Modern Repair Service Organization and Overlooked Functions in ERP

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Many ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) packages offer core support for PSA (Professional Services Automation) businesses, which often attempt to cover also repair service functionality. In reality, it is quite difficult to satisfy the wide range of business requirements in diverse industries with one standard service module available as one standard way of doing things. E.g., heavy machinery dealership service is very different from medical devices repair. Here are some of the key requirements - potential gaps I came across at similar businesses - worth examining before investing in ERP or LOB software to support business models relating to repair service of instruments. I am currently working on identifying enhancement customization approaches and ISV solutions for Microsoft Dynamics ERP customers in this area. If you would like to learn more, discuss or suggest solution, please feel free to contact me.

Tracing Service Object
Excellent repair servicing of expensive instrument will likely require ability to track transactions of the instrument and/or its parts in question by their unique serial numbers over full life-cycle of individual products. This may include tracking of where the product or its parts have left from production to reseller (own sales entity or distributor etc), further assembling operations, shipping to customer etc.
ERP will normally support rich tracking inventory items in a warehouse and even at the inter-company level of a global organization, but the same functionality might not be available for repair service items (sometimes called, service objects), which often belong to 3rd party organizations (customers, dealers etc.) or are leased and handled via separate framework or logic within ERP.

Repair Quotations
ERP will normally offer sales quotation function as part of CRM, sales or project functional areas. These will be integrated with inventory item master or new project creation.
Repair services will often deal with service objects, which belong to 3rd party organizations (customers, distributors etc) and not stored in own inventory records. Quotes will often be created based on inspection results of repair lines in service functional area. Entry of the same data on sales quote would cause additional double-entry effort and some level of disintegration with repair. Thus, adding quote functionality into repair area might be an additional need.

One Repair – Many Support Arrangements
One repair case of the whole instrument can include multiple support arrangements with different processing and segregation at transaction line level. For example, labor can be under service contract but spare parts are chargeable. One defect of the same instrument might be covered by sales warranty, another by service contract or simply chargeable repair. ERP standard package might not offer complete administration and tracking functions for a repair in case of such combined scenarios.

Service Contract Invoicing
While many ERP systems offer service contract functionality, consider how it is linked to finance, invoicing process and with various scenarios like cost and revenue recognition etc. Usually ERP project modules has this kind of link with finance and general ledger while additional integration and functionality might need to be established for service contracts.

Loaners
Upon instrument return for repair, it might be necessary to ship a loaner (temporary replacement) to the customer till the repair of original item is finished. Loaners could be company’s own stock and never sold to the customer but shipped to them. Such lending operations are not necessarily supported in many standard ERP systems. Furthermore, due to the high value of these instruments, in many countries they might be considered as fixed assets and thus handled differently than inventory stock. Some would also require conversion between both.

Intercompany Service Transactions
Larger global businesses engaging in repair services of instruments will likely organize their repair workshops in local and regional centers involving transactions among legal entities. For example, a company might choose to set criteria according to which minor repairs are done locally, e.g., at a country level, but more complicated ones - demanding more effort or specific expertise are sent to a regional repair center. This could involve shipping and receiving the repair service object belonging to customer and inventory parts from another subsidiary or factory. Furthermore, often mandatory transaction tracing by serial number and sharing of service order data among multiple companies can further reduce the standard fit levels of ERP package in question.

Damage Catalog
For a more efficient planning, management and solving equipment damages, many repair organizations choose to catalogue them and link to resource and operation planning. This classification means grouping at least the most frequent types of instrument damages, providing them with IDs, titles, descriptions, photos, solutions and other properties. Furthermore, required time, resources and location can be planned for each of the types per product, effort and workshop capacity planned in advance. If repair inspectors are to use the ERP system, it is likely that such functions would be requested.

Mobility
With the mobile taking over business processes, it is likely that mobile interface or apps will be requested by a modern repair service organization not only for the field service to connect to the service object data and update it, but also in-house. For example, many inspectors would rather use a mobile tablet interface to make photos and fill out a form than existing paper forms followed by entry into ERP table interface as it is often done today.

