Strategic Out of the Box: Avoiding Customization with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Winning

The CIOs of Convergence 2013 customer excellence award winners CEDA International and Revlon have each led complex ERP replacement programs recently with successful outcomes. And they credit their commitment to avoiding ERP customizations as a key success factor that has allowed them to help contribute to the business objectives of their organizations.

Planning for major change

At oil and gas services provider CEDA International, CIO Jerome Beaudoin was facing an initiative to migrate and consolidate from multiple ERP systems across the group's sixteen companies down to a single ERP system of record for all the companies.  Beaudoin joined the firm about two years ago with multiple ERP implementations under his belt, but none quite as complex as what CEDA was facing.  Under his leadership, CEDA used three guiding principles in their ERP selection process: the ERP had to be able to handle the company's field services needs (which they achieved with AX using Hitachi's FSA solution); it had to be able to fit the new unified business processes that CEDA planned to roll out in all its companies; and the company would accept zero ERP customization - configuration only - to get it done.

Given the scope and speed of change at CEDA to re-engineer and unify processes, Beaudoin knew that an ERP implementation had to happen quickly to keep pace with the rest of the transformation efforts. The overall process re-engineering discussion and technical assessment started in the first quarter of 2011, and by the second quarter Beaudoin was ...