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04 Solution Fit Gap Delivery Guide Implementing AX
04 Solution Fit Gap Delivery Guide Implementing AX
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3.2 Conduct Internal Pre-Kickoff Meeting .................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.3 Customize Service and Create Baseline Agenda ..................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
12 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 18
13 Appendices .............................................................................................................................................. 19
14 References ............................................................................................................................................... 19
Fit Gap and Solution Blueprint should be part of 5, 10 or 15 day Implementing Microsoft Dynamic AX planning
Services engagement. This phase should only be performed after the assessment phased was performed during the
first 3 days of the engagement. Please refer to the table below.
Pre-
Pre-Engagement
engagement
Questionnaire
Assessment
High-level
Solution Solution Architecture Report
Architecture
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is used to refer to an “enterprise view” of a business; it means leveraging
applications to manage the operations and gain a view of a company as a connected single entity, as opposed to a
collection of activity silos. The customer may find the following issues with their current information systems,
prompting them to evaluate ERP solutions:
Business Processes (BP): They do not support the customer's critical business needs and are not flexible
enough to change as the business itself evolves. They are unable to easily perform core business processes
such as quickly closing a financial period, tracking variances, product costing, or forecasting demand. They
are unable to eliminate manual workarounds to reconcile data and / or transactions between systems.
Supply Chain (SC): They are unable to provide appropriate access to information for their customers,
suppliers, and partners; processes are independent of one another and not linked together into an overall
chain whose purpose should be to supply the end-user with products or services at the right time, cost and
in the right configuration.
Business Intelligence (BI): They don’t provide timely access to the information needed to make critical
business decisions and are unable to integrate business related intelligence, information and master data
across company divisions and organizations; it is difficult to “mine” information and produce useful reports
and inquiries.
Architecture: They lack flexibility due to home-grown applications, old systems or spreadsheets that are
being used to manage the overall business operations.
During the course of their evaluation, the customer may have found that some of their business processes align very
well with Microsoft Dynamics AX. They may also have found that a certain percentage of their processes can be
covered by independent software vendor (ISV) solutions, while some may require custom development.
To quantify this in a more certain manner, the customer can request a Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint. The benefit to
the customer is to gain a clear understanding of the solution’s fit with mission critical and major, key business
processes, before the commencement of the implementation project itself.
To understand the level of Fit between their organization’s requirements and Microsoft Dynamics AX
To obtain a blueprint for the delivery of the solution that can be used in the subsequent project planning
and analysis
Accordingly, the decisions made during this engagement must align with the customer’s overall business level goals
and objectives as follows:
Validation of the “Degree of Fit” of Microsoft Dynamics AX to the customer’s business requirements
Gain business buy-in and support for Microsoft Dynamics AX as a solution that meets the customer’s
needs
Determination of the various staffing and cost options and their implications. This will allow the customer
to select the right balance between costs and benefits
This engagement fits into the overall program by providing the customer with a clear understanding of the solution’s
fit with key business processes, and business objectives, before commencement of the full discovery phase as part of
an implementation project.
In-Scope:
Review of requirements versus those that are available in the current systems
Estimate of Degree of Fit (i.e. identification of what is native functionality, configuration, or customization)
for the overall environment and in particular identified and prioritized processes
High-level estimate of the services required for configuration and customization for each requirement
Out-of-Scope:
The partner should provide a high level fit gap analysis and blue print as the length of the Planning Services
engagement permits, but should include at least one to few processes and an overall high level estimate of
the solution fit.
Detailed “To-be” process maps, training documentation and end user training
Implementation Plans
Recommendations will be detailed and documented in the Microsoft Sure Step Fit / Gap and Solution Blueprint at
the end of the engagement.
Business and IT subject matter experts are not available during the workshops
Lack of an Executive Sponsor to define the scope and champion the engagement
Scoping Assessment: This consists of a document that provides a high level project cost and resource plan
specific to the customer. It describes how they would go about implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX and
what that implementation would cost. Its objective is to determine a total cost to implement Microsoft
Dynamics AX.
Proof of Concept (POC): Microsoft Dynamics AX is configured using the online Azure hosted environment
in Dynamics Life Cycle Services around certain critical requirements. This is then demonstrated to the
Business Decision Makers (BDM) and IT personnel in a conference room setting to validate their
requirements.
Identify specific consulting and customer resources that are needed to perform a detailed analysis of each
high-level business process and identify the associated requirements.
Identify specific consulting and customer resources that can review any system integration requirements.
Current ERP environment, and any other such tools that are in use
Current status of any initiatives in the organization relating to the current ERP environment
The consultant also needs to know whether the customer has a current technology roadmap. This may either be
implied or explicitly written. The customer’s roadmap and how it relates to the “Microsoft roadmap” is something
that the consultant delivering this engagement should consider, especially when preparing his recommendations.
There are no mandatory deliverables as a result of this exercise, but the consultant should use the key findings of
this exercise as inputs to the findings and recommendations that are delivered at the end of the engagement.
You should be asking yourself these questions when preparing for the engagement:
What are the key decisions that the customer needs assistance in making?
The functional part of the engagement can be delivered by one or more Microsoft Dynamics Functional Consultants
who have product training and practical experience in the functional areas that are within scope, as well as
This means the customer must provide relevant resources (system architects, administrators, and managers) to work
with the consultant to achieve these goals. For more information about required resources, see the Fit Gap &
Solution Blueprint Resource and Readiness Guide.
3 ENGAGEMENT PHASES
The Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint activities will begin with the onsite team determining the degree of fit of the
Microsoft Dynamics AX solution with the customer’s business processes. In order to determine this, the amount of
development and customization required, and how the solution will be used by the customer.
