Dynamics 365: All You Need to Know About the Latest Changes
Technology companies need to constantly evolve and adapt their growing portfolio of products to suit the era in which they operate. Since tech developments happen with the blink of an eye, unless appropriate changes are introduced, there is little chance that these companies will succeed: changes in terms of new product introductions, new feature additions, modifications to products, complete revamp or retiral, or just a change in the name!
Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s suite of next generation intelligent business applications in the cloud, constantly undergoes a transformation: the latest changes to note are to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (August 2020) and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online (October 2019).
Changes to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations
Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations was first launched in July 2017 as a unified ERP and CRM application that empowered businesses to elevate financial performance, streamline operations, and help employees succeed. By delivering new purpose-built applications in the cloud, it helped organizations enable greater productivity, deliver deeper insights, and adapt to business needs – allowing them to accelerate their digital transformation efforts.
has now been split into two applications: Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management - offering organizations the flexibility to adopt the capabilities they need, when they need them.
Using Dynamics 365 , organizations will be able to:
- Automate and modernize their global financial operations
- Monitor performance in real time
- Predict future outcomes
- Make data-driven decisions to drive business growth
Using Dynamics 365 , organizations will be able to:
- Enjoy the combined benefits of IoT, mixed reality, and AI
- Improve visibility across global operations
- Act on predictive insights
- Boost supply chain and manufacturing productivity
Changes to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online
Microsoft’s CRM solution, launched as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, allowed organizations of all sizes to streamline processes across Sales & Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Service Automation. The cloud-based CRM solution helped businesses drive sales productivity and improve the value of their marketing efforts through unmatched capabilities across social insights, business intelligence, and campaign management.
From October 2019, the SKU/license plan is no longer available for "online" customers. With this change, Microsoft no longer uses the term "Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement apps" to refer to the collection of following apps and its related services:
- Dynamics 365 Sales
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service
- Dynamics 365 Marketing
- Dynamics 365 Field Service
- Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation
Instead, online customers looking to leverage capabilities will now have to build these on the using Power Apps – according to their specific business needs. On-premises customers, however, can continue to use "Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises)" to meet their sales, service, and marketing needs.
Stay Updated, Stay Successful
To stay abreast and up to date with the times that we live in, Microsoft has introduced several changes to its product portfolio. In addition to launching new and improved features across each of its enterprise products, it has also introduced changes to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations as well as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online.
While Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations has been split into Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, the term Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online is no longer used. Online customers looking to leverage the capabilities of apps such as Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, Field Service, and Project Service Automation will now have to build them on their own using the Common Data Service; on-premise customers however, can continue to use these apps with their Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement on-premises license.
