Ideaca Dynamics AX Tips and Tricks - Workflow

Ideaca's AX experts provide answers to common AX 2012 questions, helping you leverage your Microsoft Dynamics AX investment. This video discusses 4 new workflow features in AX 2012. For more information or to contact us, visit www.ideaca.com

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Beginning with the End in Mind: The Solution Design Document

Imagine for a moment that you are building a house. You know you want 3 bedrooms, a functional kitchen, and extensive entertainment technology incorporated into every room. Go! Those are nice ideas, but they really don’t narrow it down much, and they certainly aren’t enough to communicate to the myriad of contractors, sub-contractors and trades. What would this house look like? Could your general contractor estimate on these requirements?

You wouldn’t expect such enigmatic ideas to be good enough for a construction project, so why would we expect IT projects to be any different? Most IT projects begin with similar vague ideas. Statements like “central information repository”, “seamless integration with the enterprise systems”, “easy to use graphical user interfaces”, and “improved business processes” are common high-level requirements. These types of statements are traditionally present in project charters and speak to the business goals. But just like that house you want to build, these are not enough to provide the required clarity to all of the stakeholders.

Enter the Solution Design Document

Sandwiched between the project charter and detail technical design documentation, the solution design document fulfills a critically important role in any IT project. Why do we need pretty pictures? What’s all this non-technical stuff good for? What does WebDAV mean? These are the types of questions I’ve received over the years and here is my response;

• It provides the big picture to a broad audience.
• It communicates what the outcome will look like and how it will be achieved.
• It provides sufficient detail to allow project sponsors to make informed decisions.
• It uses language that is not exclusionary or overly technical while at the same time contains detail to be of value to technical resources.

Want a career not a "job"?!

In 2012 Ideaca ranked at #17 on Great Place to Work Canada. Want a "Great Place to Work"? Want to learn about the perks of being an Ideacan? Check out our extended version of our company video which features what it's like to work here!



Visit our careers page for more details!

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Ideaca's Company Video

Ideaca is proud to be launching our first ever company overview video! Designed with clients, prospects, and employees in mind, we have built something that truely reflects what Ideaca is all about...
 

We would love to hear what you think...leave us a comment!

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A crossover into MS Dynamics AX

This article is a personal and subjective story on what to expect when switching from other ERP systems into AX. My specific experience is with some smaller scale project-centric ERP systems and might be different from experiences of other users/consultants.

After working with AX for a couple of months and after attending a boot camp training on AX in Fargo, ND I thought it was time to reflect on the overall differences between AX and other ERP systems that I have been working with over time.

First of all I have to state that all of the ERP systems I have been working with were smaller than AX, both in functionality, breadth and complexity so I will sometimes compare apples and oranges here but this is part of the experience as well.

Targeted markets

Dynamics AX is Microsoft’s ERP flagship and is positioned with the likes of SAP and Oracle. And that’s the market, Microsoft is targeting: medium to large size businesses with multiple locations, multiple legal entities, dealing with multiple currencies and governments.

This in itself differentiates AX from previous ERP that I worked with. Most of them claimed to be multi-company and multi-currency but they really were not. The software packages were initially written for a specific vertical for small to mid-sized businesses and they grew with the companies that initially bought it. So all the features feel like they were tagged onto the solution and never really as integral part of it. AX on the other hand was designed from the ground up to handle these environments and transactions. So I found it especially easy to handle these things in AX whereas in other ERP solutions you had to jump through several hoops to get it working for the client.

Ideaca Dynamics AX Tips and Tricks - Turning off unwanted functionality in AX 2012

Ideaca's AX experts provide answers to common AX 2012 questions, helping you leverage your Microsoft Dynamics AX investment. This video helps users learn how to turn off unwanted functionality in AX 2012. For more information or to contact us, visit www.ideaca.com

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Creativity in Leadership

 

Creativity is the individual way in which our mind generates our views, ideas, style…or any other facet of the imagination. Through this comes expression which is the product of creativity and exists in many forms… one of which is leadership.

