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Saturday, September 29, 2007 5:41 AM

The 'Adaptive' ERP - Microsoft Dynamics leads the pack

I am tempted to draw relation to the things happening around us in nature. In 1859, Charles Robert Darwin, a well known English naturalist in his book 'Origin of Species', highlighted two vital traits of evolution. All living things on earth today are the descendants - with modifications - of earlier species.

Second, he proposed a mechanism - natural selection - to explain how evolution takes place. As part of natural selection, all living things keep on adapting to the changing environment around them. The fittest survive and carry their traits to the next generation.

ERP solutions have also undergone a multiple metamorphosis over the last few decades. They have adapted to the changing customer requirements and evolved over a period of time. Along the journey, there have been a lot of players who couldn't survive the onslaught of their own competitive environment and have either been acquired or perished. Yes, Darwin's Survival of Fittest applies everywhere.

The explosion in networking and internet technologies has forced the businesses to change the way they work. Gone are the days, when you used to compete with the company from the same geographical region. You may be taken by surprise by someone from Guangzhou in China to even relatively unknown place like Timbuktu. The worse scenario would be that you may not be even aware of whom you are competing. Suddenly, winning is everything. Innovation is one single ingredient that would sail 'adaptive companies' think ahead of their competition and provide their customers with the best solution at the lowest costs.

Companies are moving fast in creating loyal customers. It takes atleast 5 times more energy and resources to acquire a new customer rather than maintaining the existing ones. Companies are fast making customers part of their own operations. Example - Mclaren Mercedes, a luxury car maker in Woking, Surrey, requires their vendors to provide sub assemblies for steering wheels, suspension systems, dashboard systems just in time to match their customer's requirements. The customers buy Mclaren for the brand value which is superset of quality and reliable cars, customizable finish and never ending value. Mclaren may invest in the best Information Systems but they need to ensure that their vendors, an important part of the total value chain use the right systems.

Outsourcing is the order of the day in any industry. Some years back, I had visited Coventry, a onetime manufacturing hub in the United Kingdom to visit a large tractor company. To my amazement, the huge site had only one functional building in the myriad of large number of sheds and other structures, their administrative office. The rest of the factory was more of a yard and in ruins with whole manufacturing having shifted to Poland and other low cost eastern European countries. Come to India and visit places like Bangalore, Gurgaon, Pune and Hyderabad and you can taste where they run your banks, credit cards, railway enquiries, energy bills management etc ( the list goes on endlessly). Businesses are fast becoming adaptive - and outsourcing is the new economy phenomenon.

An Adaptive ERP would be one which allows the customers to connect with the vendors. It should be open to talk to the customers systems thus enabling the 'real integration'.

An Adaptive ERP can be implemented fast. Generally SMB organizations can't afford to spend more than 3-5 months to implement any business application.

An Adaptive ERP should be Easy to Use. End user acceptance is key to success of any ERP project. Executives instinctively know that their employees are their most valuable asset. Indeed, in many industries - such as Financial Services and Real Estate-the employee population is the most critical asset and manageable cost. The nagging issue is how an ERP can create a more efficient work environment and unlock the value of these employees. Unfortunately, many well known ERP products are cumbersome and difficult to use by the employees and thus projects fall flat on the ground.

An Adaptive ERP should be flexible to change with the business requirements. In industries like Retail, for many developing countries like India is still <5 % organized. The industry is in nascent stage but the CAGR is exponential. An Adaptive ERP should help the retail player to constantly innovate and accommodate the changes in the ERP systems to enable their business. Imagine, I wish to launch a new promotion scheme for my customers but my system doesn't allow me to do it fast. I end up losing the key opportunity as my ERP system was slow to react and rigid to change.

An Adaptive ERP should present the lowest TCO ( Total Cost of Ownership). I was going through the total revenues of the one of the largest ERP player. More than two third of their revenue comes from existing customers in terms of services and maintenance. I am scared. Would the ERP vendor charge me more as I move further? Considering this from SMB's perspective, it is simply impossible to implement a large company ERP as the total costs would escalate over the time.

Considering the plethora of ERP players around, Microsoft Dynamics presents a better proposition in terms of user friendliness, ease of implementation and all this resulting in lower total cost of ownership.

Can anyone beat the user friendliness of Microsoft Office and if an ERP looks like Microsoft Office, one would have one of the smooth and successful implementations. SAP may be good looking in features but still scores low when it comes to SMB requirements - Ease of usage, quick implementation, Adaptability to changing requirements, and a lower Total cost of ownership.

Can an adaptive ERP provide me Competitive Advantage?
Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Sunday, September 23, 2007 5:16 PM

Microsoft Dynamics in Manufacturing - An IDC report

There is a nice concise report on Microsoft Dynamics solutions for Manufacturing companies. This report also mentions key partners aligned along the Microsoft vertical strategy.

