I have been working with Microsoft Dynamics solutions for many years. I think the above is a very true account of the marketplace and where Dynamics AX fits within it. Our client BVG-Airflo adopted Dynamics AX said the following “With the efficiency savings we’ll make using Dynamics AX I expect to see a return on investment in about 18 months”. A good review if I ever heard one!

Thank you, this is a great story and very accurate. There were additional Industry Builder partners including Hitachi Consulting, formerly Iteration2.

Iteration2 developed the Field Services IBI product and has had very good success selling it internationally into several key industries including: Industrial Equipment, Oil Field Service, High Tech, and Construction.

Thanks again,

Great review.
Just starting a business case to replace GP with a more intergated Manufacturing ERP solution.
There are a number of interesting players in the SaaS domain that appear to have a Good solution.
Does MS have a strategy to move AX out into a SaaS model?

Thank you all for your comments.

Dan, Parts 2 & 3 will touch upon the SaaS topic. To the best of my knowledge, and at this stage, Microsoft will not do a total multi-tenant rewrite of any ERP product (as they have done with Dynamics CRM).

Rather, they are talking about a hybrid “software + services” approach, where the ERP core will remain on-premises or hosted in a single-tenant manner, but some services (e.g., web storefronts, cc payments, etc.) will be offered as SaaS (via Azure).

BTW, what did you find lacking with GP when it comes to manufacturing, etc.?

AX is already SAAS, we have two clients we work with in this space. In addition the real benefit of AX in Hosting/SAAS is that is able to be optimized in this setting, as it was built for multi-site’s that would need remote access from the start.

The observation on MFG is natural, AX was written with MFG in mind, where GP had it bolted on.

Brad,
Can you supply any details about AX in a SaaS environment.
MS is in the process of building a pricing model for AX but initial indications were that licenses were required to be purchased by us, and that WatServ could host the application.
Sound like being half pregant??

You have the facts wrong…
its NAV who are the chosen one ‘STILL’ and has been since Microsoft took over the 4 ERP portfolio.

When you go inside the Dynamics division figures its correct AX has the largest growht but the facts is still NAV maintain the largest share of revenue - app. 35% (can’t prove this figure publicly).

The performance of NAV has been more or less stable the last 9 years as the only profitable ERP within the Division. This despite Microsoft focus on pumping XXX mill in the AX in order to first competet against SAP and Oracle on the high end… then later redefine the scope to midsize and now to whom ever want to buy.

This show the limitation of Microsoft power and the power of the consumers (clients) and partners of NAV who stick with what they know is the best.

Thanks for your opinion Henrik. I suggest that you read my extensive 2009 3-part series on NAV (Navision), where we will largely be in agreement.

My ongoing series on AX is not to imply that Microsoft has stopped investing in other ERP products. The “chosen” word refers to the “global platform play” and “industry-enabling layer”. NAV is a great multi-national product, but scalability and functionality for the upper mid-market is simply not there as compared to AX, IMHO.

I did read your article, I respect your opinion but I do have another view.
You claim AX is the chosen one of the Dynamics ERP’s.
I ask; Chosen one by whom. You and/or Microsoft and/or Partners and/or Customers?
Here I point to the ‘facts’ (or claim as I can’t public announce the figures) that after 9 years under Microsoft, NAV has still the largest market share of endusers, new license revenue and most partners.
Then another opinion; You mention NAV is not scalable and have functionality to meet upper market demand. This again I have another opinion. First let us define what is upper market and where AX (and the other Microsoft Dynamics ERP’s are sold within). I estimate 80-90% of the customers (again it’s a claim I can’t back publicly) across all Microsoft Dynamics ERP are companies with 5-100 concurrent users.
… I call that midmarket! Then you properly have 5-10% which is between 1-4 Users and the rest 5-10% is for companies with over 250 concurrent users.
If you agree in the above classification then I do agree that standard AX has more features and look more fit for larger companies (having more than 250 concurrent users) then NAV,SL and GP. Now to be respectful to customers we may have to look at competition. So let us take a very large company with 1000 concurrent users who want an out of the box ERP. Which is more suitable from features and scalability; Dynamics NAV, Dynamics AX, Oracle or SAP?
But above is out of the Box. Now let us say the company is a Retailer. The Out-ofBox (again these are estimated figures without claims) AX will give him maybe 60% and the NAV maybe 58% leavening him with 40 or 42% to be developed which is just not suitable for either product he chose.
Then he goes for the Vertical/Industry/Add-on:
AX + LS retail which brings the fit into maybe: 75%
NAV + LS retail bring the solution into maybe 85%
… So I ‘claim’ that NAV + LS is a better fit then AX + LS based on the facts that NAV/LS has been 20 years in the market compared with AX/LS 2 years, NAV/LS Retail vs. AX/LS Retail I believe NAV has 95% market share and no of partners with over 2 years experience NAV has 100% market share. (Above figures are my personal estimate and should be taken as that)
Then he goes for an experienced partner who over the years has built his own layer of enhancement of AX and NAV:
AX + LS retail + Local enhancement which brings the fit to 80%
NAV + LS Retail + local enhancement which brings the fit to 95%
.. So I claim that NAV partners has more experience then AX partners based on that NAV/LS has app. 20 years in market and AX/LS only 2.

