Overview of how Sakata Seed uses Dynamics AX 2012 R3 for their Budget planning processes. Presentation also provides first hand information from Microsoft about new features in AX7 and upcoming features on the roadmap in the Budget planning area. This session was led by Doug Kenyon of Sakata Seed, Yogesh Kasat of Real Dynamics and Ryan Sandness of Microsoft Dynamics product team

4. • 100+ year old independent seed company
o Headquartered in Yokohama Japan
o Publicly Traded on Tokyo Stock Exchange
• Producer / Wholesaler of Hybrid Vegetable and Flower
Seed
o NO GMO Products
• Semi-autonomous global subsidiaries
o Sakata Seed Corporation (Japan/Asia)
o Sakata America Holding (US/North America)
o European Sakata Holding (EMEA)
o Sakata SudAmerica (Brazil/South America)
• Sakata Seed America, Inc
o Almost 40 years old
o Headquartered in Morgan Hill, CA
o Seed Processing, Packaging, and
o Distribution Facilities in Morgan Hill CA and
Burlington WA
o Research and Production Facilities in Salinas CA,
Colusa CA, Yuma AZ, Fort Myers FL, Burlington
WA
o Subsidiaries in Mexico and Guatemala

5. Budget
guideline
Department
Review
Executive
review
Final Budget
• Draft based on
history
• GL or budget
history
• Budget by month,
GL#, Department,
Cost center
• Reviews and
changes by cost
center managers
• Cost Center
manager submits
changes
• Rolled up to the
department level
budget
• Reviewed by
department
managers
• Rolled up at
company level
• CFO reviews &
makes changes
• Company wide
budget reviewed
by the
management
team
• Final Changes
• Final Budget
• Used for Budget
Controls &
Financial
Reporting
(Budget vs.
Actuals)
FTE Count, Salaries and overheads (including Forecast Positions)
Sales forecast
CAPEX
Cost Center
Review
Finance review

6. Finance
Initial
PY Actuals
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Departments
Distribute
PY Budgeted
Baseline
CostCenters
Distribute
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Cost Center
Request
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Requested
Submitted
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Requested
Department
Roll up
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Requested
Department
Review
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Dept
Approved
CFO Review
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Dept Approved
CFO Approved
Final
PY Budgeted
Baseline
Dept Approved
CFO Approved
Baseline
including
CAPEX, Salary
and Sales
budget

7. Budget & LE2
• Purpose:
Preparation of Next
Year Budget. Also
LE (latest estimates)
for current year
• Timeline: Nov to
Jan
• Team involved:
Budget Office, Cost
center managers,
Department
Managers, CFO
LE1
• Purpose: Budget
revision based on
latest estimates for
rest of the financial
year budget.
• Timeline: ~Sept
• Team involved:
Budget Office, Cost
center managers,
Department
Managers, CFO
Forecast
• Purpose: Forecast
for Next year, Year
+1 and Year + 2.
• Timeline: ~Jan
• Team involved:
Budget Office,
Department
Managers

10. • 1. Open Dynamics AX from Citrix
Opening Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3
• 2. Work on your LE2 and NY plan using ‘AX->Budgeting->Common->Budget plans->Budget
plans assigned to me’
• 3A. Aggregate the cost center plans for your department using the ‘complete’ action from the
workflow ribbon. (Department Managers only)
• 3B. If unable to aggregate, review the pending/incomplete budget plans for cost center’s using
the budgeting hierarchy. (Department Managers only)
• 4. After aggregation, open Worksheet and make necessary changes (do not touch table, delete,
or filter) to the cell value in the ‘Data’ sheet. (Department Managers only)
Working on your LE2 and NY Budget Plan and Worksheet
• 5. Click Publish to save your changes in Dynamics AX 2012 R3. This will ensure latest data is
always available in Dynamics AX and upon opening of the spreadsheet
• 6. Save the worksheet to ensure additional supporting information (that does not get stored in
Dynamics AX) in the spreadsheet is saved, for example – additional sheet you added for details
of travel expenses.
•Note: Always publish and save
Save Vs Publish
• 7. Delegate if you want to review with someone else before committing the LE2 or NY values.
You can delegate to anyone belonging to your department or to budget office team.
• 8. Approve when you are 100% sure of committing the LE2 and NY values.
Delegate Vs Approve *Note:
LE2 cycle is December 2015 – March 2016
NY is New Year for FY17

11. Area Type Comments
Organization hierarchy Implementation When you are manually sending excels, there is not much structure or can
have matrix organization. We had to spend some time to streamline our
department / location and regional managers, their approvals in the workflow
Excel Add in Product limitation - Slowness; performance issues for large data sets. Custom upload
functionality was big saver.
- Filtering issue (received hotfix from MS)
- Templates need to be re-created every year (matrix fields)
- Deployment across environments
Row level security Product limitation Payroll accounts had to be filtered, fixed by changes in process
Shared Folders and security of
budget data
Product limitation As excel worksheets are stored in shared folders (document handling), users
can access other users files.
Enterprise portal Product & Implementation - Plan was to use portal to avoid need for clients
- Excel add-in needs to be installed locally even if you are using EP. (defeats
the purpose and we used TS).
Licensing: Budget clerk is a
Enterprise role; every budget user
needed
Other - Created custom role for budget managers; provided access to budget
planning process and removed other unnecessary pieces from the role
- This was a functional role and lot less expensive

12. • Time savings in manual work of splitting worksheets for departments, cost centers and consolidating them
back
• Better visibility of process – tracking progress/deadlines for cost centers /departments is much easier
• Time savings in generation of initial budget guidance
• Less chances of errors due to removing manual steps and time saving in double/triple checking
numbers/managing versions of spread sheets
Net Effect: 200+ man hours saving and reduced 45 days of calendar
time in budgeting cycle

13. Case Study by Microsoft https://customers.microsoft.com/en-US/story/seed-company-cultivates-productivity-
with-updated-erp-budgeting-solution

18. EXCEL
• Improved performance via new Excel add-in and architecture changes
o Records that don’t apply will be filtered out before getting into Excel
• Templates are no longer year specific
• Browser based app should eliminate issues with local versus Citrix/TS Excel
SHARED FOLDERS
• Excel worksheets are stored in Azure blob storage, and not accessible to users
EASE OF USE
• Simplified Security setup using organization hierarchy, rather than worker position
o Also available in R3 CU8+
• Removed scenario constraints

19. • Salary accounts
o No changes. Some customers will leave these costs in their department, and others will enter these
budgets in from the HR or other department
• No SharePoint support for budget planning docs
o Azure blob storage only. Any formulas should be included in budget template. Any supporting doc can be
done via justification documents
• No justification documents in AX7 RTM
o Coming with Fall Update

20. dkenyon@sakata.com
• Yogesh Kasat, Real Dynamics
Yogesh.Kasat@realdynamics.com
• Ryan Sandness, Microsoft
Ryan.Sandness@microsoft.com

21. www.axugsummit.com/session-materials