Information Gathering
The phases above will involve a series of workshops, demonstrations to, and interviews with, the customer’s
business and IT Subject Matter Experts (SME).
Gather basic information about any additional functionality the customer can readily identify during the
demonstration
Note that for the purpose of the engagement, the only environment the delivery consultant needs to be concerned
with is the current production environment. Throughout the interviewing process, it is expected the delivery
consultant will take notes that will be used as inputs for the final set of deliverables.
If the customer has not fully complete the Role Tailored Pre-Engagement Questionnaires it can be useful to complete
these questionnaire on this phase, as it can be used to guide the delivery consultants through each functional area of
the business, and should be used to document requirements in every area. There are five sections of the
questionnaire: General (required in most every business), and separate addendums for (1) Advertising, (2)
Architecture, Engineering and Construction, (3) Manufacturing and (4) Professional Services.
5.1.2 Finance
Sample Functionality may include the following:
5.1.5 Production
Sample Functionality may include the following:
Organization Structure
Skills, Certifications and Competencies
Recruitment Processes
Performance Evaluations
Time and Attendance Management and Reporting
External systems
Legacy systems
Portal-based systems
SQL Server
Microsoft Office
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft Exchange
Due to limited time dedicated to the interviewing process, make sure all areas are covered before you look into the
details. All relevant dependencies must be considered, and only if time is allowed to focus on areas that need more
attention. Focus areas will differ between customers, but typically involve storage, network, and directory services.
5.5.1.1 Environments
One of the first steps is to determine the number of environments that need to be assessed. These can include test,
development, pre-production, and production environments.
To gauge the operational maturity of the customer, it is important to understand if the customer has more than just
a production environment and if so, how code changes are migrated from the development and test environments
to production.
5.5.1.3 Hardware
The following information should be captured for each discrete system:
Key components, including version and revision levels are important when determining applicability and
supportability in complex configurations.
Ensure that the complete configuration is listed on the Windows Hardware Compatibility List (WHCL) at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx
Focus should be on the current and planned future company standards, as well as a limited number of representative servers
(typically five to six servers from each category) that the customer identifies as being troublesome. This will provide some
insight into the customer’s pain points.
The most important parts of this inventory are whether or not the systems are on the WHCL and how the hardware
is used by the operating system, such as the settings for the boot.ini file.
5.5.1.4 Storage
Identify the storage components.
5.5.1.6 Monitoring
If the customer wants to run a high-performance Microsoft environment, it is important to understand the health of
the systems. Discover whether the customer is using Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2000/2005 and, if not,
the reasons for that decision.
5.5.1.7 Maintenance
A detailed inventory of this area is the responsibility of the operations consultant. However, make sure to perform
an overview of the operational maturity of the customer to identify any barriers to implementing the desired
solution.
5.5.1.8 Hygiene
Throughout the interviewing process, it is expected the delivery consultant will take notes that will be used as inputs
for the final report.
5.5.2.1 General
The focus is on computing, support equipment, and services. Throughout the interviewing process, it is expected the
delivery consultant will take notes that will be used as inputs for the final report.
5.5.2.2 Availability
The basic availability focus means the servers are up and in a mode that offers acceptable service to the end users.
5.5.2.4 Storage
The basic “is it running well?” focus means the storage is performing as expected.
The length of the various workshops can be from a few days to a few weeks depending on the scope of the
engagement and the number of business processes that are analyzed.
The onsite team may cover the following topics in the Business Process Workshops:
A walkthrough of the business process flow charts, within the scope of the engagement, and a discussion
of how Dynamics would work within those business processes
A review of the business requirements to determine how they will be addressed in Dynamics
Business Process Workshops provide a good way of validating the requirements information collected during the
Information Gathering Phase.
The consultant should use the results gathered throughout the engagement to create a prioritized list of findings and
recommendations.
Construct the worksheet using the Sure Step Fit Gap Worksheet tool
8 CLOSEOUT MEETING
At the end of the engagement there is a closeout meeting to complete the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint project. The
closeout meeting is the final activity performed as part the engagement. The findings for the engagement are
presented to the customer and recommendations are delivered.
It is also provides an opportunity to propose any follow-on engagements that may have been identified during this
offering.
Results to date
Integration Requirements
The Closeout Meeting is an opportunity to deliver all the documentation and reports that resulted from the
engagement:
Fit Gap and Solution Blueprint Activity Time Estimate (Hrs) Comments
Gather and Review Functional Documentation 8 All requisite documentation to be
collected prior to project start
Gather and Review Technical Documentation 8 All requisite documentation to be
collected prior to project start
Review of Legacy Applications 8 Customer to provide assistance in
doing functional walkthrough of
legacy applications
Collate all Functional Requirements 16
Construct Fit Gap Worksheet 8
Interview IT and business leadership and review
the Functional Requirements 8
Conduct Business Process Workshops 16
Requirements will be prioritized into
phases with high-level development/
Finalize Fit Gap, calculated Degree of Fit (DOF) configuration time associated with
and complete Development Estimate 16 each activity
Solution Blueprint review
requirements at a high-level, talks
about the conceptual and logical
architecture of the solution
Determine Solution Blue Print and overall proposed, major development
proposed Solution Design and Write Report 16 activities and any add-ons required
Review with Management Team and incorporate
feedback 4
Engagement Management 4
Contingency 8
Total 120
This delivery guide does not intend to address specific issues and requirements regarding the solution, but only to
provide guidance to the delivery consultant team during the process of conducting and completing a successful
engagement.
12 REFERENCES
12.1 Links
Additional links are provided in this section for training and readiness resources. Use this as a resource for
developing your personal learning plan as necessary.