Two-Tier: Deploying Microsoft Dynamics AX in entities of corporations

Gain agility and reduce costs by standardizing on one business application for your subsidiaries, divisions, and branches.

Make Microsoft Dynamics
® AX the preferred business solution for your entities. Use a proven solution that is agile, industry-enabled, easy to use, and integrates with the legacy solution at your company headquarters.

With Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can effectively manage the complexities of a global organization across locations and countries by consolidating and standardizing business processes, gaining visibility, and simplifying compliance requirements with a cost-effective, custom solution.

Some headquarters ERP solutions are too large and complex to adapt to the unique requirements of smaller, local entities. Using Microsoft Dynamics AX in a two-tier ERP approach, you can meet those specialized requirements with a custom solution and easily implement vertical functionality. Manage change with the ability to scale quickly, and help improve the quality of data and reporting while lowering operational costs.

FEATURES

Two-tier ERP deployment strategy	Use Microsoft Dynamics AX as your preferred solution to handle business processes for your subsidiaries, branches, departments and fully integrate with the financial solution at your headquarters. The solution can run in multiple IT governance models (decentralized, centralized, or federated) and integrate consolidated financial data across your multiple sites and international locations with the headquarters solution while maintaining local financial information relevant to each location.
Flexible integration	Meet a range of business requirements by deploying multiple integration scenarios—from simple financial consolidation to advanced scenarios in which Microsoft Dynamics AX communicates with your legacy system at the transaction level to expand your supply chain. The solution scales so that you can deploy the same core model across your organization regardless of project size.
Industry-specific capabilities	Leverage innovative, industry-specific functionality for manufacturing, distribution, retail, professional services, the public sector, and other key industries. Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers a rich industry foundation on which partners build packaged vertical applications to help you meet unique industry needs.
Simplified compliance	Help reduce the risk and liability associated with regulatory compliance, corporate compliance and policies, product compliance, and customer initiatives that vary widely across regions and countries by implementing internal controls and using built-in multisite, multilanguage, and multicurrency capabilities.
Global presence	Sustain your worldwide business strategy with a global solution that is available and localized for 37 countries in 40 languages, and gain support from the extended international partner ecosystem of Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Reduced costs	Reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO) by deploying a cost-effective, scalable solution that meets the unique needs of your smaller entities. You can also reduce costs and simplify deployment by taking advantage of the proven implementation methodology of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step.
Improved productivity	Get people up and running quickly with minimal training and improve organizational efficiencies with the familiar user experience of Microsoft Dynamics AX. With easy-to-use tools, you can work quickly and make smart, proactive decisions.
Fits with existing systems	Maximize your existing technology investment and take advantage of tight technology integration across Microsoft products, including BizTalk Server, Microsoft SharePoint technologies, Microsoft SQL Server ® , Windows Workflow Foundation, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft Office Project Server.

Connect Your Local Entities to Headquarters with Microsoft Dynamics for Your Two-Tier ERP Solution

Last Modified 5/4/2010
Posted 4/5/2010

Large organizations find that some headquarter ERP solutions are too complex to adapt to the unique requirements of their smaller, local entities. Microsoft Dynamics ERP provides a viable alternative for these companies to easily customize their solution to meet specific requirements, implement vertical functionality, and to manage change easily and cost-effectively.

Companies using Microsoft Dynamics as their two-tier ERP solution gain transparency and deep insight into their organization's entities helping them manage their business more effectively enabling them to drive business success across the enterprise and enabling their entities to optimize their solutions to meet local needs and adhere to their headquarter requirements.

Use the resources on this page to learn about Microsoft Dynamics as a two-tier ERP solution

Customer Quote

"As the preferred desktop and laptop provider of enterprises across the U.S. and Europe, we needed a proven global business software solution that would help us respond to the changing market with increased speed and agility to meet our customers' requirements. Microsoft Dynamics AX met our ERP global business requirements allowing us to reduce our IT and manufacturing costs and overall total cost of ownership."

- John Biegel, Senior IT Strategist, Dell Corporation

Analysts

• Microsoft Dynamics AX positioned as a leader in Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier-2-oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies
  Despite mergers and acquisitions, there are many ERP offerings for midmarket companies and firms deploying Tier 2 ERP systems*. This Magic Quadrant evaluates products that have a global presence and are specifically tailored for product-centric midmarket companies with roughly 100 to 1,000 employees.
  *Gartner Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier-2 Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies" by C. Hestermann, R. Anderson, and C. Pang, June 4, 2009
  
• Microsoft Joins M&A Resurgence in Enterprise Applications Market
  Albert Pang, September 25, 2009
  IDC analyst Albert Pang reviews the Microsoft acquisitions of industry solutions from Fullscope Inc., Computer Generated Solutions Inc., LS Retail EHF and To-Increase Denmark A/S (wholly owned subsidiaries of Columbus IT Partner A/S) across manufacturing, professional services and retail industries. Pang states, "In addition to strengthening vertical industry expertise, the Microsoft buying spree is designed to help customers run their quasi-independent subsidiaries or divisions of large companies more effectively by creating a two-tier ERP structure."
  

