Microsoft (News - Alert) has announced that American of Martinsville, a Virginia-based contract furniture manufacturer, will integrate Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to automate its current manual processes.

 

American of Martinsville designs and produces furniture for the hospitality, healthcare and senior-living markets. In other words, it's not that long until you and First Coffee are both regular users of the company’s products.

 

Microsoft Dynamics AX is described by company officials as "an adaptable business-management product that provides industry-specific functionality for midsize and larger organizations." The furniture producer will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to automate its quoting process, project management and customer communications.

 

The two Microsoft Dynamics products will be integrated so that workflow for the front-end and back-end operations of American of Martinsville runs from the order-entry phase all the way through design, master planning, production and delivery.

 

Before choosing Microsoft, American of Martinsville had also evaluated products from SYSPRO, Sage Software (News - Alert), SAP AG and Infor. The company selected Microsoft to replace its 28-year-old Unisys mainframe system with applications developed in-house. The furniture design process wasn't even connected to manufacturing and delivery.

 

American of Martinsville is implementing a number of Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 modules, including financials, e-banking, planning and scheduling, order management, shipping and warehousing, purchasing, inventory, multicurrency and multi-language capabilities, Enterprise Portal, and field service. For Microsoft Dynamics CRM the company is implementing modules for project management, quote management and customer communications.

 

American of Martinsville produces a large percentage of its products in China, and the Microsoft products let the company use Asian currency and the Mandarin language when managing projects that the company produces in China. All the data in the system can be retrieved directly, through the Web, in reports or through the Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server for business analytics.

 

With its old technology, company officials say, when working with its Shanghai logistics office, American needed to recompile spreadsheets and enter them into the home-office system. With Microsoft Dynamics AX Shanghai personnel will be able to enter information into the system directly through the Web or terminal services.

 

Earlier this week Microsoft announced that Pacific Northwest Publishing and its affiliate company, Safe & Civil Schools, both of Eugene, Oregon, have chosen Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 to integrate their accounting, scheduling, customer service and marketing capabilities.

 

The Microsoft Dynamics products will replace the organizations' Intuit (News - Alert) QuickBooks software and a paper-based system augmented by electronic spreadsheets. Safe & Civil Schools provides behavior-management training nationwide, Pacific Northwest Publishing publishes books and other materials used in the program and sold separately.

 

Officials of both companies say they will use Microsoft CRM to expand their marketing efforts and automate their paper-based systems for tracking projects with school districts.

 

The organizations work with school districts throughout the United States, and "much of the scheduling of training and consulting sessions has been handled by one person with her own paper-based file system and intricate electronic spreadsheets," Pacific officials say. Pacific Northwest Publishing and Safe & Civil Schools were looking for a way to automate these processes.