Manufacturing
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Professional Services
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Distribution
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Healthcare
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Delivering high-quality care may be the number one priority for healthcare providers,
but finding ways to reduce costs has become the number one imperative. The key lies
in finding ways to streamline processes, eliminate inefficiency, increase productivity,
and improve decision-making.
Expanding the use of information technology (IT) is a smart way to reduce costs
and improve access to patient and organizational information. A powerful computing
infrastructure helps makes it easier to share the patient information necessary
for clinical decisions and access the financial data required to drive business
decisions. Equally important, today’s technologies enable physicians, nurses, and
administrators to work together as a single integrated team.
Microsoft Dynamics solutions are helping healthcare organizations around the globe
improve financial and business processes and deliver more cost-effective healthcare.
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Benefits
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Improve financials and streamline human resources management.
Manage financial processes, drill down into summary information, and track non-financial
statistical data with ease. Shorten the budget cycle and generate accurate financial
forecasts by using powerful budgeting and forecasting tools. Track and analyze vendor
information, efficiently process payables, and make the most of vendor discounts
while maximizing cash flow. You can also simplify human resources tasks with tools
that are designed to give you greater control and security in managing sensitive
payroll information and reducing administrative costs. Attract and retain talented
employees by tracking applicant and employee data.
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Implement collaborative healthcare.
The Microsoft Collaborative Health initiative is helping healthcare organizations
address industry challenges by using new technology as a powerful catalyst both
to reduce costs and inefficiencies and improve the quality and affordability of
healthcare. Built on familiar technology, collaborative health solutions are replacing
manual, paper-based transactions with automated processes that streamline information
entry and help provide you with seamless access to information from any location.
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Manage materials and comply with regulations.
Manage an entire supply chain with distributed requisitions management and approval,
control over purchasing and vendor management, and comprehensive inventory tracking
and control. Ensure that supplies are on hand by using tools for expiration dates,
serial and lot management, and multi-bin and multi-location items. Address regulatory
compliance initiatives with a framework for storing, categorizing, and searching
compliance documents, tracking document modifications, and ensuring that managers
have the necessary data and materials to maintain compliance. Together with solutions
from industry partners, Microsoft Dynamics addresses a broad range of regulatory
requirements and helps provide the tools for implementing intelligent Health Level
Seven (HL7) messaging for international standards.
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Manufacturing is still a major engine in today’s economy. The fundamental success
factors in this industry remain constant: produce the right products—in the right
quantities, at the right time, with good quality, and at a price the customer is
willing to pay. However, flexibility and continuous improvements are also imperative.
Success includes the flexibility to respond to emerging markets, such as today’s
growth opportunities in China and Eastern Europe, and to the ever-changing needs
of the customers. Capitalizing on these opportunities and demands involves quickly
adapting to new approaches, trading partners, and procurement strategies. Microsoft
Dynamics offers integrated, adaptable business applications for small and medium-sized
organizations and divisions of large enterprises. These integrated solutions—delivered
through a worldwide network of experienced Microsoft Certified Partners—work like
and with familiar Microsoft software and help automate and improve financial, customer
relationship, and supply chain management.
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Benefits
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Integrate communication and collaboration.
Synchronize communication between engineering, manufacturing, and subcontractors.
For example, if engineering makes design changes, operations can know the details
immediately. To ensure the increased agility in engineering is supported by your
subcontractors, your communication solution needs to integrate with your enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system. Product data management and integration between
computer-aided design (CAD) and Microsoft Dynamics solutions have helped customers
improve product design. Engineers can get an overview of reported errors in drawings,
and manufacturing can confirm the latest design is being produced. Business portals
let you share information within your systems through the Web to the right people
at the right time to keep your business moving forward and your customers happy.
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Deliver outstanding customer service.
Landing a contract or making the sale isn't enough. You need to provide outstanding
after-sales service to ensure customer loyalty. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions,
you can track a project from design through "as-built" configuration. The bottom
line: Your service personnel will be able to deliver the right parts—a critical
first step towards effective preventive maintenance. Microsoft Dynamics solutions
gives you access to deep customer knowledge based on past experiences, helping you
identify and meet or exceed your service-level agreements (SLAs) and contract requirements.
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Provide accurate estimating and quoting.
You can efficiently align customer requirements with your capabilities by maintaining
a standardized product line and using your previous experience with a customer to
suggest the most effective equipment. Microsoft Dynamics solutions can help you
plan for standard components, thereby reducing lead time. In many cases the subsequent
discovery of omissions or mistakes poses the biggest challenge; Microsoft Dynamics
solutions can help you record customer requirements accurately and reuse the information
in future quotes.
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Deliver flexible production planning.
Production planners often struggle with keeping each job separate and visible in
order to match specific customer requirements with resources. When production-runs
encounter problems, planning or engineering needs to change the process. But in
many cases, these changes are lost in aggregate production activities and data.
To help you respond effectively, Microsoft Dynamics solutions support manufacturing
modes such as engineer-to-order, make-to-order, make-to-stock, or mixed/hybrid modes.
