We have seen how businesses evolved during the Pandemic. Geographical barriers grew thinner while remote working received maximum support. Almost all organizations ensure smooth working without interrupting their services or hampering customer experiences. Interactions happened without friction, and there was a massive improvement in the way customers engaged with the brands. 

By this time, you have one question lingering on your mind. 

What made it all possible?

A solid combination of ERP and CRM took care of all the business components leading to organization success. ERP implementation has led to business process improvement in the case of 95% of the businesses globally. 

For large companies—revenue over $1 billion—the cost of owning an ERP system is 2-3% of their annual revenue. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is one such aspiring product that combines both ERP and CRM. As a result, you don’t need to choose two different products to fulfill these tasks. 

Let’s get to know the concepts of ERP and CRM. It will help us know Microsoft Dynamics 365 better.

Introducing ERP and CRM

ERP and CRM are two different products that help solve a variety of problems that businesses face regularly. You can enhance business productivity, ensure growth, and increase profits with the right products.

What is ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) helps businesses integrate, manage and monitor crucial business functions. The solution helps streamline organization growth, improve planning abilities, and optimize future resources. 

The business functions such as finance, operations, sales, marketing, and human resources, which impact the growth potential, are streamlined using this product. Everyone using the system will have an idea of the spending, the overheads, the resource costs, the projects allocated, and the sales for the quarter. It helps management make real-time, shop-floor decisions. 

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management is the product that helps manage the interactions with the customer and streamlines all the customer-facing aspects, including sales, marketing, and customer service. 

It helps organizations improve their sales and augment customer experiences. You get a better insight into how the customer interacts with your brand and what they truly need. As a result, you can offer apt services promptly. 

How ERP & CRM Can Help?

They are both products that efficiently streamline the different functions of the businesses. Here are a few benefits of investing in these products for your organization. 

Better Customer Experiences: As you have defined plans for your business, and the strategies are monitored and measured across the enterprise, it becomes easier to comprehend customer interactions. As a result, you can evolve your customer experiences and nurture your customer towards conversions. Customer Relationship Management is the product that helps manage the interactions with the customer and streamlines all the customer-facing aspects, including sales, marketing, and customer service. 

Cost-Efficient Solutions: You can monitor what causes maximum expenditure for your business. Optimizing overhead and resource costs through better planning and management can efficiently run your business. Savings can play a critical role in maximizing profits.

Better Resource Allocation: You are already aware of how you are using the resource and what you need to improve. This will help you identify if you need an additional resource or not. It also helps with optimal resource allocation. Eventually, it helps in augmenting resource abilities and enhancing business growth. 

Improved Customer Journey: You know the customer journey and gain better control & visibility over it. It helps define better touchpoints and nurture them better. Eventually, it helps improve the conversion rate for the business. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365: An Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a set of applications ranging from ERP to CRM, fulfilling all your business requirements in one place. It thrives on fulfilling your business needs and improving overall productivity. You get to share all the customer-related data in one place, ensure data reaches related departments without friction, and enable the translation of data into efficient insights. 

This product’s ultimate aim is smooth collaboration, improved prediction, and data-driven decision making. 

All organizations, irrespective of their size, can use the Dynamics 365 software solution. Using this solution, you can accelerate your business using a proactive approach. 

You won’t need to invest in two separate ERP and CRM products. That’s why it is the best-fit for enterprises with a small budget and big aspirations. 

It is a flexible and highly extensible product, making it easy-to-use and highly intuitive.

Whether you have an immediate growth plan or are ready to scale, Microsoft Dynamics 365 products are best for your enterprise.  

The Core Platform Capabilities

The defined capabilities of the solution ensure they are able to further your business. We will discuss the aspects of business it impacts and how. 

#1 Sales

You can win more conversions and improve your performance with the 365 solutions. You can ably create a funnel that is personalized to your business. Accordingly, you will get a view into the customers joining and moving out of the funnel.

• Gives you a complete picture of the audience and how they connect

• Lets you onto the deals that are worth pitching for

• Helps identify leads that can be converted into customers

• Removes the customers that are not potential leads or identifiable customers

• Helps you build campaigns according to your business requirements

• Prepares you for better negotiations and deal closures

It helps build a stronger relationship with your customer, identifying their needs, and completing them with your sales-worthy performance. 

#2 Marketing

Marketing is the foundation of your business growth. You need to govern over your campaigns and identify the platforms that work best for your requirements. With Dynamics 365, you are in for a treat. 

• You can identify the channels the customers connect with best and how to improve the experiences through your efforts

• Makes your campaigns more relatable for the cluster that you are targeting

• With ease, you can provide data that belongs to the sales and other teams, thus ensuring frictionless and smooth customer journeys

• You can define interactions according to the customer needs and enable growth. 

#3 Service

When you are a service-driven organization, you must challenge your company’s core. You should deliver on your promises and engage with them for the quality you aspire. 

• Helps improve engagement through the various channels for your customers

• Enhances the field agents’ abilities by providing them with the know-how on-the-go

• Increased accessibility and personalized solutions for the field agents

• Seamless experiences across channels

#4 Finance

Streamlining your finance processes is vital from an operational and revenue management perspective. The key is to identify a workflow and system that can help you engage the data better and improve decision-making capabilities.

