Dynamics AX has long been a bastion of the Microsoft Dynamics Enterprise Resource Planning suite. Unlike other Dynamics variants, Dynamics AX is oriented towards larger organizations in retail, services, the public sector, and manufacturing, often with a significant international presence. It is meant to handle large deployments involving incoming information from a spectrum of languages and currencies, making it ideal for complex and far-reaching corporate structures. Dynamics AX is also perfectly suited for integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, such as Salesforce. In fact, Dynamics AX and Salesforce integration unlocks the greatest potential within each system and is made possible by services such as RapidiOnline.
How Do You Know You’re Getting the Most out of Dynamics AX?
So now that you know what Dynamics AX is, you’re probably wondering what the tangible benefits of AX implementation are. There are both logistical and operational benefits to ERPs like AX. ERPs optimize the flow of goods and services, meaning that customers are served more quickly and effectively.
Dynamics AX is also equipped with predictive analytics technology, which facilitates insight into every component in your supply chain. With the automation provided, you can minimize your procurement costs as well as operational spending. When you leave the number-crunching to the computers, it frees up your employees to turn their attention to larger projects, creative ventures, or customer interfacing. When businesses implement ERPs, they generally experience an increase in productivity, as data centralization means that all the necessary resources are at employees’ fingertips with little to no hassle involved.
Dynamics AX also has the ability to scale smoothly to suit your business needs. Architecturally robust, Dynamics AX omnichannel solution can rapidly adapt to business developments as well as seamlessly upgrade as newer iterations are acquired. Customer needs are ever-evolving, so a flexible ERP platform is a must for any business that wants to stay a cut above the rest.
When you include seamless CRM integration, automated invoicing, and order processing improves the consistency and quality of customer service. When Dynamics AX is integrated with CRMs like Salesforce, you’ll know you’re getting the most out of both; when the “outward facing” and “behind the scenes” components of a business work synergistically, it leads to more effective collaboration and heightened communication and efficiency within your organization.
AliMed and Rapidi: Dynamics AX-Salesforce Integration At Its Finest
AliMed has been creating and distributing healthcare products since 1970. For years, they relied on Microsoft Dynamics AX as their core ERP. However, it didn’t provide the necessary support that their sales team required to function efficiently. Due to the inefficient system in place pre-integration, AliMed’s customer records were rife with duplicates. Eventually, AliMed settled on Microsoft CRM 2013 as part of their initial solution and contracted with a third party to provide custom integration with AX.
Jimmy Mathew is the Salesforce Administrator at AliMed. He recalls that the initial integration was too simplistic and that their Microsoft CRM pulled records from AX indiscriminately, including unwanted duplicate records.
“I found that Salesforce had one of the best solutions to manage our customer data,” Mathew says. “We made the switch, but integration was still a big problem.”
Mathew and his team evaluated Jitterbit. However, they found that the program was far less flexible than they needed, and the restrictions that came with it made it difficult to utilize alongside Dynamics AX.
Using Jitterbit, they attempted to import the commercial list of all healthcare locations in the United States, mapping redundant records in AX onto a conglomerate record in Salesforce. Unfortunately, after much trial and error, Mathew and his team realized this project was simply too complicated for Jitterbit. “[A]fter 7 or 8 months of design and development, it [still] failed miserably”, says Mathew.
In his hunt for other options, Mathew learned that RapidiOnline’s integration solution has a mirroring feature that would allow them to push the customer data from ‘Definitive Data’ into Salesforce, even without a timestamp in the data source. “We might have 10 [redundant] accounts in AX, and we could tie that to one record in the middle table,” says Mathew.
Rapidi also had no issue handling custom integration solutions; Mathew and his team found that Rapidi was flexible enough to adapt to the quirks of Dynamics AX, as well as the customizations required by AliMed.
Alt attribute: Rapidi’s robust yet highly flexible integration platform is compatible with any version of Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Now since the team has solved AliMed’s data issues, they are able to provide analytics that describes what hospital or other healthcare site is ordering the most products. Mathew describes how Rapidi consultants “worked with [them] on indexing tables, and found a better route to push the data through RapidiOnline…it became very quick to bring pre-existing sales data over to Salesforce.”
A streamlined internal process means responsive customer support, customer engagement, and potent business intelligence insights. High-end data integration services like Rapidi not only let you get the most out of your legacy ERP and CRM, they also give your enterprise the competitive edge it needs to excel.
