Professional ServicesProfessional Services for Microsoft DynamicsTM AX

CONNECT

A solution tailored specifi cally for professional services organizationsWith Professional Services for Microsoft DynamicsTM AX, your

company can realize these benefi ts:

• Run your business the way you want with an adaptable

solution that's easy to upgrade and maintain.

• Gain critical insight into fi nancial, resource, and project

management data.

• Integrate key business systems and information.

• Maintain tight control over costs and shorten billing cycle time.

• Better manage your team's time and effort.

• Stay compliant with corporate, client, and government

regulations.

• Connect and interact with customers, partners, and

employees across a global marketplace.

• Seize opportunities to grow and expand your business.

Move quickly and with confi dence

Professional services companies face a number of challenges:

connecting internal team members, clients, and external partners;

running a streamlined operation; maximizing customer satisfaction;

and constantly increasing the effi ciency of your services and internal

processes. Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX can help

you gain better control of your internal processes and improve your

ability to take advantage of new business opportunities.

A fl exible, end-to-end solution designed specifi cally for project-based

organizations, Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX can

help you gain critical insight into company and project management

data by integrating traditionally disconnected fi nancial, resource, and

intellectual capital management systems. Gather and analyze data by

using tools such as a centralized dashboard that consolidates key

performance and fi nancial data to help you stay informed and manage

your business—and provides the ability to customize every aspect of

the system and make changes easily to meet your business needs.

Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps you proactively

and effi ciently manage project teams to avoid cost overruns and

allocation issues. Your project teams can benefi t from reusable templates

and automated business processes and a collaboration environment

that helps your company enhance quality and accelerate work, and

push mission-critical information to the front line of your organization.

The information in the following pages shows how you can help better

manage your team’s time and effort to achieve company goals through

an integrated collaboration environment and centralized access to

important company intellectual capital all with an easy-to-use Web-

based interface.

Manage and improve your business proactivelyGain critical insight into your company’s fi nancial, resource, intellectual

capital, and project management data. Flexible tools such as planning

and reporting work breakdown structures (WBS) conform to the way

your company works by allowing you to assign resources, establish

billing rules and revenue recognition, and report at any level of detail

necessary, including company, business unit, client, brand, product,

project, sub-project, task, and sub-task. And you can layer

information to allow both high-level (executive summary) and

drill-down (detail) views of enterprise information.

The solution also allows you to gather and analyze valuable external

insight into your business processes. For example, you can tailor a

fl exible, centralized dashboard to meet your specifi c information

needs and easily administer secure, Web-based surveys for planning,

post-project analyses, and corporate scorecard feedback. To better

manage the allocation of resources, you can also view and analyze

human and material resources across the enterprise to avoid over-

and under-allocations, analyze and identify potential opportunities,

and identify and address company and process bottlenecks. In

addition, the solution lets you benefi t from your past experiences to

identify evolving trends and core competencies.

ANALYZE

Integrate key business systems and informationWith Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can connect

disparate systems to integrate data and stream line company and

project-related processes. For example, you can integrate with the

Microsoft Dynamics AX general ledger, purchasing, and receivables to

automatically post client invoices and vendor expenses. As a result,

you can help reduce duplicate efforts, improve accuracy, and increase

employee productivity.

With role-based access to information, your employees and

management team always have access to the information they need

to do their jobs. Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps

you analyze fi nancial data so that you can maintain tight control over

costs and shorten billing cycle time by tracking fi nancial transactions

within and between different departments and subsidiaries, to provide

you with an accurate overview of revenue and cost fl ows.

With Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX, all of your

critical business information and services are in one place, including

lists (such as client contacts and vendors), links to critical Web sites,

and other enterprise applications. This consolidation helps you to

better manage users’ access rights and increase employee productivity

by reducing the time spent searching disparate systems for critical

information.

Manage your team’s time and effort effi cientlyHelp avoid project cost overruns, confl icts, and allocation

issues. Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps

allow you to proactively manage project teams by viewing

and analyzing proposed team member availability and work-

loads before booking projects. It also lets you create reusable

templates and business processes from historical data to

accelerate project startup.

Capture notes associated with any sub-projects, tasks, or

documents while the project is in progress and archive them

with the project for future use. By capturing, storing, and

managing valuable intellectual capital in a central location,

your company can reduce the loss of such capital due to

employee attrition.

Enhance quality and accelerate the pace of work with easy-to-

facilitate team collaboration. Web-based Document and

Meeting Workspaces help team members, clients, and partners

work together more effi ciently. Full bi-directional integration

with Microsoft® Offi ce Professional Edition 2003 and Microsoft

Offi ce Project Professional 2003 offers both increased team

collaboration and ease of use.

The solution also helps you make critical company, client,

and project information accessible to your frontline

employees anywhere in the world through a Web-based

enterprise portal regardless of the source of the information

(such as project management systems and sites, business

management solutions, and HR applications).

Maintain control of your business processes

To help ensure your corporate security policies extend to critical business systems, the suite

includes synchronization with Microsoft Active Directory® that helps you comply with corporate,

client, and government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. The suite also helps you establish,

automate, and monitor core business processes.