"The Microsoft Dynamics ERP product lines, especially the highly scalable Microsoft Dynamics AX, have become the de facto ERP standard within certain subsidiaries and business units of large entities such as Boeing, Ingersoll Rand and Sara Lee, even though the headquarters may be using a different system."

Manage organizational growth with Microsoft Dynamics AX

Scale your business systems rapidly and efficiently to support new users, new locations, and new lines of business

As your organization expands, the ability to rapidly scale your ERP systems to support new users, new locations, and new lines of business—as well as to improve the efficiency of core business processes—is critical. Systems that keep pace with your growing business can minimize growing pains and ensure your company is poised for future success.

Whether you're supporting the organic growth of your existing business, expanding by adding new locations, or transforming your organization through merger or acquisition, Microsoft Dynamics AX can help you manage a smooth transition as you take your business to the next level. Here's how:

Ensure smooth integration of merged or newly acquired companies

• Rapidly gain visibility into the new or combined entity and/or subsidiaries by integrating all business systems and capturing manual business processes. Aggregating and analyzing data from disparate systems can help deliver operational insight, enabling better sales and production forecasting, materials scheduling, inventory management, and other critical processes.
  
• A familiar, comfortable user interface and intuitive Role Centers help employees quickly become proficient in ERP functionality, reducing downtime and training time, and eliminating resistance to adoption of the new systems.
  

Quickly add new locations or international offices

• Track multiple business units within a single organization as separate profit/loss centers. Scale to support an unlimited number of books for asset management and support different depreciation methods depending on tax authority and financial reporting purposes.
  
• Rapidly add international capabilities and new functionality. Support for multiple languages and currencies, country-specific functionality, and a rich set of multi-site shared services and intercompany functionality make it straightforward to extend Microsoft Dynamics AX with the exact capabilities you need—when and where you need them.
  

Scale your systems along with your business

• Improve the speed of transaction processing and scale your transactional volume by automating business workflows, freeing people for other, more productive work, and reducing overhead costs as you grow.
  
• Respond quickly to new opportunities by integrating discrete budgeting and planning processes into the daily rhythm of the business. High performance systems enable you to run production and planning processes more frequently, so you can react to changes and increase company performance and schedule efficiencies.
  

Support your growing organization

• Maintain appropriate staffing levels and manage future organizational changes, including planned reorganizations and hiring campaigns by automating internal and external recruitment processes such as sourcing jobs, managing recruitment, and hiring new workers—including hiring en masse.
  
• Enable employees to spot trends and respond proactively. More easily perform complex analyses on data involving numerous aspects of the business, so people across the organization can make more confident decisions about high-risk business situations based on data from multiple sources.
  

Manage organizational growth

Microsoft Dynamics business solutions help you grow your business

The challenges of a struggling economy place greater pressure on your organization to grow. Companies that find a way to maintain growth—through customer acquisition and retention, as well as diversification into new markets, and even mergers with former rivals and partners—will gain a competitive advantage and thrive even in these unforgiving market conditions. The key to growth can lie in solutions that:

• Help you take advantage of new market opportunities or fend off new competitors to gain market share.
  
• Enable you to plan current and future capacity relative to planned growth.
  
• Efficiently integrate disparate applications or legacy systems to provide consistent access to business information, even across distributed companies and newly merged organizations.
  
• Help you retain existing customers and gain new ones by placing customers at the center of your business.
  
• Enable you to rapidly respond to new trends and opportunities and identify shifts in purchasing patterns.
  
• Support multiple channels (store, catalog, Web, phone) and maintain consistent brand, presence, and inventory management across all.
  

Microsoft Dynamics business solutions provide the management controls, comprehensive functionality, and customer-centric business processes that companies need to grow under even the most challenging conditions. Here's how:

• Role-based functionality and familiar, intuitive user interfaces make it easy to extend access to business systems across your entire organization—and to quickly take on new users or subsidiaries—with minimal training or down time.
  
• Web portals provide real-time access to business information, even for remote employees and employees who do not typically work with financial or ERP applications.
  
• Prebuilt Web services and a straightforward integration model connect your financial and ERP systems to data stored in legacy applications and disparate systems.
  
• Core ERP functionality helps you manage and forecast inventory and sales across all your channels and locations.
  

Build a customer-centric business with fast access to all relevant account history.

