With Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, Microsoft introduced new functionality for calculating and applying indirect costs associated with project activities. Indirect costs can include costs such as rent, office supplies, IT support, telephone charges and similar costs and are typically calculated as a percentage of the direct labour or as an hourly rate.

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, indirect cost components can be configured, grouped and assigned to project hour journal transactions. This is complementary behaviour to the existing burdening of production labour via production cost categories and costing sheets.  On-line help, training documentation and Microsoft TechNet all have comprehensive information to configure and use indirect cost components. This is great functionality that those of us in the project manufacturing world have been waiting for… and it works quite well!

However, there is an issue in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 when you use indirect costs in project forecasts – specifically with project cost control calculations. Let me explain…

When using project forecasts, indirect costs that have been configured to apply to project hours journal transactions (actual costs) will also apply to project hour forecasts (estimated costs). This is correct – we want to know the total forecasted costs include indirect costs.

To demonstrate, I have set up a project cost category called “FCST_ENG” with an hourly rate of $25. I have also configured an indirect cost category at a rate of $50 per hour, and created a test project. In the example shown below, I have created an hour forecast for my test project of 100 hours:

On the General tab, I can review the indirect and total cost amounts that are applied per my test configuration:

You can see that Microsoft Dynamics AX is correctly applying the indirect cost (100 hours @ $50/hour) to the hour forecast transaction (I will also note that the correct indirect cost is applied to actual hour journal transactions). So far, so good.

 The issue arises when I perform a Cost Control calculation for my test project:

You will notice that the indirect costs applied to the hour forecast are not being included in the “Total budgeted cost” calculation – the calculation includes only the base hourly cost. I will also note that, although not demonstrated above, the indirect cost is correctly applied to actual hour journal transactions shown in the “Actual cost” calculation.

The result is that the forecast/budget is understated by the amount of the indirect cost. Since the actual cost transactions do calculate correctly, I am not comparing “apples-to-apples” and my cost control is inaccurate.

Furthermore, the cost control calculations are also the basis for calculating POC (percentage of completion) for revenue recognition in estimate projects. The result is that the automatic POC calculation is incorrect (overstated) and each individual project estimate must be overridden with a manual POC calculation.

Fortunately, Microsoft has been working diligently on this issue and as of this writing has developed a hot fix that we are currently testing. Please note that this hot fix is not yet publicly available but hopefully will be soon.

In conclusion, the project indirect cost component is a welcome addition to Microsoft Dynamics AX functionality that provides project manufacturers with a wider perspective on cost management and control. If you use indirect cost components in your project forecasts, be sure to review your calculations to ensure your indirect costs are included.

By Dave Blanchard, Sr. Solutions Consultant, Microsoft Dynamics AX

Pronto Xi Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has proven to be a timely provider of information for Mining sites throughout the world. One of the most important features that are being turned to is the Alert Intelligence and Data Intelligence modules. Not only are these modules complimentary with the base license but they are extremely powerful tools that are suited to the end user. Both boast set up wizards that guide the intelligence developer through the creation process and this has proven to put power into the hands of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) owners. The movement away from database names of fields to realistic names of fields (Such as job-cost-master.job-our-reference to GL Account code) makes using the tool suitable for ERP users of various levels.

Alert Intelligence

Alert Intelligence fully automates the notification of any person or group regarding events from their ERP system based on criteria that the user can define, and issues business alerts in real time. The power of this utility for mining companies is that any single activity can prompt an Email, SMS, Fax or on screen alert. Alert intelligence can be used as triggers for endless uses, for mining we find they are essential for;

• Outstanding Work Orders
• Inventory items falling below the minimum
• Approval Requests
• Budget commitments breaching maximum

Data Intelligence

One of the trends being seen with Pronto Xi is the increased ability to develop reports. Cognos Business Intelligence is a powerful report writer, but the simplicity and speed of developing a Data Intelligence report is not lost. With the ability to create data grid reports that export to Microsoft Excel, organizations using this feature are seeing employees take ownership over data and are empowering managers to be more budget conscious. The real time nature of these reports, coupled with the ability to link them to any menu within the system improves visibility over the system. Our mining customers have used these reports for;

• KPI Quick Check
• Accounting Month End Reconciliation
• Data Gap Analysis
• Presentation preparation
• Outstanding actions

These two functions are highly valuable and are profound in their efforts to keep ERP software users educated and informed on the important aspects of the system. Taking a step to being independently empowered with the ERP system and removing reliability on a vendor to provide on-going reports and triggers makes using these modules cost effective.

