The Top 10 WaysMicrosoft Dynamics AX 2012 Will Revolutionise Your Advertising or Marketing Agency

Whitepaper

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Microsoft has officially announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, the newest release of its flagship Enterprise

Resource Planning (ERP) software solution. After investing over 4,500 man years in the development of Dynamics AX 2012, and with the

addition of over 1,100 new features, Microsoft is poised to further its leadership position in the ERP software market with a modern solu-

tion purpose-built for Advertising & Marketing agencies.

Microsoft followed three key design themes in developing Dynamics AX 2012, with the overarching goals being to help organisations increase their competitive-ness, quickly capitalise on new business opportunities, and ease user adoption by taking advantage of a solution built with the same look and feel as Microsoft Office.

With that brief introduction, here are the top 10 ways Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 will revolutionise the way that your Advertising & Marketing agency does business and utilises its information systems.

Powerful

Agile

Simple

Gain more value faster with a single, powerful solution that offers industry-specific capabilities, support for global business operations, and streamlined workflows.

Seize new opportunities and quickly adapt to chang-ing market conditions with a flexible solution that can be easily reconfigured as business conditions

Ease user adoption and drive innovation with a business system that is simple to use, deploy, and manage.

AX 2012

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Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 was designed specifically with the needs of project-driven organisations, like Advertising & Marketing agencies, in mind. The ability to deliver deep industry-specific functionality is a key driver of Microsoft’s ERP strat-egy, and the Services Industries are one of five key industry sectors that are addressed with Dynamics AX 2012. Armed with a dedicated product roadmap, R&D resources, and marketing team, Microsoft’s services industry group is com-mitted to delivering market leading capabilities for Advertising & Marketing agen-cies.

With capabilities to support the entire project lifecycle, from opportunity tracking to project closure, Dynamics AX 2012 can help your agency manage its Finances, Projects, Clients, and Resources all in a single system. Say goodbye to disparate systems environments that hinder productivity levels and limit management’s visibility.

Implementing most ERP applications is akin to pouring digital concrete. Once these systems are configured, they’re extremely difficult to modify to adapt to changes in your business. As a result, employees start using manual work-arounds and offline systems to perform their work – a clear detriment to organisa-tional efficiency levels and the expected return on your ERP investment.

What makes this problematic is that businesses are dynamic environments with many internal and external factors that require them to make adjustments to remain competitive. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps you quickly react to changes in your business in the following ways:

Deploy flexible business workflows, configured through a graphical designer, that help you automate key business processes and enforce consistent business practices. Literally drag-and-drop workflow items to automatically reconfigure your business processes.

A unique model-driven layered architecture makes it easy to modify your system in a controlled fashion to meet unique company-specific require-ments. This speeds the process of fitting the system to your business during the implementation, and enables rapid system evolution in the face of changing business conditions.

Utilise standard upgrade tools that ensure that any changes to your system are easily preserved when it comes time for an upgrade. This helps your organisation quickly and cost effectively take advantage of new capabilities as future versions of the software are released.

10 Purpose-built for Advertising &Marketing agencies

9 Easily Adapt to Changing BusinessConditions

Built completely on the Microsoft technology stack, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps you leverage your existing Microsoft investments and minimize your IT cost of ownership by providing tight integration with the following Microsoft technolo-gies:

With this integration, your users will enjoy significant productivity advantages, and your IT staff will be able to efficiently and cost effectively manage your ERP environment.

Your project workforce is constantly on the move, and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps them stay connected in a variety of ways. Utilising the Enterprise Portal web interface built on SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics AX provides access to critical client and project data, aswell as your time and expense entry system, from any location through a web browser.

Microsoft Windows Server

Microsoft SQL Server (including SQL Reporting Services and SQL Analy-sis Services)

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, and Outlook)

Microsoft Project Server

Microsoft Lync Server (previously Office Communications Server)

Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation

Microsoft Visual Studio

8 Pervasive Interoperability with YourMicrosoft Tools and Technologies

7 Support for the Mobile ProjectWorkforces and Technologies

Dynamics AX Graphical Workflow Designer

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For organisations looking to provide system connectivity to their employees utilis-ing mobile technology, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 provides the ability to deploy any business process in the Enterprise Portal to a mini-browser for access directly from your mobile device. This allows employees to enter timesheets or look up important project or client details directly from their phone.

For Windows 7 phone users, Microsoft even offers a pre-built application for man-aging expenses from a mobile device. This mobile expense app lets users enter their expense report details, take a picture of their receipt with their phone, and upload these details to the back office expense system for processing.

Many Advertising & Marketing agencies utilise a series of disconnected systems to manage their accounting processes, work with clients, track resources, and perform other business functions. Now, you can replace these disparate applica-tions with a single, fully integrated business application using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

With integrated modules for Accounting, Project Management, Client Relation-ship Management, and Human Resource Management, Dynamics AX 2012 can help your agency:

As a services driven organisation, your agency’s profitability and client satisfac-tion levels depend to a large extent on your ability to successfully deliver on-time and on-budget projects. This requires that Project and Account Managers have complete information about their projects at their fingertips at all times.