Single vs. Multiple Instance Global ERP: Case of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

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A quick summary of pros and cons for single vs. multiple ERP solution instances when planning to deploy a global ERP. Considerations are based on experiences with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 product. Advantages of one approach often reflect disadvantages in the second.

Single Instance Pros

• Cost benefits - potentially less investment required with lower TCO - one instance clearly requires less resources and lower ongoing cost than multi-instance.
• Simplified management - setup and processing of various master data and group's transaction data in same set of rules, (global address book, products), inter-company transactions, consolidation processing etc - by having all data and legal entities stored and managed within the same instance.
• Unlike in previous versions, with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 release, various standard AX localizations (different functionality per legal entity) are supported within the same instance and do not require additional deployments for supporting local legal requirements.

Single Instance Cons

• Maintaining potentially complicated dependencies and rules caused by modifications and configurations to meet diverse local and regional business specific requirements. Customization for one region or legal entity can have undesirable dependencies for others. Meanwhile, workarounds exist. For example, create a modification for regional enhancement, which determines the user's region and enables respective customizations in the legal entity he/she belongs to.
• Increased impact of maintenance or failures on all worldwide regions and users. If for any reasons, the production ERP instance shall be stopped for troubleshooting or maintenance, this can affect the whole worldwide users in all time zones.
• Database limitations - scaling out of Microsoft SQL server performance in large deployments and collations issues with storing text fields in different ways.
• Availability of network infrastructure to all worldwide users. Network latency and other network considerations for users in various locations are usually raised when considering single instance vs. multiple an may require additional validation before making the decision.

Multiple Instances Pros

• Easier to implement and maintain more complex modified solutions where such customizations and configurations for one region and legal entity can cause undesirable effects on others if handled within the same application instance. It is often considered better to separate these into instances.
• Mitigate the impacts from downtime risks or maintenance if production system should be turned down for a some time especially over multiple timezones. Industries like retail and other would not be able to afford long downtime of business critical system in one place for whatever reasons causing it in other regions.
• Solution to some database limitations - ability to scale out Microsoft SQL server to improve performance in large deployments and resolve potential collations issues by separate instance of database.

Multiple Instances Cons

• Higher investment and TCO caused by additional server licenses or subscriptions in ERP platform, staff (especially, for on-premise case), maintenance and more additional deployment environments (e.g., test, validation etc) required. 
  
• Additional complexity in modifying and maintaining cross-instance customizations since same code might need to be promoted and tested across diverse multiple application instances.
• Maintaining and processing cross instance data and rules is not so straightforward as in single instance. For example, consolidation processing would require additional steps with file exports. Master data integrity across companies might require additional steps or solutions. Master data management solution, such as, Microsoft SQL Master Data Services can be considered. Furthermore, if a company wants to implement a global BI & Analytic solution, this will affect the data warehouse and BI solution architecture.
• Lower impact of downtime since instances are separated.

Interoperability of Public Clouds: Case of Azure and Joomla CMS Migration

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The features built in Azure for rapidly setting up and deploying various well-known CMS, collaboration, e-commerce and other  packages involving multiple components (application, database, web server etc) is really great. Work which could take many hours by IT specialists in the past can now be done in couple minutes by less advanced experts. However, what happens if a customer wants to migrate out a solution from Azure to another cloud or simply a Web hosting provider? The need might be there due to cheaper price of the services or other preferences. Would Azure allow you to migrate out the solution with similar speed and simplicity as when deploying? Here is a summary of hands-on experience in migrating out Joomla content management system from Azure to Web hosting provider which supports widely known industry tools in Web hosting mentioned in the article.

What is Joomla CMS?

For those who might not know, Joomla is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing Web content and widely used by content publishers and Web designers worldwide. For more technical folks - Joomla is written in PHP, uses object-oriented programming, stores data in a MySQL and includes many features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.
According to Wikipedia, as of February 2014, Joomla has been downloaded over 50 million times. It is estimated to be the second most used content management system on the Internet after WordPress.

