Feature

3rd rule of agile ERP: focus on value

  • Reading time:5 mins read

image – “We need a report which groups our sales by product components.”

– “And we need it broken down by cost centers.”

– “And it must show comparison with last month, quarter and year, and with budget and forecast, with indexes and trends. In linear regression.”

– “And it must let you choose if it is by posting date or by document date. Or by shipment date. Maybe some other date as well.”

– “And it must exclude returns, and include only those re-shipments that were linked to original returns in the shown period.”

And it must be a disaster if you agree to half of these.

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Top 12 Microsoft Dynamics NAV features to defeat recession

  • Reading time:6 mins read

imageThere are three kinds of people: those who watch things happen, those who make things happen, and those who wonder what happened.

The world is in crisis. Some countries are hit harder than the others, some markets have sunk deeper than the others, but the effects of global economic recession are obvious, and if the crisis didn’t hit you yet, fasten your seatbelt—it surely will.

With the whole world wondering what’s going on, the winners will be those who learn to navigate the troubled waters and make things happen. This is much easier with a piece of good business management software, such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

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Featuritis Cure

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Don’t you just love when users come up with new feature ideas at a microprocessor clock rate. Even before you finish developing one, five new requests pop up. This is a disease, and it’s called featuritis!

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Diagnostic Phase – a signpost for implementation

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Each phase of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology is equally important in an implementation project. You could argue that analysis is the most important, or that design is the most important, or that operation is less important. I’ll paraphrase Scott Adams here and ask: how one phase can be more important if each of them is completely necessary? Well, except for Diagnostic phase.

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Cool undocumented feature

  • Reading time:1 min read

I hate it when I don’t have time to blog. I’d like if I could tell you what I’ve been doing, but let’s leave it at this: I am enjoying my vacation, away from my office, my job, my projects, my customers, my partners, and obviously – my blog. You should take a vacation, too – great stuff!

Another thing I hate is to start anything with “I hate”. So, let’s switch the tone.

I love undocumented features. They afford you some brag time with your friends and colleagues. I’ve just found about a great undocumented feature in Microsoft Dynamics NAV: import objects from a .FBK backup (found on Plataan Knowledge Blog). If you just need the objects, there is no need to restore the whole database. Nice one!

(I already see myself using this – after the vacation, of course…)

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Peugeot – Engineered to be enjoyed (or A simple way a car dealership can profit from an ERP system?)

  • Reading time:5 mins read

About six months ago, when I was buying a car, a friend of mine, in a typical The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fashion, told me that there were two kinds of cars: good cars, and French cars. I bought a French car. I bought a Peugeot 407 SW (Peugeot says their cars are engineered to be enjoyed) and although I could do so, I am not going to make this a post about what went wrong with this car already so far. This is going to be a post about how the simplest of the features of an ERP system can influence customer (dis)satisfaction, and create long term decisions for, or against a car vendor. Also, not typical for me, I am speaking from the shoes of a customer, rather than consultant, this time. Quite a change for me.

Continue ReadingPeugeot – Engineered to be enjoyed (or A simple way a car dealership can profit from an ERP system?)