Better financial reporting for Axapta, Microsoft’s top-of-the-line business management package, is the goal of the recently announced integration of Axapta and FRx. FRx, a financial analysis and reporting package gained in Microsoft’s acquisition of Great Plains, will be available to Axapta customers as an add-on module. The announcement signals Microsoft’s intent to consolidate financial reporting across its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product line on FRx and is part of efforts to better integrate Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) products. Integration of Axapta and FRx could also benefit Microsoft resellers, giving them a new module to sell to Axapta’s 3,500 customers.

Axapta Financial Reporting Improved

Axapta, acquired in the July 2002 purchase of Navision, is Microsoft’s highest-end ERP offering and is aimed at multinational companies with 100 to 5,000 employees, less than US$1 billion in annual revenue, and complex manufacturing or distribution needs. Although Axapta offers general business reporting—users can analyze business factors affecting delivery lead times, for example—it lacks advanced financial analysis and reporting capabilities, such as the ability to measure company or departmental financial performance against revenue and budget targets.

FRx was acquired by Great Plains (in its Feb. 2000 purchase of FRx Software) to provide an advanced financial analysis and reporting package for the Great Plains and Solomon products. Because FRx generates reports directly from Solomon or Great Plains general ledgers, it minimizes the data consistency problems inherent in ad hoc, Excel-based financial reporting processes. (FRx also works with more than 50 non-Microsoft accounting systems, such as SAP’s mySAP Financials and Epicor’s eBackOffice.)

The integration of FRx and Axapta brings these same financial reporting capabilities to Axapta and lets financial analysts and planners work directly with data in the Axapta general ledger. For example, multidimensional analysis features in FRx allow users to examine financial results by product line or company division. With FRx’s report-building features, users can create reports based on these analyses and can output results in familiar file formats, such as HTML or Excel, for review by managers or executives. FRx does not replace Axapta’s native reporting capabilities, however. Customers will still use those features to analyze business data and processes that are independent of the Axapta general ledger.

The announcement signals Microsoft’s intent to consolidate financial reporting across its ERP product line on FRx: FRx now integrates with three of Microsoft’s four ERP offerings. Although Microsoft will probably integrate FRx with its remaining ERP product, Navision, a date for that integration has not been announced.

In addition, Microsoft has not indicated where (or whether) it will use the recently released (Jan. 2004) SQL Server Reporting Services in its MBS line. However, supplementing financial reporting capabilities in its core ERP products—using Reporting Services for automated report distribution in FRx, for example—seems an obvious possibility.

Availability, Pricing, Resources

FRx is available as an add-on module for Axapta customers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia now; other countries will be added later in 2004. Pricing of the FRx module is US$2,500 and more, depending on the size of the installation and number of concurrent users.

More information on Axapta is at www.microsoft.com/businessSolutions/Axapta/default.mspx.

The FRx Web site is www.frxsoftware.com.

Managed reporting with SQL Server is summarized in "SQL Server Reporting Services Launched" on page 3 of the Mar. 2004 Update.