The eChain Approach to Dynamics AX Services

SOAR™ for ERP Assessment

Are you outgrowing your current ERP capabilities, or ready to purchase your first Enterprise Resource Planning solution? Perhaps you have already made your decision to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics AX. Either way, your engagement will begin with a Business Needs Assessment (BNA) and Requirements and Process documentation.

Did you know that properly documented business needs and requirements form the roadmap for a successful implementation? Each business requirement is documented, ranked, and scoped as part of your implementation. Requirements become embedded in unit and process test cases, and thus are ensured to be included in the final product. This recursive inclusion helps to force your business users and implementers to stay on target with the initial vision and deliver a solution that meets all of your needs.

We have an enterprise methodology that will work with any chosen solution that clearly and accurately captures your business requirements and needed capabilities. Before you start any ERP initiative, you need to have a proven and professional Needs Assessment that will live beyond the beginning of the project and will guide all facets of the implementation activities. The SOAR™ for ERP Assessment methodology delivers a professional roadmap that will guide your subsequent implementation.

eChain Technology consultants have hands-on experience with most of the leading ERP systems in addition to several implementations and many releases of Microsoft Axapta (Dynamics AX). We also have experience with many different sized companies and industries. As part of our Strategic Operational Assessment Review SOAR™ for ERP, we will review and document your current business processes and required future capabilities and present to you a detailed gap analysis. Leveraging our in-house experience, we will map the best solution to your needs considering technological complexity, budget, time, ROI, and other important factors. We will present our findings with industry and best practice references and in recommended phased deployments that will support maximized adoption, capabilities and ROI.

No matter what size your company, you will receive a comprehensive and professional review of your business and operations. If Microsoft Dynamics is right for you, we will help you substantiate your purchase decision and will be able to assist you with the next steps of the acquisition and implementation process.

Our solution consultants would be glad to talk with you about Dynamics AX and if your company could benefit from this solution. Contact us today!

Gap Fit & Solution Recommendation

Starting with the SOAR™ for ERP analysis, we will fit existing and proven industry solutions to your business requirements and needs. We understand that business does not exist in a bubble, and we also take into consideration your time-to-market needs, budget constraints, resource constraints, ongoing support capabilities and needs, and compliance requirements.

We then will make multiple recommendations to you, highlighting strengths, weaknesses and estimated costs of each option. We will help guide you through the decision making process to identify the best solution for you.

Yes, we focus on Microsoft Dynamics AX, but we also have experience with SAP, Oracle and other ERP and Supply Chain solutions, so we will give you an unbiased recommendation based solely on the facts uncovered for your particular engagement.

Collaborative Project Planning

Too many companies begin an implementation with a generic project plan and methodology that would work equally well for a 50 person company as a multinational corporation. We will work with your resources, capabilities and timeframes to craft a project plan that will deliver a successful implementation in the shortest amount of time possible.

At eChain Technology, we understand that long projects fail while short projects succeed. We go for a phased approach of quick wins and quick ROI that maintain momentum, excitement and adoption.

Our consultants have provided guidance and support to Microsoft's largest Dynamics implementation partners. We have supported projects for mid-size manufacturing companies and multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations.
You can have confidence that you have an expert in your corner for the duration of your engagement. Even if you use a different vendor for your implementation, consider using an eChain Technology Engagement Manager to help ensure that your vendor performs as promised, and your employees stay sufficiently engaged to ensure a successful implementation.

Let us show you how 15 hour investment in an eChain Technology Engagement Manager can significantly improve your chances of an on-time and on-budget implementation.

Legacy Data Migration

We will help you with your legacy data migration. We can provide best class naming and numbering convention recommendations for your master Customer, Vendor and Item data. We understand the value of starting your hands-on training with your data. We will help you pull, clean, rename/renumber, validate and you're your data into your Dynamics AX environment using Dynamics AX templates.

If you decide to move historic transaction data into your new system, we can recommend how much historic data to migrate, we can remap the historic data to your new numbering schemes, clean and validate the loaded data.

Process Testing, Business Pilots and Conference Room Pilot testing can be much more realistic and comprehensive using real transactions imported through a migration process, and your key business users will engage much more aggressively through these often tedious activities by processing real-life transactions.

Few of the big Microsoft Business Solutions partners support (or understand) the importance of cleansing and migrating existing customer, vendor, item, and transaction data. This is your one big opportunity to significantly improve your system data. Why not take full advantage?

We will analyze and work with your key users to clean, consolidate and format your data for loading into Axapta. Think about how important your first key user training session would be if you could train against your own data?

The value and benefits of professionally validated, cleaned and migrated data are clearly a huge factor in a successful implementation and we will help make this task simple and seamless for you.

Infrastructure Assessment and Update

Upgrading to a new ERP or supply-chain system is a great time to review your current system and network infrastructure. We can bring in professional infrastructure and network experts to analyze and review your current infrastructure and make recommendations for enhancements that would be installed in your overall implementation timeframe and planned activities.

We maintain a staff of Microsoft server and network infrastructure experts. We can review your existing systems and infrastructure and help guide you to the best solution for your company and budget.

Implementation

We use only hand-selected industry and solution leaders for your implementation. We understand that an implementation is the realization of your business requirements and needs, and will stay true to your requirements. We will guide and lead your team through every aspect of your implementation.

Training

We understand that ERP Training is critical to the successful acceptance of a new system. Train too early and the users lose their excitement and momentum. Train too late and the users become frustrated and disillusioned. Bad trainers can alienate the entire team and create huge resistance to the solution.

eChain Technology uses proven training techniques and skilled trainers, timed to precision within the project timeframe to optimize excitement, momentum and the capabilities of the users.

Testing

eChain Technology has a pedigree in huge systems implementation and middleware development. We understand that appropriate testing is crucial. Our approach is to quickly get the customer data loaded into the system, support unit testing, and continuously improve the user experience of testing to maintain user interest, and all the while the testing supports and is aligned with training.

Our goal is to quickly bring the system and users to a point where they test and train through CRP's (conference room pilots) on real transactions and scenarios. One approach is to take one week of recent historic transactions and work through these as a team. We have found that this is the best way to identify 95% of the needed capabilities and skills prior to a go-live.

Supported Go-Live

We will not implement and disappear. We will be on-site and/or available for your go-live and support you through your first week, first month-end, and first cycle closing. Additionally, we can be available to provide advanced training, or to discuss any next phase enhancements or capabilities.

Next Phase Roll-out

We believe in a phased engagement approach. Quick successes, quick ROI. Throughout the engagement, we will be taking notes on needed capabilities that were not, or can not be included in the original implementation. Toward the end of the engagement, we will present a plan for a follow-on phase to implement additional or enhanced capabilities.

This approach reduces scope creep and risk on the original implementation, and will ensure a smooth transition to a new follow-on engagement that will not put at risk the success of the primary engagement.