When it comes to picking licenses for Microsoft Dynamics 365, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Dynamics 365 is a single platform that offers a unified and intuitive way to help you run every part of your business, including sales, marketing, customer service, finance, operations, e-commerce, and even HR.
Which licenses you need depend on your organization’s function and its goals.
Why Use Dynamics 365 and Where to Start?
If your organization is new to digital transformation, we would recommend starting with Dynamics 365 Sales because sales are the lifeblood of your organization. Without consistent sales (or donations if you are a nonprofit), your organization will struggle to grow or even sustain itself.
If you have no Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Dynamics 365 Sales is a wonderful choice if your organization already uses Microsoft 365. The most significant advantage of using Dynamics 365 is its natural integration with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite. You don’t have to worry about expensive and difficult Application Program Interfaces (APIs) to integrate your systems like you would if you chose a third-party CRM.
Additionally, Dynamics 365 is built upon Microsoft’s Power Platform, which takes advantage of the Dataverse, allowing customers to build low-code apps with PowerApps, automate processes with PowerAutomate, and analyze data with Power BI.
Being able to track customer activity in a unified, standardized way that is also easily accessible is the first step to improving sales and growing your business. Without a CRM like Dynamics 365 Sales, you will have to manually track all phone calls and emails with customers and remember where customers are in the buying cycle.
Manual and paper tracking of customer activity is problematic for several reasons:
The first problem is not having a centralized proof of record to keep track of customer information and interactions. If you have a sales team, and someone is out sick, how will anyone else on the team know when to reach out to their customers and what to reach out for?
The second problem is that manual tracking forces your sales representatives to rely on their note-taking skills and memory alone. No one is perfect, and employees will forget important dates and touchpoints in their busy day-to-day without a system to fall back on. With Dynamics 365 Sales, you can set up cadences for your sales representatives. All reps have to follow the process, check a box when they complete each activity, and Dynamics 365 automatically schedules the next step. This way, nothing falls between the cracks.
The third problem with manual and paper tracking is that it’s harder to analyze trends. With your customer interactions and sales data stored in Dynamics 365 (which is built on Microsoft’s Power Platform), it’s easy to analyze the data with Power BI for trends to see what is selling and what is not.
This information is essential to look at and learn from for any organization looking to grow.
Dynamics for Organizations without an IT Department
If your organization does not have an IT department, the best way to get started with Dynamics is to buy one Dynamics 365 Sales license and several Team Member licenses.
The employee using the Dynamics 365 Sales license will be the “administrator” of the system and can load and edit customer data. The employees with the Team Member licenses will have access to the information from anywhere they have an internet connection.
Dynamics for Organizations with an IT Department
If your organization has an IT department, you can get away without purchasing any Dynamics licenses at first.
If you are not currently tracking customer activity, your IT department can build a simple app on top of the Dataverse to do so. Microsoft 365 ships with the Dataverse, and it’s not difficult for an IT professional to build a Power App on top to track customer activity.
This approach would work well for smaller organizations that have a small client base and simple horizontal processes.
If your company is growing rapidly, you may just want to skip right to Dynamics 365 Sales. Creating customized and standardized horizontal processes will be more critical in the long run.
Which Dynamics 365 License Should I Look into After Dynamics 365 Sales?
After digitally transforming your sales processes and bringing your contact management to the cloud, the next module of Dynamics you should get depends on which part of your business you think would benefit most.
If your company is service-based or has a customer service department, Dynamics 365 Customer Service would be a great next choice to continue standardizing and unifying your processes for assisting customers.
Suppose your company is service or product-based, and you want to start building end-to-end customer journeys to increase lead conversions and improve customer retention. In that case, you should go with Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Dynamics 365 Commerce can help unify back-office, in-store, e-commerce, and call center experiences if your company is in retail or selling anything online. The tools will let you personalize customer engagement, increase employee productivity, and optimize store operations.
These are just a few examples, and only you, as the owner of your business, know what you need to work on next.
If You Want to Customize Dynamics, Work with a Partner
Dynamics 365 was designed intuitively, and anyone can use it out-of-the-box to unify and digitize their business processes. If you want further customization, work with a partner who will help you build what you want and support you in every step of the process.
We have helped many organizations with implementing Dynamics and training their employees on Dynamics best practices to help them reach their goals.
Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about Dynamics 365 or need help setting it up and customizing it to fit your needs