In the increasingly competitive manufacturing landscape, the technological capabilities that an enterprise system like Dynamics 365 offers are beyond compare. With features across AI, intelligent analytics, AR, and IoT, the solution helps manufacturers disrupt the hyper-connected ecosystem through fast and efficient production outcomes. Yet, despite all that Dynamics 365 brings to the table, a one-size-fits-all strategy can never work. With every manufacturing organization powered by a different set of strategies, models, and ideologies, driving excellence requires them to tweak the solution to meet organization-specific needs and requirements especially when it comes to supplier management.
Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator: An Introduction
For manufacturers looking to keep operations, performance, and throughput consistent while adapting to constantly evolving supplier needs, Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator empowers them to rapidly develop tailored solutions: while the 2020 Release Wave focused on forging stronger supplier relationships via modern qualification, onboarding, and integration of suppliers. With the 2020 Release Wave , Microsoft is introducing new scenarios with enhancements to the data model focused on manufacturing sales. This release aims to offer new capabilities to sales representatives and managers, so they can make better sales decisions via better visibility into sales agreements, on-hand inventory, discounted items, and warranty and field services requests.
The accelerator aims to enable manufacturing organizations to adapt to trends and efficiently manage their suppliers via a set of customizable capabilities including:
- Pre-built industry-standard entities, forms, relationships, and best practices to quicken development
- Seamless workflows for manufacturers to manage supplier business relationships and meet the rapidly growing needs of reassessing a vendor performance
- Role-based tools to help onboard new suppliers and manage relationships with them throughout the lifecycle via API integration
- Native CDM support that unifies manufacturing and supply chain entities, allowing for consistency across applications
The Benefits
Of all the challenges manufacturers face in day-to-day functioning of the business, improving collaboration with suppliers and boosting sales has always been a pressing concern. Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator aims to overcome these challenges via:
1. Quicker Onboarding of Suppliers:
Seamless access to a guided and easy-to-use role-based tool allows manufacturers to quickly qualify suppliers and onboard the team to enable API data integration. Leveraging the common data model and full capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform, Power Portals, Power Apps, and Power Automate, the accelerator provides a robust end-to-end solution for new supplier registration, integration, and onboarding. A supplier management console and easy to use workflows further helps manufacturing organizations manage and score their suppliers, helping optimize supplier selection and performance to rapidly produce and deliver better quality products.
2. Proactive Supplier Management:
Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator provides a modern portal that makes supplier management a breeze. Using the portal, manufacturers can seamlessly manage initial access requests while leveraging a guided experience to qualify suppliers based on different criteria. Since all details pertaining to suppliers, including account details, technical details, and current status, are easily available in a central repository, it becomes extremely easy for manufacturers to get a single view on supplier relationship health as well as engage with them in a proactive manner.
3. Better Sales Decision-making:
Getting timely insights into sales and warranty operations is never easy, but Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator changes this. By offering the right insights at the right time, it empowers manufacturing sales representatives and their managers to make better decisions. Using the accelerator, sales representatives can get a central view of warranty and field service requests, view descriptions for available inventory, and get visibility into operations and manufacturing process for outstanding orders.
As the manufacturing landscape gets increasingly volatile, manufacturers expect to be able to tailor their Dynamics 365 systems and make them fit their unique business case. In order to make the system more relevant, Microsoft has launched several . Serving as the foundational components within Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365, these accelerators help manufacturers to quickly build industry vertical solutions. For the manufacturing sector, the Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator allows organizations to extend the capabilities of their Dynamics 365 platform through introduction of new capabilities as well as integration with new and existing apps. Such can allow them to effectively onboard and manage suppliers while improving the accuracy and timeliness of decisions that are taken by sales teams.