Jarrad Sonnenberg, BDO Solutions Consultant, a Pronto Xi ERP software expert with over 10 years of experience that has been gained primarily in the mining industry. 

Recently, one of our clients in the Oil and Gas Services industry invited us to compete in a competitive bidding process to determine which vendor would supply their Digital Field Ticketing Solution as they were not happy with their current system and processes.

The competition was steep – there were a total of 16 potential vendors bidding for this business. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and BDO Canada were ultimately selected for a number of reasons:

Works with other Microsoft products – the entire application is available in Outlook, all functions are available in Microsoft Outlook (including tasks, service calendaring, appointments and email) and reports can be generated directly into Excel.

Flexibility – our client had some specific requirements pertaining to changing a ticket while work was progressing, either from the field or dispatch, which Dynamics CRM was easily able to accommodate.

Changeable – the client was anticipating adding a number of new lines of business over the next few years that would require supporting new business processes that would be very different from their present lines of business. BDO Canada was able to prove that Dynamics CRM would be able to support these new processes would not impact current business operations and would in fact enhance them by providing additional opportunities to cross-sell, upsell and centralize customer information.

Offline capability – our client wanted to provide crews with the capability to make changes and add services to field tickets whether they could connect to the office or not. Microsoft Dynamics CRM was able to provide access to field tickets, job work orders, customer-specific price lists, contracts, attachments and services without connecting to the central server. Once the crew operator was able to connect via the Internet all changes were uploaded seamlessly to the central system. 

Integration – There was a requirement to integrate multiple elements to Dynamics NAV, including job orders, field tickets, payroll, invoices and credit memos. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and BDO Canada were able to meet this requirement easily. In addition, there was a need to integrate to third – party invoicing applications Open Invoice and Cortex that are being used by a growing component of the Oil and Gas industry. The modular nature of Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled us to accommodate this request at very little additional cost.   

Dispatch module – Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes an effective dispatch module can accommodate individual and crew schedules, service and rig availability and availability forecasting, from any desktop or device attached to the application.

Cost – Providing Oil & Gas Services industry solutions at non – Oil & Gas industry prices was cited as one of the key reasons Microsoft Dynamics CRM and BDO Canada was selected by our customer.  This product is substantially cheaper than our competitors, or so we’ve been told.

Support business processes – The final reason that Microsoft Dynamics CRM was selected was for its ability to support the other business processes required to operate a oil and gas services business, including Sales, Marketing, Operations and Accounts Receivable.

Is Microsoft Dynamics CRM right for your Oil & Gas Services business? Maybe, maybe not – but a major oil and gas services business with a majority of the market share selected it for their business, despite the number of purpose – built solutions available for just this purpose so it might be worth a look. 

So far, we have covered how to picking a solution, hardware investment and getting good help. In this issue, we will discuss taking ownership.     

Taking ownership is about more than just paying for the solution. It is about engagement and commitment. If you read my previous three blogs posts, you may be thinking the following: 

Barrier 1

Picking a solution: I have acquired some software and now the software vendor will be responsible for ensuring that it works.

Barrier 2

Hardware investment: I have acquired some hardware or have subscribed to a cloud service; the installer or provider will ensure that it works.

Barrier 3

Getting good help: I have hired a consulting organization that will make sure that the software and the hardware work together. 

Seems reasonable, right? Now add “for me” at the end of each these sentences. This is where you need to take ownership. If you have done your research and made good decisions about the solution, technology and resources, then you have set yourself up with a great team.

