To develop or not to develop

Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM is a continually updated system. Customers must implement a minimum of two updates per year and can only forgo a maximum of three consecutive updates. This means that all customers are current, unlike the Dynamics AX customers, which are typically years out of date.

There are obvious advantages to this approach. Every customer will be on the current version making all the features available, while also having all the patches applied. In contrast to Dynamics AX, where systems were often unpatched and outdated. Updating them was frequently a time-consuming and expensive task.

For those customers that move to Dynamics 365 F&SCM from Dynamics AX, there is often a concern that the continual update approach will consume lots of man hours in testing and costs in updating and releasing. This concern comes from previous experiences of upgrades, which often steamed from the level of development in their Dynamics AX system.

Many customers are now adopting a “no modification” approach and using the system as-is to streamline the implementation and decrease update complexities.

Is utilising the out-of-the-box approach the solution?

It is important to ensure the system to implement meets your business needs and adds value to your business. Every company has unique elements that make them special, and it is important that the system allows the uniqueness to be present.

When a business process does not align with D365F&SCM, you need to review the process to ensure what the customer is doing is the best approach. Customers must comprehend their business processes, but it is crucial to comprehend the rationale behind the flow of their processes. Customers will say this is their established process, but when reviewing the history of those choices, we can identify issues with the business process. The history could have originated from the initial choices made by someone in the early stages of the company, and the practice has persisted over time. Alternatively, it may have been due to limitations in an earlier system that necessitated a specific approach, and customers have since continued with or expanded upon that approach.

Once the review is complete and the gap is identified, discrepancies should be evaluated to determine whether modifying the system to align would be beneficial. This can be directly in the ERP system, or within external tools. The key question is, does this change bring value to the business?

It is important to understand the development process in D365F&SCM differs from Dynamics AX. Where AX used an overlaying method, D365F&SCM uses an extension module. The extension model allows developers to add functionality to the system in a flexible and powerful way, while still making updates to the system easily manageable.

We should only develop functionality that adds value and ensure all development has automated testing. Using automated testing is the critical requirement. This is the biggest hurdle for customers to manage, the testing cycle. It takes a lot of key resources from the company to perform the different testing to ensure a smooth release. Automating the testing is essential and allows for a high confidence at release time. Some manually testing is always advisable, but with an automated testing plan becomes significantly reduced and less invasive to the business. 

The expectation is you will be on this system for many years. As a result, adding value now will have a huge saving.