QuantiQ explains Dynamics 365

229,380 steps taken by a team of 5 with just 1 aim: Dynamics 365.

2003 saw a bold announcement, Microsoft launched Project Green: a move to combine the best elements of all their ERP solutions into a single code base – one ERP application to rule them all.  A difficult task which didn’t materialise into anything meaningful, perhaps ahead of its time.

The digital landscape has matured since then and with the strides Microsoft has made with Azure and Dynamics the time seems right for the next evolution in business productivity.  Enter Microsoft’s Dynamics 365

According to CEO, Satya Nadella, Dynamics 365 is set to become Microsoft’s leading business ‘system of intelligence’, said to:

• help organisations move from monolithic application suites to purpose-built, SaaS applications with intelligence built in
• integrate with Microsoft Office 365
• provide a customer centric business model to build apps you want and buy just the capabilities you need, while ensuring people have access to all the data they need to be successful in their jobs

Built on proven ERP and CRM capability, the two editions of Dynamics 365 i.e. Business and Enterprise. Business is the amalgam of Project Madeira (a trimmed down cloud only version of Dynamics NAV) and Sales and Marketing.  With Enterprise comprising Dynamics AX and CRM.  Clients no longer need to purchase all-inclusive modules, instead they purchase plans comprised of apps related to workloads and their associated business processes.

In Dynamics 365 speak, an app is a discrete piece of software. Apps will include things like sales or marketing capabilities currently resident in Dynamics CRM. A plan is a grouping of apps that, when purchased together, can be used without restriction by all plan users.

Two editions exist to address the needs of organisations of varying sizes:

The Enterprise edition will include a total of eight apps these include Dynamics AX, which is going to be regarded as a single “Operations” app, five apps representing most CRM-related capabilities, and PowerApps and Flow.

The Business edition will begin with Financials (aka Project Madeira) and soon after the initial launch will be introducing additional apps for sales and marketing.

Two critical components of the Dynamics 365 stack are the Common Data Model (CDM) and PowerApps.

CDM is a secure business database that affords an organisation a unified view of data across apps.  CDM will enable organisations to connect business data from applications with information residing in the Office 365 productivity platform, for example a calendar appointment or Outlook task that surfaces Opportunity data associated with that particular entity.

PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile.  This makes integration between complex business processes easier without the time and expense of custom software development.

In a Cloud-first, Mobile-first world businesses demand the flexibility that Dynamics 365 affords.  Should you want to know more, give QuantiQ a call.