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6 Manage Your Entire Agency in OneSoftware System

5 True 360-degree Visibility for Projectand Account Managers

Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal in SharePoint

Improve operating efficiencies by streamlining key business processes

Increase communication across departments and functional areas

Improve reporting and timeliness of information

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As a fully integrated, real-time information system, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 provides your Project Managers with the following capabilities.

These features all provide Project and Account Managers with a 360 degree view of their projects, helping them improve project execution, delivery, and ultimately client satisfaction.

The lifeblood of most Advertising & Marketing agencies is their time and expense collection process. For these agencies, ensuring that employees are accurately entering their timesheets and expense reports on a timely basis is a critical opera-tional requirement.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 makes it easy for your employees and contractors to enter their time regardless of what type of operating system platform they use (PC or Mac). With a redesigned user interface built around SharePoint 2010, Dynamics AX 2012 provides a number of utilities, such as favourites and copy functions, to minimize the time and effort required to enter timesheets. Built-in policies and validations help maximise the accuracy of these time records by ensuring that employees are entering time to the right projects and tasks. Approv-ing timesheets is a simple process as well, utilising the embedded workflow platform to route and approve time, and to notify employees who haven’t yet entered their timesheets.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 utilises the same user-friendly interface for the collection of expense reports. Employees can enter their expenses, upload receipts, and submit their reports for approval with a few simple clicks. And for employees that are on the move, a mobile expense processing application can be used to enter their expense report, capture a picture of the receipt using the phone’s camera, and upload the expense and receipt for processing.

4 User-friendly Timesheet and ExpenseReport Collection

Dashboards present relevant information that help Project and Account Managers focus on what's most important to them

Real-time transaction postings provide immediate visibility of project related timesheets, expenses, purchases, and other costs that will hit the projects

Embedded workflow management routes critical transactions such as budget revisions, timesheets, expense reports, and purchases for review and approval prior to posting

Subcontractor tracking features help track committed costs, timesheets, and invoices for outside subcontractor services

Comprehensive resource management and scheduling tools help ensure that Project and Account Managers have access to the right resources with the right skill sets at the right time

Draft invoicing procedures allow Project Managers to review and approve client invoices for accuracy prior to sending them out

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Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 takes project collaboration to the next level. Utilising the integration with Microsoft SharePoint, you can now improve communications and knowledge sharing by leveraging the native document management and collaboration features found in SharePoint, the industry standard collaboration platform.

With Dynamics AX 2012, you can easily set up Project Team sites (Creative, Account Management, Pitch team etc.) for each project where documents can be stored, discussions can take place, and project tasks and schedules can be man-aged. Project team members can work together on project-related documents, gain access to knowledge bases and share new ideas using the embedded collaboration features, including blogs and discussion groups. You can even provide secure access to external parties, such as subcontractors or clients, toshare project information and improve communications.

3 Embedded Project Collaboration

Timesheets in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

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Having access to relevant business information is necessary in order to make confident business decisions. Unfortunately, the deployment of Business Intelli-gence tools has historically been relegated to a few key executives.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps deliver Business Intelligence for the masses, making relevant information available to all of your employees so that they can better serve your clients and improve their decision making capabilities.

Gain access to real-time performance metrics such as utilisation, WIP balances, and budgetto-actual performance using the embedded Microsoft SQL Server analysis cubes. These data cubes deliver role-based Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and business metrics, as well as interactive reports for deeper analysis out of the box.

Slice and dice your data on the fly, and perform multi-dimensional analysis of your projects, clients, vendors, and accounting data using a familiar Microsoft Excel front end. Enable collaboration and confident decision making by using Microsoft SharePoint to publish data cubes and KPIs to a broader audience that might not be traditional users of an ERP system.

2 Business Intelligence for the Masses

1 A System Your Employees WillActually Embrace

Dynamics AX Multi-Dimensional Analysis Using Microsoft Excel

Lack of user adoption is one of the top reasons that organisations fail to receive a positive return on investment on their ERP project. Simply put, your ERP system and the data that resides in it are only as good as your employees’ ability and willingness to use it.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps organisations remove barriers to adoption by providing a familiar user experience with an Outlook and Excel style user inter-face.

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Summary

About SAGlobal

Dynamics AX 2012 Outlook and Excel-style User Interface

These are only ten of the ways Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can help revolu-tionise your Advertising & Marketing agency. To learn more about how other project-driven organisations are utilising Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to grow their business and maximise profits, contact our organization at info@SAGlobal.com or visit us at www.saglobal.com.

SAGlobal is a global provider of leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Enterprise Resource Planning solutions for Professional Services Organizations. SAGlobal provides a complete set of software evaluation, implementation, and support services to help clients achieve a tangible ROI from their software investment. With offices in 15 countries around the world, SAGlobal offers its clients global reach with a local touch.

For more information, visit www.SAGlobal.com or email us at info@SAGlobal.com

Improve productivity and allow your employees to focus on the highest value work with role-based access to information. With nearly 80 pre-built roles offering customizable dashboards, Dynamics AX 2012 provides visual representations of critical data to help your employees immediately key in on the most critical business events.

Leverage familiar Microsoft Office desktop tools to drive productivity gains as well. Publish system data into Microsoft Word documents, generate ad hoc reports and analysis views using Excel, and integrate key data about your activities and contacts with Microsoft Outlook. Simply put, Dynamics AX 2012 and Microsoft Office are better together.

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