General Migration Steps for Joomla
To migrate Joomla from one server (this can be Azure service) to another (new Web hosting company) there are generally few steps as described fully here and summarized as follows.
1) Copying Application Files with FTP
- Download application files from server (Azure) to your computer.
- Upload application files from your computer to the new server
These operation often done by well known industry tools as FileZilla, Cute FTP used by Web masters and admins.
2) Copying the Database with phpMyAdmin
- Exporting a copy of the database (such as Azure service) to your computer
- Importing the copy into a new database
3) Changing Joomla Configuration to point to the new database etc.

Azure and Application Migration
The Microsoft's tool available in Azure for copying files is WebMatrix. In order to use it for accessing  files, a publisher settings file had to be imported. Using 3rd party FTP application was not possible or clear/straightforward due to this setup required. WebMatrix has a function to Download site (to local). However, it always got stuck without any message at the stage seen as in the below screenshot. Another option (besides file download) is to set up the whole environment for Joomla with installing MySQL DB, XAMP etc. locally. While this also did not work out to the fullest due to WebMatrix stopping execution, it somehow allowed to download the application files.

Azure and DB Migration

While database is a critical component of any CMS architecture, it is not directly available in Azure portal for any operations. The only link to it is under website settings as seen in the screenshot. If clicked, it brings you to 3rd party service called ClearDB and might raise at least couple of questions if not more. After some time of research you might end up installing one of the tools like  Oracle's MySQL Workbench, Sequel Pro for Mac OS X, or Navicat to access your database and copy it out locally from Azure and ClearDB framework. While Workbench did not work out well Navicat was a relatively short learning curve to get the job done and allows transactions between both Azure and the new hosting provider.

In Conclusion
While setting up CMS (such as Joomla) on Azure might take just minutes, migrating out is not so straight-forward and can take up to one day or more depending on the technical experience. If you are not sure about staying with Azure service forever, it might be wise for any organisation or individual to consider migrating out plan as well since Web site hosting market is very competitive with possibility of finding better value elsewhere.

Few Simple Steps to Start Using Lync-Skype Connectivity

Microsoft Lync and Skype connectivity has been announced for messaging, voice and recently also for video calls. This enables users to reach each other in much more convenient way from their preferred tool at home or office environments. Let's have a look at how to actually connect the both as a user.

From Lync
1) To add a Skype connection, click "Add a Contact" icon.

2) Select "Add a Contact Not in My Organization" and then "Skype" in the sub-menu.

3) Type the Microsoft Account ID address of your Skype contact and click OK. As result, the contact will be added to your contact list in Lync.

From Skype
1) You must log into Skype using Microsoft account instead of Skype or Facebook ID in order to use Lync connectivity.

2) Add your Lync contact by typing the email address in Search field and clicking "Search Skype" button.

Once the address is identified, continue by clicking "Add to Contacts".

At first, your Lync contact might appear as follows in the contacts list.

Results and Tips
Connectivity might not work immediately and you can try the below tricks before inquiring IT support.
* Make sure contacts are added from both sides (Lync and Skype explained above).
* Restart Lync (log off and on) to get the contact actually enabled for communication. You can also try the same in Skype.
It might be also that Lync server administrator has not enabled connectivity with Skype.

Six Ideas for Increasing Consumption of Office 365 Investment

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Organisations of today require increasingly advanced tools for productivity and communication to serve their customers, accomplish various tasks and stay connected. Meanwhile, it may happen that companies are not aware of various capabilities in the packages or services they are to use. Technology or business decision makers need to plan in advance or facilitate more consumption of existing software or service packages to achieve higher return in investment. With this article we will start exploring ways to plan and increase package consumption in case of Office 365.

Simple Tip: Share Access to Documents Instead of Sending Files

Office 365 provides simple way to grant access (edit or view) to your folder, files and documents. This can help you not only to control permission levels to your documents, but also save a lot of space and confusion in mailboxes by having one storage place and version control system with collaborators.