Confi gurable workfl ows automate key business processes and standardize best practices.

By using version control, your organization can manage and record the evolution of project

and fi nancial information, and maintain project history down to the document, list item, and

transaction level. Every version change is stamped with date/time and user information.

You can even enforce the collection of comments.

MANAGE

DELIVER

Customize your solution to fi t your needs

Adapt and upgrade your solution over time as the need arises.

Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX can be tailored with

add-on functionality while maintaining low total cost of ownership

(TCO). The highly fl exible, layered architecture helps to allow

Microsoft partners to provide valuable customizations

and extensions to your solution as your

business changes and grows.

Complement the systems you already useProfessional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX works like and with

familiar Microsoft software, so you can take advan tage of the entire

catalog of Microsoft products. For example, the solution helps maximize

your investment by integrating closely with powerful Microsoft tech-

nologies like Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 and Microsoft Internet

Information Server, as well as familiar tools like the Microsoft Offi ce

System programs and Microsoft Offi ce Outlook® 2003. Easy to use,

deploy, and upgrade, this fully integrated solution is designed to help

you quickly and affordably seize competitive advantages whenever

possible.

Benefi t from quality assurance and support from a company you can trust: MicrosoftTo provide high quality and excellent value, Professional Services for

Microsoft Dynamics AX has been reviewed by Microsoft’s internal

development and quality assurance staff and is supported by Microsoft

Dynamics Support Services globally. So you can count on the overall

assurance of receiving support for your entire solution from one place,

rather than having to contact different people and organizations for

different support needs. In addition, technical review prior to launch

and throughout the product life cycle helps ensure greater overall

quality, performance management, and stability through service packs

or major releases.

Professional Services Functionality

Microsoft Dynamics AX Core Functionality

Business Analysis Enterprise Portal

Human Resource Management

Financial Management

SCM CRM

Time and Expense Client Profiles and Templates

Revenue Recognition and Billing WIP Reporting

Project Accounting and Financial Management

Schedule and Resource Planning and Management

Document and Digital Asset Management Process Designer

Project Management

Project Estimating

Proposal Generator

Labor Management

Job Costing

Flexible Project and Cost Codes, Setup

Enhance your business management systems with industry-specifi c capabilities

Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps provide your company with industry-

specifi c capabilities in the areas of project accounting and project and team management

as shown in the following solution map. By accessing integra ted business processes and

information, your management and employees can better achieve company goals.

Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX is an end-to-end business solution that integrates project, fi nancial, and resource management

capabilities to help companies improve profi tability, effi ciency, and customer service, as well as adapt more quickly to changing business conditions.

Gain the best value for your IT investmentMicrosoft understands that today's sophisticated business

management software buyers demand solutions personalized

for their business at the lowest possible TCO. That’s why

Microsoft Dynamics AX solutions are supported by a wizard-

based confi guration and system setup tool that has been

shown to signifi cantly reduce implementation times and TCO

for customers. According to Nucleus Research Inc., a global

provider of return on investment (ROI)–focused research and

advisory services, 75 percent of Microsoft Dynamics AX

[formerly known as Microsoft Business Solutions—Axapta]

customers interviewed achieved a positive ROI from their

deployments, with an average payback period of only 23

months.1

In the Nucleus Research survey,1 Microsoft Dynamics AX

ROI compared favorably with other business management

software vendors. According to the survey report, “Companies

cited four key benefi ts leading to a positive ROI from Microsoft

Dynamics AX: Staff reductions, reduced IT costs, improved

customer and partner satisfaction, and improved operations

and visibility.”

The report says, “Fifty-six percent of Microsoft Dynamics AX

custo mers were able to directly reduce staffi ng costs as a

result of their Microsoft Dynamics AX deployment.” In addition,

44 percent of customers reduced IT costs as a result of their

Microsoft Dynamics AX deployment, and 75 percent reported

“improved operations and visibility.” Microsoft expects that

the wizard-based confi guration and system setup tool will

further accelerate the strong ROI results demonstrated in this

independent study.

Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AXProfessional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps service

companies connect employees, customers, and business

partners. It can help you improve customer satisfaction and

increase employee productivity, and it provides the fl exibility

you need to seize new market opportunities. By streamlining

your internal processes, you can reduce costs and increase

earnings, easily adapt to support your business as you pursue

new and bigger opportunities, identify the real costs associated

with each service or project, and connect with your customers

to help turn your service quality into a competitive advantage.

PERFORM1 Nucleus Research, Inc. The Real ROI from Axapta. Research Note E116, October 2004.

01/2006

This document is for informational purposes only.

MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Active Directory, Axapta, Microsoft Dynamics, the Microsoft Dynamics logo, and Outlook are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft Business Solutions ApS is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confi dence. Microsoft Dynamics works like and with familiar Microsoft software, automating and streamlining fi nancial, customer relationship and supply chain processes in a way that helps you drive business success.

For more information:Worldwide (1) (701) 281-6500U.S./Canada Toll Free (1) (888) 477-7989www.microsoft.com/dynamics/ax