As businesses are swiftly shifting to cloud based software, it may be time for your organization to migrate from Microsoft Dynamics AX to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Supply Chain Management. If your company is currently operating Microsoft Dynamics AX and want to learn about your options then you have come to the right spot. This page is dedicated to provide Dynamics AX end users information on why, when, and how to migrate to Dynamics 365 for Finance & Supply Chain Management
Cloud ERP is Trending in Businesses Today
Leaders are 78%
more likely than
followers to keep
their ERP
updated.*
By 2020, 50% of the G2000 will see most of their business depend on their ability to create digitally-enhanced products, services and experiences.***
Organizations on the latest ERP release saw 13% improvement in profitability.**
From 2009 to today, there is a 36% increase of organizations who consider cloud solution for their next ERP deployment.**
Source: *Aberdeen, ** Nucleus Research, *** IDC 2017 Predictions
Microsoft’s Extended Mainstream Support will be ending for all versions of Dynamics AX. Therefore if your organization is like most others, you will want to run your business on a fully supported ERP system. Hover over the tiles below to see when extended mainstream support ends for your current version of Dynamics AX:
Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1
Extended Support End Date:
4/12/2022
Dynamics AX 2012
Extended Support End Date:
4/12/2022
Dynamics AX 2012 R2
Extended Support End Date:
4/12/2022
Dynamics AX 2012 R3
Extended Support End Date:
1/10/2023
Achieve best business results with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Supply Chain Management
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management helps to achieve significant improvements in operational efficiency by providing enhanced business capabilities and employee productivity. The most notable are:
Optimize Workforce Productivity
Workspace
Workspace:
Able to create, manage and publish your own personalized views: Empower employees with role-based workspaces that provide intelligent automation, task prioritization, and integration with Office 365 applications to maximize efficiency.
Mobile-ready
Mobile-ready:
Solution accessible through mobile for some basic process operations, for example: time and expense data entry, vendor invoice approval, mobile Point of Sale.
Streamline process
Streamline Process:
Reduce process time quickly and join leading financial, retail and manufacturing practices with advanced cloud capabilities.
Templates
Templates:
Access to large set of templates for different process and requirements, for example localization and compliance.
Reporting
Reporting:
Integrated Power BI dashboards in workspaces. Near real-time access to analytics to drive intelligent operations.
Insight
Insight:
Improved timely, accurate, reliable and verifiable financial information used in (decision making) processes.
Training
Training:
Lower training costs up to 40% and user adoption and user productivity by 15% through Office 365 like user interface.
Integration of Office 365
Integration:
With Office 365 integration, finance staff can expect a gain in productivity: eliminate double entry, facilitate data entry (Excel based inputs), automatics reports.
PowerApps
PowerApps:
Enable users with a no-code approach to easily configure mobile or web apps for data entry, regulatory reports, e-invoices, payment formats, etc.
Financial Management
Mobile/Web apps
Mobile/Web Apps:
Shorten data entry time with PowerApps development by users in business teams. Mobile workspaces allow users to execute finance and administrative processes from any device.
Task Guides
Task Guides:
Reduce training time and quickly converge to best practices with integrated process documentation and embedded task guides. Ensures accurate master data and reduced hypercard during the ramp-up period. Developer recordings of task guides ensure fast response for support. Automated Regression Testing based on task guides ensures early detection of issues after any change.
Insights
Insights:
Increased insights with washboarding tools (Financial Period close, etc.) and reduced integrations with single data layer. Drill Down/Drill-Through provides quick access to the right information.
Data Quality
Data Quality:
Improve data quality by using single source of truth layer (D365, O365) and improving data entry experience with mobile and PowerApps.
Advanced Analytics and Visuals
Advanced Analytics & Visuals:
Shorten time to cost and revenue insights with streamlined washboarding tools (Power BI) .
Accelerate analytics democratization by combining analysis method-of-choice (Excel, Power BI) with single source of truth data layer.
Finance Process Optimization
Streamline Process – Finance Process Optimization:
Reduce Debtor Days (DSO) with accounts receivable predictions for proactive collection management. Hence provide recommendations on which customers to target in bill collection efforts, to be initiated immediately.
Increase cash discounts with faster invoice approval times with “real-time” mobile approvals and trigger-based workflows.
Early budget check (during internal purchase requisition) to control spending and improve cash flow forecast.
Compliance
Compliance:
Shorten time to compliance with continuous updates of regulatory certifications. Reduce exposure to potentially significant fines and reputation issues.
Purchase and Supply Chain
Data Entry Saving
Data Entry Saving:
Reduce inventory data entry effort with dynamic update of inventory levels based on purchase invoices.
Reduce time spent managing returned items with compensation agreement management available for PO returns.
Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps:
Reduce vendor invoice approval effort with access to mobile approvals.
Search
Search:
Faster search and purchase of non-stocked items with ‘PunchOut’ eProcurement– option to redirect to an external site, the external catalogue and return the shipping basket.
Control
Control:
Improve control of unit margin and procurement limits with unit purchase prices thresholds and trigger warnings.
Buying Power
Buying Power:
Improve negotiation conditions with more timely payments as a result of faster invoice approvals and standardizing vendor selection with bid comparison criteria.
Increase buying power with consolidated, timely view of all child legal entities purchases.
