Microsoft

While running a business, one should always remember the fact that ‘Customer is King’. San Francisco-based Salesforce, who is now a global leader in CRM and enterprise cloud computing technologies has imbibed the same principal into all their products. Microsoft, even though has been sluggish in the past, is now also aggressively pushing for a deeper cloud integration by updating its business software called ‘Dynamics’.

Microsoft has today announced that it is unifying its current Customer Relationship Management(CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) cloud solutions into one service, under the moniker ‘Dynamics 365‘. The company believes that combining services will make it easier for businesses to buy and manage their applications.

Using Dynamics 365, businesses will be able to seamlessly deploy specific business functions, including: Financials, Field Service, Sales, Operations, Marketing, Project Service Automation and Customer Service. But, its more complex than just naming a couple fields of operation.

Microsoft has also deeply integrated the fully-functional Office 365 suite into the unified cloud service, to enhance productivity and opportunities for collaboration. The service also comes with Power BI data visualization and Cortana Intelligence embedded natively into the cloud services core. They will push you to achieve your business goals by providing you with predictive insights, predictive intelligence and a set of actionable next steps.

For example: Cortana Intelligence will be able to predict which product or service a customer might need and then provide cross-sell recommendations to customer sales reps. While an integration with the Office suite will enable the sales rep to always stay within Outlook and respond to emails directly from the cloud service, with quote attachments from both Finance and Sales apps.

Microsoft is now working on inter-mingling the functionalities of the two cloud services to make one robust and extensible business application platform. Dynamics 365 will be available to all business owners in the coming fall.

Talking about the immense possibilities of the new ‘Dynamics’ platform, Takeshi Numoto, Corporate VP, Microsoft Cloud + Enterprise adds that,

We imagine a better world for business users everywhere. One where you can track leads, automate field service, drive sales and improve operations using modern, mobile, enterprise-ready intelligent business apps from the cloud.

And to again re-iterate the fact that Microsoft is planning to tackle Salesforce with the launch of this cloud platform, it is launching a business SaaS app store, called ‘Microsoft AppSource’. It very much similar to Salesforce AppExchange, which enables developers to find and try-out additional business apps to streamline their day-today workload. At present the AppSource has over 200 business SaaS apps, add-ins and content packs, including industry specific apps for retail execution, citizen services, next-best action among others.

Due to a degrading CRM marketshare of just 4.3 percent as compared to the 19.7 percent that has been occupied by Salesforce, Microsoft is now doubling down to work on the evolution of its cloud services. Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, the company’s focus has shifted completely towards cloud and enterprise products. It is now also setting up accelerator programs to help new-age Indian startups develop SaaS applications using their Azure cloud platform.

And the launch of the Dynamics product services as a consolidated service will help position Redmond as a solid competitor against CRM service providers, including Oracle and SAP above it. Salesforce, however, isn’t sitting idle and gloating about its success in the global market. To enter and expand its reach into the enterprise e-commerce market, it has recently acquired Demandware for a massive $2.8 billion.


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