Being a leader is an immeasurable opportunity for growth.  You are being given the chance to influence and be influenced, learn as well as teach, and guide in your own unique way.  Of course there are some basic guidelines, but each individual will bring their own flare to leading a team to a successful finale.  What you choose to do and say will inevitably create an experience for everyone on the team, including yourself, and give you the capacity to profoundly shape a project and the people who are a part of it.  Your creative abilities may come as new strategies to tackling a tight schedule, your technical understanding, or sheer ability to make people feel important.  Wherever your inherent virtues lie, being put into a lead role will assure they have the chance to develop and shine.

It’s important to have a foundation to build upon, so consider these points the canvas for your creative endeavor:

Be confident  -  You must believe if you want others to believe in you. Carry yourself in a manner that exhibits strength, encourages excitement, and gives a sense of stability.  The way you step forward as a leader permeates the air around you, and has a profound effect on how people see you.  Their belief in your ability to guide instills confidence in them as well, and inspires great performance.  In the midst of this exchange of recognition is the creation of trust, which in the aspect of a project will go a long way.

Know your team - Just as you have your own way of being in the world, so do your team members and recognizing the exceptional qualities that each team member brings to the table will tremendously further your ability to attain success.  Pinpointing a person’s strengths in the beginning will allow you a broader insight down the road into delegating appropriately to utilize the team’s greatest powers when and where they are needed.  In doing this you are aligning with efficiency by pushing forward peoples talents. It gives people a sense of purpose when they know they are essential and why, it drives ambition and productivity and a sense of self. This is a great form of expression.

Know where you are headed – Visualize the end result, or final product.  Know in your mind that you will achieve the best final result possible and exceed expectations and how it will look when you’re there. If you can imagine it, you can make it and this is a force to be reckoned with.  Every project is susceptible to encountering obstacles along the way, but having a vision will help you navigate around roadblocks thus maintaining a clear path to success.

Keep in touch – Communication is vastly key to so much in life and especially in a collaborative situation.  The ebb and flow of a project is directly associated with straight up talking to and amongst one another.  The individual components that each team member is responsible for will amalgamate to form the final, tangible result and in order for that to happen there needs to be a streamline of conversation.  It is vital to not only deliver project updates to the team but to exchange thoughts and ideas. In doing so you are creating an environment of constant awareness of the state of the project as well as combining the team’s brainpower to solution any challenges that may arise. Not to mention it unifies the group socially, which can create an immensely dynamic team when they are called to duty.

When you consider these concepts and ignite them with a passion to do great work and do it with your own style, you can come through the other side having not only delivered an intended product, but having done it with the rare qualities only you possess.  Your character and personality make you a leader unlike any other seen before, or that will be seen.  It is the chance for you to leave a mark that will impact others in a positive way, and hopefully make a difference in some way…somehow.  Because once the project is over what people have left (besides a fantastic new…….[insert your project delivery here]) is the memory of how it came together and the people who made it happen.

- Joelle Thrasher, Portals & Collaboration Consultant

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Ideaca is proud to sponsor this year's Calgary International Children's Festival

The Calgary International Children's Festival collaborates with like-minded companies to celebrate creativity, education and family. Ideaca has chosen to sponsor the festival this year in order to help the Festival provide an educational experience that improves student's critical thinking skills. Students gain a unique awareness of their place in the world around them. These experiences inspire innovative thinking, which is the driving force of tomorrow's leaders.

"With the help of companies such as Ideaca, we are able to ensure that economic circumstances are not a barrier to a family’s ability to attend Festival performances and workshops,” said David Anderson, Executive Director at the Calgary International Children’s Festival. “Our sponsors help us achieve our goal, which is to bring children and families to an inclusive community event that sparks imagination, inspires creative thought, encourages cultural understanding, and fosters a lifelong passion for the arts.”

“Ideaca is dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of Canadians by investing in our communities,” said Mike Alkier, Managing Partner, Ideaca. “We strive to be strong corporate citizens, and be involved in ways that benefit the regions in which we operate.”

