Microsoft Dynamics AX

Role-Tailored QuestionnaireSample Responses

Prepared for
Contoso Entertainment Systems

Project
Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation

Prepared by
[Authors name]

Contributors
[Document contributors]
Table of Contents
1. PRESIDENT ............................................................................................................................................................. 4
2. ACCOUNTING MANAGER .......................................................................................................................................... 5
3. ACCOUNTS PAYABLE COORDINATOR ........................................................................................................................ 6
4. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE ADMINISTRATOR ................................................................................................................. 7
5. PRODUCT DESIGNER ............................................................................................................................................... 8
6. MATERIALS MANAGER ............................................................................................................................................. 9
7. SALES AND MARKETING EXECUTIVE ....................................................................................................................... 10
8. CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER ............................................................................................................................. 11
9. PRODUCTION PLANNER.......................................................................................................................................... 12
10. PURCHASING MANAGER..................................................................................................................................... 13
11. PRODUCTION MANAGER .................................................................................................................................... 14
12. W AREHOUSE MANAGER ..................................................................................................................................... 15
13. PRODUCT DIVISIONS MANAGER .......................................................................................................................... 16
14. HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR/MANAGER ......................................................................................................... 17
15. PAYROLL ADMINISTRATOR ................................................................................................................................. 18
16. IT MANAGER ..................................................................................................................................................... 19
Sure Step
Introduction
This document is a sample of what the finished Microsoft Dynamics AX Upgrade Role-Tailored Questionnaire
Response Form may look like after asking all of the questionnaire questions to a customer. This document is
organized by role-based needs and criteria. Whenever possible, it should be completed with input from the roles
specified for each section. These responses are fictional and not based on a real company. They are intended to help
visualize what a completed questionnaire document would look like.

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1. President and/or CEO
1.1 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The following reports should be shown on the Role Center Dashboard, grouped together with a
functional structure:
Financial:
o Graph of profitability per product group for the major product lines (for example.,
televisions, home theater equipment, speakers, and car audio)
o Year-to-date total revenue with a comparison over last year
o Planned versus actual budget summary by department
o Cash Inflow versus Cash Outflow
Customer:
o Pipeline analysis chart
o Customer satisfaction statistics
Production:
o Production efficiency chart
o Production capacity

All of the KPIs should be repeated on the Enterprise Portal home page for the president.

1.2 Business Analysis

The following reports are critical at certain time intervals:
Monthly:
o Profitability analysis statement
o Inventory value and carrying cost
o Sales over last month
o AR aging
Quarterly:
o Sales over last quarter
o Sales forecast for next quarter
o Inventory turnover
o Employee turnover
Annually:
o Statement of Cash Flows
o Income Statement
o Balance Sheet
o Top customers by YTD sales
o Profitability analysis by product line

1.3 Workflow Management Rules

Only the president should have the ability to approve the following workflow steps:
Purchases over $15,000
Customer credit limits exceeding $100,000
Management-level final hiring and firing decisions
Annual expense budgets for each department

The president would like to have access to the KPIs over the web. The president would also like to be
able to view any workflow approvals and his own benefits/retirement plan information.

The president wants to be able to set his own alerts after the go-live, but does not want other
employees to have the ability to set alerts for him.

The president wants his Outlook account to link to Microsoft Dynamics AX, but only for Contacts and
Appointments.

Additional note: During the discussions, the president mentioned that the company may purchase a
production plant in Mexico in the near future. The system must be configured so that the addition of this
facility will be an easy transition in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

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2. Accounting Manager
2.1 General Ledger
The general ledger has a basic structure with several sub-accounts for different departments. The
general ledger (GL) has balance-type accounts as well as header-type accounts. There are total
accounts for major segments of the GL such as cash, assets, inventory, etc.

Changes are usually only made to the chart of accounts once per year. The President or CFO will
review any suggestions from the accounting team and she will make the final decision on what should
be changed. There is not really a need to make periodic updates to the GL with a fill utility.

Journal entries are currently named with a prefix that indicated the type of journal, such as ALLOC for
allocation journals. The journal numbers are sequential and should be generated by the system. The
company would like to have a continuous flow of journal numbers from the old system to the new, thus
Microsoft Dynamics AX should start numbering journals at the last number that was entered to the old
system.

Batches are posted to the GL twice per day, once around 12:30 pm and again overnight. The company
does not require approval of batches prior to posting. The company currently allows anyone to post a
journal regardless of who created the journal, but would like to change that process with the
implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX so that users cannot post journals that they created
themselves.

