The Business Benefits of Dynamics 365

Earlier this month, Microsoft released their new Cloud service, Dynamics 365 which is a combination of their ERP, CRM and BI solutions. It combines its previous capabilities into a range of several applications that are intended to work together flawlessly (sales, operations, marketing, financials, etc.). What are the business benefits of Dynamics 365?

Dynamics 365 is the upgrade to Microsoft’s line of business software, in the same way that Office 365 was to the Microsoft Office package. It’s intended to provide a seamless experience for businesses across all applications, in contrast to previous ERP and CRM systems. It’s being advertised as the next generation of intelligent business application by Microsoft, a big claim, but will it live up to the hype and what will it mean for your business?

1. Licensing

Dynamics 365 now has two editions: Business and Enterprise. The Business edition is for organisations that have 10-250 employees and it includes financials, sales and marketing. The Enterprise edition is for organisations with over 250 employees and it contains sales, field service, financials, marketing, customer service, operations and project service automation.

The new cost of the licencing model is simplified and a lot more flexible. By offering this subscription model, businesses can remove a big capital expense and turn it into a monthly operational cost. For example, if only one member of your finance team needs the financials module you can just pay for their subscription instead of paying for a full CRM licence. The move from an on-site infrastructure to the cloud means it’s also a scalable module, therefore you can turn it on and off depending on busy and quiet times of operation.

2. Flexibility

With Dynamics 365 you no longer need to manage your own servers and data centres. It is able to support entire virtual office environments which means that as long as employees have an internet connection it can be easily accessed from virtually anywhere. With working flexibility now popular, Dynamics 365 is a system that will be advantageous to everyone, providing more freedom. It’s especially valuable for back-office employees such as consultant and salespeople as it will improve the quality and quantity of work carried out.

Considering how quick Dynamics 365 deployment is, businesses will no longer have to carry out scoping projects with the IT team in order to reserve rack space, buy servers and install the software.

3. AI

With two AI features installed for sales and service employees, Dynamics 365 is especially good for Customer Insights and Relationship Insights. Relationship Insights helps sales people view real time information regarding customer relationships. Built on the Cortana Intelligence Suite, it uses sentiment analysis to examine what the odds are for a deal closing and what the best action to take is.

Customer Insights is a separate Cloud service that lets users integrate with KPI’s to create automated actions based data.

4. ERP integration

The integration of ERP is extremely useful, it means that a business no longer has to go through the trouble of VPNs and remote sessions to connect to a server when out of the office. Thanks to Dynamics AX, users have access to all the front office tools for their benefit.

What other business benefits of Dynamics 365 can you think of? Let us know in the comments if we’ve missed anything.

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