Leadership Voices: Dynamics ERP Customers Push Major Process Changes on Their Organizations to Cope with Global Business Upheaval

The new economic environment is forcing major changes on Dynamics ERP customers.

In the ERP Customer Leadership Showcase at Convergence 2009 on Tuesday, a panel of Dynamics ERP customers explained how the new economic environment is impacting the technology and business decisions that shape their companies.  Constant change, global organizations, distributed supply chains, and the global economic downturn have all contributed to the way the leaders in this panel do business and use ERP technology.

The speakers, Bart Fitzgerald (CTO of Central Programs, Inc.), Karen Rhinehardt (Executive Director, Global Corporate Portfolio, Chanel USA), and Randy McDougal (CFO, Astin Partners) answered a range of questions on the challenges and opportunities they deal with while managing their organizations.  The following are excerpts from their responses to the panel questions.

Challenges in a downturn

Bart Fitzgerald: "28 years we've grown double digit most of the time, we don't know how to behave now that we're shrinking.  We're used to dealing with the management of growth. We've done things we've never done before like reducing payroll. But at the same time we have expansive projects going on...when we get to the other side and the economy starts coming back up, there's an opportunity there and we want to make sure we are able to take advantage of that."

Randy McDougal:  Access to capital has been a huge challenge that resulted in his company employing significantly fewer people in terms of new projects. Fortunately, some areas are growing.  "But one of the challenges from a technical standpoint is how to communicate in the best way we can, to stop spending."

Efficiency in adding and deploying projects

Karen Rhinehardt:&...