Product life-cycle management in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

The evolution of a product from invention, to sales-ready, to eventual end-of-life is simple at its surface. However, this process becomes dramatically more complex when considering all the moving pieces, approvals, inventories, production needs, marketing efforts, profitability, and more. Multiply this complexity by every new product a company seeks to produce, and product lifecycle management (PLM) functionality becomes a must-have for any company in the business of managing one or more production processes.

As the word “lifecycle” might imply, there are natural stages products go through during the course of their production lifetime which influence the many moving pieces referenced above. Since a product’s stage has varying implications on other parts of a business, it’s important to have a tool to manage the process like Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations brings up the features of product life-cycle management which can manage the process well. Let’s see how. Below is the scenario, I would like to cover.

Scenario

For any product within any organization goes through various stages typically following

• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline

To demonstrate in Microsoft Dynamics 365, I am using following stages

• Design – Product is in design phase and not ready for fully fledged sales and not to be considered in planning.
• Active – Product is released and can now be considered in operations for sales and purchase along with planning to procure
• Discontinued – Organisation has decided to discontinue the product but there is a left-over inventory which needs to be sold off. Discontinued products will not be considered in planning.
• Obsolete – Product is 100% obsolete and will not be considered for planning, sales and marketing. Any inventory left to be scrapped.