After a Go-Live, Microsoft Dynamics AX Users Face a Variety of New and Unexpected Challenges

Going live with an ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics AX can be an exciting, albeit nerve-wracking, experience. That's because you'll be faced with challenges like responding to objections, managing adoption, and struggling to engage a project team that has to go back to their day jobs.

"A common misconception once you go live if AX isn't working correctly is that it's a problem with the code; but nine times out of 10 it's not a problem with the code," said Frank Vukovits, Director Programming at Dynamic Communities Inc., speaking at an online meeting of the AX User Group, that focused on the challenges of companies that recently implemented Microsoft Dynamics AX. "It's something that's changed on the parameter side that's causing the system not to behave the way one might expect and your developers are not the best people to start reviewing parameters and settings  to troubleshoot it."

That configuration job belongs to the members of the project team. But keeping that core project team challenged, motivated, and organized within a larger organization - especially for the team members on the shop floor and in the warehouse - can be a real and unexpected issue.

One AX customer wanted to know how best to use the reporting function in Dynamics AX in a new deployment.

"If you don't actively manage your report base you get hundreds or even thousands of reports-80 percent or 90 percent are the same report just with different column layouts, different orders of the columns, and that became an administration nightmare to support them," the attendee said. "I'm looking forward to managing and understanding the utilization of the reports and then building off those rather than [creating] brand new reports."