CUSTOMER ADIVSORY BOARD NEWSLETTER. Armanino Consulting / Microsoft Dynamics Customer Advisory Board Newsletter

Transcription

1 CUSTOMER ADIVSORY BOARD NEWSLETTER Armanino Consulting / Microsoft Dynamics Customer Advisory Board Newsletter Published: October 2012

2 Keynote: High Tech Industry Trends The keynote speech was delivered by Ron Jones, Founder and President of N- In Summary The initial Customer Advisory Board meeting was held on September 18, 2012 at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Conference Center. Armanino Consulting Dynamics Partner Chris Moore began the meeting with an overview of the board s objectives: Networking Offer Microsoft feedback Gain Insight into Microsoft Dynamics' product direction Demonstrate Armanino Consulting's commitment to supporting and working in the High Tech industry Offer Customer's opportunity for strategic visioning for their businesses Able Group and an executive with many global semiconductor firms. He got the crowd s attention when he illustrated Moore s Law with the decrease in size of transistors over the last 40 years. In 1972, one transistor could fit on one pixel. Today, 1,000,000 transistors fit in the very same space. Because of the rapid pace of innovation in the high tech industry, Ron Jones believes that systems, such as ERP and CRM, are not a business expense. Rather, they are a strategic investment to enable company growth and to manage the rapid pace of change in the industry. Microsoft Visioning and Customer Feedback Ron was followed by a visioning session for Microsoft s Business Division by Patty Ryan and Dave Danford, who both lead the product strategy teams for Dynamics. Patty spoke of the factors that impact product development at Microsoft, including the Dynamics of Change: Economy, Geopolitics, People and Technology Cloud. She spoke of surveys that point out that today s college graduates consider digital connectivity as important as food and water and how the Cloud is the biggest disruptor in our generation. Patty emphasized that Microsoft Dynamics has an advantage in this technological evolution because it has the flexibility and elasticity to deliver modules in bite-size pieces and to help workers connect inside and outside of companies seamlessly. Dave spoke of how dynamic businesses utilize proactive applications, manage connected organizations, and implement business workloads and suites. Customer Advisory Board member Jason Thorpe of Microsemi asked about Microsoft s vision for delivering real-time data and addressing big data issues. Dave replied that Dynamics AX 2012 has made real progress in allowing for realtime flexibility and the time to value on the out of the box BI tools is much faster. Additionally, he pointed out that in AX 2012 R2, testing of the global code base to make industry-specific solutions work for all will be a huge benefit. Board member Michael Evans of dpix asked how Microsoft can support user adoption and education beyond marketing collateral. Armanino Consulting s John Van Metre pointed to Microsoft s InformationSource website with resource libraries in beta form that will be more readily available in the future. Board Member David Jeng of Wintec asked Patty and Dave about their strategy to get the customer community to create use case scenarios. Dave offered to connect David with the engineers who run this program for Microsoft. Chris Moore concluded this session by inviting members to participate in the upcoming Armanino Consulting focus groups that will zero in on specific functionality in the future and provide actionable items to Microsoft. Armanino Consulting Page 1

3 Dynamics AX 2012 Highlights and High Tech Industries ISV Solution This session started off with each Customer Advisory Board Member introducing themselves, their company and which version of Microsoft Dynamics AX they had started with: Karen Carte, CFO, NET, AX 2009 Mike Evans, Senior AX Administrator, dpix, AX 2009 James Wang, IT Business Analyst, Wintec, AX v4 Minh Ha, IT Applications Director, Shoretel, AX 2009 Adam Haigis, Director, Supply Chain Management, Entropic, AX 2012 (went live two weeks before this meeting) Yi-Ching Tsai, Director of ERP, ISSI, AX 2009 Jason Thorpe, Director of Enterprise Applications, AX v3 John Quist, Senior VP of Operations, Impinj, AX 2009 David Jeng, VP of Operations, Wintec, AX v4 Nan-Huang Hsu, Business Applications Manager, Wintec, AX v4 David Wagenseller, Acting CEO, NET, AX 2009 Misty White, Director of Product Development and Senior Pre-Sales Consultant for Armanino Consulting, offered an overview of Dynamics AX 2012 s completely revamped Enterprise portal. Hovering over hyperlinks making it quicker to drill down in the system to detailed information, all sales order entry information is now on one screen, and a collaborative workspace for project management are all time-saving features of the new version. Misty said the collaborative portals within AX 2012 allow internal and external vendors to pull together information and is a great example of Microsoft s commitment to pervasive interoperability. Chuck Junhke, Microsoft s Business Solutions Specialist, provided a demonstration of Management Reporter and illustrated how organizational structures can span legal entities and even be consolidated in minutes. The Dynamics AX 2012 version has an employee self-service portal designed to encourage ERP for everyone. AX 2012 has 90 out-of-the-box workflow templates that offer better graphical representation than the 34 templates include with AX John Van Metre, Business Development Representative for Armanino Consulting, presented on the topic of consignment arrangements, which were voted on as a key issue for Customer Advisory Board. He reviewed the five major consignment arrangements managed in Dynamics AX, including vendor, customer inbound, contract manufacturer, customer outbound, and 3PL. Misty wrapped up the session by identifying two major topics of interest for the upcoming focus groups: integration with suppliers and consignment arrangements Armanino Consulting Page 2

