Balancing act: The importance of the internal team on Microsoft Dynamics AX project success

If experience is the best teacher, then who better to offer information about implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX than someone who's already been there, done that?

That was the premise of a recent meeting of AXUG's currently implementing companies group. The online meeting focused on how companies can balance their implementation needs with their normal day-to-day business needs; time and budget project management; understanding the importance of testing; and support options.

Securing the right internal team

Organizations often don't have the luxury of a full-time project team during a Dynamics AX implementation. And that means members of the team might still have to work in the finance department to help close the books each month. Or maybe they still have to work in the warehouse to help with order fulfillment or in sales, making phone calls to bring in new business.

And it's challenging for companies to address their implementation needs with other pressures faced by their team members. One attendee strongly suggested companies have a good project team from day one.

"We've been working on this for two years with two people - one from finance and one from production," he said. "And it's a nightmare not to have sales and engineering involved."

"The project should be led from a business point of view," another member agreed. Identify "workstreams" within the project upfront, she recommended, to figure out which people from which departments you need to pull into the project. And even if you can't secure full-time resources from all the pertinent departments to the project, the best thing to do is at assign people to the project at least part time. It's important to remember that ERP implementations ...