Microsoft has launched the newest generation of its business software in South Africa, saying it signals a new chapter in enterprise resource planning (ERP) user productivity by providing an easy-to-use interface and information tailored to specific roles within a company.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, which was released locally this week, has already won plaudits from analysts and early adopters, including local IT solutions provider XON and JSE-listed staffing provider Adcorp.
Jumana Helal, who heads up the Dynamics business at Microsoft SA, says AX 2009 aims to help businesses thrive in a competitive global marketplace by controlling costs, managing risk and increasing employee productivity.
"Our vision of ERP is that it will actually start to prompt its users to take certain actions, instead of merely being a reactive tool that people use to pull weekly reports from," says Helal. "Employees using traditional ERP systems have had to wade through inefficient, time-intensive steps - enter transactional data, run reports, analyse reports - before they can do their jobs effectively. Through Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009's Role Centre, employees from the executive suite to the warehouse have access to role-relevant business intelligence to help them make decisions more efficiently."
Adcorp CIO Kobus Pienaar says the group has a clear roadmap for rolling out AX technology to all 15 of its subsidiaries. Adcorp has 1 700 fulltime employees, and administers 70 000 full and part-time staff for its clients at any given time, paying R2.2 billion a year in salaries and processing 70 000 timesheets and 60 000 payslips per week.
"The complexities of managing accurate business insights and standardising operations across multiple locations are immense," said Pienaar. "Microsoft Dynamics AX helps us to manage complex financial and supply chain processes more easily. For example, the new software can run multiple legal entities on a central installation and provide a single, integrated view of financial and supply chain information from facilities around the country, helping us simplify our planning. Advanced planning and reporting scenarios, such as consolidation or budgeting, are offered through integration with Microsoft Office Performance Point Server."
Systems integrators like XON Group say the new AX 2009 will offer powerful new capabilities to help growing multisite organisations streamline processes, reduce operational costs, manage compliance and drive informed decision-making. XON Group, which has operations in 16 cities across South Africa, was the first South African user of AX 2009.
"We have 40 people across eight companies and three national offices using Microsoft's ERP system," said Bart van Buynder, CFO of the XON Group of companies. "We are using a total of six modules that our business partner - XON Business Solutions, deployed first in a test environment before going live and we encountered no issues during the rapid deployment."
Another business challenge that growing companies face is the increasing pressure to meet global and local regulatory compliance, a complex and costly problem that has been a top priority for chief executive officers and chief financial officers. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 delivers core features to help companies limit these risks and lower total cost of compliance, including country-specific functionality to help local customers more easily comply with local regulations.
Helal says people need software that helps them do their jobs more effectively and with minimal training. To increase productivity and foster more confident decision-making, the role-tailored design of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 gives employees access to critical business data through the following new features:
* A Role Centre that prioritises tasks and real-time information for a majority of business functions.
* A user interface that looks and feels like familiar Microsoft Office software to help employees ramp up quickly, resulting in higher user productivity and more consistent adherence to business processes.
* Self-service business intelligence tools using Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies to deliver standard KPIs by role and simplify end-user reporting, which results in more informed decision-making and integrity of information across the organisation. Preconfigured KPIs and reports enable customers to start immediately.
"Managing risk is an integral part of my job, and Microsoft Dynamics AX makes my job easier," said Marc de Deygere, CIO at the global textiles giant Picanol, who was in South Africa for the industry launch this month. "I can access critical company information from within the Executive Role Centre and see a 360-degree view of our global IT and finance operations, ranging from compliance risks to how the company is tracking against forecasts."
Picanol has three major lines of business, which deliver specialised products and services to the textiles industry, meaning AX2009 had to be flexible enough to cover a myriad different processes and millions of calculations. The company has more than 800 AX2009 users across the world - of which at least 300 are using the system at any given time around the clock.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 integrates with other leading Microsoft technologies, maximising the benefits of any company's overall IT investment. Benefits include:
* Enhanced security, reliability and scalability though integration with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. For example, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 can compress the database size by 60% to 80%, which can lead to lower hardware and data maintenance costs;
* Reduced operational complexity and IT management overheads with improved control through interoperability with Windows Essential Business Server 2008;
* Improved ability to manage and administer projects through integration with Microsoft Office Project Server; and
* Easy communication with remote employees, customers, and trading partners through integration with Microsoft Unified Communication.
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