AXAD System Overview
Stability
Feel instantly at home.
A steep learning curve costs you money. The time and training it can take to adapt to a new system can disrupt day-to-day operations and seriously impact efficiency and morale. Clunky and unintuitive interfaces don’t help.
Most users feel instantly at home with Microsoft’s fresh and intuitive interface. It inspires confidence, minimises disruption and maximises use of new functionality. The seamless interaction with Outlook, Excel and other Microsoft family applications avoids hours of frustration.
Flexibility
Why pay for a tailored suit and end up in a straightjacket?
Don’t try to cram your agency into a one-size-fits-all system. It’s not comfortable. Your software system should complement your unique agency culture rather than impose rigid processes.
With an open code base, AXAD ERP for advertising agencies is built with customisability at its heart. Let the system support, streamline and enhance your workflows. Let it strengthen your agency’s distinctive vision.
Reliability
Be less generous.
Data breaches, malicious hackers and system outages – all facts of the digital age. The security of your IT systems is a priority and, intuitively, keeping your data closer to home seems safer. It is safer under the mattress.
But the vast resources and focus cloud providers apply to security makes it the more bulletproof platform. And Microsoft Azure is second to none in performance, security and data privacy. When you have to ensure the safety of not only your own data, but also that of your clients, by all means, go ahead and entrust your data to Acme cloud provider. Your clients may prefer you were less generous.
Quality
Donkey or spaceship?
Here today, gone tomorrow. Where to place your bets? Technology moves forward at warp speed, and getting left behind leaves you at the mercy of the competition.
Microsoft’s unrivalled investment in R&D puts you at the forefront of technology, now and tomorrow. Benefit from leading-edge products such as machine learning and predictive intelligence. With long-term support and development guaranteed, you won’t be tying yourself to a donkey.
Replace your legacy systems
Place all your business processes on one AD agency management software. Cut out the costs of sub-optimally performing legacy and disparate systems.
Give your advertising business the only fully integrated technology solution to streamline and manage a better and faster service for your clients. Benefit from the R&D investments made by Microsoft on its intuitive and agile ERP for advertising agencies.
Features
AXAD system builds on the world-class Microsoft Dynamics 365 architecture by adding the features and processes needed to meet the exacting standards of the advertising industry.
Campaign management
Convert creativity into profitability. Free your creative talent to do what they do best.
Plan, create, control and complete campaigns. Create a campaign hierarchy comprising multiple sub-projects and easily match work requirements with available resources.
- Work breakdown structures (WBS). Use work breakdown structure (WBS) templates to quickly and easily plan complex campaigns. Customise and create your own hierarchical WBS for more detailed control, including schedule, requirements, estimated cost and revenue, and staff attributes.
- Campaign resource and schedule management. Make better campaign staffing decisions, and hard or soft book employees with enhanced views into availability, skills and relevant experience. Track schedules, manpower utilisation, and cost to complete. View and schedule resources and track costs across divisions and other legal entities. Take advantage of the built-in integration to do complex planning in Microsoft Project client.
- Revenue recognition and work-in-progress. Recognise actual costs to avoid potential cost overruns. Post and accrue revenue for fixed-price campaigns based on completion percentage or completed contract. Accrue revenue or capitalise costs for time-and-material projects to recognise gross margin. Even assign revenue to an employee in a fixed-price campaign to see the profitability per employee. And automatically invoice based on time and material or fixed-price campaigns.
- Campaign time and expense. Capture campaign time and expense quickly and accurately. Full integration with expense management enables expenses to be distributed to a single campaign or across multiple projects.
- Simple and accurate timesheets. AXAD minimises the time and effort required to create timesheets yet ensures complete accuracy. Copy previous time periods or select favourite items. AXAD knows what projects you are currently working on according to the resource schedule and can automatically create entries based on that plan.
- Mobile timesheets and expense apps. Allow employees on the go to stay productive. Update timesheets at any time from almost any device. Time can be viewed and entered in multiple ways, by period, category or project, with necessary breakdowns and comments, and the information becomes instantly available in the AXAD system to authorised users. File expenses on the spot from anywhere. Forget about wallets stuffed full of receipts, simply snap a photo of the paper receipt, click attach and submit, and the expense entry is securely transferred over Windows Azure to the Dynamics back end.
Communication
Scale up your enterprise without losing your unique vision and culture. Grow the business but maintain the vision.
Grow your client list and billings without losing your agency’s unique vision and culture. Encourage communication and collaboration by having all your systems talk the same language.
- No more silos. Break out of the silos created by disparate software platforms and remove obstacles to communication, inside and outside the agency. Leave behind the cumbersome and error-prone manual work that impacts efficiency and deprives the business of a single source of reliable, real-time data. When all your systems speak the same language, everyone can be on the same page, all the time.
- Slave to the systems. Microsoft Dynamics open and versatile code base means you get more than a one-system-fits-all solution. Shape the system around your agency culture and let it support the way you work rather than hold you hostage to rigid processes.
- Encourage collaboration. Encourage deeper collaboration by giving your people powerful tools to share information, and ensure the right people have access to the right information, whenever they need it.
