Integration with Relationship Management

The ability to manage relationships with customers, vendors, and others is fully integrated with standardized functionality for supply chain management. This level of integration contrasts sharply with add-on functionality such as a third-party customer relationship management (CRM) application. Illustrations of integrated functionality include the following:

* Contact interactions reflecting supply chain activities. The system automatically records contact interactions involving sales and purchase documents. For example, an interaction may represent sending a document for a sales quote or invoice, or a purchase quote or order. Each document is treated as an interaction.

* Contact interactions reflecting outgoing calls, e-mails, and cover letters. The system automatically records contact interactions involving outgoing communications initiated from within Navision, such as originating a phone call. Outgoing e-mail becomes an attachment to the interaction. Incoming e-mails can also be automatically recorded as a contact interaction and attached to the interaction.

* Contacts. You can create contacts from existing information about customers and vendors (and vice versa), and automatically create contacts when adding customers and vendors.

* Create sales quotes and orders for an opportunity. A sales quote can be defined for an opportunity (where the opportunity represents a potential sale to a contact) and converted to a sales order.

* Contacts and commerce portals. Business with a contact can be conducted through a commerce portal.

Other relationship management capabilities go beyond these integration features. As part of generating and qualifying leads, for example, you can create a campaign, assign a subset of contacts to the campaign, define a template for sending information (such as mailings or e-mail) or making phone calls, and track responses for the campaign. The system automatically records the sent information and responses as contact interactions. Contact interactions can be manually added, and contacts can include banks, accountants, lawyers, travel agencies, government authorities, press, and others. The system supports the identification and tracking of opportunities within user-defined sales cycles, and recording the related contact interactions. Contact information can also serve other purposes, such as printing labels or exporting data for external telemarketing.

Integration with Warehouse Management

Integrated warehouse management functionality is already included, thereby avoiding the need for a supplemental application. It supports both order- and document-based approaches to warehouse management, and a natural growth path to more advanced functionality. For example, suggested put-aways can account for item characteristics (such as weight or cold storage requirements) as well as bin characteristics (such as weight limitations or cold storage capabilities).

Integration with E-commerce

E-commerce builds on the natural design of an ERP system since it provides electronic communication of basic transactions. Integrated e-commerce functionality is supported in several ways, including Biztalk transactions, reverse auctions, commerce portals, and user portals.

Biztalk Transactions for Sales and Purchasing. The symmetry of sales and purchasing functionality is reflected in Biztalk transactions, as shown in the following figure. For example, an outbound Biztalk sales quote and sales order confirmation can be sent to a customer. Conversely, an inbound Biztalk purchase quote and purchase order confirmation can be received from a vendor. Each inbound transaction can have an optional e-mail notification sent to the internally responsible person.

E-Commerce Sourcing via Reverse Auctions. A reverse auction provides an electronic approach to sourcing a purchase. It includes sending a request for quote to multiple vendors, obtaining vendor responses on a web site, reviewing the quotes, communicating to vendors whether their quote was accepted or rejected, and creating a purchase order from the quote.

Manufacturing Environments and Integration with Other Functions

Definition of Product Structure Information. Master bills and master routings define product and process design, with optional bill and routing versions. Their identifiers are assigned to relevant manufactured items and specified on production orders. Planned engineering changes are identified using date effectivity for each bill and routing version; date effectivity can also be identified for material components. The master bill and routing information provide the basis for costing and planning calculations. Routing information is optional, and some firms coordinate production activities without it.

The order-dependent bill and routing for a production order initially reflect the assigned master bill and routing, and can be manually maintained to identify a custom configuration. The system models a multilevel custom product configuration using order-dependent bills and multiple linked production orders tied to the sales order.

Variations in Production Strategy. Selling stocked product involves a make-to-stock production strategy, where sales forecasts typically drive end-item replenishment. A make-to-order production strategy often requires stocked components, where replenishment may be driven by component forecasts. The production order for a make-to-order product is typically linked to a sales order. A make-to-order product may have make-to-order components, so that multiple linked production orders are tied to the sales order. The linked production order(s) can be generated during sales order entry, by planning calculations, or by manual assignment.

Lean Manufacturing Practices. Lean manufacturers often require auto-deduction of material and resources, bin replenishment of floor stock material, order-less reporting of production, or constraint-based scheduling of manufacturing cells.