Leverage Integration With Other Applications
Office 365 enables many enhanced use cases to increase productivity by integrating with other applications. For example, Lync now works with Skype contacts enabling instant messaging, voice and video calls between both.
Sales Productivity is a package solution combining Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 in a powerful way. Integrated scenarios include, but not limited to the following.
* Internal social networking on Yammer enabling better collaboration when working on sales opportunities and other scenarios.
* Advanced sharing and administration of documents related to entities in CRM using SharePoint
* Exchange Online support for email campaigns, calendar integration etc.
* Data integration with Excel (on-premise and Office Web Apps)
* Microsoft Office mail merge for direct mail campaigns
* Data analysis in Excel, Power BI

Selecting The Right Plan for Business Needs (Sizing)
Office 365 has various plans to select the right solution components for organisations to match with their actual requirements. For example,  some workers are without a desk or office, such as shift or retail staff, or any workers who use a shared PC. Office 365 kiosk plans are designed to provide services to improve communication and collaboration for these workers without investing into other capabilities which are not used.

Explore New Releases
As Office 365 is evolving and new capabilities are released on monthly basis, explore what business value they can bring. Examples of past updates include - enhancements of Office Web Apps, Microsoft Office for iPad, mailbox size increase etc.

Align Consumption With Timeline of Projects
Deployment and migration for Office 365 or its separate products such as Exchange Online, SharePoint etc. require planning, allocation of resources leading to some need for project management and scheduling. It might be a good idea acquiring the new capabilities while making sure the actual ability to implement and at least have a rough plan to deploy them.

Explore Possibilities with Free Training Resources
You can always learn new things and nowadays a lot of resources are for free. Getting training in Office 365 and learning  ways to use it is available for free at least in English. Here is a good list of available free assets.

Introduction to Omni-channel Retailing and Single Platform Approach: Case of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Retail

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This article introduces the basic ideas behind Omni-channel concept, explains advantages of adopting a single platform approach as business solution and reviews key retail capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3.

Requirement for Omni-channel Approach and System Readiness
Retail is one of the industries experiencing impactful changes. It has expanded from traditional brick-and-mortar to call centers, e-commerce and continuing to shift into social and mobile spaces. One of the new industry buzzwords is Omni-channel retailing (where the word “Omni” stands for “All”). It is retail marketing discipline focused on seamless approach to the customer experience through all available shopping and interaction channels - physical stores, kiosks, call-centers, Web sites, social networks, mobile and even TV and radio can be considered here. This approach means tracking and managing customers, their transactions and experiences across all channels. Unless Omni-channel is successfully adopted, it is not a surprise if a customer is better educated of the latest company offerings than sales staff in a store by learning from their e-commerce site . Furthermore, customer can expect to buy online but pick-up at a store. It means that all retail teams shall have the same understanding, readiness and information from systems available in their roles. Customer will expect to have the same great brand experience in both - the physical world of stores and online. Merchandise and campaigns are expected to bring the same value and experience in all touch points with the customer and not differ by a channel.
As the business technology advances, retailers often end-up with separate systems and multiple vendors for their Line of Business (LOB) solutions to be coordinated and integrated. For example, in-store POS systems, separate solution for call-center, and another platform for e-commerce, native mobile apps etc. These front-end solutions also have to link with back-office (financials, SCM, warehouse etc.) to provide seamless customer experience. Supply chain visibility becomes even more relevant in Omni-channel model since merchandise is now a customer centric as opposed to channel oriented. In not so distant future, a retailer might even like to improve customer service whereby warehouse staff is notified as soon as customer enters a store and triggers communication with a nearby beacon device. More about beacons here.