Financials
Let AXAD do the sums for you. Enterprise-class financial tools and integrated Power BI provide granular visibility and control across your entire business.
If you are writing off costs, entering budgets more than once or taking several days for month-end close and reporting, you are clearly supporting your system, not the other way around. Why allow the limitations of your current software to compromise key deliverables and business objectives? Single entry of campaigns, budgets, procurement, time and expenses into an integrated system will free you of the trivia and let you focus on the important stuff.
- Good reporting, good decision making. Consolidate financial records and remove the burden of dealing with multiple countries, currencies and regulatory frameworks. Let AXAD do all the heavy lifting for you. Spend less time sifting through disparate data sources and more time growing the business. Get the detailed feedback and reporting on billing, costs and margins that only an integrated system can provide.
- Automate processes. Post and accrue revenue for fixed-price campaigns based on completion percentage or completed contract. Accrue revenue or capitalise costs for time-and-material projects to recognise gross margin. Free up your time with continuity of process from campaign entry through to budgeting and cost capture. Automatically invoice based on time and material or fixed-price campaigns, in advance, arrears, by period or pro-forma.
- Turn information into action. With embedded Power BI get instant analysis and customisable visualisations to turn data into actionable insights. Power BI brings the qualitative insight to quantitative data that helps you transform deeper understanding into strategic decision-making. Forecast the impact of changes with Azure Machine Learning. Control risk, anticipate issues and make informed, strategic decisions with a holistic view of operations across your entire business. Interact with your data using natural language and speech through the Cortana Intelligence Suite. Take advantage of the suite’s predictive analytics and proactive alerting to enhance your decision making processes.
Integration
Ensure consistent creative excellence. With Power BI, Azure Machine Learning and the Cortana Analytics Suite, you have the tools to monitor, anticipate and act, from pitch to delivery.
Ensure the consistency of your creative output by streamlining your workflow and placing all your business processes on a single, unified platform. Avoid inefficient integrations with third-party accounting solutions. AXAD ERP system for advertising agencies uses only one business logic, one source code, one database and one comprehensive toolbox. Everything you need works right out of the box.
- One version of the truth. A single source of data and real-time visibility over your entire agency brings the qualitative insight to quantitative data that helps you transform deeper understanding into strategic decision-making. One, up-to-date version of the truth provides a platform to share knowledge and simplify collaboration, helping build an even stronger team and drive the agency toward its goals.
- Machine learning and predictive analytics. Harness the power of Azure Machine Learning and the Cortana Intelligence Suite to forecast the impact of changes, control risk and anticipate issues. Make timely, strategic decisions with a holistic view of your entire business. Interact with your data using natural language and speech through Cortana. When dealing with complex problems that involve multiple variables that may change in real time, let the Intelligence Suite’s predictive analytics and proactive alerting simplify and automate your decision making processes.
- Seamless integration. AXAD’s open code base can be easily integrated with third-party tools and data suppliers. Use the powerful Dynamics CRM, or take advantage of seamless Salesforce integration if you prefer.
Human Resources
Optimise management of human capital. A single, unified HR system removes administrative complexities, putting the focus back on people development.
Advertising is a people business. A business of talented people. Put your focus back on the development of talent.
- Pick and choose. Microsoft Dynamics Human Resources is not an all-or-nothing solution. Because it is built on nimble and flexible architecture you can pick, choose and use only the parts you need today, and, if needed, easily add more tomorrow.
- System versatility, human versatility. Create fixed, variable or pay-for-performance compensation plans, which include grade, band and step structures, as well as the ability to adjust pay scales across a group. Maintain hierarchical, matrix and team-based organisational structures over time, and get a more accurate picture of historical, current and future changes. Put the right people in the right place by mapping internal and external candidates against the competencies and qualifications you’re looking for.
- Employee self-service. Access all your timesheet and expense information direct from your personalised AXAD homepage. Every employee can keep their own profile up to date with new skills and competencies.
- Powerful tools. Create custom Human Capital Management and Payroll Analysis reports with tools such as Microsoft Excel, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Power View. Power View provides quick and easy visualisation of data, such as total headcount, and turnover percentages for the month, year, or quarter.
Maximise ROI
Reduce administrative expense. Business software doesn’t have to be clunky and a chore to learn. AXAD ERP for advertising agencies brings a smooth and intuitive UI already familiar to users of Office.
AXAD provides unmatched visibility across your entire operations, dramatically improves business processes and drives efficiency that sets your agency up for success and increased profitability. Deployment in the cloud reduces infrastructure, hardware, and IT management costs.
- Rapid uptake of functionality. The HTML5 UI works the same on any browser, any device, any form factor. The full power and functionality of the system is ready wherever and whenever you need it. If the users can’t or don’t like to use an application, the ROI is always negative. With AXAD the familiar Microsoft family interface ensures maximum usability and functionality from the word go.
- Smooth transition. AXAD can be deployed to suit your unique requirements – whether on-site, in the cloud or hybrid. Deployment through Azure Lifecycle Services ensures no disruption to operations with a smooth transition to the live system.
- Trust and security. Ensure your critical data, and your customers’ data, is always safe on a trusted and secure cloud platform, with encrypted communications, threat management, mitigation practices, and regular penetration testing.