Thanks for a great and insightful debate, Henrik, which is exactly the point of blogs.

You are inadvertently stealing my thunder, since many of you points will come as AX negatives/challenges in Part 3 :-)

My 2009 series on NAV pointed out that NAV is still the cash-cow business, has the largest install base worldwide, and unmatched micro-vertical capabilities of partners.

Having said that, NAV, in addition to scalability, has a number of other issues that do not make it a global platform, but rather a great departmental solution (even a NAV veteran will tell me to look at AX in case of true global centralized corporate capabilities).

NAV also only recently overcame the outdated 2-tier c/s architecture, and is usually the last one in the family to get the MS stack enhancements. NAV does not have native global financial management/consolidation capabilities that AX has.

How many NAV partners are truly global companies that can uniformly support clients across the globe, say, like Avanade or Hitachi do for AX?

For all of the above reasons, on top of MS deciding to acquire several partner’s IP and roll them into standard AX functionality, I think that Microsoft has chosen AX as a global platform play.

I did not choose AX myself, as I am just a neutral observer. Certainly, I did not intend to instill some sense of envy amongst MS Dynamics products and partners.

I have a great respect for NAV, and I am sure MS does too. To go back to a sports analogy, often a star player is not necessarily the most valuable player (MVP) in a team :-)

Now the blog is getting really intresting and I like the point you had made at the end :)

Ok let us not continue the NAV vs. AX vs. etc. - but instead look at the challanges faceing the Customers selecting an ERP.

I think my point is very validt. Maybe my estimate between out-of-box + vertical + Partner enhancement is not 100% accurate I still belive (based on my own expirence thrugh 11 years in the job of implementing ERP) that its key to a sucessful ERP deployment.

yes I admit I’m in love with NAV but i do have expirence in AX, GP, SL (the rest of the MS ERP gang) but also the 2 other main vendors Oracle and SAP.

So let me have your opinion about the out-of-box + vertical + partner enhancement rate across products and industries?

Ax is definitely the chosen one…
Ax is where MS investment is going…
Ax is where growth for MS is …
Ax scales from 5 users up to thousands…
Ax is easily customizable …
Ax is 50% cheaper than SAP or Oracle …

:) what else do you need?

Navision is good business for established partners and ISV, but NEW partners will go directly to AX…

We have switched from selling and supporting GP to 100% AX … Not many partners do this, because they are in the comfort zone! :)

Your comment that AX fit 5 users is absolutely incorrect - it would be the same as say SAP R3 fits 10 users!

That MS has decided to invest heavily in development of features in AX in order to match SAP/Oracle is there decision and I’m happy that they don’t do the same mistake with NAV and GP. As I see it they are creating a new VISTA!

Let us try to see if we can turn this blog into something constructive Nelson.

The chosen ERP depends of the companies size:

1. The ERP Structure.
ERP’s can be classified into 3 groups based on the company size they where build for:
A: Large Companies (>250 concurrent Users).
These ERP’s are build to cather the demand of hierachy organisation - Large no of users in each department requere more features - because of the no of transactions most data are batchprocessed or a lenghtly data processing verification process.
These ERP’s are: SAP, Oracle with AX (Being turned from a midsize ERP into a large ERP by MS the last 5 years).

Do it requere vertical/Industry add-on to implement these ERP’s: YES

B. Midsize companies (5-250 concurrent users)
These ERP’s are build for more flat organisation and focus on min. complexity. The processing of data are done online and mainly single screen data input for data validation.

These ERP’s are: NAV,GP,SL and SAP B1

Do it requere Vertical/Industry add-on to implement these ERP’s: YES

C. Small companis (1-4 concurrent users)
These ERP’s are more or less build like the midsize structure just with focus on even less complexity and price of the ERP.

These ERP’s: proberly a market for Hosting/SaaS of NAV,GP,SL and SAP B1.

Do it requere Vertical/Industry add-on to implement these ERP’s: NO

I am sorry, if my previous comments seemed not constructive … this was not my intention.

As I see it (based on 20 years ERP experience - mid-size ERP (GP, SBT, and larger packages) having an ERP that can handle the requirements of complex as well as simple organizations is a good thing.

