Managing Your Supply Chain Using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 - Book Review

Recently I had the pleasure to receive a copy of Dr. Scott Hamilton's book, ' Managing Your Supply Chain Using Microsoft Dynamic AX 2009.'



This book is by far the best attempt, to give what could be considered an MBA level of knowledge for actually managing a company's supply chain with the functionality that lives within Dynamics AX 2009.

Several use cases are the vehicle in delivering proven techniquse and strategies throughout the entire book. There is a great deal of looking into vertical add-on's as well.

What first struck me about the layout of this book was its role centered approach, so people could jump right into the roles that they best fit into. This was a great move in how this book was structured, as this is exactly how the user experience is meant to be in Dynamics AX 2009, with the Role Center.

As part of my book review, I emailed Dr. Hamilton some interview questions, about this book, and his experience in creating it. Below is the questions and answers from that interview:

i - Scott, this latest edition of your book of “Managing Your Supply Chain with Dynamics AX 2009” has a wealth of knowledge, focusing on several different roles. Did you find it easier to develop this role focused approach to your book, with Dynamics AX 2009 itself introducing Role Center, and Role Focused Experiences for information workers?

A: A role-centered viewpoint builds on the foundation of well-designed business processes that reflect the conceptual models embedded in the AX software functionality. The book directly addresses these conceptual models for handling common and unique varia tions in business processes, which helps define the tasks for role assignment. Each participant in a business process should have a mental model of “how it all fits together in AX”, as well as in-depth knowledge for using AX to perform tasks for their particular role(s). The book supports a role-centered viewpoint by helping to structure these tasks and highlight relevant information for each role.

ii - Did you find yourself wanting a lot of screen shots and how-to steps for actually setting up Dynamics AX based on the theories and knowledge you are sharing in your book? What kept you from doing that in this book, or even creating a companion document / booklet, etc. that did such things?

A: The book’s objectives and desired book length precluded the use of screen shots and step-by-step instructions. These are best covered in one or more separate training guides. Too much detail can obscure an understanding of “how it all fits together in AX”, especially if you attempt to cover every field/parameter or every step.

The book’s content represents the information covered in my training classes. It also represents many conceptual topics that should be part of the AX user documentation for “application and business processes”. These conceptual topics could then provide the foundation for improvements in field/form help and in training materials.


iii - What big ticket items in this book would you have liked to have spent more time on, or felt driven to spend more time on? Did you find it hard to balance the topics out, spread across so much knowledge?

A: A critical issue in writing this book involved the choice of topics, and the sequence and level of detail for explaining these topics. The topics focus on key software functionality that supports the dominant business practices in manufacturing and distribution environments, based on my observations of use cases across more than a thousand firms. The topics reflect those use cases actually tested and proven to work within AX; not all use cases could be tested or proven. The linear presentation sequence was shaped by what worked most effectively in previous writing, teaching, and consulting efforts for the target audience.

You asked about big ticket items not covered in the book. Lean manufacturing using Dynamics AX will be covered in my forthcoming book. Additional topics about Professional Services using AX, or about Accounting/HR/CRM using AX, would best be served by a separate book, written by a relevant expert.

iv - What your take on the current release of Dynamics AX? Going back over the past several years and versions from AX 2.5 to today, what are some of the greatest improvements that have taken place, that you believe have had the most impact on Dynamics AX as an ERP platform?

A: The biggest changes have been the improved quality of training materials and user documentation, especially in comparing AX 2.5 versus today. We still have a ways to go, but the olden days were a nightmare and prompted me to write the first AX book.
It is difficult to cite a laundry list of the improvements in software functionality. The improved functionality has provided more out-of-the-box solution approaches while minimizing increases in system complexity.

v - What future road map item are you most excited about for the next release of Dynamics AX?

A: Lean manufacturing.

vi - Do you plan on continuing to create / develop the next editions of your book with each release of Dynamics AX, and are you already working on that next version?

A: Yes. I plan to write additional editions for each major AX release with significant functionality enhancements. My forthcoming book covers lean manufacturing using AX.

vii - To give the readers of this post a little bit of personal side to you, what your favorite sports or outdoor activity?

A: Most of my favorite activities involve spending time in wilderness areas, whether it is hiking in the Rockies, kayaking in Alaska, or canoeing through the BWCA.

