Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2020 release notes
On the 8th July 2020, Microsoft announced a range of new features coming to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management in October 2020. This forms part of Microsoft’s 2020 release wave 2 – one of Microsoft’s 6 monthly updates which ensure continual enhancement across the full range of Dynamics 365 products.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is Microsoft’s enterprise-scale ERP solution for manufacturers and distributors. The solution enables the monitoring of performance in real-time, prediction of future outcomes and ability to make data-driven decisions to drive business growth.
What is outlined in the 2020 wave 2 release notes?
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2020 wave 2 release notes include several enhancements focused on improvements to the suppliers and RFQ management, enhanced cost allocation for inventory, new stock tracking features and enhancements to manufacture, warehouse and transportation operations.
These powerful new capabilities will be released between October 2020 and January 2021.
The release largely focuses on improving visibility and access of operational tasks to enable better planning of resources and improve efficiencies in time and cost savings.
Cost management
For organisations based in the retail, service or distribution industries a common challenge faced is determining the gross margin of sales as a result of difficulties when allocating the overhead costs to products or product groups. This is a crucial requirement to determine profitability, and to support strategic decisions on the future product offerings.
With the enhanced cost allocation in release wave 2 users will be able to use advanced cost allocation rules to perform cost allocation through multiple rules. These rules can be defined based on cost per object, cost per single or per group of elements and representative cost rules.
Organisations can now also benefit from streamlined goods receiving, accurate costings and reduced administrations tasks in the managing of landing costs through the new landed cost and inbound transportation management feature.
Enhanced job cards in manufacturing
To better support shop floor workers, a modernised shop floor terminal will be available for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management users. This includes an updated job card view with a single integrated touch screen experience for workers. The new screen not only includes an optimised layout for touch screen entry, but it also benefits from improvements in serial number recording when reporting the job as finished. Shop floor workers will also be able to select multiple jobs at the same time or start another job whilst another is still in progress.
Enhanced product version tracking
The enhanced product version tracking coming with release wave 2 offers improved flexibility of product version control through a new standard inventory dimension along with two additional new generic dimensions.
The standard inventory dimensions will continue to operate as the existing dimension, however, the two new generic dimensions will offer more flexibility in enhancing the standard application as the number of generic dimensions increases to 12.
Improved supplier management
Several enhancements have been made to supplier management capabilities within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as part of release wave 2, particularly on the supplier collaboration portal.
When using the request for quotation (RFQ) features, you will now have more flexibility in identifying what detailed information you wish the supplier to provide through default fields.
You can now also save bids previously submitted by a supplier for their review and apply any updates as a result of any amendments made to your request for quote.
Suppliers can also use the supplier collaboration portal to submit new and update expired certifications and provide new bank details. Once a supplier submits revised bank details these are submitted to workflow for validation and approval before being added to the supplier record.
Improved warehouse features
The warehouse and transportation capabilies in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management benefit from several enhanced features in release wave 2. These include the ability to create batch jobs to confirm outbound shipments ready for loading.
Warehouse managers can now benefit from work policy enhancements for inbound deliveries allowing goods to be received and shipped with less manual intervention and warehouse tasks. New visualisations of scheduled warehouse activities also help warehouse managers to plan resources.
There are also several updates to the warehouse app including the ability to create and process transfer orders and improved processing queues for actions completed on the warehouse app.
Summary
The above powerful new capabilities are free to organisations who hold an active subscription to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The features can be applied in an automatic update from October 2020 through March 2021.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management users can also benefit from the wave 2 updates in Dynamics 365 Finance and the Power Platform.
If you would like to learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, please get in touch and we will be glad to help your organisation transition through and harness the power of these changes.