Microsoft Office 365 & Dynamics 365

Microsoft Office 365 & Dynamics 365

Dynamics and Power Platform

Dynamics 365 & Microsoft Office – Better Together

Every month, more than 85 million people are more productive thanks to Microsoft Office 365. Users can work from anywhere, at any time and across any device.

Add Microsoft Dynamics 365 to your Office 365 subscription and transform the way you work with customers.

Let’s take a look at how Dynamics 365 and Office 365 work together.

Office 365 and Dynamics CRM logos

Outlook & Dynamics 365

Track customer interactions – in one click

Create new Dynamics 365  records in Outlook. Never fail to track email leads again. Click one button and the email sender becomes a record in Dynamics 365. You can also bulk create records from any of your Outlook contacts.

Quick create customer tasks. Create activity lists in response to emails. Simply drag emails that need actioning into Outlook Tasks. These are automatically scheduled as tasks in Dynamics 365 and added to the customer record.

See important account info in Outlook. View account info next to the message. Dynamics 365 draws sales activities, cases and opportunity information about the account and places it next to the relevant mail.

Log your sales activities from within Outlook Calendar. With a single click from within Outlook Calendar, track meetings and customer appointments. Managers get an update on these activities without the sales rep having to log in to Dynamics 365.

 

OneNote & Dynamics 365
Sync Notes. Never lose a piece of information about a customer. Record text, photos, voice, spreadsheets and even handwritten notes. Access them directly from the customer record.

Mobile. Take notes on the move. Dynamics 365 will connect these to the customer record.

 

Word & Dynamics 365
Merge customer data into word templates. Pull customer information into quote and proposal templates at the click of a button. Word imports account information from Dynamics 365 into merge fields. E.g. Company Name, Account Contact etc. Creating sales documents has never been quicker.

 

Excel & Dynamics 365
Use Excel Online directly inside Dynamics 365. Perform analyses within Dynamics 365 and cut out the frustration of transferring data between applications. View your data in familiar Excel spreadsheets and perform functions like ‘what-if’ analyses. All analyses are saved in Dynamics 365, maintaining the sales workflow.

Connect Excel to Dynamics 365 data at the touch of a button. If you prefer seeing reporting data within excel, Dynamics 365 will link with whatever reports you produce. The data in Excel remains linked to Dynamics 365, so your reports update dynamically. And because the data is drawn from Dynamics 365, user security roles are maintained. If the excel doc contains some data above your security clearance, that part of the data will be hidden on the spreadsheet.

 

Power BI & Dynamics 365
Blend data from Dynamics 365 with other data to get smarter insights. E.g. Draw sales figures from Dynamics 365 and compare it against weather reports to see if outside temperature has an effect on sales. View this graphically to spot trends.

Create custom dashboards. Set up all your key metrics in one window. Import datasets from Dynamics 365 with a few clicks, using the pre-built content packs. It’s never been easier to see the data you need, all in one place, on any device.

 

Sharepoint & Dynamics 365
Documents added to SharePoint can be instantly accessed in Dynamics 365 against a customer record. And vice versa.

See calendars and shared docs from within Dynamics 365. Your company SharePoint accounts automatically get imported to Dynamics 365, making integration easy and seamless.

Smart collaboration on proposals. Source customer data from Dynamics 365 and those documents automatically get attached to the customer record.

 

Skype for Business & Dynamics 365
Click to Call. Call anyone from inside Dynamics 365 using Skype for Business. There is no need to invest in telephony platforms. The best part is that all calls will be logged inside the customer record.

Instant follow up. Conduct webinars or whiteboard discussions with Skype for Business and then immediately send a record of the event to participants. Dynamics 365 will track who received it, and add it to their customer record.

 

Office 365 Groups & Dynamics 365
Enhanced Group Collaboration. Office 365 Groups automatically import into Dynamics 365. So, you’ll continue to have a central access point for all shared documents and calendars. But now you’ll also see all customer and potential customer records there as well.

 

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The CRM Maturity Journey

The CRM Maturity Journey

Thought Leadership

The CRM Maturity Journey

Where are you currently?

Consistently great customer experience doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey. But it’s a journey you definitely want to be taking.

How do we know? Because each stage you reach on the CRM maturity journey directly impacts your revenue. We’ve helped companies like yours do this time and time again. Whatever stage they’ve started at.

See where you are now, and where could you be.

Stage 1: Scattered CRM
You can’t be sure if your customer is getting a consistent experience. There are too many variables: which area of the business the customer connects with, the person they connect with, the time of day, how busy they are etc. You are getting customer interactions across many platforms. E.g. emails, phone call, Facebook messages, tweet etc. But you are not sure they all get a similar response.

You may hear this in the office: ‘Nobody click save on the sales excel doc for the next 10 minutes. I don’t want another conflicted document’. 