That being said, the business expertise and the knowledge of what you really need the system to do for you is in your hands. If you don’t have significant experience with systems implementation or technology, here are some tactics that you can use:  

Become a power user

• Get to know the solution
• Take training and take it seriously
• Read the manuals, watch YouTube videos on the solution and join a user group
• Attend industry sessions that discuss your solution  

If you are working with contractors and/or consultants, ask them to walk you through the solution once a month during the project. Even if everything is not 100% set up at the beginning, this will give you the opportunity to see your processes happen as the solution is gradually completed.

You will need to keep an open mind in these sessions when there is little data at the beginning of the project. Each month, it should look progressively more like what you need. 

Once you have had each walkthrough, try to execute the steps independently. In order for the solution to work for you, it is important that you try out everything.

Again, if you are working with contractors or consulting, they will ask you for a periodic sign-off on the project milestones and deliverables. Take these seriously. While the sign-offs are for the protection of the consultants, they also give you an opportunity to ensure everything is how you want it.

Try out everything that they say is working on the system on your own. It will work from their perspective, but you need to be sure that it works for you. 

To summarize, taking ownership is necessary to ensure the solution works for you. In order to accomplish this, you must be committed to the solution and engaged in the project. This is the ownership aspect of systems implementation that many organizations overlook. 

Next month: Continuous improvements

A frequently asked question when we’re implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX is how to email documents to customers and vendors from within the application.

 To email a document to a Customer or Vendor as a one-off is straightforward – if I want to email a Purchase Order Confirmation, I click Printer Setup, choose Print Destination E-mail, manually enter the email address, and click OK.  Easy enough, but the email address doesn’t default, and I have to email documents one at a time.

What if I want to set up the email address in advance so I don’t need to enter it every time, or if I want to send out confirmations for multiple orders at the same time (perhaps in batch)? The solution is Print Management.

Print Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX is a very powerful feature. It can be used to set up default printing preferences for a Customer or Vendor. Each Customer and Vendor can have their own predefined destination, number of copies, footer text and even custom developed format for all documents.

Here are the steps to set up a Vendor so that their Purchase Order Confirmations can be automatically emailed – this can be applied to any Customer or Vendor document. My example is based on AX 2012 forms, but the same functionality is also available in AX 2009.

Step 1 – In the Vendors form, go to the General tab and click Print Management in the Setup section. The Print Management Setup window will appear.

Step 2 – In the Print Management Setup window, expand the document you want to set up by clicking the + symbol, right click on the Original (Default) and choose Override:

Step 3 – In the Print Management Setup detail window, click the right arrow at the end of the Destination field and choose Printer setup:

Step 4 – In the Print destination settings window Choose E-mail in the left section, and enter the Vendor’s email address and an E-mail subject in the right section:

Step 5 – Time to test! In the Confirm Purchase order window check the Use print management destination checkbox:

Step 6 – When I click OK I get the following Infolog messages (one message per email being sent):

Step 7 – And the emails are sent!

By David Linton, Solutions Senior Manager at BDO Canada LLP who has been working with Microsoft Dynamics AX for 6 years.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Customization – Object Binding in VBA: Better Late Than Never

Recently, I started work on a project which involved the modification of a legacy customization containing a sizable amount of VBA code. As I went through the process of importing the package and compiling, I was faced with some familiar adversaries – Active X Cannot Create Object, and User Defined Type Not Defined. Wait a minute -  I thought you were both defeated in 2004. This can’t be happening!

Does anyone else think that this article is caught in a time warp and would feel much more comfortable about ten years ago? Granted, this would be a valid point if it were not for the multitude of VBA customizations that have been created over the years. In this particular case I was thrust into what Active X era developers affectionately termed DLL Hell. The original (well meaning, I’m sure) developer included a reference to an Active X control in their project and declared and instantiated a host of ADO objects using early binding.

I know the Active X purists swear by this method and are likely rallying to have me silenced as we speak. It is however not without its pitfalls. In this example, a reference to the appropriate Active X object was not provided with the package file.

In another equally frustrating instance, a reference may be provided but the referenced instance of the Active X object does not exist on the destination work station. Veterans of the VB6 days (me included) know that attempting to fix errors of this nature lead down an ever narrowing path of despair!  So, taking the path of least resistance, I removed the early binding code and replaced it with its versatile but sometimes frowned upon relative – late binding.