• You have greater visibility into the financial condition of your company, thus allowing you better ability to drive growth

• With real-time data accessibility, you can define growth and productivity your way

• The solution caters to AI-driven insights, which allows you better forecasting capabilities. You can build your model to drive growth.

#5 Operations

You can create a workflow that enables better operations and improves business efficiency. 

• Greater control on the supply chain and distribution aspects, which promotes better decisions

• You will know which resource is impacting your overheads and how to optimize it better

• You can roll out projects faster as a result of your increased operational capabilities. You have defined flows and milestones, which enriches your abilities.

#6 Commerce

Retail is no longer offline. It is an integrated approach, and you need to cater to the integrated customer’s needs. 

• Seamless experiences online as well as offline channels. Growth induced operations for better engagement

• Employing tactics that enrich the customer’s experience and lead to better growth channels

• Improving loyalty through defined methods and mechanisms

#7 HR 

This is a highlighted part of the engagement, where you need to team to manage your resource goal and optimize their requirements. 

• Identify and plan HR programs that are aligned with your goals. Define solutions that help them perform better

• Know the payrolls and gain insights into their attendance at a go

• Performance analysis with ease. Gain insights that help you nurture your resources better

Core Enterprise Features 

The features core to this solution makes it business-worthy. These features not only enhance the organization’s visibility but also improve its data capabilities. 

1) Increased Mobility: You will observe an increase in the product’s mobile capability. You can easily use features such as calendars, timelines, and video players on your mobile devices. With the new-age colors and defined layouts, you can access content with ease. Mobility has also led to on-to-go tracking, editing, and creating of workflows for better productivity.

2) Sitemap Designer: Sitemaps create the blueprint for the design and improve your search engine response. The new edition has rolled out an easy to use drag-n-drop model that you can use to create sitemaps for your apps. If you are rolling out multiple applications, you can create an individual sitemap for each of them.

3) Relevance Search: Identify the exact content using the intelligent search engine developed by Microsoft Dynamics 365. You can easily use the key phrases or identifiable words to gather the precise search. Personalized queries or refined questions are also allowed.

4) Better Integration: You can now easily integrate Dynamics 365 with other Microsoft products. The ease of integration allows for improved blending and efficiently manages your customer relationships. Business intelligence derives maximum capabilities as a result.

5) Visual Process Designer: The visual processes can be designed using easy drag-n-drop modules. You can create business workflows and rules for the business operations using Dynamics 365. It will help you gain a visual insight into how your business operates.

Best Practices for Implementation

When implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365, you must adopt the best practices. It will help induce the perfect ingredients for the execution of the product. 

#1 Call for Experts

Having experts working on your project can accelerate your implementation time. They identify the delay grounds better and know what project milestones to provide. You will receive maximum support from the experts. They have experience performing the same course of actions that help implement the product successfully for an enterprise your size. They can justify their plans and activities too. 

#2 Customize then Integrate

It is easier to customize the product. If you have specific applications that need to be personalized for your requirements, you can easily integrate them into your existing products. Try, as it may not be possible for all the processes in your organization. When you have all the data and migration work done initially, implementing the solution becomes more comfortable. You can adjust integration to the new personalization needs expressed by the answer. 

#3 Cross-functional Collaboration

Some teams and processes are aligned with each other. They will be dependent, and implementation requires the consultants to collaborate. It is always easier to plan such collaborations and ensure a blueprint is defined for all the performances. You will reduce the time taken by the resources involved due to defined plans and optimal resource utilization. The elimination of redundant meetings and the use of multiple resources leads to many savings in terms of cost and efforts. 

#4 Align Business & Implementation Timelines

Businesses should align the business needs and implement the Microsoft Dynamics 365 product to meet the requirements posed by your organization. If it is the year-end and plan to deploy the new solution, then it happens to be a perfect time. When the new financial year begins, you will get started with the latest software management solution. You will need to plan your implementation and execution accordingly to go live at the said duration. 

When it comes to implementation, you also need to consider the business dynamics, the design & plan, and finally, the user adoption. 

The Pricing Guide

When you purchase Microsoft Dynamics 365, you need to be sure of the pricing. It helps you know if the solution meets your budget requirements. 

Two factors help consider the right solution that meets all your needs.

1) The Plan: Of the several plans available, few meet all the variables that you have considered necessary for your business. It includes functionality, personalization, and the individual solution you need. 

2) Number of Users: How many people from your company will be using the solution simultaneously. It would be best if you thought through this to capture the right solution for your business. 

Conclusion

Woah! We just completed a guided tour into Microsoft Dynamics 365. As we can see, this tour completely introduced you to all aspects that you need to know about the product. 

It is a one-stop-shop solution for all your business needs. Whether you require an ERP-CRM integrated solution or, you want a separate app for all your collaborative needs, this product fulfills it all. It is built into the cloud. As a result, you opt for high security and always accessible solutions. 

Incorporating the best practices mentioned in this guide can help you avoid the hassles that go into implementing a new product. It also helps tune your solution to the business requirements. 

Now that you know what this solution can do and how effective it is for your business, we open the podium for questions. If you want to consult an expert to get a know-how of the product, connect with us over email or phone. We also assure free product demo and need-based solutions.

So, what’s stopping you. 

Get in touch to scale your business smoothly.