We have many implementations with GP where many processes are not covered or done manually.

In the last years GLOBALIZATION has increased and ERP projects have been more and more “corporate” but do not have “corporate” enourmous budgets, so you need the features but not the complexity…

I think AX has a BIG differential here, because it has the features to handle complexity or depth if needed, but it is NOT complex to implement, it is flexible.

From a Partner standpoint, if you target MidMarket companies, with AX you have an excellent solution.

You speak of verticals as an advantage and I agree and love verticals, but in Latin America 90% of the verticals are not supported, not translated, not sold. In the case of AX, the verticals are provided by MS and this is good for Partner and Customer in these remote geographies…

One other thing to consider is that if MS is pushing in one direction, we as Partners need to be aligned if we do not want to face extintion!

No offense taken Nelson :)

Let me make a new comment on your last sentense.
I think if you as partner make the wrong decision it will have consequences.

MS has in its time made alot of dirrent strategies and/or initiatives with the Dynamics.

We all remember ‘the operation green’.. Good we didn’t jump on that one.

Later it was the strategy to make AX compete against SAP and Oracle in the large company segment.. which also was not sucessfull.

So down again it went to the SME-midmarket but now with much more complexity (and hype).

In the meantime NAV has just maintained its perfect ballance of features vs. complexity and MS has focused on what was needed… Bringing the backbone technology into the next generation with ASP.NET, Sharepoint Integration etc.

As a consultant my oppinion is that NAV is in perfect ballance and what is missing the partners has build as there local feature pack over the years…

About AX.. I feel it has become more and more complex… The latest is the so called Vertical purchase which was done. These remind me of the same strategy done in the past with NAV adding areas like Service Mgmt. and Warehouse Management, Intercompany Postings, forecarster etc. into the base. Luckily they have now discontinued most of these unsuable modules and gone back to optimise the core.

Anyway I wish you all the best with AX - and yes AX is also a great product - But I’m not switching to it as what I already have is simply a better fit.

… but yes by MS promoting AX so hard to the prospect has open the doors for our real competitors like Infor, Sage etc.

With a better strategy MS would had taken the entire market and AX partners would not had to fear NAV :)

Henrik,
As you say the entire market is very large and there is room for AX and NAV.

I agree that with time, AX will grow and become more complex and there is space for a smaller, simpler, but still robust player like NAV.

In our geography, SAP, JDE, Oracle have all sold big projects to medium sized companies and there is a need for a “leaner” player in that space. We are doing very well there, as surely we would with NAV …

I think the big question is: in the long run if you had to keep only one product, as a software manufacturer, which one would it be?

The answer is “the chosen one” … but I do not have the answer! :)

Hi Nelson.

You ask a question and I will answer. If I was MS and should chose one… Yes I would chose AX.

But this is never going to be the case.

Why:
MS has paid heavily for acqucitions in the ERP market and ending up with AX is just too bad a business to even consider!

… Any figires bellow is my own estimates and should be taken as so… I’ts the point not the figures!

If you make a small calc.. Dynamics division has an anually rev. of around 1 bill USD of which AX revenue to MS is app. 200 mill. Spend 4 Bill on Aqucition. Spend another 2 BIll within few years to make Dynamics market leader…. So estimate the return on investment of that strategy.
… So its a bad idear and for sure MS realise this is not the right thing todo.

Then I will not mention that AX is from a technology point of view not the choseen one.
… That was why Operation green was launched in first place.

And yes I can go in details with above if you want ;)

Another comment.

I think MS should just let the market decide the future.

SL has found its niche in US for project companies + its large old customer base.

GP is the best known ERP (accounting package) in US for sme-medium companies.

NAV is very strong in various European and emmerging markets…

…. so possition (and develop) AX in high end market against SAP and Oracle make sense!

The truth is that the ERP market as everything else are moveing away from US/EU… The future is just some where else!

So when the future is India/China/Brasil/Russia who at this stage requere complexity,partners, prices and products who better match NAV then AX…… so who in the end are going to be the Chosen one?

My final comment is. Convert AX to NAV and I will adopt :)

[…] it will become clear that each Dynamics version has strengths for different types of businesses. The blog at Technology Evaluation Center did just that and came up with some interesting results.Microsoft Dynamics GP Microsoft Dynamics GP […]

Please give me some advise, who’s competitor of AX for Retail? thanks

I’m the CTO of a small utility company (in Germany) and I just had to make that decision: AX or NAV? We decided for Navision for some very simple reasons:

- largest base installed, largest community (couldn’t find half of the knowledge for AX)
- developers are available and are experienced (AX developers would cost nearly twice as much)
- license costs around 150 k for AX vs. 75 k for NAV (in Euro, ballpark only)
- we couldn’t lay our hands on at least ONE very clear argument pro AX, it was mainly all “it’s more…” or “it’s better…” I would have expected a list with technical or business functionality telling me: THIS you can’t do with NAV, here you NEED AX!

