Navigating the Challenges of the Microsoft Dynamics AX Application Consultant Career Path

In my last article I described the general development path of a Dynamics AX application consultant.  Now I will review some typical challenges that a consultant faces in ERP, and Microsoft Dynamics AX specifically, at the three main levels of his or her career path. These challenges are correlated to the consultant's business experience, soft skills, and technical knowledge. The level of challenges vary as the level increases from awareness to proficient to expert.

Awareness Level

At the Awareness level, the application consultant is scratching out his career, moving horizontally to shape key components of his skill matrix. An application consultant at this level should have a solid grasp of general business fundamentals such as organization departments, financial entries, and inter-department relations; business terms such as debit, credit, Purchase Order, and Sales Order; core business cycles such as Purchasing and Sales; and industry-specific business knowledge.

The consultant should also take on the challenge of exploring the ERP application's functions and how they are mapped to the business needs or requirements.  

Most managing partners and senior consultants miss a key development opportunity for their junior employees by overwhelming them with focusing on the features and functions apart from the business side of things. This mistake can have a real impact on the new consultant's career since a consultant needs from the very beginning to understand that the real goal of ERP work is helping customers in bridging business needs to ERP.

Beside the application's business function, the ...