You decide and define your best practices and how you want the planning system to
execute. Additionally, wireless technology can help increase the capability and
flexibility of your plant and workers.
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Efficiently manage projects.
Good project management accounts for resources such as materials, capacity, engineers,
service personnel, critical paths, and slack time, helping you deliver on time.
It also helps you identify the completion state of tasks and provides an overview
status of the project. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, you can set budgets, manage
billing, review current costs, and track activities and resources related to a project
at many levels of detail. You can also leverage knowledge and content from existing
or prior projects to improve your processes and avoid mistakes.
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In professional service organizations, efficiency is a primary concern. Businesses
are challenged with selling an intangible product that is ever-changing and difficult
to quantify. Profitability requires that projects are estimated correctly, are completed
on time, and meet customer requirements. To succeed, professional service companies
must adopt strategic and comprehensive financial, project, and resource management
practices. Expanding the use of information technology (IT) is the best way to add
greater value while supporting more cost-effective operations. Bottom line, an affordable
computing infrastructure can help your company and your people share data, work
together, and make effective decisions more easily. Microsoft Dynamics offers a
set of strong solutions to help professional service organizations manage every
aspect of their company, from customer relationships and projects to business process
outsourcing and financials. These solutions can help you streamline operations while
increasing value, improve interactions with customers, and make faster, smarter
decisions.
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Benefits
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Keep the customer front and center.
Microsoft Dynamics solutions can help you manage and track all customer-facing activities
from the initial point of contact. A guided sales process provides automated routing,
notifications, approvals, and escalations. A flexible IT infrastructure facilitates
customer interactions with electronic document capabilities and protects deliverables
with version control for approval workflows, document-profiling, and publishing.
Web-based access and robust security features promote safe interactions while protecting
business-critical data.
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Smoothly manage projects.
Project management and Microsoft Dynamics solutions help you deliver detailed, multidimensional
project information for more complete initial project estimates and future quotes.
Improve visibility for key decision-makers by configuring workflow-driven approval
processes, critical path schedules, and exception-driven alerts. Use IT resources
for accurate critical path-scheduling and effective allocation of internal resources.
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Operate more efficiently.
From Web-based time and expense entry systems to automated billing and customized
invoicing, business tools can help make operations healthy and profitable. By monitoring
daily and monthly metrics, you can make incremental, company-wide improvements such
as boosting productivity, rewarding employees through automatic incentive systems,
and modifying salary structures to reflect the current market. Automated payment
systems protect cash flow, track outstanding liabilities, and make payments contingent
on deliverables.
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There is no time for rest in distribution. As globalization trends continue, new
channels are constantly developing. And existing channels are expanding with new
approaches—such as global sourcing, cross-sell capabilities, third-party logistics,
and radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions.
Companies are shifting to more advanced distribution management processes as increasing
competition and disintermediation concerns grow. These trends are driving changes
in distributors’ business relationships and processes. Customer service expectations
are also expanding. Major customers and vendors are requiring specific service-level
agreements and compliant technology business processes.
Microsoft Dynamics offers a powerful technology platform that gives distributors
the critical resources they need to manage every aspect of their business, from
order entry and procurement to sophisticated inventory and shipment management.
Integrated applications can be deployed quickly and inexpensively without complicated
customization or drawn-out implementation projects.
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Benefits
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Enhance business operations.
For small and mid-sized distributors, information technology (IT) is the most effective
way to add greater value while supporting more cost-effective operations. Automating
business processes at each touch point—from order capture to inventory replenishment—helps
streamline diverse tasks and simplify business intelligence-gathering. With an integrated
distribution process, your company can better manage information and materials while
controlling costs and performance.
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Improve supply-chain processes.
Efficient supply-chain management is essential for meeting customer demands. With
an integrated IT infrastructure and a Web-based approach for cross-business communication,
your company can operate effectively in an increasingly complex global supply chain.
Portals offer greater visibility into product availability and delivery data, while
Web-based storefronts simplify selling, improve accuracy, and increase delivery
speed.
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Streamline inventory management.
Flexible inventory applications help streamline purchasing, order-processing, and
inventory management. These tightly integrated solutions can include the use of
bar codes and scanners to maintain accurate, real-time inventory data, thereby further
reducing errors. A powerful IT environment helps warehouse management employees
optimize layout, picking methods, and movement to secure an efficient product flow
throughout the warehouse. You company can then rely on order management software
to ensure accurate and on-time order fulfillment. You can also keep up with industry
standards, such as advance ship notification (ASN)—with container and item level
information sent electronically—incorporated with UCC128 compliance labeling.
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Access accurate information more quickly.
Gain access to up-to-date data by using online inquiries, Web-based reporting, customer
self-service tools, sophisticated financial consolidation, and online analytical
processing (OLAP) analysis applications. Your salespeople can use this real-time
data to help them accurately answer questions on stock availability and pricing.
You can also use this timely data to identify buying patterns and then leverage
that information to anticipate customer needs and build customer loyalty.
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