I admit we don’t plan to operate a couple of thousand users in a broad number of countries.

Hi,P.J. Jakovljevic/Henrik/Nelson,

I am an amateur when it comes to ERP applications. I currently work with Sage Accpac ERP as an ERP product. Which I know that it is every effective in the SME market. This gives value for money for these customers. But I have an idea of moving out. I want to look at a different ERP application which I can work with. I would like to play a consultants role. I would like to know, what is would take for me to be a Dynamics AX or Navishan consultant?. What would I have to do( qualify and experience) to be a consultant?.
I would appreciate a response to my question.
Thank you,

Thx. for your valuable comment Stefan.

I wish there was more like you who did a simple logical evaluation when they decided for a ERP project.

Unfortuneally many don’t have your capability and get influenced by the advise of socalled independent industry analyst like Technologyevaluation, Gartner’s Magical etc.

There is nothing wrong with AX and its as good as NAV but it simply leads to lots of disapointing resoults when you sell an ERP based on Better, More, Bigger, The Chosen One, Industry Leader etc.

useful article

Very succinct. Confirms that our plumbing and air conditioning supply companies chose the right direction with the NAV technology. We used a company in the U.S. that does a lot of its implementation from Mexico and that saved us about $300,000.

Here is some of my advice when a company Select an ERP… Simply look beyond the std. software.

1. Meet the ERP Service providers project manager and make your evaluation of his expirence and maturity to communicate and advice across departments.
…. Put into your contract that this is the person who will be in charge from the supplier side.

2. Put into your service contract an acceptable downpayment and some progress billing but secure that the majority of the suppliers payment are due upon the final boardroom flow acceptance.
… If your service provider really has the expirence he claim he should be willing to invest in the project and bring this to a stage where its visible it will sucess.

3. Apoint an Internal Super/Key User who will be responsible for the internal project cordination,
responsible for user roles and permission, responsible for any data cleaning and delivery, responsible for first level support and first level requerement analysis.
… These are task the company can and should manage which save time for the external consultant.

4. Get the management backup to a startegy of follow std. NAV workflow and change if the process is working. Also everything related to reports are done first after the go live/data are avalible.

… Don’t force the external consulatnts to develop rteports who match your exsisting before the user will start key in…. then later to realise that the new system flow is much better.

5. Development is not easy… it may look easy to add a field, make reports but more is not better - Simplicity and transparecy is the key.
… under stand the diffrence in development, modifucation, configuration, screen layout etc.
Somethings are easy and no impact other this is very risky!

6. RECONCILE…
Any ERP is as good as its data… and controling that data is timely and correct is a tricky control which lay in the responsibility of the user.

… So focus on the reconciliation and place the posting control is as few hands as possible.
And simply monitor the actuals and insist in full month end closeing!

…. and there is 100 more advices in the complex project of implementing an ERP (And through this optimise all the business processes of a company and through this get the diffrent department to work on the same data).

I gained a by reading this blog.I just want a advice from you people “Is Finance Consolidation is possible in MS Dynamics GP 2010″.and can any one of you give some more idea abt Gp.Actually i am looking for tool in MS for Finance Consolidation.It’s was ealier possible with PPS-2007 but with PPS-2010 it’ not possible(my assumption as Bussiness Planner Moduler is not in it).So my question is can we do finance consolidation in Microsoft GP.

You’ll never know with Microsoft which is the choosen one, but NAV is not for sure.
Microsoft won’t tell you and partners won’t tell you also but it’s freaking dead end. My opinion that it won’t exist as a product in any form by the 2020. It’s impossible to replace the core (programming language, tools and code) without the rewriting the whole damn thing from the scratch and MS won’t do it because it’s not profitable for them and it’s not feasible for a lot of partners.
As a customer if you are unlucky and your company have a lot of customizations in code (because of lack of funcionalities or lack of support for local markets) that means you’ll pay implementation of the product to partners all over again and again every time you upgrade to new major release of NAV. Every potential customer should be aware of that while listening NAV marketing presentations regarding TOC & ROI.

Btw, good article. Keep blogging.

fyi

AX is 1st

notify me on follow- up comment. Thanks.

Very interesting article only one point all seem to be missing. The Dynamics products are being ruined by Microostf ownership and they will never get the return on investment they want due to bad decisions. Only thing keeping Dynamics afloat is they help keep users on windows. Once we are in cloud this is no longer true.