Creating amazing customer experiences
OnWindows Issue 6: Spring 2016
Microsoft Dynamics AX is bringing new benefits to retailers
The latest iteration of Microsoft Dynamics AX has just become widely available, bringing with it a raft of benefits for the retail industry. In the first of a series of articles on Microsoft’s flagship ERP solution, Luke Shave and Karen Garrette tell us what to expect from the new release
The new release of Microsoft Dynamics AX brings the power and intelligence of the next generation of cloud computing in an enterprise-class business application to retail organizations worldwide.
Choosing to call it ‘Microsoft Dynamics AX’, rather than ‘Microsoft Dynamics AX 7’, we’ve departed from branding that included years or versions of the product to a simple brand that underscores Dynamics AX as a cloud-based service that will be regularly updated. This latest release delivers a new, intelligent user experience, optimized to deliver value to retailers. It brings proven business processes to the cloud, which means that the full set of capabilities of this solution will be available to customers from day one. Dynamics AX introduces continuous management services that enable the software to quickly adapt to an organization’s business needs. The new Dynamics AX also harnesses the power of the cloud, giving businesses and people global availability and scale to work anywhere, anytime so they can grow at their own pace and on their terms.
The benefits for retailers are clear. In this industry, businesses are looking to empower their people with tools they want to use and to enable them to make smarter decisions faster. To enable this, Dynamics AX offers a new user experience that looks and works like Microsoft Office and delivers deep integration that seamlessly shares information between Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM and Office 365. It gives people near-real-time analytics powered by Azure Machine Learning with the ability to visualize data through Power BI embedded right within the application.
It’s easy to implement too. ERP systems have traditionally been known for their rigidity, complexity, and slow deployments and implementations. Dynamics AX is changing the game in this area with revolutionary new technology that continuously enhances rather than disrupts business processes and operations.
Businesses are looking for flexibility and choice in how, when, where and at what pace they bring their operational systems to the cloud. Building on the global Microsoft Azure platform, with its strong commitment and capability to meet diverse data locality and data sovereignty requirements, Dynamics AX is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of global customers. The new release brings with it the benefits of the cloud that are most important for retailers – from simple signup, immediate provisioning, and built-in high availability and disaster recovery to elastic capacity to add resources but only pay for them when they are being used.
Don’t miss our article in the next issue, where we will discuss how Dynamics AX enables the modern retail store. Karen Garrette is industry director for retail, consumer packaged goods and hospitality and travel and Luke Shave is global industry marketing lead for hospitality, retail and travel. Both work in the Microsoft cloud and enterprise group
