Microsoft offers CRM, ERP SaaS, adds SaaS marketplace

Source: Microsoft.

Microsoft has introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource to help bring intuitive app and service features from the consumer space to the world of business, encouraging businesses to innovate, increase collaboration and ultimately achieve more with the power of enterprise-ready business apps.

In a blog post, Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Cloud + Enterprise, notes that business apps and services can be "difficult to use, try and deploy. Some even make you pay extra for capabilities like visualisation, workflow automation and predictive insights".

Helping customers transform

This fall (editor's note: roughly Q3 to Q4), Microsoft Dynamics 365 will consolidate the company's existing customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) cloud solutions into a single cloud service with purpose-built apps. The apps will be designed for specific business functions, including financials, field service, sales, operations, marketing, project service automation and customer service.

"Dynamics 365 apps are designed so they can be easily and independently deployed. That means you can start small and pay only for what you need. Yet they work together seamlessly so, as your business demands, you can grow into additional capabilities with ease. They include built-in insights, predictive intelligence and workflow optimisation, all of which will be delivered through simple, easy-to-use, mobile experiences with offline capabilities," said Numoto.

Power BI and Cortana Intelligence will be natively embedded to help customers achieve their business goals with predictive insights, prescriptive advice and actionable next steps.
Cortana Intelligence could provide cross-sell recommendations to help sales reps predict which products and services a customer will need, for example. Dynamics 365 and Office 365 will also be integrated, so that a salesperson could respond to an email in Office with data drawn from both the Finance and Sales apps, without leaving Outlook.

Dynamics 365 apps will:

• Use a common data model, shared with Office 365, to simplify data management and integration across apps and business processes.
• Offer tech-savvy business customers/analysts, aka “citizen developers,” (using PowerApps, Power BI and Microsoft Flow) as well as professional developers (using Azure platform services) a consistent business platform to compose new apps and modify existing ones.
• Come with connectors to integrate third party software and services, including custom application programming interfaces (APIs) and on-premises systems.

Also new is Microsoft AppSource, a new destination for business users to locate and trial line-of-business software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps from Microsoft and its partners. At launch AppSource contains more than 200 business SaaS apps, add-ins and content packs, including exclusive new industry-specific business apps from:

• AFS Retail Execution – An end-to-end solution for consumer packaged goods (CPG) organisations to use in the field, covering visit and merchandising, sales, asset management and audit as well as a suite of business intelligence (BI) and analytics.
• AvePoint Citizen Services – Government organisations can automate incident reporting, response and resolution.
• Veripark Next Best Action – Financial institutions can maximise the lifetime value of each customer and deliver a first-class customer-centric experience by making the right offer, at the right time, via the right channel.