10 Reasons to Choose Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
If you’re looking for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for enterprises, then you should look no further than Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The latest release of the biggest Dynamics ERP and customer relationship management (CRM) family is easy to use and is purpose-built for five key industries. Highly flexible and customisable, it allows you to take immediate advantage of new business opportunities — provided, of course, that you have a Dynamics AX consultant on board to help ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. In this article, we’ll look at the top 10 reasons you should choose Dynamics AX 2012 for your enterprise’s ERP solution.
1. Quick ROI
Purpose-built for five industries including retail, services, manufacturing, distribution and public sector, Dynamics AX 2012 allows for rapid deployment, and with the help of a Dynamics AX consultant you can have your ERP software up and running quicker than ever before to see immediate ROI.
2. Go global
How Microsoft Dynamics AX Helps Your Business
Microsoft Dynamics AX is one of Microsoft’s most complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) solution. It consists of a specifically designed foundation that can run across five industries, and includes core ERP functionality for management of areas including human resources, operations and finances. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Microsoft Dynamics AX, discussing what it can achieve for your business. We’ll also look at the benefits of engaging a Dynamics AX consultant to help with your Dynamics AX implementation.
How does Microsoft Dynamics AX work?
Dynamics AX is such a powerful application that it would be difficult to explain how it works in such a short space. Additionally, it varies from business to business; every business is different and, as such, the ERP software must be designed differently to suit that business’s processes.
To give you a basic idea of how the software works, however, take a look at this example of how Dynamics AX can help an electronics store’s operation manager to forecast inventory, avoid situations where stock may run out, and place supplier orders…
4 Questions to Ask Your Dynamics Consultant
If your organisation has made the decision to implement Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) software in order to improve sales and increase customer retention, it’s critical that you engage the service of Dynamics consultants to help ensure the implementation is as smooth as possible. After all, CRM is never an out-of-the-box solution; it must be integrated closely with your business processes, and also requires a deal of technical expertise. In this article, we’ll run you through five questions that you should ask your Dynamics consultant.
1. Do they have the appropriate expertise?
As already mentioned in the opening, a successful Dynamics implementation requires both integration with business processes and also a sound technical understanding. Before engaging Dynamics consultants, then, you should ensure that they have both of these qualities in abundance. For example, the consultants may have a strong understanding of the technical side of things but may fail to help you integrate the solution into your business processes. Alternatively, they may be strong business minds without the ability to deliver your technical requirements. In many cases, you may need a consulting team to cover business process management and technical implementation.
How Consultants Can Improve Your Microsoft Dynamics Implementation
If you run a business of your own, you’ll know that your customers are the lifeblood of your business. You may have also heard of the benefits of customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as Microsoft Dynamics, in increasing your sales and improving your relationships with existing customers. While the benefits of implementing CRM software are undeniable, making the move to CRM does not go smoothly for every business. In this article, we’ll take a look at the benefits of engaging Dynamics consultants to assist in your CRM implementation.
What are the benefits of a successful Dynamics implementation?
Microsoft Dynamics is the most popular CRM software on the market, and it can bring many benefits in relation to your sales and customer management. It can help you to:
- Generate a larger amount of dales leads and improve overall lead management
- Help you to convert leads and close more sales in the long term
- Aid in customer service management and help you to facilitate better customer support
- Stay in touch with your customers in order to build or increase loyalty
- Allow for higher levels of customer retention through offering the best products at the correct time
5 Ways to Increase Employee Satisfaction
As a business owner, one of the keys to getting the most out of your employees is to ensure their morale is high. As the saying goes, a happy worker is a productive worker. In this article, we’ll take a look at five ways to increase the levels of employee satisfaction in your workplace, from accommodating work-life balance to utilising the knowledge of Dynamics consultants for your ERP or CRM implementation.
