Avoiding Failures with Microsoft Dynamics AX: Deploying with common sense and ruthless focus

Topping Panorama Consulting's recent Top Ten Predictions for the ERP Software Industry in 2014 was the forecast that ERP failures aren't going away anytime soon. "ERP implementations are simply too complex and too risky for all organizations to succeed, especially those that are overconfident in their own abilities or choose to leverage the support of subpar ERP consultants and system integrators," writes Eric Kimberling. "Our growing expert witness practice is a good indicator of ERP failure rates and we see our growth in this area accelerating, suggesting that ERP failure rates are not slowing."

In the Microsoft Dynamics AX arena, project failures are a risk like with any other ERP software. But with a growing number of AX projects, the important metric to keep an eye on will be the percentage of successful versus failed implementations.

"If you look at the percentage of failures versus overall [AX] product installations, the former has actually declined over the last nine or 10 years," says Dwight Specht, COO at I.B.I.S., Inc., and blogger at The Death of Reason. "However, we may be seeing more failures in general because Dynamics AX is penetrating the domestic market more and more; it's a volume issue."

In pinpointing the cause of such failures, Specht says the players in the implementation process are the usual suspects. "Like any feature-rich ERP product," he says, "Dynamics AX [poses] implementation challenges that are related to the skill of the implementation partner, its knowledge of the client's industry, and how clearly defined the scope of work is between the client and the implementation partner."

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