank believes optimism is a key part of helping to sustain growth, “it is this optimistic approach the companies who believe and think that they are moving in the right direction that will instill the confidence that will translate across the whole of society and will impact the economy as a whole”.
Exploring these emerging markets will require a strategy, a plan, a long-term view. Will your existing infrastructure and company processes support these ventures?
This is where many businesses will turn to IT as one aspect to assist this change and streamline business processes, take waste of their business, tap into the power of the WEB to help facilitate such ventures by lowering the overall risk to deploy their business solutions as a key element in the overall infrastructure of working alongside their new found partners.
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What will be the effect of the public sector cuts announced in Oct 2010?
Oct 29th
Suppliers to the public sector will find times ahead difficult; this will ripple to the private sector. However, the view from analysts is that this short fall in business may come from an increase in exports due to the lower value of the Sterling. But are these companies geared to compete in these times to come?
Does your ERP system work for you or are your working for IT?
Is it hard to streamline your processes and change and adapt? If information is power- can you access your data quickly and easily? Does your data make you agile and responsive in today’s business world?
As businesses undergo a process of re-adjustment “it is difficult to access capital because the banks have tightened up on their lending” Bronwyn Curtis, Global Head of Research for HSBC. Access to the working capital from the banks is needed to help them drive the innovations and improvements needed in today’s changing business world.
Companies faced with little or no capital to invest in their I T infrastructure look for alternatives such internal developments, Excel or Access databases as it may appear simpler to make smaller investments and piece meal the changes now and deal with the disjointed approach later. The problem is will the changes be effective and quick enough?
A cost effective alternative is to go hosted; no capital outlay, no expense hardware to purchase, no upfront software purchase, product enhancements and updates included for just a simple fixed, flat fee for the use of the solution per user per month.
Cloud computing is where companies are investing to get around funding constraints, have you considered this alternative?
Ardent with Microsoft Dynamics AX offers just that, a single fee per user per month for all or some of your I T needs, you choose what works for you. Why not take a look at www.ardent24.co.uk
http://www.ardentsolutions.co.uk/News.html
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It must be difficult to select a single ERP solution let alone a short list!
Oct 22nd
Sites looking to move forward with ERP have some real challenges today with application software from many authors to choose from that all look pretty much the same, offer similar functionality and different way of achieving the same thing. Unless you are in a particular market sector with a unique requirement the choice can be overwhelming.
It must be difficult to select a single solution let alone a short list!
The times I have heard “ but we are not a complicated business – we do the same as many similar companies- it should be simple shouldn’t it?” compounds a client’s choice.
However, there is one aspect that generally gets overlooked – the level of R & D the particular author invests year on year back into their business application. This is a key factor to a client’s investment, not purchase, of a new ERP solution.
The days of reviewing and changing your ERP solution every 3 or so years is disappearing. I am being asked about the longevity of our solution well beyond 5 years.
Only a few innovators and market leaders in the ERP arena are capable to maintain the high level that the market and client demands. Microsoft is one of them.
Highlighted in the “magic quadrant” by the research organisation Gartner, Microsoft not only drive and lead innovation but they harness the users’ needs and drive this into their business applications for the good of all.
Who else can offer the integration between your desktop tool, Excel, Word, Outlook and the business app? Unleashing the power of the SQL database extends beyond running the business application, consider the reporting and analytical modules tapping into the data with SQL, consider the DR and resilience offered in the built in Log shipping – all supplied as part of your purchase of the SQL database.
Add the remaining Microsoft applications many sites embrace, SharePoint, One note, WEB services and maybe the decision is not as hard as it should be!
After all, love it or hate it- Microsoft applications are embedded within many companies so why don’t we harness and make the most of these investments by integrating them into their ERP suite such as Dynamics AX.