Business Intelligence: 5 Things to Watch for in 2010

Business Intelligence Solutions is also known as : BI Solution, Competitive Intelligence, BI Technologies, Business Intelligence in 2010, BI System, Pervasive BI, Business Intelligent, Business Intelligence Technology,

Leveraging Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence Analytics, Decision Support System, Core BI Applications and Functions, DSS, Pervasive Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence Data, Business Intelligence Application, BI Solutions and Processes, BI Analytics, Enterprise-wide BI, BI Information, CRM Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence Support Decision Making, Adoption of BI, Business Intelligence Function, Success with BI in 2010, Business Intelligence Recommendations, BI Applications.

Introduction

Business intelligence (BI) solutions will continue to multiply in 2010. Smaller, newer vendors will merge with or be acquired by larger software companies. And users will continue to try to figure out how best to leverage BI to turn their organization into truly intelligent, agile and more effective businesses. Below are some specific areas of focus and recommendations intended to help those users to achieve their goals.

Analysis

 
 

1. BI will become more pervasive and more visible - and more invisible.

CRM, SFA and other applications focused on sales, service and support will increasingly act as "feeders" into core BI applications and functions. This increasing integration offers the prospect more complete and comprehensive views of business operations, in part by hiding BI functions behind other applications and interfaces familiar to users.

What you should do: Ensure that all of your current and potential solutions for CRM, SFA, help-desk management, contact-center management and other business-critical functions can "talk" to your BI solutions and processes. Also, work to drive adoption of those "feeder" applications to as close to 100 percent as possible. This will help to ensure that, to paraphrase a recent U.S. president, no BI information is left behind.

2. BI functions will increasingly "live in the cloud(s)."

As more collaboration, CRM and sales/marketing automation functionality is delivered as cloud-based services, BI functions will follow suit. This should give you more options for expanding the reach and adoption of BI and related applications, in many cases more affordably and with lower management overhead than possible with previous alternatives.

What you should do: If you're already using cloud-based solutions for CRM, SFA or related functions, work with your vendor(s) and/or reseller(s) to make sure those solutions interoperate with incumbent or planned BI solutions. If your organization is not yet in the cloud, educate yourself and your colleagues about what's available; what works with what; and what makes the most sense given your organization's specific needs, goals and resources.

3. BI and business collaboration will grow closer.

During 2010, numerous innovative collaboration-centric solutions will likely appear, built upon platforms such as Google's Wave, Salesforce.com's Chatter and SAP's 12 Sprints/"Constellation" project, now in beta testing. SAP's alternative is particularly interesting, given the company's long leadership in ERP and BI. Also, early reports indicate that SAP plans at least some integration with Google Wave, and to support real-time collaboration with information aggregated from multiple sources, presumably including those within and outside of an organization. Given SAP's legacy, the company will likely enable users to employ a hybrid approach combining cloud- and premises-based resources. All of these emerging platforms offer the promise of enhancing real-time collaboration with real-time and near-real-time BI and business analytics.

What you should do: Keep an eye on developments related to these and other such platforms. Pay specific attention to how and whether the providers of your most business-critical applications adopt and/or respond to those developments. And make sure those responsible for those business-critical applications at your organization sign up for access to the emerging platforms, so your organization has as much practical information as possible about potential specific BI-collaboration integrations.

4. BI will gain a larger "voice."

The growing use of IP telephony creates new opportunities to gather and leverage information about who calls whom and what happens before, during and after each call. This information can be a very valuable addition to BI and analytics efforts - but only if a company's phone system and that system's vendor, reseller and/or integrator are sufficiently strategically focused on the company's business needs and goals.

What you should do: Take a strategic approach to VoIP, and make sure that your chosen and candidate solutions - and their vendors - understand your business needs and goals. You want to make absolutely sure that all relevant information about voice traffic at your organization is as accessible to your BI- and analytics-related solutions and efforts as is information about e-mail and other data.

5. BI will continue to challenge business decision makers to take full advantage of its benefits.

While growing numbers of companies will achieve success with BI in 2010, many will find their efforts stymied. Impediments will include disjoint solutions, inconsistent integrations with other key applications and information sources, lack of complete solution adoption, lack of managerial support or some combination of these factors.

What you should do: Stay the course and remain focused on your business goals. Evangelize the business value of effective, comprehensive, enterprise-wide BI and analytics to all key constituencies at your organization, from senior management to sales and support teams. Strive to focus on solutions and vendors that support and encourage interoperability, ease of use and management, and effective integration. And keep at least one eye on technological and business developments among BI solution providers.

Conclusion

Business intelligence efforts can only result in a truly intelligent, agile business if they are driven by business goals; comprehensively deployed and adopted; and managed in ways that produce meaningful, measurable and credible results. The trends and recommendations above can provide a foundation upon which you can build an effective approach to BI tailored to your organization's unique needs and goals. In addition, resources such as Focus can help you to get and keep informed and up to date on relevant industry developments, the experiences of other users and advice from experts.