What I have done is cause VBA to obtain a reference to whichever instance of the requested object happens to be available. Subsequently, this project compiled successfully and the old Active X nemesis was once again defeated.

 Not so fast – what about constants?  Excellent point!  When an instance of an Active X object is created, it will expose enumerated constant values which are tremendously helpful when writing code. No such luck with late binding as we are now working with generic Object types.  Luckily we live in an age of information at our fingertips and Wikipedia bestows brilliance on us all. So, a quick work around may be had by inserting code similar to the following at the beginning of the module.

That, in a nutshell, is the technique of late binding. Use it wisely and conquer your own Active X nightmares!

By Eric Verebelyi, BDO Solutions Senior Consultant, with a great sense of humour.

In part 1, I explained how the calculator works, and how to design the form. Now, I’ll show how the code is structured.

Adding Functionality for Fields in Yearly Columns

The general concept is that a field change in one of the yearly columns will trigger 2 jscript functions. One calculates the row total, and another processes the change to the column. These functions can be added to the field change event in CRM, and the exact combination is unique for each field.

This second function will calculate the column total, and then add all the column totals for that section to get the section total. In my case, there were summary fields at the bottom of the form that needed to be updated as well.

There are sub functions that do the actual work. In the case of an expense column change, the CalcExpenseColTotal function is called with a parameter “person1” indicating the column name and field name suffix. This screenshot illustrates the concept, but in reality there are many more expenses than what is shown here.

Adding Functionality for Monthly Fields

Whenever a month field changes, a series of calculations is performed:

• get the number of months for the year,
• calculate the yearly value and update the Person 1 field in the same row,
• calculate the column totals for Month and Person 1 in this section,
• add the yearly column totals to get the total for this section,
• update the summary fields at the bottom of the form.

Adding Functionality for Number of Months Left in the Year

Similarly, if the “# Months” field at the top of the form changes, the Person 1 field for each row will be recalculated from the month column, and then the totals will be updated.

Engaging with business leaders and providing a better understanding on how technology can help drive operational effectiveness is what our BDO blog aims to cover. This particular post ties together elements of previous entries to bring one view on the value of Business Intelligence and Performance Management applications.

Enabling Financial Automation

The office of finance takes on a growing number of core business processes that can be automated through technology. Some of the benefits of incorporating BI/Corporate Performance Management technology is its often leveraged as a competitive weapon to improve efficiencies, reduce the time spent on low to non-value-added activities while enhancing an organization’s overall ability to make more informed decision.

By connecting technology to business processes software can help resources become more productive across all departments by helping:

• Improve accuracy, transparency and accountability
• Provide insight and forward facing analysis
• Manage uncertainty and mitigate risk through more effective scenario planning
• Enable self service agility and analysis to adapt to change
• Drive collaboration across business units and integrated functions
• Improve the integrity of planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting processes

Technology: the Catalyst for Business Change

• Invest in technology that provides a foundation for growth and scenario planning to help bounce back from disruption
• Ensure structure and processes are in place so you can react with timely and accurate information, thereby competing more effectively
• Ensure you have the right processes and systems to manage the customer experience, which is critical for long-term success

Driving Change and Building Support

Consider how your organization is currently handling the following processes and what your team is currently using to help with decision management:

• Budgeting (spreadsheets?)
• Financial reporting and analysis
• Forecasting for operations and financials
• Financial and data consolidation
• Strategic and operational planning
• Statutory and compliance reporting
• Getting the right data to answer specific questions
• Managing various data sources and systems (ETL)
• Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs)

Connect with the professionals at BDO Solutions

Leverage our experience in streamlining your planning and performance management processes. For instance, budgeting software is just one of the integrated specialty solutions that we bring to the table and below is a customer case study outlining our collaborative approach in delivering value to our clients.

So far, we have covered how to pick a solution and hardware investment. In this issue, we will discuss getting good help.  

