Congratulations to the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics partners who achieved President's Club, Inner Circle, and Partner Awards this year! Dynamics partners were recognized last week at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, CA for their commitment and dedication to addressing customer's business needs with Microsoft Dynamics.

Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Microsoft Office 365 globally, the company's newest cloud service. Office 365 is now available in 40 markets, and it brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service, at a predictable monthly subscription.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, introduced at the Convergence 2011 conference in Atlanta, is truly a global ERP solution that supports right out of the box the unique requirements for business systems in 38 countries, including multiple currencies, time zones and languages, as well as compliance with multiple banking and reporting standards and legislative codes. Additionally, one of the most anticipated new components of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is that it contains pre-built capabilities for five industries: manufacturing, distribution, public sector, professional services and retail. Including this functionality directly in the solution offers customers a great deal of flexibility, and it isn't something most ERP solutions can deliver. Read more about the streamlined and simplistic approach of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

With Microsoft's update of the BPOS platform (Business Productivity Online Suite) to Office 365 there are many SharePoint-related improvements. Office 365 will be tightly integrated with Microsoft Office and will use the 2010 series of server products, including Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010. This provides a strong avenue of improvement for SharePoint users currently on BPOS.
The biggest SharePoint-related improvement for companies migrating from BPOS to Office 365 will be in the upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. This brings rich new functionality to Office 365 users' including an improved user interface, Business Connectivity Services (BCS), list validations, Performance Point Services, and multi-browser support. Learn more about SharePoint online services.

If you are using Business Portal for Dynamics GP or Employee Portal for Dynamics NAV and find it is not meeting all your business requirements SharePoint can help you extend the base portal to enhance productivity by eliminating requests to update information or view personnel data.  SharePoint will allow you to empower employees and managers to access and update their information from an integrated web-based SharePoint site that gives employees quick access to information such as their profile, pay, tax withholdings and benefit enrollment. Learn more about how you can extend Business and Employee Portal with SharePoint.

Why look to a 3rd party, standalone application, for your expense reimbursement needs when you have SharePoint! There are many solutions available for accommodating employee expense management and reimbursement and essentially all have the same basic building blocks: Expense Entry Form, Approval Workflow, and ERP Integration. Based on those core requirements SharePoint should be on your list for consideration. By utilizing the existing infrastructure and functionality of SharePoint you can drive down the cost while accommodating the unique needs of your organization.