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3. Accounts Payable Coordinator
3.1 Vendor Payment
Vendors are paid twice per month, typically on the second and fourth Fridays of the month. Vendor
invoices are entered into the system at the time of receipt, though they are usually held until several
invoices can be entered at once. The invoices are matched to receipts once the items are received.
Right now this process is manual, but there is a desire to have them matched electronically in the future.

The company orders both items and services from vendors on a variety of order types. Services orders
tend to be blanket orders with a monthly or periodic release against the blanket. Item-type orders are
usually created from master planning to purchase raw materials, but can also be entered manually upon
occasion. It is rare to have services and items on the same order. Vendors often send the items in
multiple shipments, therefore it is crucial to be able to receive a partial quantity on an order and show
the remaining quantity to be delivered.

Purchase order numbers are assigned automatically by the system. There is not a restriction on the
range based on order type. The company would like to keep a continuous flow of their purchase order
(PO) numbers when they move over to Microsoft Dynamics AX. The system should check for invoice
number duplicates.

The purchase order confirmation should print out on 8 X 11 paper with the company logo in the upper
right corner. All POs should have a footer note at the bottom that says Questions? Please call 1-800-
111-1111. The PO should print the items price along with any applicable taxes or shipping amounts.
The final AP invoice is typically not printed, thus the layout is not critical.

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4. Accounts Receivable Administrator
4.3 Interest and Collection Letters
Contoso does not charge interest to past-due customers, but the company does send out a series of
collection letters based on the AR aging report. However, customers in the Major Customers customer
group should not receive these letters. These customers should receive a personal phone call from their
designated sales representative. The sales reps should receive an alert when their accounts are past
due to remind them to call the customer.

For customers that do not fall into the Major Customers group, the company sends out three different
collection letters. The accounting manager will provide the templates that are used. The first level of
letters should be sent when the account is 10 days past due, the second should be sent when the
account is 20 days past, and the third at 30 days past. Currently, this is a manual process, but Contoso
would like to automate it as much as possible.

When the second letter is sent, the collections manager should be notified so that he can proactively
call the customer to inquire about the account.

The system should also track the history of the collection letters, so that the customer service manager
can run reports regarding which customers are likely to not pay on time in the future.

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5. Product Designer
5.1 Product Configuration
The company offers two products that can be configured by the customer, the Custom High End
Speaker (item 1119) and the Assembled Home Theater System (item 1299).

For item 1119, the customer can pick which midrange speaker should be in the enclosure. The
customer can also opt for extra insulation, and whether or not they would like to have documentation
included with the shipment. The customer can specify the exact height, width, and color of the
enclosure. However, the system needs to restrict some entries based on rules and validations. For
example, the customer should not be able to order a 12-inch speaker with an enclosure that is only 10
inches wide.

These speakers can only be ordered by calling into the customer service department and speaking
with a representative. The representative is responsible for entering the order and configuring the
speaker on the fly. When this particular item is entered on an order, the user should be automatically
prompted by the system to configure the item, since this item is rarely ordered and the representative
may forget that it needs to be configured. The representative needs to be guided through the process
of selecting a power rating and then an enclosure, the communicating the price and delivery date to the
customer. The price is calculated based on the options selected during order entry. If the
representative enters an invalid combination for the item, the system should warn him of the violation.

After the item is configured on the order, the representative should be able to print a quotation that can
be emailed to the customer. The quotation should outline the configuration choices that were made
and the final price and estimated delivery date for the item. This information should also be printed on
other documentation such as the pick slip, pack slip, and invoice.

The system should create a bill of materials (BOM) specific to this customers order. This BOM needs
to be automatically transferred to the production floor when the order is confirmed and a work order is
created. The core BOM component options should be the same across all sites.

Users do not need a report of where the variables are being used, as the variables are rarely used in
other items.

All customer service representatives should have access to create a configured item from the sales
order, but only the Product Designer should be able to change the configuration rules.

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6. Materials Manager
6.3 Quality Management
All speaker enclosures are tested for quality after production. Contoso has an area of the production
floor dedicated to this testing called the Speaker enclosure testing area. The quality manager tests the
measurements of the enclosure to ensure that they conform to the specifications. A measuring tape is
used to do the testing.

Every enclosure should be tested, and the enclosure must pass testing before becoming part of the
available inventory. Any variables in the dimensions should be reported. The tolerance level for the
measurements is .0001, thus, if the measurement is longer or shorter it will fail the test. Only the
dimensions are tested during this process.

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7. Sales and Marketing Executive
6.4 Marketing Processes
Marketing lists are purchased from Dunn and Bradstreet on a quarterly basis. The marketing team uses
the filtering mechanisms offered by Dunn and Bradstreet to only pull relevant company information.
However, the ERP system should be able to compare the incoming list against existing prospect
records and find any potential duplicates. The marketing team should be able to easily upload the new
lists into AX either directly from the Dunn and Bradstreet website or from a .CSV or .XLSX file.