Also, here is Dr. Hamliton's closing statement:

When reviewing or learning any ERP software package, it is important to understand its underlying conceptual models and how it supports variations in business processes. It is easy to get bogged down in the details. Many of the key design factors that differentiate Microsoft Dynamics AX have been covered in the book. These design factors influence how the system fits together to run a business, especially for managing supply chain activities in manufacturing and distribution.

Given Dr. Hamilton's admitted love for the outdoors, it's not suprising that his books are similar to path finding guides for exploring Dynamics AX.

Just look at some of the objectives that this book covers, listed in the below table:


This was truly a pleasure for me to review, and I recommend anyone looking for some proven, deep functional knowledge of Supply Chain management with Dynamics AX 2009, to consider getting this book.

The price of: $29.95 over at Amazon (Click for direct link) is well worth the knolwedge that you can gain from this book.

I would like to thank Dr. Scott Hamilton for contacting me, and for all the hard work he has poored into sharing this knowledge with the Dynamics Community.

Make sure to check back soon, as I have more great post coming out. See you then!



Dr. Scott Hamilton’s Bio:
Scott Hamilton consults and teaches globally on SCM and ERP issues. He has consulted with more than a thousand companies and conducted several hundred seminars, and also taught SCM/ERP as an MBA professor at several leading universities. He authored Maximizing Your ERP System and several books on Microsoft Dynamics AX and NAV. Scott has won the rarely-given Microsoft MVP Award for Dynamics AX, and Microsoft’s Excellence in Innovation Award. He can be reached at ScottHamiltonPhD@aol.com.





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Book Review: Quality Assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions

Well Recently I was sent a copy of a new book geared for Quality Assurance in the development and customization of Dynamics AX. This book was sent to me, to review by the books publisher, PACKT Publishing.

The books title is: "Quality Assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions" and the targeted audieance is entry level to mid level professionals.

So to kick this review off, let me start with saying it gets: 3 out of 5 stars. I have to be honest I wanted to give it 2 stars, but because of it's target level, I will get it a 3.

There is some good content in this book. Great structures, and wonderful information around what one could call the Quality Assurance space. Still the content, you can tell was rushed to publishing. There is much lack of supporting content, walk throughs, examples, images / screen shots, etc. etc. Also the cost is way to high, for the content that you get from this book.

All in all, if your a newbie to Dynamics AX stretching to get your hands on material that you can carry around with, then you might want to look at this. But beyond that, I would not recommend this book. Maybe if it had more supporting content, and the price was about $10-12 bucks cheaper than it's current price of $39.00, then it would be a nice buy.

A direct link to this book can be found here, with a 10% discount: Link to book

Check back soon as I plan to pick back up on posting!

Interview with Steen Andreasen 2007

Well I took some time and sent Steen Andreasen, author of the Dynamics AX 3.0 Technical book MORPHXIT, some questions for an interview. Below are the questions and responses from Steen, which I hope everyone will enjoy:

1. Steen, what have you been up too since your book MORPHX IT has been released?
After MORPHX IT was released as both e-book and in print, I continued working on the translations. The Russian edition came out for a few months ago. The Dutch and the Spanish editions will follow soon.

In May 2007 I started out working as a Dynamics AX freelance developer where I primarily work on customer projects. Besides programming i am doing knowledge transfer to VAR’s and customers on AX programming, how to manage and getting started with AX development projects.


2. Since your release of MORPHXIT, Dynamics AX 4.0 has been in full swing. How have you measured the success of your book? How successful has it been by your measurement?
Writing and publishing MORPHX IT has been an amazing and a major challenge for me. I have never expected that my book would get that much attention and I am very pleased with the feedback I get – Thank you very much!

I had been programming in AX for about 8 years when I wrote MORPHX IT. I thought I had done it all, and that I just had to do a brain dump – that was so wrong. When putting you knowledge in to words I realized that I had to learn how to communicate using a media as a book. When I read a book I will like know more than how a feature is used, I want to know why I should use this feature and what the pros and cons are using that feature. I might have been using a feature for years but I couldn’t explain why I did as I did. To do so I had to dig in to the corners of AX, and that allow me to learn a lot about AX which I did not know before.

From AX 3.0 to AX 4.0 not much have changed from a developer point of view, so for a starter getting to know the development environment MORPHX IT is still very useful, and I guess this is why MORPHX IT is still popular.