The size of your business — whether you are small, mid-sized or an enterprise — has a large impact on obtaining the appropriate resources for your project. The challenges you will face and the best ways to get past them vary in each market.   

In a small business, it is common to have a dedicated staff of people who love working together and know your business well. However, unfortunately, you likely also have insufficient internal resources or expertise to execute a project that will implement new technology. 

In a mid-sized business, you may have some technically-savvy team members who feel that they could run the project. Time becomes a big factor in this case. The team would need to continue to work on its existing jobs while also executing the project, often leading to employee burn-out or projects that either never start or fail.

In a larger enterprise, it would be common to see a specific budget allocated to hiring temporary or contract people to execute the project. This creates its own challenges. How do you find the right people without overpaying for them? How do you support the solution when the contract team leaves at the end of the project?

The most important step is to determine how a project can be completed the most successfully in your company and what your budget is for resourcing the project.

• Hire temporary team members to conduct the day-to-day work and allow your regular staff to work on the project. Your regular team can still help the temp team and may enjoy the opportunity to work on something different for a short period of time. This will reduce burn-out and will be less expensive than project contractors. 
• Hire the contractors you need, but choose one to stay on after the solution goes live who can provide detailed training and support to your regular staff. This will ensure that you become independent.  
• Engage a consulting organization to work with you and share all project tasks. This will allow you to complete the project tasks for which you have the skill-set and time, while giving consultants only the items you are not able to take care of yourself. This will provide a part-time support team after the project is completed so you only pay for what you need rather than a full-time contractor.
• Hire or contract only a project manager with industry and product experience if you are not in a position to hire contractors or consultants. Then execute the project with your existing team and expect the timeline to be considerably longer. The project manager can help you bring in “hired guns” for very specific tasks that the internal team cannot handle. 

Getting good help is no easy task. Arguably, the most important factor is to obtain references. Talk to companies and individuals who have worked with your selected contractors or consultants. Ask questions and be sure you like and trust the people you select. This will be absolutely critical to your project success. 

Next month: Taking ownership       

With my experience of implementing Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) clients, I have found the knowledge transfer to be speedy and the implementation of Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics AX to be extremely successful.  It is always a joy to empower users with results that meet their expectations and that invoke confidence in their own ability to create, generate, secure and publish their own reports.

Here are just a small handful of benefits for Management Reporter with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012:

• Fast and easy to set up with existing Microsoft Dynamics infrastructure.
• Reusability of reports across different companies and different levels of an organization.
• Immense flexibility with Rows, Columns and Trees; these components can be used across multiple reports in Management Reporter without having to recreate the same data over and over again.
• The Data Mart is excellent, with near real-time updates that run every 5 minutes.  Data Mart report generation process has improved performance through elimination of queries back to the Microsoft Dynamics AX database for each report that is run.  Management Reporter reports directly from the Data Mart.
• User friendly interface – non technical resources are able to build their own reports without the help of IT through its familiar Microsoft look and feel.
• Deep drill down capabilities down to the transaction level in both Management Reporter and also to GL transactions in Microsoft Dynamics AX.
• With Microsoft Dynamics AX having the ability to create an unlimited number of Financial Dimensions, Management Reporter  allows you to utilize these dimensions effectively.  You can build numerous variations of Trees in Management Reporter that allow you to report on these dimensions at great extent.
• Management Reporter takes advantage of the unlimited number of Financial Dimensions in Microsoft Dynamics AX.  Users can build numerous variations of Trees for reporting that gets the most out of the available data.
• Group and organize your Financial Statements into Report Groups.
• If companies are not already consolidating in Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can create consolidated Financial Statements using Management Reporter.
• Deliver your reports to single or multiple library directories.  Management Reporter can publish links to generated reports in network locations or in Microsoft SharePoint sites.
• Management Reporter allows you to schedule your report generation process, therefore, you can have your Financial Reports packaged and ready and delivered at every period/quarter end, without having to manually generate.

Management Reporter is a must have for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.  Download our Management Reporter Fact Sheet for more details.

Mamta Rathod, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Solutions Consultant.  BDO Solutions Canada