Axapta or now Microsoft Dynamics AX (with the new name for Microsoft Project Green Microsoft Dynamics) is in the initial phase of requirements mapping for first implementation in Brazil. It is localized to support Brazilian taxation, federal & state reporting and translated to Portuguese. In this small publication we would like to focus on Axapta strong points and how they should fit to Brazilian business requirements

Supply Chain Management. Axapta supports intra-company orders to fulfill external customer sales order, which allows you to design and implement flexible internal cost and profit allocation within your business group or enterprise. Also Axapta supports the seamless link between Service module (repair, preventive maintenance, damage estimation, etc) and on-demand manufacturing order (manufacturing module). Plus nice Axapta flexibility feature is Axapta business logics exposure via web services, which in turn allows repair crew technician to enter replacement parts list into mobile devise and transmit the order to Axapta server via cellular media. This also opens door for barcoding and warehouse management automation\

Manufacturing. Historically manufacturing ERP is divided into two types: Discrete and Process manufacturing. Discrete manufacturing, where you expect fixed number of manufactured items from fixed number of components, labor and machine time is traditionally better automated than process manufacturing, where you do not expect exact outcome: food processing, beverages, mining, oil refinery, etc. You should expect excellent discrete manufacturing from Axapta as well as very good process manufacturing via some third party add-ons and custom improvements. Adding into consideration integration with Supply Chain Management gives you very flexible and cost efficient manufacturing automation. On the top of this Axapta has flexible and intuitive Product Configurator module to enable custom manufacturing, based on customer unique order requirements

Service Management. Imagine machinery servicing franchise business, when you have to maintain and support machinery fleet across Brazil replacing parts on unique demand, ordering parts from your franchisor warehouses and production plants worldwide

CRM . Axapta has its own CRM module, integrated with Sales Order Processing, plus Microsoft Dynamics CRM is on the way to be integrated with Axapta in 2006/2007 enabling you worldwide CRM department functionality

USA situation. Currently 2006 Microsoft Dynamics/Microsoft Business Solutions has its Fargo, ND facility (famous Great Plains Software Dynamics and later on Microsoft Great Plains) to localize Axapta financials and humane resources module to US and Canadian market

Europe. German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian markets have Axapta localized. Axapta also supports Unicode Chinese & Japanese characters support

Multinational Company. International Manager is typically speaking English, probably some Spanish or German. The priority for international manager is reporting clarity and transaction level audit (when required). Axapta supports multi-language and seamless transaction audit. We would like to stress that for multinational corporation preferably ERP is the one, coming from world-wide ERP vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft to address Brazilian subsidiary control questions

Axapta Business Portal. Having three tiers architecture, Axapta allows you as a developer to enable business logic object exposure via web service in a simple MS Visual Studio.Net procedure. This in turn gives Axapta additional advantage and flexibility on the Business Portal web exposure level in comparison to such legacy products as Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains or Microsoft Dynamics NAV Navision.