Do visit the link -

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/0/8/9088B7E3-A52C-467E-B9B1-3835FE117EB4/MS_Dynamics_in_Manufacturing_Mar07.pdf 

Since the report has APAC perspective, it would be quite useful in targeting the manufacturing industry.

Friends, this is our time. Microsoft Dynamics clearly presents a better value proposition to the end customers as compared to our competition.Clearly, we are redefining the ERP market. We triggered the 'consolidation wave' in ERP market (the industry was very fragmented prior to our entry), we have one of the clearest roadmaps to our solutions which converges in deriving the value from Microsoft stack.

Gone are the times when customers needed to go through sleepless nights in trying to integrate multiple solutions from multiple vendors. Truly, 'One Microsoft' is the way forward. Remember, in short, if you are looking for the best integrated information system at the lower TCO, you are at the right place.

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Sunday, September 23, 2007 4:51 PM

Microsoft Dynamics NAV receives high rating

A new analysis utilising The Accounting Library, one of the most respected software selection tools serving the needs of midmarket companies, Microsoft Dynamics NAV was determined to be among the top-ranked business management solutions when compared against more than 100 middle market accounting solutions in the areas of basic functionalities, all features, out-of-the-box functionality, distribution and manufacturing features.

Read the full report here

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Thursday, September 20, 2007 7:33 AM

Microsoft Dynamics value proposition

We come across lot of queries from most of you trying to find the right documents while positioning against competition.

The Dynamics value proposition is very clear and neat - Ease of usage and lower Total Cost of Ownership. And if you use other Microsoft softwares - like MS Outlook and MS Office (;-), the ease of integration can offer your customers the best value for their investments. You can find extensive documents and case studies on partnersource. I am also connecting you to the following links which you should definitely visit -

How Dynamics fares against SAP, Oracle, SAGE and others ?

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/product/compare/default.mspx

The Microsoft Advantage

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/product/whymicrosoft.mspx

Microsoft Dynamics - Global case studies

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/product/casestudies.mspx

Microsoft Dynamics - India case studies

http://www.microsoft.com/india/dynamics/customerspeak.mspx

Microsoft Dynamics - Roadmap/Product plan

Please be aware an updated Dynamics AX Statement of Direction has been posted for Partners, as well as a new Customer Ready version. Use at will during sales cycle to discuss/present what is a very clear Roadmap going forward.

Link on PartnerSource

Now you are equipped with best tools, Go for the kill ! Let your competition keep guessing ;-

 Cheers, Raman

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:12 PM

Is my ERP People ready ?

Microsoft Dynamics vs SAP ERP- End-User Business Productivity Study

 

End user productivity is a vital area for success of any ERP implementation. Use the following link on PartnerSource for details on a field study conducted by Keystone Strategy, working under the direction of Dr. Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. They measured how end users of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications describe the impact of Microsoft and SAP applications on their business productivity. A very interesting report which throws open lot of new and crucial dimensions to look at while evaluating business applications.

Take the link to find out which solution came out on top...........it's got some very interesting points throughout the study especially a reference to one of the systems being something like dungeons and dragons.

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Monday, September 10, 2007 1:03 PM

Dynamics Partner Sales Training is back - Book Early..seats are limited

To – All Microsoft Dynamics partners  

 

Hi All,

 

Sales Training is back !  We are organizing the first session for FY 08 as per the following schedule -

 

Date        Oct 5, 2007 (2 PM onwards)

Venue    Microsoft Dynamics Sales Academy, Microsoft Corporation, 5th Floor, Eros Corporate 

               Tower, Nehru Place, New Delhi

 

Agenda

 

1.       ERP Market – Players, Opportunity size

2.       Competition – What they do and how to beat them ?

3.       Positioning of Microsoft Dynamics.

4.       Partner source – Use effectively

5.       Interactive session – Q & A

Note –

1.       Last date for registrations is Sep 20, 2007. You can register by sending the names of the participants to me or Viren (virenb@microsoft.com)

2.       Seats are on first come first served basis. So Book Early and don’t miss the bus ;-

3.       There is a maximum limit for 2 participants from each organisation.

 

Cheers, Raman

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
Monday, September 10, 2007 12:55 PM

Welcome to Dynamics India partner Information Source..!!

Dear Dynamics Evangelists,

Thomas L. Friedman in his book ,"The World is Flat" beautifully accounts for the changes taking place in our world. The lightning swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the world in touch as never before thus creating an explosion of wealth for countries like India and China. Clearly, knowledge economy is going to translate the next economic order.

Blogging is a new world phenomenon and a medium to collaborate with the masses. We are trying to create an information source for our important partner ecosystem. We believe that through this effort, we can present wealth of information available from different sources at one place. We would present to you upcoming Microsoft training programs schedules, some tips and tricks as well try to present partner solutions to enable P2P (Partner to Partner) connect.

We are learning and would look forward to each of you to continously enhance and improve the blog. Your patronage is essential for the success of this initiative.

Cheers,

Raman Dhooria & Viren Bhardwaj

Posted by RamanDhooria | 1 Comments
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