1. Work-life balance
Always consider an employee’s work-life balance. Remember, employees are more than just resources to be deployed as you choose; they have lives and schedules outside of work. What’s more, those lives and schedules will vary from employee to employee. Some may have kids that need to be picked up from school, or a medical condition that requires regular trips to the doctor. Whatever the case, an employer needs to be flexible. Let employees work from home on occasion, or allow them to make up for missed hours in another way. Consider allowing them limited access to social networking websites such as Facebook, too; while they can be distracting, they’re also indispensable tools used for managing the affairs of their daily lives.
Understanding Employment Arrangements in Australia
In Australia, there are various types of employment arrangements. In this article, we’ll look at a few of these, from full-time employment (office workers, for example) to casual employment (bar staff, for example) and contractors (Microsoft Dynamics consultants, for example).
Full-time employment
In Australia, a full-time worker is one that works at least 35 hours per week. This usually involves five eight-hour days (with one half hour to hour lunch break per day), though hours can vary — eight 12-hour days per fortnight, for example. Full-time workers also receive entitlements including annual leave, sick leave and long-service leave.
Part-time employment
5 Ways to Boost Business Productivity
All business owners are looking for ways to increase productivity in order to help their business grow. In this article, we’ll take a look at five ways to boost productivity in your business, from motivating employees to utilising the knowledge of Dynamics consultants for your Microsoft ERP implementation.
1. Keep up to speed with technology
Technologies are improving and converging at a rapid rate, and businesses need to remain on top of these advancements in order to boost productivity. An example of unproductive use of technologies can be seen in businesses that still have separate systems for phones and data; these days, converged IP networks can be taken advantage of that combine these functions (and more) into a single solution. Replacing old computers with faster, more powerful versions can also go a long way to increase will also ensure productivity remains high, and even the simple task of keeping computers updated can be useful.
What is Insourcing?
In-sourcing is an often ambiguous term which is seeing increasing use in the world of business. In this article, we’ll take a look at two different definitions of insourcing, comparing it with the more well-established concept of outsourcing to assist in its understanding. We’ll also look at examples of insourcing, such as hiring Microsoft Dynamics consultants to help with an organisation’s ERP implementation.
Comparison with outsourcing
Most of us are familiar with the term “outsourcing” — that is, the process of contracting work or a business function to an external provider or “third party”. Businesses outsource for various reasons, but most common among these is that outsourcing is viewed as a means of saving money. Often, outsourcing work is cheaper because businesses can leave the work to external providers of whom they don’t need to provide benefits, and who can usually charge a cheaper rate due to greater focus and fewer overheads.
6 Unforeseen Costs of CRM
Making the decision to implement customer relationship management (CRM) software in your business is a crucial step to improving your sales, marketing, customer service and other customer-related business activities. However, many business owners plunge headfirst into the CRM pool without properly considering the additional costs that will inevitably arise on top of their up-front investment. In fact, many Dynamics consultants would suggest you’ll need to budget anywhere between three or four times the initial cost of software for the ongoing costs down the line. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what these costs entail.
1. Infrastructure costs
First and foremost, you’ll need to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is in place, including server, laptop, PC and operating system upgrades and replacements. These costs will probably be more pronounced if you’ve implemented an on-site CRM system as opposed to a cloud-based deployment.
6 Ways to Get More out of CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) software can have huge benefits for your business, helping improve sales, marketing and customer-related activities immeasurably. In this article, we’ll look at six ways to get the most out of your CRM, from effective CRM training to utilising CRM consultants — for example, Dynamics consultants, if you’re using Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
1. Plenty of training
The key is training. While CRM software can have excellent long-term benefits in terms of improving sales, the fact of the matter is that employees will probably be set in their ways. It will take a great deal of training before they get used to the new way of doing things. Without training, employees will not feel comfortable working with the new software, and if they’re not comfortable with the software there’s a good chance they’ll default to the old ways. And remember — the old ways are inefficient and exactly what you’re trying to get away from!