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Table of Contents
1
Introduction...................................................................................................1
Executive Overview........................................................................................2
2.1
Executive Summary........................................................................................................... 3
2.2
2.3
Risk Assessment................................................................................................................ 4
2.4
Initiate Engagement.......................................................................................6
3.1
3.2
3.3
Kickoff Meeting..............................................................................................8
4.1
4.2
4.3
Engagement Phases.....................................................................................11
7.1
7.2
7.3
Data Migration................................................................................................................. 16
7.4
7.5
Technical Assessment...................................................................................................... 16
7.5.1 Infrastructure Inventory............................................................................................ 16
7.5.2 Customer Pain Areas................................................................................................ 18
7.5.3 Requirements........................................................................................................... 19
9.1
9.2
9.3
Customer Review............................................................................................................. 21
10
Closeout Meeting.......................................................................................22
11
12
Conclusion.................................................................................................24
13
Appendices................................................................................................25
13.1
14
14.1
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines to Microsoft Partner consultants who are
providing a Fit Gap and Solution Blueprint for customers who are implementing Microsoft
Dynamics AX. Areas covered include roles and responsibilities for the consultant, the
customer, and any vendors or partners who may be involved in the project.
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.
Activity
3 days
5 days
Assess &
document
top
business
processes
&
requireme
nts
Plan AX
implementa
tion
architecture
& suggest
solution fit
Preengageme
nt
Assessmen
t
10 days
15 days
Showcase
implementati
on & Validate
Customer
Benefits
Showcase
& Validate
Customer
Benefits
extended
(1 to few
processes)
(3+
processes)
Assessmen
t and
process
documenta
tion
workshop
High-level
Solution
Architectur
e
High level
fit gap and
scoping
Proof-ofconcept
Supporting Documents
Pre-Engagement
Questionnaire
Microsoft Dynamics
Lifecycle Services Business
Assessment Report
Template
Solution Architecture
Report
Assessme
Customer
Architecture
nt
PoC Findings
Deliverable
plan & gap
Findings
Report
s
summary
Report
PoC
Findings
Report
Microsoft Dynamics AX
2012 Implementation
Planning Guide
Microsoft Dynamics AX
Installation Guide
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
This section describes the major issues facing a customer that may have prompted them to
begin the planning process for a Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint. It describes the overall program,
the purpose of the engagement, and outlines the major activities covered.
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 dont 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.
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 solutions fit
with mission critical and major, key business processes, before the commencement of the
implementation project itself.
2.1
Executive Summary
The customer engages a Microsoft Partner for the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint offering for the
following reasons:
To understand the level of Fit between their organizations 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 customers
overall business level goals and objectives as follows:
Gain business buy-in and support for Microsoft Dynamics AX as a solution that meets
the customers 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
2.2
The Vision for this type of engagement is to determine the degree of fit of the Microsoft Dynamics
AX with the customers business requirements, as well as to determine the amount of configuration
and customization required, and how the system will be used by customer. This will be
accomplished through a series of interviews, workshops, and demonstrations to the customers
business and Information Technology (IT) personnel during which feedback on their business and IT
requirements will be collected.
This engagement fits into the overall program by providing the customer with a clear
understanding of the solutions fit with key business processes, and business objectives,
before commencement of the full discovery phase as part of an implementation project.
Below is a list of in-scope and out-of-scope activities for this engagement.
In-Scope:
Review of requirements versus those that are available in the current systems
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 at the end of the engagement.
2.3
Risk Assessment
The following items could have a negative impact on the success of the Fit Gap & Solution
Blueprint 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
2.4
Depending on the outcome of this engagement, and in order to meet the customers
expectations, several other activities may be required, which are identified as the next steps
listed below:
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.
2.5
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.
2.6
Business Requirements
The Business Requirements gathering phase marks the official start of the engagement. The
goal of this stage is to define and document the companys business requirements related to
Microsoft Dynamics and any needed ISV solutions. These requirements include Business,
System, Technical, Integration / Interfaces, Data, and Quality / Testing. Taking a "big picture"
approach at the initial stage of the project allows us to consider all the requirements and
possibilities related to if, how and when Microsoft Dynamics is deployed in the various
locations and departments in the customers organization. At this time we also determine
which Microsoft Dynamics functionality is required and document the Deployment Strategy
that lays out in what phase of the implementation project the various modules and / or
functionality will be implemented.
2.7
Before starting the Fit Gap engagement, the consultant should have gathered enough
background information about the current environment so that the engagement is focused in
the right areas. This is not an in-depth analysis, which is beyond the scope of this exercise,
but it should capture how the customer currently feels. Some examples of areas that should
be covered include:
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 customers 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.
2.8
Engage all project stakeholders to ensure expectations have been set correctly. The entire
project team should have a common understanding and a buy-in of the vision and scope for
this engagement. They should understand the importance of the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint,
as well as how it fits into the customers overall plans and objectives. Identify tangible
benefits and focus on the technical, business, and operations aspects as appropriate.
Examples include:
You should be asking yourself these questions when preparing for the engagement:
What are the key decisions that the customer needs assistance in making?
2.9
The Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint engagement is created to be delivered by a virtual team with
collective knowledge in, potentially, three disciplines: business, technical, and operations.
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 experience in conducting interviews with relevant
stakeholders. The technical part of the engagement can be delivered by one or more
Technical Consultants who have the skills to perform an audit of the environment. They would
be using a number of Microsoft and third-party tools and will conduct interviews with all of the
relevant stakeholders. The Technical Consultant must also have experience in estimating the
effort required for configuration and customization to satisfy business requirements.
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.
