Analytics

Axapta has  advanced features that position it at the high end of the mid-market.  Few other products can display OLAP integration and advanced graphical capabilities within the application.  Shown below is a customer revenue pivot table created for one Axapta customer.

The pivot table can be used for internal analysis or exported to Excel for further refinement. 

Questionnaires

If the customer is king, what better way to know how you are doing than to survey your customers? Axapta has a built-in questionnaire generator which can be used to create questionnaires for conducting telephone interviews or to publish surveys on the web. The questionnaires can also be used to conduct employee reviews, gather product testing results, or for internal surveys.  Shown below is a sample questionnaire created to measure employee satisfaction.

Survey results are captured in Axapta and can be analyzed graphically.

 

 

Manufacturing 

The heart and soul of Axapta resides in its manufacturing and inventory features. Axapta focused on  manufacturing when it began its entry into the United States market and as a result  has features rivaling those of the Tier 1 products. 

• Master Scheduling
  
  Master scheduling helps you  calculate what needs to be purchased and produced to fill a sales order : to deliver the amount ordered on the date scheduled, and to generate transfers between warehouses if needed.

The task can be completed in many different ways, for example you can build inventories at different item levels to meet rush orders, or you can operate without inventories, where a customer order generates purchase and production orders.

The principle adopted depends entirely on conditions in the company. It is often the case, however, that some items or item groups are controlled by inventory to ensure a high service level and short delivery times, whereas others are only produced or purchased when the item is actually needed. 

Axapta's Master Planning module can address both situations. In order to fulfill the order below, existing inventory on hand is depleted and a planned purchase order is automatically generated for the balance.

• Planned Orders

The planned order window enables you to display, edit, and create planned purchase orders, planned production orders, and planned transfer orders in a master plan.  

• Bill of Materials

The Bill of Materials designer uses a graphical interface to combine components into a BOM.  The options and symbols available are displayed below:

This Bill of Materials for a painted cover is being modified to include an additional item.  Once the item is selected from the bottom right pane, it is dragged to the BOM pane, and the routing is adjusted to reflect the change.

Inquiry screens throughout the manufacturing process provide information on orders and status as well as costing and target dates.

The screen below shows the status of production orders as well as the status of each operation in that order.

Information is available in Axapta both via inquiries and graphical tools.  The graphic below illustrates net requirements for an item over time.

Inventory 

Axapta has more than 90 fields in the inventory item table to support the needs of manufacturers.  Here is a partial list of these fields:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Customizable Help Text

The help files can be easily edited and customized by the user.  In the screen below, I have inserted custom procedures in the area enclosed by horizontal lines.  Images can also be inserted into these files using simple, intuitive commands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interface

Axapta has a straightforward interface designed to look like Windows Explorer.  Sub- menu items can be also be accessed from the tool bar .

 

Wizards 

Wizards are located throughout Axapta . There is even a "Wizard Wizard" for creating additional wizards as needed.  

Detailed warehouse parameters including bin, aisle, dock and picking information as well as blocking causes and buffer locations can be recorded via a wizard. Once loaded with the appropriate information, the system can suggest the most efficient routes through the warehouse.

 Picking locations are defined below.

 The time invested in these setups will payoff in increased warehouse efficiency.

The screens above illustrate how wizards help to simplify tasks in a product whose sheer number of features can sometimes be overwhelming.   

Financial Reports  

Axapta has standard financial reporting which can be modified to include additional row and column formats.

 

Customization Capabilities

It is interesting to note that like its sister product and former competitor, Navision Attain, Axapta is extremely easy to modify.  In fact, Axapta has taken user customization to a new level.  Here’s hoping that the folks at Microsoft learn a few things from these products.

Customize the tabs and buttons on any form with this interface.  In addition, Axapta's "Morphx" technology  means that you can hide any field on a form and the other fields will automatically be repositioned. Fields can later be returned to the form by selecting "show all". There is no need for programming to make these kinds of changes, which are stored by user.    

Multicurrency

The Trial Balance displayed below is shown in US dollars (note the USD on the bottom right corner of the status bar.) 

Double clicking this currency notation will generate a list of other currencies for this company, choose one and the trial balance will be immediately restated as shown below (in this case amounts are now reflected in British Pounds).