Approach based on Many LOB Systems
Depending on business strategy and existing IT landscape, a retailer could choose updating and extending their often distinct existing systems and adding new LOB packages to keep up with the latest Omni-channel and industry requirements. At first glance, this sort of gradual approach could seem less risky compared to large overall platform changes like implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with integrated retail functionality. The “Big bang” approach is often avoided due to challenges and dependencies associated with large implementation projects. Meanwhile, the downside of having many LOB packages is enabling integration and middleware among all front-end technologies and their linkage to the back-office requiring investments into analysis, interface development, handling data-integrity as more packages are added, modified, extended or upgraded.

Single Platform Approach
Alternatively to handling many LOB packages, a retailer can consider adopting a single, end-to-end business platform, which can support majority of requirements, require minimal integration, provides extensibility and offers a road map into the future. Integrated ERP for retail approach shall provide one solution for back-office areas such as SCM, finance and warehousing as well as enable centralized data management. Retailer shall be able to manage merchandising, catalogs, run POS and various sales channels including e-commerce, call-centers and have variety of CRM functions. Modern ERP solution for retail should enable Omni-channel capabilities possible for business and united technological platform that IT can support.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 ERP in Retail
Besides the back-office support (finance, SCM, warehousing etc.), Dynamic AX currently offers the following architectural components and functionality in retail as part of one ERP package while not being limited only to these features.

Retail HQ
Retail HQ module allows to configure and administer retail channels as brick & mortar stores, call centers and online stores. Retailer can manage assortments and product selections offered at the stores based on various criteria like region, demographics etc. Retail workers can be assigned roles and privileges. The module allows to manage kits, catalog of products attached to channels with expiry dates control if necessary, pricing, discount, and promotion functionality. Replenishment requirements are also supported with push, cross-docking and replenishment rules. Loyalty program management is available as well as gift card management.
Inquiries functionality provides data on retail transactions, sales, posted statements etc. Periodic tasks include data updates and technical level communication with retail channels.

Retail POS (traditional and modern)
Dynamic AX for Retail provides Point of Sales (POS) program built on .Net framework. POS administrator can customize look and feel - font color graphics of the user interface.
POS application can be role tailored. Store manager can access store reports and real-time sales data. POS solution allows to processes sales orders and codes and cash draw. It provides bar codes, printing of receipts, amount and tax calculations, shift close, gift cards, loyalty transactions and other functions. From back-office perspective, it proves inventory receipting, reporting and stock count.
Along with traditional POS, new in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 is Modern POS app for PCs, tablets and smartphones which allows to process sales transactions, orders and daily operations including some inventory management within the store. It can also be used in conversations with customer - clienteling using product catalog details and Bing maps integration for store locations etc. Modern POS must connect to Microsoft Dynamics AX Retail server which performs business logic and processing.

E-Commerce and Social Features
Online store is one of the retail channels published on SharePoint site from Dynamics AX. Categories and hierarchies are driven out of Dynamic AX and mapped to other channels to enable consistency. Functionality includes shopping card capability, real-time inventory updates, sharing on social networks directly from Web site, pick-up at the store, map integration with Bing to find store and many other solutions.

Commerce Data Exchange (CDX) 
Channel database (or store database) holds data that is required for retail transactions while master data is sent to channels from Dynamics AX database. CDX is a synchronization service that transmits data among head office, stores and channels. Data distribution is asynchronous while in some scenarios require real time communication between Dynamics AX and the channel which is also supported in CDM architecture.

Commerce Run Time (CRT) 
The Microsoft Dynamics AX CRT enables multi-channel commerce capability and provides retail content and services in a scalable way. CRT addresses the requirement to manage different channels with same tool via same logic and integration. It can also serve to innovate with new capabilities on the same platform.

Enterprise Portal for Retail
The Web portal and can be set up for access over the Internet to serve retail team for sales reporting, inventory monitoring, receiving and picking. Retail employees can also view retail products and related detailed information as well as access read-only price adjustments and discounts. Various sales reports, such as sales by hour, worker, store, performance by product, sales or retail category are available. Furthermore, staff can perform stock account over the Internet, receive purchase or transfer orders and complete outgoing transfer orders

Retail Hardware Station
Retail Hardware Station is another novelty in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 providing services for Modern POS clients, peripherals as printers, payment devices to communicate with Dynamics AX.

