How we saved an international retailer from bankruptcy! Part 1
“So can you help us?”, asked the logistics director
Let me summarize:
- You are not necessarily overstocked, but you are somewhat clueless about where your items are; maybe in this warehouse, maybe in another, maybe in transit or maybe in one of your many shops, even though you have one of the best barcode scanner applications.
- Customers don’t really receive the items they ordered on time. Sometimes they don`t receive it at all and sometimes they receive another item. You are happy with Dynamics CRM though but you are using CRM to register all complaints
Sounds familiar? Not yet? Then let`s continue.
- Vendors are supplying you, but they are not necessarily fulfilling their whole purchase order, nor do they deliver on time. Also on rather good days your vendors deliver your whole order, twice and you are saying Microsoft BizTalk might be the culprit?
- And because of all this your best demand planning system is unreliable? You think your 3 year old nephew`s logic can give better forecast than this multi-million-dollar system you just bought.
- Customers are standing in line at the cash registers wanting to pay for an item but your in house made point of sale system can’t process items that are not on stock in that store.
And these are only your most pressing issues, because you also have a backlog of 384 other items that needs addressing?
Yes, we can help you! “Yes We Can!”
Mission: Impossible?
“Are there any questions?”, I asked. No one of the 24 Dynamics AX and BizTalk professionals asked any questions. The customers` Business Process managers did have plenty of questions though. After I dismissed my multiple teams of six , I addressed them:
“Look, what you have implemented is theoretically correct. There is not one flaw in this picture; you have chosen the best of breed systems and I understand why. You have connected all those systems using almost a hundred interfaces and you are managing them through Microsoft Biztalk, so theoretically it’s all correct.”, I praised them. However, having 14 best of breed systems in practice means you have to manage this complexity as well. Your almost 100 interfaces are basically 100 points of failures and apparently they do fail”.
Too much theory, no relation to simple day to day practice!
The next discussions were about “Who of those 14 vendors was to blame?”, “Didn’t we test well enough?”, “Did we put too much pressure on these 14 partners?”, which I basically ignored as much as possible. Appreciating the state of the company these discussions were held at the wrong time by the wrong people.
After all the emotions and blaming the solving part was actually the easiest. “If you guys did everything with the best of breed systems, and according to the best practices available, using different consultants and change-managers, then the issue is simply just that!”, I told the logistics director. A moment of silence and then the acknowledgment followed “Too much theory, no relation to simple day in day practice!”
The next step was…
Do you want to find out how we solved their problems? Stay tuned!
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Session date in Microsoft Dynamics AX
Accountants would like to easy enter corrections at a month end date. For this reason in previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX there was an option in the Tools menu to change the session date and time. However this menu is not implemented in the new cloud based Dynamics AX, the option to change the current work date is still available. The option is even closer than you might think.
The new Personalization options – part 2
A lot of investments had been done by Microsoft to get a new attractive user interface for Microsoft Dynamics AX using modern browsers. As there is no native client, also the personalization options are reconsidered. In previous previews there was an option to change the theme colors and a setting to display more or less information which actually manages a kind of zooming. With the latest preview (CTP8) there is a new way of doing form personalizations. In part 1 I explained some basic user options. In this second episode I will inform you about form personalizations.
(meer…)
The new Personalization options – part 1
A lot of investments had been done by Microsoft to get a new attractive user interface for Microsoft Dynamics AX using modern browsers. As there is no native client, also the personalization options are reconsidered. In previous previews there was an option to change the theme colors and a setting to display more or less information which actually manages a kind of zooming. With the latest preview (CTP8) there is a new way of applying personalizations. In this part I will explain some basic user options. Part 2 will inform you about form personalizations.
Tips on AX 2012 Security Development Tool – Part 8
Last year I posted some tips on the Microsoft Dynamics AX Security Development Tool. Recently my colleague Boye Walters also wrote an episode and named it Tips on AX 2012 Security Development Tool – Part 7. Well… he fanned the fire on his topic and here is another edition: Tips on AX 2012 Security Development Tool – Part 8; focusing on the view type Duties and Privileges.
Security: Past, current and future
When you read the title of this blog post you might think this post is about changes during the lifecycle of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Or maybe it is related to the security framework in older versions (AX 2009), the current version (AX 2012) or the new Microsoft Dynamics AX (aka ‘AX 7’). Well, it’s not. This post will tell you about a standard feature to restrict access on past, current and future records for tables which supports date effective data. It is called “Date effective policies”.