The festival runs from May 22-May 26. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Hang up on the past...dial into mobility NOW!

Last Wednesday evening in Waterloo, Ontario, Ideaca hosted a cocktail event "Mobility...Canada's most overlooked priority & why it is crucial to business success!".

This event focused on the urgent need for Canadian businesses to step up their initiaves in creating a mobile platform for both their employees and for their customers.

Brad Blaskavitch, Sales Director at Ideaca, touched on the many ways a company can develop different mobile strategies to better their customers experience, as well as satisfying the everchanging needs of their employees.

Christa Nesbitt, Sales Director at Ideaca,  also wowed the audience with a few demos showcasing submitting expenses on the go, tracking store productivity and sales in real-time and a virtual tracking program to discover and maintain issues in the field.

If you missed out on this event, it will be hosted again in Fall 2012 in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Stay up-to-date for event details in your city!

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Best Workplaces in Canada Second Year in a Row!

Today it was announced that Ideaca was recognized for the second year in a row as 2012's Best Workplaces in Canada - Medium organizations. Best Workplaces in Canada is ranked using the results from employee surveys and comments. This year, we ranked at number 17 surpassing last year's number of 69! What an amazing accomplishment and an outstanding achievement for Ideaca and our employees!

The full list of companies will be posted in today's Globe and Mail and also can be viewed here.

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Moving Towards the Cloud: Ideaca Profile with Terry Bradshaw

Ideaca is featured on television show Profiles hosted by Terry Bradshaw, 4-time Super Bowl Champion, broadcaster and successful business man. This episode of Profiles is a feature on "Leading Developments in Business Application Consulting".

Ideaca chose to focus on Cloud Computing for this segment and its role as a highly disruptive and revolutionary technology that is quickly gaining momentum in today's marketplace. We describe why this computing methodology is changing the landscape of information technology and Cloud's capabilities in revolutionizing internal IT systems in any organization.

Look out for this segment on your local news network!

Check out the clip here.

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Corporate Mobile Application Strategy

In the March/April edition of Exchange Magazine, Ideaca's Brad Blaskavitch wrote an article around creating a Corporate Mobile Application Strategy for your business.

In this article Brad outlines five essential technology components for a successful mobile strategy:

1. Mobile Devices: Smartphones and new generation tablets are more powerful and capable than ever before, and keep evolving at a rapid rate. Their power allows for more advanced applications. The ability to store data when network connectivity is lost, has been critical to corporate mobile application initiatives.

2. Mobile Applications & Platforms: Previously, organizations delayed investment in mobility for fear of tying themselves to a single hardware vendor, causing paralysis. Today's mobile computing platforms and development tools have advanced to the point that device OS/manufacturer is no longer significantly relevant. Mobile applications can be developed once to run on Android, Apple iOS and Blackberry.

3. Network/Carrier Infrastructure: Wireless telecom companies have made tremendous investments to improve the speeds of data transfer and expand their geographic coverage. We have seen the transition from 2G to 4G networks. These improvements allow mobile applications to have more capability and perform at acceptable speeds.

4. Corporate Technology: Many companies have invested heavily in corporate systems and line of business applications to improve operational efficiencies in administrative functions, systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Financial, Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence. Organizations now have the key internal infrastructure to support a true corporate mobility strategy and extend these capabilities to their mobile workers in an integrated solution.

5. Cloud Computing: While many will argue that it isn't a core requirement, cloud computing has allowed many organizations to scale their technology footprint without incurring the significant capital costs of a more traditional on-premise hardware strategy. The ability to scale up or down the computing power of an organization, eliminating hardware and IT resource constraints, has freed up capital and IT resources to focus on value add solutions to increasing the organizations competitiveness.

For the rest of the article, click the link below to check it out on page 32-33. http://www.exchangemagazine.com/currentissue/ExchangeVol29No4/

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Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

Check out this recent post on Project Management from Ideaca Partner, Evan Hu's blog "at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership". Evan goes into detail about why projects fail, and what you can do to ensure future success.


Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

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The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark Report

Last week, Service Performance Insight released The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark. SPI puts out this report every year to help Professional Service Organizations compare their yearly results to their "benchmark of peers". There was significant growth in the last year, and the results show that the technology professional service industry is booming!

SPI mentions that some of the year's highlights include:

Revenue growth: the leading indicators for growth — annual revenue growth, headcount increases, size of the deal pipeline and percentage of revenue in backlog — were all up in 2011, almost recovering to the pre-recessions highs seen in 2007. Year-over-year revenue growth (13.7%) has consistently outpaced year-over-year headcount growth (10.1%) which means PSO’s are continuing to ratchet up productivity.

Salaries are up: After three years of layoffs, headcount and salary freezes, base salaries and incentive compensation increased across all major job categories. The average base salary for seven job titles (senior manager, project manager, business consultant, technical consultant, solution architect, account manager and training specialist) rose 4.8% in 2011 on top of an 11% rise the year before.

Productivity continues to improve: The percentage of billable staff compared to total staff has risen every year from 67% in 2007 to 73% in 2011. At the same time average billable utilization across all global geographies and verticals has increased to 70% in 2011 up from 65% in 2008

One of our Partner's Gord Smith, speaks in the article about how Ideaca benefits from using the PS Maturity Benchmark report:

“We have used the PS Maturity Benchmark for many years to measure key aspects of our firm and to gauge the progress we have made. We have made some fundamental changes based on the benchmark to improve our firm’s overall results. I have not been able to find data as comprehensive from any other source.”

Gord Smith
Partner

Have a look at the press release featured on Business Wire and check out

www.spiresearch.com for more details on The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark Report.

 

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Ideaca Calgary's Ski Weekend in Banff

Great time at the Ideaca ski weekend in Banff on Saturday. Beautiful day and fun night with the crew!

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Break Down Organizational Walls

At Ideaca, we do many different things to keep our corporate culture a fun and motivating work environment. We proudly hold the title of "100 Best Workplaces 2011" in Canada, (and are hoping to qualify again this year!)

Sometimes it is the little things that count, and ultimately make your employee feel valued and appreciated.

Check out this Article on "9 Ways to Break Down Organizational Walls" to help your company break down those intimating corporate walls.

For more insightful ideas and discussion topics, also check out our SharePoint User Group on Linkedin! Follow @Ideaca

Happy Holidays!

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Amble with Angus

Every year one of Ideaca's partner's Angus Cowan hosts "Amble with Angus" which is a 5k "fun run" in downtown Calgary in support of the Calgary Food Bank.

This was its 10th year, and it was a great success!

Click here for the official website of: Amble with Angus
  Sponsored by:

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Holiday Cheer around the Toronto Ideaca Office

On an annual basis, Ideaca “adopts” less fortunate families during the Holiday Season. Employees across the organization volunteer to purchase toys, groceries, clothes and make cash donations for the families.

This year we were extremely successful in adopting three different families, and providing numerous gifts and treats for the families to enjoy on Christmas.

Every year, Ideaca likes to put a fun twist to our fund raising. Employees have the chance to donate money to a dare (of their choice) to another employee to perform. If the other employee agrees, they perform the set dare, if not they have to match the amount donated to get out of the dare.

Check out this year's hilarious dares from two great sports at one of our company meetings.

Norm Spears performing a sonnet on SharePoint written by Val Prendergast.

David Wickett performing the opening credits from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" accompanied by "The Carlton Dance"

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Ideaca Mo-Bros Raise Awareness for Prostate Cancer

Movember is an annual month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November. Every year, Canadians get together in teams to grow their ugliest moustaches.

Men lack awareness about the very real health issues they face. The aim of Movember is to change this attitude. Make men’s health fun by putting the moustache back on the face of Canadian men and raising funds for prostate cancer.

Every year around 24,700 Canadian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 4,300 die of the disease, making it the number one cancer threat to Canadian men.

Congrats to our Ideacians for being great sports and raising $8,317!!!

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