Why I Really Like Skype on Xbox One?

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While not being a serious gamer, I bought my Xbox One with Kinect quite soon after its release. In fact, gaming takes only less than 5% of my Xbox usage time while Skype accounts for around 40%. Here are the reasons why Skype on Xbox is really cool and I could not find anything close to this rich experience in other apps for communication or gaming.

Immersive Experience and Convenience in Living Room
The first obvious advantage of using Skype with Xbox is possibility to have large screen and convenience in living room as opposed to Skype and other similar apps on desktop PCs or mobile phones. One can enjoy using Xbox Skype with video while relaxing in sofa or even moving around the room. This all enabled with the same familiar user interface and navigation from Skype. For me it gives immersive and close communication with friends and family members abroad, thousands of miles away without feeling the great distances and coping with small screens in PCs, tablets and smartphones. In fact, Skype on Xbox is also comparable to Telepresence - expensive conferencing tool with large screens found in many executive offices around the world.


Auto Zoom
Kinect camera can zoom into speaker automatically and amazingly in the right context during increased activity, such as  speaking or moving around the room. Once your friend or family member joins you nearby on sofa or elsewhere, the Kinect camera can automatically detect the change and broadcast full family of participants on the screen. No desktop PC or mobile based software has this capability and experience in general use.

"Xbox Call" + Name
If user likes to use voice for giving commands to Skype for calling, it is also possible - say "Xbox Call" and name your contact in Skype favorites (works from anywhere in Xbox). This is similar to familiar experience on Cortana for Windows phone and Siri on iPhone, but available now on TV console.

Call Landline and Mobile Phones from Your TV
Sure, technically speaking it is Xbox One console, but the user experience is as calling from TV.

One Service, Many Devices
Skype is probably one of the best cases by Microsoft enabling its service and device strategy where data and user experience is integrated across mobile, PCs and console connected to TV. Furthermore, now Skype can be used to communicate with Microsoft Lync users, but more about that next time.

Introduction to Loyalty Programs or What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 for Retail?

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Customer loyalty is often considered as an extensive discipline within CRM (Customer Relationship Management) aimed at keeping existing customers and increasing their satisfaction and revenues to the business. In this article, we will look at what specific mainstream activities are covered under the concept of loyalty program based on the latest R3 release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for retail. This will help to better understand the specific scope of loyalty program management in enterprise, introduce the latest ERP standard solution in loyalty and address key requirements of a typical loyalty program manager.

What is a Loyalty Program?

Loyalty program stands for structured marketing efforts that reward and encourage loyal buying behaviour and results in benefits to the company pursuing such program. Loyalty programs are often associated with physical loyalty cards under various names like point card, membership card, mileage card etc. By presenting such a card at the outlet, customer can qualify for various benefits like discounts, points, and status benefits. Recent new trend is to develop on-line and mobile loyalty programs which require minimal use or even elimination for a need to carry physical card.

Microsoft Dynamics AX package can enable initiatives from simple to complex loyalty programs involving tiers, across multiple legal entities and retail channels (such as, brick & mortar, online, call center). Loyalty managers shall be able to create loyalty schemes and customers to accumulate loyalty points. They also shall be able to enable multiple tier qualification criteria over flexible periods for loyalty status achievement by customers. Multiple programs can be associated to a loyalty card in Dynamics AX and different rewards enabled based on shopper status via tiered loyalty programs. Channel specific loyalty program is an option as well.

Loyalty Points

Loyalty points in Dynamics AX can be based on quantity (such as number of transactions) or amount - sales to customer in set currency. Points in loyalty program can be redeemable in new purchases or in some cases accounted for status change in the loyalty levels (e.g., bronze, silver gold or similar).

Furthermore, redeeming sequence can be controlled in case points are used along with other loyalty rewards in a program.

As many airline passengers already have noticed with their airline miles, points in a program are usually set to expire. In Dynamics AX, expiration time control can be set in days,  months or years.

