Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Is this the end of silos of information?

‘When I first joined the Dynamics community back in 2004, Microsoft had just purchased Great Plains and Navision, the pieces that would become Microsoft Dynamics, and all the talk was about how Microsoft was going to do what it always did – change the game. In the preceding years, the Dynamics product suite has grown to have functional parity with the old guard – Oracle and SAP. However, with the announcement in July 2016 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 I believe that Microsoft hasn’t just reached parity, but rather it has finally changed the game.

Why do I believe that?  Organisations have been working with disparate silos of information, frequently moving between ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence and productivity tools (particularly Outlook and Excel) to get their work done. In doing this, employees waste a huge amount of time, while constantly searching for the latest version of whatever document they need. Microsoft Dynamics 365 changes this forever.

Imagine receiving an email from a supplier asking you to approve an invoice. Instead of leaving Outlook to open up your finance system, searching for the invoice, seeing if you have authority to approve it, seeing if they have delivered the goods or service, approving it, then going back into Outlook to let the supplier know that it’s approved – you just right click on the invoice number which brings you the relevant detail, and you approve directly from Outlook.

This kind of scenario, working across different Microsoft products is only possible through the Common Data Model. Simply put, the Common Data Model is the glue that connects all Microsoft Business Applications; Office 365, Dynamics 365, PowerBI, Cortana Intelligence Suite, Azure IOT suite, Microsoft PowerApps, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft Azure; so that you don’t have to. This reduction in effort means that your organisation is able to instead concentrate on creating cross product workflows that work the way you do today, with the flexibility (and tools) to adapt in the future as your organisational needs change. This is why I think that Microsoft Dynamics 365 has changed the game – which other software vendor could do this?

The other big change, I believe, is the way that Microsoft has broken up the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics 365.  As an organisation, you don’t think of employees in terms of what tools they use, but rather on their job roles, so why should your Enterprise Software be different? Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to think of buying software designed to support your business workloads: Sales, Customer Service, Operations, Marketing, Field Service and Project Services?  By doing this Dynamics 365 has achieved two really important things – allowing organisations to buy what they need, when they need it and also allowing you to add to your current solution rather than making you replace your current systems that may be working perfectly well for you. Again, which other software vendor could do or has done this?

In the next post I will walk you through how the new Dynamics 365 licencing supports organisations moving into this new Enterprise software paradigm – allowing you to buy what you need when you need it, but even more importantly giving your organisation the ability to put the tools your employees need into their hands in a way that has never been possible before.

Hopefully, you enjoyed this article, and if so I would love to hear what you think in the comments below.

My key takeaways are below – what are yours?

• This is a LOT more than a name change – this is Microsoft changing the way organisations buy and use Enterprise Software

• How do you use software to empower not hinder your employees.  Is there a better way?

• Why not join the live launch of Dynamics 365 on the 11th of October here

• If you would like to hear what I have to say about Dynamics 365, then please feel free to join our webinar on Tuesday the 18th of October, at 13.00 – 13.30 BST.