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 customers 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 customers business and IT Subject Matter Experts (SME).
The Initial Demonstration is the first meeting of the engagement itself and has the following
primary purposes:
Gather basic information about any additional functionality the customer can readily
identify during the demonstration
The Information Gathering phase follows the same framework as the Data Gathering phase,
regardless of the customers environment. The following describes the steps, requirements,
resources, and tools for data gathering for this type of engagement.
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
During the information gathering process, the delivery consultant should identify which of the
Microsoft Dynamics AX functionality is required by the customer. A list of the Microsoft
Dynamics AX functionality is included below.
5.1.1
General Foundation
5.1.2
Finance
5.1.3
Supply Chain
5.1.4
5.1.5
Production
5.1.6
5.1.7
Projects
5.1.8
Human Resources
5.1.9
Organization Structure
Skills, Certifications and Competencies
Recruitment Processes
Performance Evaluations
Time and Attendance Management and Reporting
Other Modules
5.2
During this workshop the delivery consultant will have a chance to interview and gather
requirements for systems integration with:
External systems
Legacy systems
Portal-based systems
5.3
Data Migration
The scope of data migration, as defined during the kickoff meeting, is reviewed. This review
provides a starting point for the Delivery Consultant, Key User and IT team members to
identify data migration requirements. This exercise also provides visibility into the customers
current master data and transaction volumes, and should include an overall assessment of
the data cleansing and updating that is generally required before data migration can occur.
5.4
The Quality and Testing Review is determined by the scope defined during the kickoff
meeting. This review provides a starting point for the Delivery Consultant, Key User and IT
team members to identify the Quality and Testing standards and requirements.
5.5
Technical Assessment
The focus of the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint engagement is to gather Business and IT
requirements. Limited time is allotted to analyze the clients technical environment.
Therefore, the analysis in this area should be considered as only a high-level pass.
5.5.1
Infrastructure Inventory
The intent here is to help the delivery consultant discover as many details as possible about
the current environment. Once infrastructure data have been collected, the delivery
consultant will have a solid understanding of all the relevant dependencies. This Inventory will
provide crucial data points to help the consultant perform the gap analysis and make his
recommendations.
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.
5.5.1.2
5.5.1.3
Hardware
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 customers pain points.
If the customer does not have this information available beforehand, do not spend too much
time collecting it during this phase.
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
5.5.1.5
Directory Services
5.5.1.6
Monitoring
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
Additionally to the information which was gathered during the assessment phase, the
consultant should collect additional information on the prioritized processes regarding
customers pain points. The goal of this process is to allow the customer to clearly
communicate detailed key areas that cause issues within the organization. These essentially
fall into two categories: undesired behavior that is occurring; or desirable behavior that is not.
The result of this interview will be a prioritized list of issues based on the customers ranking
by importance or impact. The customers background information should be collected prior to
engaging with the customer. Based on the customers pain points, the consultant should try to
categorize the list into business requirements and underlying issues, which can be converted
to requirements for the new solution. Technical and operational assessments will help
determine the underlying causes of the issues.
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.
5.5.2.3
System Performance
The basic is it running well? focus, checks whether the servers are performing as expected.
Take note of any documentation that defines how running well matches with their Service
Level Agreements (SLA). The overall connection between SLAs and performance is a link that
the operations consultant should be making in the interviews. Based on the responses here,
he should confirm that this link has been established.
5.5.2.4
Storage
The basic is it running well? focus means the storage is performing as expected.
5.5.2.5
Disaster Recovery
The focus is on understanding the customers maturity in the Disaster Recovery (DR) area.
Use any additional space to make notes about the Disaster Recovery environment.
5.5.2.6
Third-Party Components
The focus is on understanding any third-party components that affect the environment. Use
any additional space to make notes about third-party applications after obtaining answers.
5.5.2.7
This is the opportunity to allow the customer to freely identify issues or needs not expressly
covered in previous sections.
5.5.3
Requirements
This section helps the consultant document the customers technical requirements as they
relate to this engagement.
Business Process Workshops are conducted halfway through the engagement to present and
discuss current findings with the customer and to review the business processes that are
considered within the scope of this engagement.
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
Business Process Workshops provide a good way of validating the requirements information
collected during the Information Gathering Phase.
After the Information Gathering Phase of the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint engagement is
complete, the delivery consultant will have number of reports, tools, outputs, and interview
documents that will be used as inputs for the final report.
The consultant should use the results gathered throughout the engagement to create a
prioritized list of findings and recommendations.
7.1
Using the inputs obtained during the Information Gathering Phase, the onsite team constructs
the Fit Gap Worksheet. The following steps may be followed:
Construct the worksheet using the Sure Step Fit Gap Worksheet tool
7.2
Following the completion of the Fit Gap Worksheet, the onsite team can determine the
Solution Blueprint and the design of the overall proposed solution. Sure Steps Fit Gap
Solution Blueprint Template document can be used for this effort.
7.3
Customer Review
Once the Solution Blueprint report has been created, the delivery consultant should schedule
a review meeting with the customer. The delivery consultant should address all objectives
agreed upon at the beginning of the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint engagement.
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.
Integration Requirements
Note: Make sure you identify any possible future engagements for inclusion in the Next
Steps section of the presentation.
The Closeout Meeting is an opportunity to deliver all the documentation and reports that
resulted from the engagement:
This section contains a detailed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for the Fit Gap & Solution
Blueprint engagement.
10
CONCLUSION
The Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint engagement represents an important solution offering to the
customer.
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.
11
APPENDICES
11.1 Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint Process
Flow
The process flow to be used to deliver the Fit Gap & Solution Blueprint is depicted in the
diagram below:
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.