Microsoft advances cloud, mobile, social, and marketing options for Dynamics apps. Delta Airlines touts massive Windows Phone point-of-sale deployment.
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a wave of latest Dynamics CRM and ERP applications and improvements, tying the selling, social, mobile, and cloud-deployment enhancements to the theme of improving customer experience.
The new apps and contours, announced in Atlanta on the company’s annual Convergence Conference, include Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Microsoft Social Listening applications in accordance with the company’s MarketingPilot and NetBreeze acquisitions. The goods were partially integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM soon after their purchase in 2012 and 2013, respectively, however the new Microsoft branding denotes a completed transition to consistent, Office-inspired interfaces, and cross-application data access and workflows.
Microsoft isn’t alone in mixing marketing and social capabilities with CRM. Competitors Salesforce.com and Oracle have followed the identical path. Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 for customer-sentiment analysis in 2011, and it added Buddy Media in 2012 and ExactTarget in 2013 to strengthen its Marketing Cloud services. Oracle acquired Collective Intellect and Vitrue for social-analysis and social marketing in 2012, and Eloqua and Responsys in 2013 for marketing.
[Want more on Microsoft’s latest Dynamics deal? Read Microsoft Parature Buy: Think Self-Service CRM.]
Microsoft Social Listening could be included with the following release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, that is set for release within the second quarter. Customers deploying Dynamics CRM on-premises can add the social app for $20 per user, per 30 days.
Microsoft often uses aggressive pricing as a weapon against its cloud rivals, and a brand new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise license probably can be the most recent example. Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud Enterprise license is $125 a month, but Microsoft is including Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Microsoft Social Listening, and a brand new Unified Service Desk (supporting social and more conventional service channels) in its $200-per-user, per-month deal. Salesforce.com sells its Marketing Cloud social and marketing services separately, and it doesn’t publish the costs for those services.
Microsoft honored Atlanta-based Delta Airlines with a Customer Excellence Award at Convergence for its use of the Microsoft Dynamics Retail mobile point-of-sale platform. As component of the deployment, Delta has distributed Nokia Lumia Windows phones equipped with mastercard readers to greater than 19,000 flight attendants to support in-flight food and beverages purchases on 5,800 flights per day. The Mobile Airline app that Delta is using relies at the point-of-sale system and was developed by integrator Avanade. The platform also handles passenger manifests, frequent-flyer information, connecting-gate updates, and flight-attendant scheduling updates.
Delta flight attendants demonstrate Dynamics Retail Point-Of-Sale capabilities supported on Windows Phones.
Microsoft announced a sequence of ERP upgrades on the event including a brand new applications and services framework for its flagship Dynamics AX ERP suite. The framework makes it easier for firms to develop and distribute mobile applications tied to AX, in keeping with Microsoft. a brand new application for shop-floor operators, for instance, lets these factory workers report on production using touch-enabled Windows tablets and phones.
AX 2012 R3, a release expected in May, supports deployment at the Windows Azure cloud platform via infrastructure as a service. Microsoft also will offer pre-configured AX instances on Azure, but in both cases it’s apparently handled in a hosted (managed services) approach. Kirill Tatarinov, executive VP of Microsoft Business Solutions, was recently quoted as saying that multi-tenant AX services won’t be offered until the subsequent major AX release in 2015.
Microsoft’s GP and NAV ERP applications run as hosted services on Azure and on multiple partner cloud platforms. Microsoft apparently isn’t too worried about competition from Kenandy, NetSuite, Plex Systems, and Workday, as it’s taking its time about delivering multi-tenant ERP services.
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Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of … View Full Bio
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