Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s new combined CRM and ERP solution. Currently, there’s no official price and details are sparse. That said, at Conspicuous, we wanted to provide our audience with a comprehensive round up of everything we already know. One thing’s for sure: Dynamics 365 is set to be a market disruptor.

Background

While Microsoft’s ERP solutions: AX, GP and NAV have always been competitive, with large audiences, their current CRM offering, Dynamics CRM has struggled, with just a ~4% market share (according to Gartner). By combining their ERP and CRM solutions into one comprehensive package, Microsoft could be seen as cleverly growing their CRM audience by encouraging their existing ERP user base to use CRM functionality. In other words: increasing CRM market share through osmosis. Officially announced on 6^th July and presented a bit later at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, the organisation will show off the tech to an enthusiast audience at AXUG later this year on October 11^th in Florida. Until then, it’s likely that Microsoft won’t reveal much about their new 365 offering. That said, we do know that the platform will revolve around 4 main pillars:

1) Cross-team visibility and collaboration

Teams across a business – whether start-up or enterprise organisation – will have full visibility across the entirety of their business. While this is beneficial for a whole host of organisation reasons, it also means that businesses will no longer need to take the risk of investing in – and deploying – stand-alone applications which might fulfil all necessary requirements.

2) Built-in intelligence

Dynamics 365 will take advantage of Power BI, making big data and IoT analytics easy to comprehend. This means that any user will have compete access to on-demand insights across the business.

3) Business processes plus productivity

Office 365 will also be heavily integrated across Dynamics 365. Microsoft is now coming close to realising their dream of offering users one comprehensive solution, scalable for all business sizes, enabling them to fulfil all their business needs. With SharePoint built in, people across organisations will be able to collaborate on documents, spread sheets and presentations in a live environment.

4) New flexible licensing

Microsoft has recognised that not all businesses will need to deploy the full suite of benefits that Dynamics 365 will bring. Therefore, they have broken down the features of Dynamics 365 into apps that will be available from a dedicated AppSource marketplace. Apps will be available from Microsoft and also from a select range of Partners. These four pillars encapsulate what could be an encouraging start from our perspective for a piece of technology that could really disrupt the marketplace: the world’s first combined CRM and ERP solution; a custom app-based marketplace and powerful, integrated BI and IoT technology. Of course, we will need to wait until AXUG to see how Dynamics 365 is really panning out. One huge factor in all this is pricing. ZD Net have speculated on leaked price points, but we won’t comment until we know for sure what the pricing will be. Until October 11^th, it’s time to sit tight.