I would say then, your book has been a great success for your measurement. Thank you so much for the insight on what took place in the course of writing this great Dynamics AX book.

3. In writing your book, the first time around, did you have times to actually work on other projects or were you totally focused on the creation of MORPHXIT?
No, not at all.

Writing a book is very time consuming, especially if you want to get hold of all the details. Before starting out writing I read a guide from another technical author writing for a publisher. I remember he wrote that before starting out you should spend time with family and friends as for the next very long time you will have to give up your social life and sleeping will be something you do during the meetings at work ?

This was why I took an 8 month leave to write and decided to publish MORPHX IT myself.


4. Do you plan on writing a follow up book for DAX 4.0 or 5.0, and will you still have the same focused level to dedicate to it?
I would love to write a new edition of MORPHX IT. In fact I have done research on an update of MORPHX IT. However the time does not allow me to sit down writing right now as even updating MORPHX IT to 4.0 is a matter of 4 months of work. It is a bit like programming. When completed programming you only part of the way as you still need to do testing and fault correction.

I will be writing in the future. At present time I am not sure whether it will be a 5.0 edition, or whether it will be in another form.

Soon I will start writing Dynamics AX articles on AX programming on my new blog www.steenandreasen.wordpress.com . My blog will focus on where MORPHX IT stopped: Knowledge transfer on how to get started with AX development, how to manage AX development projects. I will introduce some of the tools I use when programming in AX and when managing AX development projects.

I think there is a lack of information on how to get properly started with AX development projects, how to make the first projects a success and I would like to give my contribution to this.


5. What do you think of the current state of Dynamics AX 4.0 versus 3.0 in the market place?
I am not familiar with all the changes in the application so I can only speak about what I know.

A lot of interesting features has been introduced by 4.0. I think the transition of the Enterprise Portal to SharePoint has been a good for the customers. I don’t expect such a major change of the Enterprise Portal to go smoothly and in my opinion there is still room for a lot of improvements. I find it more time consuming customizing the EP 4.0 than in the previous version. I guess it takes more that one version to do a proper transition.

In 4.0 some of the features from 3.0 have been removed due to Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing. The HRM modules had some issues because of this:

- An ActiveX showing absence per calendar year has been removed. This calendar was in fact one of the reasons why the customers were using absence.
- When applying for a job on the Enterprise Portal it is not possible to attach a CV due to security reasons. Why then have the feature to apply for a job on the web?

4.0 is the first real release of AX since Microsoft took over. With that said, I wish that the people developing the standard modules once in a while attended a customer project at a VAR. This would in my opinion be a way of collecting valuable information for the upcoming releases, as you don’t actually knows how the product is used if you never get dirt on your hands.


6. What is your outlook on future releases of Dynamics AX and what do you think will be impact technologies / changes that we should all look for?

Sooner or later the development platform will move to the .net framework. I am not sure whether this will be in 5.0 or 6.0. Even though you are supposed to still be able to use X++ I think this will be the next major challenge for AX developers, as sooner or later you will have to learn to program in C#. For what if you are working on a project where some modules are written in AX and some in C#?

I find this transition exciting and I am looking forward to hear more about when and what is going to happen.

7. Any extra things you would like to comment on and leave us with?
I would like to thank you Brandon for this opportunity to get my voice heard.

Please subscribe at www.steenandreasen.com/axaptabook.asp to be updated on when the Dutch and Spanish editions of MORPHX IT will be available.

You can subscribe to my news feed at www.steenandreasen.wordpress.com to be updated on when new articles are available on how to get started with AX programming, reviews on some of the tools I use when programming or manage AX development projects. The articles will be based on input I get during workshops I held for VAR’s on how to get started, or how to improve the quality and speed of AX development projects.

Well Steen thanks for giving us all those details and your point of view in our Dynamics AX world. To touch on a few things myself. The trustworthy computing, implemented by Microsoft in Dynamics AX 4.0 was a big change. This in my thoughts was a very positive change, even though Steen did point out in the HR Module that it had some different, and even small negative effects. Still the gained benefit of a more secure business application platform, that Dynamics AX is, was worth the trade off.

Alright thanks again Steen, keep us updated and check back soon everyone!

Find a job at: www.DynamicsAXJobs.com