Integrate communication and collaboration. Synchronize communication between engineering, manufacturing, and subcontractors. For example, if engineering makes design changes, operations can know the details immediately. To ensure the increased agility in engineering is supported by your subcontractors, your communication solution needs to integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Product data management and integration between computer-aided design (CAD) and Microsoft Dynamics solutions have helped customers improve product design. Engineers can get an overview of reported errors in drawings, and manufacturing can confirm the latest design is being produced. Business portals let you share information within your systems through the Web to the right people at the right time to keep your business moving forward and your customers happy.

Deliver outstanding customer service. Landing a contract or making the sale isn't enough. You need to provide outstanding after-sales service to ensure customer loyalty. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, you can track a project from design through "as-built" configuration. The bottom line: Your service personnel will be able to deliver the right parts—a critical first step towards effective preventive maintenance. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you access to deep customer knowledge based on past experiences, helping you identify and meet or exceed your service-level agreements (SLAs) and contract requirements.

Provide accurate estimating and quoting. You can efficiently align customer requirements with your capabilities by maintaining a standardized product line and using your previous experience with a customer to suggest the most effective equipment. Microsoft Dynamics solutions can help you plan for standard components, thereby reducing lead time. In many cases the subsequent discovery of omissions or mistakes poses the biggest challenge; Microsoft CRM can help you record customer requirements accurately and reuse the information in future quotes.

Deliver flexible production planning. Production planners often struggle with keeping each job separate and visible in order to match specific customer requirements with resources. When production-runs encounter problems, planning or engineering needs to change the process. But in many cases, these changes are lost in aggregate production activities and data. To help you respond effectively, Microsoft Dynamics solutions support manufacturing modes such as engineer-to-order, make-to-order, make-to-stock, or mixed/hybrid modes. You decide and define your best practices and how you want the planning system to execute. Additionally, wireless technology can help increase the capability and flexibility of your plant and workers.

Efficiently manage projects. Good project management accounts for resources such as materials, capacity, engineers, service personnel, critical paths, and slack time, helping you deliver on time. It also helps you identify the completion state of tasks and provides an overview status of the project. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, you can set budgets, manage billing, review current costs, and track activities and resources related to a project at many levels of detail. You can also leverage knowledge and content from existing or prior projects to improve your processes and avoid mistakes.