Microsoft aims at ERP access

BANGALORE: Software giant Microsoft Corp. is aiming at ERP access and usability, according to advisory firm Ovum.

Microsoft, at its Convergence Conference in San Diego, has announced a variety of products and initiatives to drive adoption of its Dynamics family of business applications.

“The announcements underscore Microsoft’s increasing ambitions in the business applications space, and illuminate its fundamental strategy of developing Dynamics as a business-applications platform and tightly integrating it with its ubiquitous Windows and Office platforms,” Warren Wilson, research director at Ovum, said in a statement.

According to Microsoft, the “two key problems with today’s business applications are that too few people have access to them, and those that do have access often find them daunting.”

Ovum feels Microsoft is targeting at addressing this issues. It has unveiled a new package of software and licensing terms designed to extend the power of enterprise resource planning applications to many more people within a company.

Microsoft has also commissioned a survey that revealed users found its offerings easier to use than SAP’s.

Additionally, the Redmond, US-based software giant has showed off new versions of key applications that it said would radically simplify business tasks by gathering many disparate pieces of information onto fewer screens and automating the steps required to complete each task.

Typically, in a company that has invested in ERP capability, access is provided to only a fraction of the employees who could benefit from it.

“To remedy this, Microsoft announced an offering called ‘Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server’ that lets companies inexpensively extend the capabilities of its Dynamics solutions to users through the familiar applications in its Office productivity suite.”

The offering consists of both software – up to 12 self-service applications built into Microsoft Office and its SharePoint collaboration technology – and a license for the new Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Customers can choose a base version priced at $195 per user or an uplevel version for $395 per user that provides more workflow, search, business intelligence and other capabilities.

The new Dynamics Client will be available in May 2007 with Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0, Dynamics AX 4.0 and Dynamics SL 7. Its availability for Dynamics NAV will coincide with that product’s 5.1 release.

“Firing a shot across the bow of ERP inventor SAP, Microsoft unveiled the results of a commissioned survey by Keystone Research in which users of Microsoft business applications rated theirs higher than users of SAP software rated theirs,” Wilson added. “Respondents showed a strong preference for Microsoft solutions when asked to state their level of agreement or disagreement with statements such as, ‘The software is very awkward to use’ and ‘I sometimes don’t know what to do next with this software.’”

Microsoft is making usability a cornerstone of its push into the business applications market. One facet of this is what the vendor calls “role tailoring,” in which business tasks are organized by job roles in order to drastically reduce the time and effort a user must expend to find the necessary information and take the appropriate action.

“In one example, Microsoft said it has taken a process that used to require the user to view dozens of information panes and simplified it down to three or four,” said Wilson.

“Microsoft may be lower on the curve than its competitors in terms of tailoring its ERP solutions for specific industries, but with its emphasis on usability and low ownership costs, Microsoft is gathering momentum -- and serving notice that no one should dismiss it lightly,” Wilson concluded.

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