State of Microsoft Dynamics 365 in 2017 - My Speaker Notes

A couple of weeks ago I recorded the 50th episode of CRM Rocks podcast with Markus Erlandsson. We had good fun discussing the topic of "the State of Dynamics 365 (Sales) in 2017" and you can listen to the podcast recording on crmrocks.com.

While many people might enjoy consuming even work related information in audio format, I myself am a text type of a guy. I think in text (which is why I enjoy writing down my thoughts) and also acquire in practice all of my CRM related knowledge via blog posts, tweets and forum posts - as opposed to podcasts or videos. Each to his own!

Anyway, since I jotted some notes to guide my train of thought during the podcast recording, I though I might as well share them with you, too. Just as raw bullets, to capture the main points of the dicussion, so you can better evaluate if you're interested in listening to the full hour of me and Markus on the podcast. Here are the Q's and my A's:

Why is the term "CRM" gone?

• CRM as a strategy is still very relevant, but calling these systems we have as "CRM" hasn't always been so beneficial
• Many are operational apps for customer data management, sales pipeline tracking, sales reporting etc.
• Rarely do you see a true Customer 360 view that cuts across process silos or truly reflects a strategic approach to managing customer relationships
• There are great benefits to be had from modern business applications, especially when deployed in the cloud that's easier to maintain and quicker to connect with other cloud apps
• Calling them "CRM" is perhaps missing the point of what their main impact has been

What about all my xRM applications?

• Things are now more XRM than ever
• New apps are all built on the XRM foundation
• Also core product features are now increasingly shipped as standard solution components
• Just because it's XRM doesn't mean it would be oldskool. I believe the platform will gradually evolve to take advantage of all the latest cloud innovation coming from the Azure teams

Can you explain to me what this "Dynamics 365" is?

• It's a service designed for the cloud, not a hosted version of something you used to deploy to your CRM servers
• Right now it's a commercial offering with biggest impact on the licensing side
• Things will likely move a bit slower on the ERP side when it comes to cloud adoption

Common Data Service (model)? Why should I care?

• CDS includes CDM
• Likely targeted as the future common API for connecting commercial applications and services into the customer environments running on Dynamics 365, both on the XRM and ERP side
• Potentially very important for solving PowerApps scenarios and Flow integration
• Maybe less so with Power BI, since Data Export Service and other SQL capabilities may solve the issues here
• Customer Insights is another interesting preview of what's to come, again not tied to CDS today

Social?

• MSE is still there & evolving, but more in a supporting role
• LinkedIn is the big social play from Microsoft, but it shouldn't be considered just a social app
• All about data and algorithms
• Relationship Insights with Exchange data and click tracking is a taste of things to come

Field Service?

• Quite a comprehensive solution in terms of the OoB functionality it contains
• Mobility still based on Resco, cannot easily be replaced with what MS currently has
• The Connected Fields Service solution template with the IoT sensor data connectivity story is bound to get a lot of attention across different Microsoft events since it allows them to connect so many different Azure and Power BI technologies together via this scenario

Project Service?

• A different type of service delivery, days & weeks instead of minutes & hours
• Interesting MS Project integration for attracting the existing users to consider a Dynamics 365 based solution
• We'll likely see the Project Service and Field Service scenarios get merged more and more into a service delivery process that can be adapted to various client needs
• With the new Unified Scheduling foundation the possibility of scheduling basically any entity, the investments in FS and PS apps will become more widely available to also existing deployments and scenarios

Financials? (Madeira) Operations? (AX)

• I don't think a lot of CRM or ERP consultants will expand their skill set to cover both of these business application types.
• They are different beasts by nature and both require deep understanding of the day to day business use cases in each area, so at least to me it feels like quite a stretch if you try to be an expert on both fields.
• As far as consulting companies go, there is certainly going to be lots of mergers and acquisitions caused by this new Microsoft product strategy
• Will it merge the two or three product platforms into one? I don't think it ever will, to be honest. That's why things like CDS are being built, to allow the transactional ERP features and the broader customer engagement solutions to co-exist with a better integration story, without any tightly coupled architecture in place that would force too many compromises on either side of the house.

Marketing? (What happened to Adobe Marketing Cloud)?

• If it was easy to come up with a tightly integrated marketing automation solution to work with the XRM driven processes and data, I bet we'd already have a glorious integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud
• The fact that we have pretty much nothing at this point goes to show that it's never easy
• Microsoft's deal with Adobe has most likely not been driven by the Marketing Cloud integration opportunities, rather it's just been a nice addition to the partnership where Adobe has agreed to move all of their services onto Azure
• We now have two interesting initiatives to keep an eye on: will the in-house Marketing solution that Microsoft is developing natively on top of XRM be able to leapfrog over the integration approach that Adobe is taking?
• If you ask me, I don't think Microsoft intends to settle only for the SMB side of the market with their own Marketing application.

That's all, folks! Remember to subscribe to either CRM Rocks or Surviving CRM, depending on the way you prefer your Dynamics stories served.