Design Factors Shaping System Usage in Distribution Environments

Major factors shaping system usage include item definition, symmetry of sales and purchasing functionality, sales variations, symmetry of warehouse functionality, and the capabilities to model variations in multi-site operations.

Item Definition. Item master information consists of company-wide and location-specific information. Company-wide information, for example, includes the item number, lot/serial tracking policies, and a costing method (such as standard cost or an actual costing method). Location-specific information includes the item's costs and replenishment method for each location. Non-stock items can be defined in the item master, as well as item variant codes to handle color/size variations of the same item.

Primary Engine for Coordinating Supply Chain Activities. Planning calculations synchronize supplies to meet demands and generate suggested action messages on worksheets. Replenishment logic within the planning calculations includes time-phased order point, DRP, and MRP logic.

Symmetry of Sales and Purchasing Functionality. Sales and purchasing both handle documents for quotes, blanket orders, orders, invoices, returns and credit memos, with parallel approaches for handling cross-reference identifiers, prices and discounts, special charges, and order-related text. Symmetry is also apparent in the definition of customer and vendor information, and the handling of special orders and drop shipments.

Variations in Sales. Sales order line items can identify material items (including special orders, drop shipments, and kits of components) as well as resource time, special charges, and text. Pricing and discounting schemes can reflect product and customer groups, quantity breakpoints and date effectivity, and discounts based on total order value. Sales can be forecasted to drive purchasing requirements.

Symmetry of Warehouse Functionality for Inbound and Outbound Shipments. The same functionality for handling outbound shipments applies to sales orders, transfer orders, and returns to vendor. Similar functionality for handling inbound shipments applies to purchase orders, transfer orders, and customer returns.

Variations in Warehousing. Shipping activities can focus on individual orders or a pick document, while receiving activities can focus on individual orders or a receipt document and an optional put-away document. Put-away suggestions can optionally account for bin location considerations, such as location preferences and capacity constraints. Movement within a warehouse can reflect bin replenishment policies, such as replenishing bins from a bulk storage area.

Design Factors Related to Customization Capabilities

Customizations range from the simple to the complex. Complex customizations typically entail significant changes to system functionality and logic. Simple customizations typically involve minor changes to the user interface and reports, and do not impact system logic. Several tools support simple customizations as illustrated below.

Customizing Window Layout for the List Format. The list format allows an end user to tailor window layout by selectively hiding, showing, and sorting fields via drag-and-drop. This provides a simple approach to customizing window layout and the system remembers each end user's preferences. In addition, an end user can view all available fields (and their values) in the table related to a record.

Customizing Window Layout for the Card Format. The card format can be changed with an easy-to-use forms designer, such as changes to field labels, to show or hide fields, and to rearrange fields on tabs.

Customizing Reports and Documents. The format and content of reports and documents (such as an invoice) can be customized using a report designer tool. The tool also supports export/import for exchanging spreadsheet data. Customizing via Additional Fields. New fields can be added to tables with immediate visibility in list format windows and availability for customizing card formats and reports.

The object-oriented design also supports more complex customizations. Numerous case studies throughout the book illustrated some of these customizations.

Managing Your Supply Chain Using Microsoft Navision

The user interface within Microsoft Navision provides consistency across all windows that assists ease-of-learning and ease-of-use. In addition, a graphical user interface supports user-defined work flows so that a user can select the desired step and access the relevant window. A few illustrations are provided below about the basic types of windows comprising the user interface.

Card versus List Format. Records can be viewed individually in card format or all together in list format, where the list format works very much like a spreadsheet. Customer master data, for example, can be viewed and maintained in card format for a single customer or viewed in list format for all customers. Both formats support access to related information and forward/backward browsing. The card format often segments data into tabs, while records in a list format can be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet.

Some windows with header and line item information employ a combination of card format and list format. A sales order, for example, consists of header information in card format and line items in list format. The header information for all sales orders can be viewed in list format.

Find Capabilities. Find capabilities can be based on any string of embedded text in a record identifier (such as customer number) or its attributes.

Filtering and Sorting. A filter limits the displayed records based on values in one or more fields, with sorting based on any field. The user can browse forward and backward through the subset. Filtering logic includes equal to, different from, greater than, less than, intervals, and wild cards.

Drill-Down Analysis. The system supports several drill-down approaches, such as drill-down to the source transactions and drill-down to the details comprising a summarized value.