Microsoft Dynamics AX Users Learn from Experience to Run Smarter Implementations

Is your company currently in the middle of a Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation? If so, you know how difficult it can be to balance the project team's implementation needs with normal day-to-day business needs.  So how do you work the balance during the project and then walk away with a useful, well adopted solution?  Members of the Microsoft Dynamics AX User Group tackled these questions, by drawing on their own experiences at a recent online meeting.  

Building the right project team

"One of the things we did when we were putting together our team is that we included the managers from different functional areas of each department," one member said. However, in retrospect that might not have been the best way to go for a number of reasons.

"You're better off taking people who aren't also trying to manage their departments because they have more time as well as more hands-on experience with what they're trying to do so they're more effective."  The right balance seemed to involve the right amount of participation from a subject matter expert for the knowledge and a manager in order to get the buy-in of the department and the sign off. The member said his company also included the manager in stand-up meetings and important meetings as needed.

Another member from a multi-national company with different businesses said any given implementation may have from five users to 200 users in an office.

"We [include] management and knowledge holders early on in the process of the actual set up and business process-fifty percent of their time was spent on the implementation and fifty percent was spent on their jobs," he said. "Then once we went through ...