The incoming leads are categorized as either High Revenue or Low Revenue. As they go through the
marketing process, the stage of the lead goes from Stage 1: Verification to Stage 2: Contact to Stage 3:
Quote. When a lead has passed through the verification stage, its status becomes Qualified.

Contoso also tracks a lead Type that indicates where the lead came from. The current lead types are
Business card, List vendor, Referral, Research, or Self-referral. A quarterly report is run to see how
many new leads are coming from each source.

Leads should have a Priority category of Very high, High, Medium, or Low. Users should be able to
quickly filter and sort by the leads priority to ensure that they are focusing the most effort on High
Priority leads.

Leads are typically assigned to a particular member of the marketing team who is responsible for
updating the stage of the lead. Contoso would also like to track the date on which the lead is imported,
so that reports can be run on how quickly leads are being processed by the marketing team.

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8. Customer Service Manager
8.1 Service Agreements and Orders
Contoso offers maintenance agreements with its Major Account customers to periodically test and
maintain their audio/video equipment. Major Accounts are usually concert halls/conference centers that
have professional equipment installed. These agreements can be further grouped as either Silver, Gold,
or Bronze. The service agreement group is assigned to an agreement based on the length of the
agreement and the types of services that are purchased. Contoso will also allow the customer to
temporarily suspend the service agreement for an agreed-upon period of time. This typically does not
break the longer-term agreement.

Most service agreements have signed contracts that should be somehow associated to the account.
The service agreements are usually open-ended, meaning that the service will be performed and billed
until the customer specifically requests to end the service. However, some customer service
agreements do have stop dates that are agreed upon in the contract.

Multiple tasks can be performed by a technician on a service call. These tasks include Preventive
Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, Inspection, Installation, Periodic Services, Professional
Services, and Upgrades.

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9. Production Planner
8.2 Master Planning
Contoso uses several types of planning to cover its item master. Coverage group 10 is the Item
Requirement coverage group, Group 20 is the Manual coverage group, Group 30 is the Min/Max
coverage group, Group 40 is the Period coverage group, Group 50 is a special group used for
positive/negative classes, and Group 60 is used for intercompany items. For Group 10, a BOM and
route version are required for planning. The production planner will provide an Excel sheet of which
Contoso items currently belong to each group.

Groups 10 40 are for a coverage period of 90 days with a coverage time fence of 100 days. The
maximum number of days that inventory may have negative coverage is 2 days for Groups 10 40.
These groups are allowed to go positive for a maximum of 100 days. Group 50 can only go negative for
1 day and positive for 5. The intercompany group (Group 60) is set to 100 days for both.

All groups have explosion and capacity time fences of 100 days, and all of the groups are based on the
Standard working calendar for Contoso.

Lead times are maintained in the system for purchased items. There is a 14-day lead time for
purchased items that belong to the following item groups: Televisions, Receivers, Projectors, DVRs,
and Speaker components. The Home Theater Systems have a 5-day lead time. The Car Audio and
DVD Player lead time is 10 days.

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10. Purchasing Manager
10.5 Vendor Management
Contoso groups its vendors into categories for posting to the general ledger and for reporting purposes.
Each group has its own terms of payment and settlement periods. The vendor groups are:
Group 10: Video Vendors
Group 20: Audio Vendors
Group 30: Services Vendors
Group 40: Parts Vendors
Group 50: Packaging Vendors
Group 70: Tax Authorities
Group 80: Other Vendors
Group 90: Intercompany Vendors

Vendors are sequentially numbered within their groups. For example, all vendors in the Video Vendors
group have a vendor number that starts with a 1. Vendors in the Audio group all have numbers that
start with 2, and so forth.

Vendors are attached to an Invoice account, which is the account from which the invoices are sent to
Contoso for payment. In some cases, one vendor account is used to receive invoices from multiple
vendor records.

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11. Production Manager
11.1 Manufacturing Structure
Contoso manufactures a variety of home theater equipment and cabinets. Contoso has three locations
in operation to manufacture and distribute its products.

The first site is used to manufacture speakers. There is one main warehouse at this site, but it is broken
down into four virtual warehouses: Main, Vendor, Quarantine, and Transit. The second site is solely a
warehouse, and the third site is another manufacturing facility. As with the first site, the third has one
physical warehouse that has 4 virtual warehouses within it.

The first and third sites are often replenished from the second site where there are shortages of parts.
This currently happens through an automatic replenishment process. Occasionally the two production
sites will send inventory to one another.

