RapidStart Sevices for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Now Available to Partners, Customers

Brandon George reports on his blog that the Windows Azure-based RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is now generally available through CustomerSource and PartnerSource. 

The initial capabilities for out-of-the-box questions and templates are around US and Canada financials, with more planned offerings coming, according to George.

From the announcement:

"Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services allows organizations to easily configure business processes and modules thru an intuitive interview style questionnaire. Organizations can answer questions specific to their business processes and based on the responses to questions the necessary records for those business processes are created. Time of configure Microsoft Dynamics ERP can be greatly reduced and allow organizations to spend time on value add services."

George, who has reviewed the documentation, says he sees the cloud service as primarily a partner-focused tool that can be used to reduce the time and effort spent configuring the system. "Like all software, the community has to dig in, and start to see real value out of this. However I see this becoming a staple in all AX 2012 projects," he writes.

As Kees Hertogh, director of product management for Dynamics AX, told MSDynamicsWorld.com at Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, the goal of RapidStart Services is to run through the varied and sometimes non-sequential configuration steps of Dynamics AX more quickly to cut down on much of the repeatable and often time consuming work that slows down time to value for a customer.

"It's almost like TurboTax for ERP," Hertogh explained at the time. "You get to look at all the details together and make sure ...