When it comes to basic reporting, loyalty program administrators or operators shall be able to access summary on points. This includes summary of available points as of today, already issued points, consumed and expired points.

Loyalty Schemes

Loyalty schemes in Dynamics AX specify the rules with details of how points will be administrated and calculated. It serves as connection point between loyalty program and retail channels. It will also determine how customer can earn new points taking into consideration tiers (membership levels) if applicable. Points and status can be earned by activities. Types of these activities as classified by loyalty program are:

1)    Purchasing product by amount

2)    Purchasing product by quantity

3)    Sales transaction count

Furthermore, loyalty manager can choose to set up loyalty schemes by retail product category or limit to particular product for points earning. Loyalty manager is to set how many points are to be earned and when for each rule and for which reward points and to which stores.

Loyalty Cards

Loyal (and also not so loyal) customers can be associated to one or even multiple loyalty cards at the same retailer. Loyalty card can also be applicable to multiple accounts within an organization or family members.

Dynamics AX support loyalty cards for so called omni-channel business scenarios where loyalty program can be executed over various means of communication and sales channels. For example, client can earn points not only when making purchases in a store but also on Web store etc.

More advanced requirement of some interest for couple of companies is support for card tender process – the system can let you to administer if card can be used to earn, only redeem points or both. Example of redemption card could be Disney Rewards Redemption Card which is combined with Visa credit card and allows customer to use Disney Dream Reward Dollars as payment.

Card can be linked to respective loyalty programs and quick summary of points can be obtained.

Controlling of Loyalty Point Transactions

Administering loyalty point transactions could be a challenging area in loyalty program in a large enterprise. The high level requirements include.

 Earning points

Business solution shall be able to control point earning against criteria of loyalty programs. Points shall not be given away if the criteria is not met. To earn points, it is also necessary for the loyalty card to be associated with the point of sale transaction. If the customer is associated to loyalty card then this customer would be added to the transaction.

Redeeming Points
Business solutions shall be able to control that redemption happens only when customer has enough points and is qualified by the loyalty program.

Adjusting points

Sales and customer service issues and exceptions are not seldom happenings. Most of loyalty program managers will likely require ability to directly add points for customer satisfaction or in case of transaction related matters. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, adjustments can be done directly on the card form.

Configuring Dynamics AX 2012 Application

Now that we know loyalty program basics, someone also has to set it up in a business system. On Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 application side, to create and administer loyalty program, the following are key prerequisite setups.

*  Loyalty date intervals (necessary if tiered loyalty is required)

*  Channels – to link channel to loyalty schemes

*  Retail price groups – to enable loyalty specific pricing

*  Loyalty parameters – default parameter settings

Key setup areas for loyalty functionality itself are:

* Loyalty programs and tiers

* Loyalty points

* Loyalty schemes

* Loyalty cards
Further to basic application side configuration there will be more technical considerations and setups such as smart-card readers, POS support, integration to customer facing membership Web sites etc. We are not covering these scenarios in this article.

Approach as Framework

Real life loyalty program requirements and Dynamics AX capabilities are not limited to the ones described here. Dynamics AX for Retail is to be thought of as a platform. Microsoft Dynamics AX development tools allow extending your loyalty program business solution with new functionality. Furthermore, as retailers try to differentiate their programs from competition - segmentation, profiling, mobile loyalty and many other industry buzz-words and capabilities will have to be supported in near future. Having integrated ERP package as backbone enabling basic framework of loyalty program administration and other retail functionality could an approach to take at retail organizations.

Using Hyper-V in Windows 8 to Run the Latest Dynamics Products for Enterprise

One of the main reasons to use Windows 8 in my role is Hyper-V Manager available now within the new OS. This allows me to run Dynamics AX 2012 or Dynamics CRM 2011 from my PC by using virtual machines with Windows Server, Microsoft SQL, SharePoint and other required enterprise systems installed. Hereby, we can use Windows 8 for demo, training, and testing of the latest Dynamics products for enterprise by using just one PC.