Procurement Management
Procurement Management:
Prevent late asks for additional budget with configurable embedded budget control — warnings, blocks
Process Optimization
Process Optimization:
Reduce inventory levels by having a dynamically updated baseline
Perform fine optimization inventory levels with automated anticipation/postponing purchases.
Vendor Collaboration
Vendor Collaboration:
Easily allow vendors to work directly in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations through Web portal without having EDI.
Minimize Risk
Minimize Risk:
Monitor and control purchasing processes with automated workflow.
Easy to configure/implement approvals for internal controls, preventing unnecessary or fraudulent purchases.
Warehouse Management & Distribution
Barcode
Barcode:
Out-of-the-box support for the next generation of barcode scanners.
Mobile Devices
Mobile Devices:
Use scanners and mobile devices to optimize precision in the picking and put-away processes. Configure the flow for system-directed push strategies and user-directed pull strategies.
Work Planning
Work Planning:
Monitor through single view the processing and the amount of work in a warehouse, push work to dedicated warehouse workers and trace completed work.
Demand Forecast
Demand Forecast:
Operations can leverage big data, external and internal indicators, and machine learning algorithms to better forecast demand, and automatically identify and mitigate supply risks. Master planning to plan for future material requirements.
Inventory management
Inventory Management:
Set up cycle counting thresholds, schedule plans, apply ad-hoc cycle counting, and configure real-time replenishment
Real-time
Real-time:
Pre-calculates and stores various intermediate results enabling fast real-time querying and provides new mobile workspace that anyone in the field can use quickly to check on-hand inventory, or query a given item bar code of License plate ID.
Catch Weight
Catch Weight:
Improved capabilities for inbound weighing per pallet level and capture the outbound sales process during picking or packing per catch weight quantity (box).
Warehousing optimization
Warehousing Optimization:
Create warehouse work such as picking, put-away by using work templates and location directives policies. Identify pick and put locations for various handling units depending on pre-defined rules and policies.
Containerisation
Containerisation:
Set up container groups to sequence packing processes and create templates that support packing strategies.
Quality Control
Quality Control:
Include quality control in any inbound or outbound processes that you set up for warehouse items.
Transportation Management
Transportation Management:
Monitoring all inbound and outbound transportations: Identify orders to be fulfilled and show the quickest routing solution for inbound and outbound orders. Organize the transport of materials to be delivered as soon as possible and identify the least expensive rates for transportation.
Manufacturing
Mobile
Mobile:
My timesheets (optimized for mobile) allows employees to create and submit project timesheets to record their hours for a specific project on a mobile device.
Time and Attendance
Time & Attendance:
Time registration workers can enter different types of time registrations, for example: clock in, clock out, register indirect activities, and absence registration.
Integration to Warehousing
Integration to Warehousing:
Track warehouse work for all material movements inside shop floor
Sales Integration
Sales Integration:
Data shared across CRM and ERP: Integrated support for source documents for sales orders, returns, transfer order, production orders, etc.
Integration to Warehousing
Integration to warehousing:
Create granular material movements in the shop floor.
Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and Analytics:
Use and extend standard BI content packs for cost accounting and manufacturing.
Product Configurator
Product Configurator:
Product configurator to meet customer demand for unique products while reducing or eliminating obsolete inventory items.
Resource allocation
Resource Allocation:
Consolidated resource view with dashboard and more granular resource allocation features
Visual Planning
Visual Planning:
Gantt based project planning integrated in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management
MRP in-memory
MRP in-memory:
More frequent and complex material resource planning by leveraging Azure computational capacities.
Migration Path: Upgrade vs. Re-implementation
Logan Consulting can help your organization assess what migration path is the best for you. In some cases there is a direct upgrade path to Dynamics 365 making it more of a technical effort. In other cases it may make sense to use the migration as an opportunity to re-implement the solution either because it wasn’t originally implemented optimally or because your business has evolved over time and no longer fits the existing configuration. We have outlined reasons to consider for both approaches below:
Traditional Upgrade
- Typically preferred for companies that transition to Dynamics 365 as a purely technical expertise without a desire to explore new functionality.
- Typically preferred when the volume of Dynamics AX customizations that will need to be preserved in Dynamics 365 is considerable.
- Typically preferred when most add-on ISV products will continue to be in use.
- Typically preferred for companies when expecting to utilize Microsoft data upgrade tools.
- All transactional history is brought in to Dynamics 365
- Potentially smoother transition for users as no configurations would change
- No ability to change configurations as everything needs to stay the same for master data so transactions convert properly.
- All code needs to be reviewed and potentially rewritten to conform to current extension format
Re-implementation
- Typically preferred by companies when the Dynamics 365 project is utilized as an opportunity to advance the system, discover new features, and achieve a true ROI.
- Even when the number of Dynamics AX customizations is not significant, yet most mods can be replaced by standard Dynamics 365 features.
- Typically preferred when significant number of Dynamics AX ISV solutions are not available in Dynamics 365, not curated by Microsoft, or can be replaced by out-of-the-box functionality.
- Typically preferred when planning to load the initial data for Dynamics 365 without the use of data upgrade tools.
- Ability to change current configuration for company growth.
- Revaluate current processes and make improvements where necessary
- No transactional history migrated.
- Longer process than traditional upgrading.