Four Career Options for the Microsoft Dynamics AX Application Consultant

In my last article I described the general development path of a Microsoft Dynamics AX application consultant. In this post I will discuss Dynamics AX application consultant career options that extend to project management, pre-sales, and leadership.

A consulting job offers outstanding career opportunities for those who desire to reach further in their professional lives. By working at the heart of the business of top organizations - shaping strategic decisions and executing on the most important transformational aspects of a business - a Microsoft Dynamics AX application consultant has the opportunity to explore a variety of projects and business areas and grow professionally more quickly than in any other job position.

An application consultant can work on the partner side, the customer side, or even for Microsoft. Consultants working for partners have the opportunity to gain exposure to a broad range of business cultures and customer requirements.  And ideally these engagements focus on a particular business domain to allow the consultant to also develop specialization in a business vertical. 

Interestingly, many consultants hesitate to move to roles with Dynamics customers with the justification that they will lose many of benefits of the consulting career.  To the contrary, the consultant working for a customer actually gets deeper into the business's pains and solutions. On the software provider side, the consultant helps partners and customers to know the application in more depth and help in the sales cycle, participate in support, and participate in enhancing the next releases.    

The following graphic describes four areas that a Dynamics AX application consultant could realistically take his or her career  over the course of many years.