Understand the Challenges When Adapting Microsoft Dynamics AX for Multinational Companies

More and more enterprise users of Microsoft Dynamics AX are adapting the ERP software for businesses scattered around the world.

Based on a discussion at a recent AX User Group SIG on Enterprise AX Installations, multi-site, multi-country AX users think carefully about the challenges of deploying a single Dynamics AX code base to multiple regional AX instances. Although it might still be one database, in the case of the regional instances, companies might have some challenges related to local code that might apply in one country but not in another.

Global test and deploy practices

One multinational company explained how it is pushing code base changes globally with the help of a network of designated local owners in each of the companies and a robust test plan, including regression testing.

"We have a deployment cycle - we do our development in a development environment," a user said. "Then we bring it into a test environment and our global team is responsible for testing the existing set ups and making sure that our code - anything that works - doesn't break what exists today. So that team has a window of time in which to complete testing and then we determine if it's acceptable or not because of all the global times - we span the globe and we have companies that are 12 or 14 hours out of [synch] with the US. Then they submit their responses as far as approval or not and then we have a standard review of all the testing. Then we can [promote] our code once all the testing has past."

Sometimes time and date stamps make reporting a little bit off, so the user said her ...