We are using an older version of Dynamics AX and we are using their servers.
We are a managed services company, meaning that we provide telecommunication services like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to our customers. We use Dynamics to log tickets, to resolve incidents, and to record changes in the platforms that we deliver to our customers.
I have not really found very much that is valuable, at least in the version of the product that we are using. I do not think it is really suitable for the work that we do anymore. The reason for that is that we have changed our business model over the past few years. It was okay when we delivered hardware and we had to do maintenance on the hardware. But now that we have a real service organization where we have to comply with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) with our customers, it does not fit the structure.
To manage the service levels, we have to meet the agreements. For example, we have to resolve priority one incidents within four hours and we have to resolve priority two incidents within eight hours. I find that the Microsoft Dynamics product is not suitable for that. We had to make a lot of adjustments and tweaks in the software just to meet our goals. The reporting for our customers was a problem because there are no portal service level reports. We had to develop all of those solutions ourselves.
The product is no longer going to be supported by Microsoft next year. For that reason, I do not think that they will improve anything. Putting that fact aside, I think that the whole IP module can be improved. They need to improve logging, tracking, and tracing service tickets, as well as reporting towards the customer. They need to create a customer portal where the customers can view and create their own tickets. That would be a lot of work to do for a product that Microsoft will no longer be supporting.
I would suggest that Microsoft use a real top-class ITSM (IT Service Management) with the replacement product (Business Central) and then integrate that with Microsoft Dynamics rather than developing it themselves. Integrating a dedicated product will be better.
I am with my current company since January, but I know that the company has been using Dynamics for about ten years now.
Considering the fact that Dynamics AX is going out of support and they are not continuing, the product is not being properly updated and that leads to stability issues. The new version of the Microsoft solution is called Business Central. I do not know exactly what functionalities it has or what has changed. In other words, it might be the case that Microsoft has already improved the solution in the new version of the product.
Scalability has been a problem for us. That has somewhat to do with the fact that we use the 2009 version of Dynamics. It runs on Windows Servers, and we had to upgrade those servers. So that led to having some compatibility problems and that affected scalability and stability. But the lack of scalability is also an issue because we use it on-premises. In a private cloud or a SaaS service, it might be better. That is why we want to move towards a SaaS service.
The product is being decommissioned so technical support is all but non-existent.
We have different components to use with the Dynamics solution and that can affect the price, but the price for the product is relatively high any way you look at it. You pay per seat for the number of users. Then we have, of course, the hosting costs for the server it runs on. Because we host it ourselves in a private cloud we do the maintenance on the OS level. I think that moving to a SaaS will decrease the cost a little bit.
We are currently looking at TOPdesk and ServiceNow and doing some research into these products. I know that one of our competitors is changing from TOPdesk to ServiceNow. They must have a reason, so that warrants a comparison on our part as well.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best. I would rate Microsoft Dynamics as only a five-out-of-ten in general. It does not meet our needs and will essentially be decommissioned.
I had some clients go through the same issue - the AX manufacturing is generally good and we have some pharma mfgs doing process manufacturing and others doing discreet mfg - but AX is a LOT of work to configure and it takes a lot of consulting dollars.
So the issue is simply getting to the mfg implementation - I had one client that took 2 years before they brought everything up.
People are attracted to AX because it's so much less expensive than SAP or Oracle, but it's still a Tier One system - or very close to it.
So the best practice is to do the ROI study and come up with how it's going to make mfg less labor intensive - or whatever - and when the entire company sees the return, they will finally get behind the project and move forward.