AX Architect and User
Rating: 9 out of 10
IncentivizedUse Cases and Deployment Scope
Microsoft Dynamics AX is used across various departments with our customers. In some cases there are separate systems for inventory, A/R and the integration and management of bi-directional data is easy to setup and maintain. It addresses costing of inventory, speeds the time to close for the finance teams, and with inter-operability with Office (Word, Excel, Visio) it is fast to train new users.
Pros
- GL and use of dimensions allows for a 'lighter' chart of accounts and dynamic use of data categorizations for reporting and budget control.
- The entire ERP system is integrated, so Inventory in particular is straight forward to create (items can be inventory, service or BOMs) and the costing options are flexible enough to offer different costing (FIFO, LIFO, Standard...) for different groups of inventory and pricing (cost and/or sales) can be different based on site/WH designation.
- Cash and Bank management is now an independent module and offers better tools to manage cash flow. This is true for Budgeting as well as this functionality makes setting, managing and updating budgets easy as it works seamlessly with Excel.
- Data and ERP system updates at the transactional level is less complex as you can export and then import data via Excel into AX as long as your security rights give you access to the tables/data in question.
- Project service and project accounting is deep in functions as it will work with Project Server, Invoice with time and material or fixed fee projects and works great for projects internal or external in managing/capturing all time for a specific initiative.
Cons
- MRP can be slow to adapt to changes in actual production or supply chain transactions.
- Setting up number sequences seems a trivial matter, but these numbers ID transactions once they are in the ledger and are key--easy to miss this point in the implementation process.
- Bank rec being easily automated and able to quickly plug into a bank back end to get data is not the best.
- Payment processing can be 'clunky' based on checks, ACH, Wires...as some of these items are not triggered out of the box in AX, bur are easily added --talking ACH and Wires specifically.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is strong tool for manufacturing, supply chain, project services and retail. I would say highly engineered businesses where CAD and unique billing/project types are demanded are tougher to have AX baseline functions work as customers need.
I have seen AX work well in a 'hub and spoke' model where it operates certain business divisions but not all. The integrations and interfaces are easy to set and manage/monitor.