Site 1 has eight work center cells on the production floor, and they also used subcontracted labor on
occasion. Two of the eight cells are used to track the process times of machinery, the others are used
for tracking human processes such as assembly, inspection, packing and sanding. Most of these groups
use the Standard calendar, which is a 3-shift working calendar with some holidays. However, the
Enclosure assembly center and the Finishing center use a more seasonal calendar that has peak times
and off times built into it, in which there are not always multiple shifts.

The warehouse site has three work center groups that are used for packing processes such assembly,
kitting/packing, and inspection. This is also a 3-shift location that uses the same calendar as the first
site.

The second production site (Site 3) only has assembly and inspection work cell groups. It is also on the
seasonal work calendar as this location has a much lighter workload than the primary production
location.

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12. Warehouse Manager
11.2 Warehouse Management
Contoso currently operates 14 virtual warehouses that are part of the three physical warehouses. The
warehouses are setup as Default, Quarantine, or Transit. The Quarantine and Transit warehouses do
not allow inventory to be reserved out of those locations. Inventory can only be reserved or picked for
an order if it is in a Default warehouse.

Contoso has one warehouse in which it stores the vendors inventory. This inventory is placed into a
separate virtual warehouse so that the inventorys value can be kept separate from the main inventory
for Contoso.

Only the DVR items are stored at the bin location level. For the Quarantine and Transit warehouses,
there are only two locations an inbound and an outbound. For the main warehouse types, the location
includes an aisle, rack, shelf, and bin. The numbering format for this location starts at 01-01-01-1 for
Aisle-Rack-Shelf-Bin. Only one pallet is allowed per bin location, and the max height for the pallet is 36
feet. The max width is 42 feet, and the max depth is 48 feet. The locations are typically segmented as
either being a bulk location or a picking location.

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13. Product Divisions Manager
13.2 Project Types And Hierarchies
Projects typically fall into one of the following categories:
Cost project
Fixed-price
Internal
Investment
Time project
Time and material

All of these categories are chargeable with the exception of the Internal and Time projects.

Projects are numbered sequentially, but the first digit of the project number indicates the category of the
project. For example, Time and material projects all start with a 1, Fixed-price projects all start with a 2,
and Investment projects begin with a 3. Contoso would like to continue numbering projects in this
manner, since it is a quick way for users to quickly recognize the project type.

Time and material and fixed price projects can have subprojects attached to them. These subprojects
are often physically performed across multiple physical locations and need to be tracked separately for
reporting purposes. For example, the customer may ask for a report of costs per location for a large
installation project. These subprojects may also be in various stages, so tracking the subprojects allows
users to see the process stage per location. Other project types such as Internal and Time projects may
occasionally need to track subprojects but this is rare.

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14. Human Resources Director/Manager
14.3 Absence Tracking
Absences are tracked for Contoso employees. There are many absence codes these will be provided
in a Microsoft Office Excel format for uploading into Microsoft Dynamics AX. These codes are not
categorized or grouped in the current system but they could be grouped as the following:
Community service
Education
Flex time
Holiday
Illness
Late
Leave
Personal
Vacation

Salaried and hourly employees have a different process for submitting absences, but the categories and
codes are the same for all employees.

For an hourly employee, absences are currently submitted by filling out paperwork and submitting it to
their supervisors. Contoso would like to automate this process by allowing all employees to request
absences via a secure corporate web portal. This would eliminate data entry errors and manual
paperwork. However, the paper process should still be an option.

The departmental supervisors are responsible for approving absences for their employees. The Human
Resources Manager is responsible for approving absences for the supervisors, and for running a
quarterly report on absences that is presented to the vice president of the company.

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15. Payroll Administrator
15.2 Employee Data Management
Employees are often transferred to other positions within the company. Contoso would like to track
these transfers and keep a history of the employees positions and salary.

Pay rates are at the individual level for salaried employees, but hourly employees typically belong to a
pay grade. These pay scales are standard to the industry. There are some exceptions to this rule.

The hourly employees use a time-clock system to track their working time. This system currently feeds
the hours directly into the enterprise resource management (ERP) system so that the hours can be
processed by payroll. Employees are paid time-and-a-half for working more than 8 hours in any day or
on weekend days, and are paid double-time for working during holidays. Second and third shift workers
receive a shift premium but the premium is already built into their pay grade.

Employees are paid strictly based on time worked there is no piece rate pay.

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16. IT Manager
16.3 Document Management
Contoso currently has a file storage space that can be accessed by most employees. This space is
used to store general documents that are not confidential within the company. Contoso would like to
have a storage location that could be controlled more closely.

There is also a need within the company to associate item images to each item in the item master.
These images would need to be stored in a central location and should only be available for update by
certain employees in the company. Customer documents such as contracts and services agreements
are currently stored in physical filing cabinets, but Contoso would like to have an electronic copy of
these documents available within the system.

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