4 Deploying Dynamics AX Globally Jason Thorpe of Microsemi and Traci Rayburn, Senior Project Manager for Armanino Consulting and former VP of IT at Microsemi, spoke together about the agility Dynamics AX provides this global company whose business strategy focuses on serial acquisitions. Jason started by saying that for many years, Microsemi let its separate business units work autonomously, but the need for accurate company data became greater. In 2003, the company sought a single ERP system to provide a single source of data and Microsemi s business users unanimously selected Dynamics AX. Traci provided an example of the speed with which AX can be implemented. Microsemi acquired a discrete manufacturer running its business on SAP with a complicated configuration. It took just four months to transition all components of the business from SAP to Dynamics AX. Equally impressive, when Microsemi decides to close a business unit, they can move the data and shut the systems down in a single weekend because the AX system is so agile Microsoft Dynamics AX is a complete, holistic solution, not pieced together from third-party add-in products. Every module in Microsoft Dynamics AX therefore has a more consistent appearance and tighter integration. Benefits of Managing the design win process across the entire organizational structure Improve Sales Effectiveness Improve internal collaboration and customer excellence Improve Forecast Accuracy Ensure tighter alignment between sales revenue forecast and production forecasting Design-Win and Forecast Management Case Studies Scott Mangelson, Director of Armanino Consulting's Dynamics CRM practice, provided an overview of the benefits of a unified CRM-ERP solution. Through screen shots and case studies, he illustrated the how managing the design-win process across the entire organizational structure helps to: Improve Sales Effectiveness Improve internal collaboration and customer excellence Improve Forecast Accuracy Ensure tighter alignment between sales revenue forecast and production forecasting Marketing Feedback for Dynamics User Conference Mary Tressel, Armanino Consulting s Strategic Marketing Manager, provided the Customer Advisory Board with the opportunity to rate a list of educational sessions that will be presented during the firm s Dynamics User Day. The sessions spanned Dynamics AX and CRM and an Executive Track of sessions, designed to help C-level leaders work more strategically to drive success in their businesses. Additionally, Board members were asked to provide input on speaking engagement opportunities for Armanino Consulting s High Tech Dynamics practice. Armanino Consulting Page 3

5 User Adoption Led by Armanino Consulting Dynamics Partner Bruce Kirschenbaum, this session focused on the challenges and solutions Board members have for encouraging greater user adoption. High on the list of challenges were: Lack of education/understanding about AX s value Need for management support Users who don t want things to change Minimal access to CustomerSource for e-learning The solutions suggested were myriad and helpful and included: Steering committees across divisions to help the ERP team understand the user challenges Use the Process Flow and Task Recorder functionality to create procedure manuals for each role Incorporate the required SOX documentation around roles and responsibilities into a training manual for new user and cross-departmental training During the last conference room pilot before go live, have business users employ the Task Recorder to create training documents for end users. This is amazingly successful for Microsemi s user adoption efforts. Merge specific Task Recorder documentation into the AX 2012 Help feature to optimize the Help tool. When Armanino Consulting assesses a client s business processes, we encourage clients to see the AX implementation as an opportunity to recast the mold and optimize their business processes. Dynamic Communities AXUG (User Group) offers regional meetings and an annual conference that offer great educational sessions to encourage user adoption. Chris Moore concluded the afternoon by thanking everyone for their participation and reminding them that our focus groups will begin in The group adjourned to a networking dinner at FAZ Restaurant in Sunnyvale. All PPT presentations are available to Armanino Consulting / Microsoft Dynamics Customer Advisory Board Members. Send Mary Tressel a note if you d like copies: mary.tressel@amllp.com. Armanino Consulting Page 4