Recently I’ve delivered Dynamics GP training to new users
who came from a company using Dynamics AX.
In my own experience, other than the additional features that Dynamics
AX offers over Dynamics GP (which are considerable) and getting accustomed to the
ability to post a transaction initiated in the General Ledger back
to a subsidiary module in AX, there is a lot of commonality in the User Interface
(UI) between the two applications. This
is particularly important for companies that have perhaps outgrown Dynamics GP
and are considering a move to a more full-featured ERP system such as AX. Microsoft has done a commendable job of
unifying their ERP system UI’s, which offers the client the benefit of quicker
and easier user adoption when moving from one application to another.
Additionally, both applications are tightly integrated with
Microsoft Office tools, further easing the transition to a new system.
The first image below is of the Dynamics GP 2015 Financial
module, with the menu items arranged in basically the same sequence as the
Dynamics AX 2012 R3 image below it.
Notice how the menus and the Navigation Pane layout are quite similar in
both applications, albeit the AX UI is cleaner, in my opinion. Maybe the GP development team can get
together with the AX dev team on that one.
Based on their comments, my recent trainees report the same
experience. They’ve indicated that
adapting to Dynamics GP from AX has been much quicker than they thought it
would be, primarily because of the similarities between the two UI’s.
In considering an upgrade from Dynamics GP to Dynamics AX,
user adoption and performance ramp-up can be relegated to the bottom of the
list of concerns.