Your customer contacts are in different places. Some are in your email program, some are on business cards, some are on your phone, and some never got captured. While things seem to be functioning now, if the business grows there is no way of scaling processes.

Targeted marketing happens sporadically. When you do run a campaign, somebody has to import email addresses manually. If you outsource your marketing, you aren’t getting meaningful data back. Sales may go up after spending money on a campaign, but you don’t know which elements were the impactful ones.

You know that things ought to be better, but you are not quite sure how.

Stage 2: Tactical CRM
You have strategies and systems in place to connect with customers. And they are working. Your sales teams track prospects on a sales management program. Your marketing team creates mailers with things like Mailchimp. Your inventory is on an ERP etc. But these systems are spread across the business. They don’t talk to each other.

Because of this, you are wasting many hours collecting duplicate customer information. Worse still, you aren’t sure which information, in which system, is the most up to date. You wish there was a way to have a single, accurate customer record – right across your business.

You may be hearing this in your office. ‘Everyone! If you don’t send me your customer information today, they won’t be invited to the event.’ 

You want to be able to learn from all the data you collect, but you can’t. If you do get insights, they are only at a departmental level. They are not available to the rest of the company. And because of this, you are missing out on many up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. Your customer service could also be better.

Stage 3: Operational CRM
You have one over-arching system that coordinates customer interaction across your business. Good job.

You are beginning to be confident that a customer will get a consistent experience. Marketing, sales, fulfilment and service can all see the complete record on a customer.  Not only that, you are tracking customer information across your business. Emails, calls, appointments, comments, surveys can all be seen in one place. Data from your ERP, marketing software, etc. all links up in one portal.

Every interaction is acted upon. E.g. Somebody tweets about a service issue. This gets logged by the marketing team and flagged with the service department. Because you have an over-arching system, this sort of co-ordination between departments is easy. The resultant customer experience doesn’t feel disjointed, but consistent.

You may hear this in the office: ‘Score! I just came back from the call-out and sold them a new machine!’ Because your CRM system prompts servicing engineers with upgrade opportunities, your up-sell numbers are increasing. Invoices are generated instantly. And because stock levels are accessible remotely, the customer gets realistic delivery dates.

As your system matures, you are able automate more of you processes and reporting. Staff spend more time on the things that matter and you have a better handle on what’s happening. This increased efficiency has a beneficial knock-on effect on your bottom line.

Stage 4: Analytical CRM
Because of advanced analytics and machine learning, your business processes are evolving daily. You are seeing the impact of changes in real-time. And the information is visible to everybody who needs it. Your competitors are sweating. But they can’t work out how you are accelerating away from them.

You can see the experiences a customer has in different departments. And when things go wrong, you have processes in place to intervene. When customers show certain buying patterns, promotional campaigns trigger automatically.

Accurate sales forecasting has reduced your inventory costs considerably. You are hearing things like this in your office:

‘Maximum revenue occurs when we offer these promotions, targeted at that set of customers’. 

Even though your business is large, it still feels very agile. Your processes are more efficient and your opportunities are increasing. Your bottom line is improving significantly. You wonder how businesses operate in any other way.

Interested?

Contact Us

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Deliver projects on time, on budget, at a profit

Deliver projects on time, on budget, at a profit

Dynamics and Power Platform

Ensuring projects deliver: On time. On budget. At a profit.

Ensure your sales team, project managers, resource managers, and project personnel coordinate for maximum profit and efficiency. Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation works in conjunction with your current project management tools so that you can manage your entire project lifecycle: from sales, to resourcing, to delivery and billing. And because Project Service Automation is part of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, you can easily connect it to all the other Dynamics 365 business apps. Project Service Automation has all the features you’d need to run a project from a finance and resource management:
  • Coordinated Opportunity Management – Track and manage upcoming project opportunities, so that sales teams and project managers can work together to land as many projects as possible, without overlapping resources.
  • Accurate Project Quotations – Quickly create comprehensive project quotes using standard or customized templates.
  • Automated Resource Planning – Use Azure Machine Learning to forecast demand and resource allocation. It will automatically match people with the right skills and experience to the projects that need them.
  • Team Collaboration – Combine Project Service with Office 365 and share project documents. You will be able to monitor the status on project deliverables and receive real-time updates by project members, simplifying risk management.
  • Simple Tracking of Budget and Costs – Each project worker keeps a record of hours and expenses in their mobile device, which is automatically collated by Project Service. See the whole project costs visualized in real-time.
  • Easy Reporting – See key project metrics in powerful overview dashboards, on your computer, or on-the-go. Quickly export these metrics into your project reports.
  • Hassle-Free Billing and Invoicing – See project costs in a simple overview that can quickly be converted into an invoice – either within Project Service or in conjunction with your current accounting system.
Want to see Project Service in action? Schedule a demo, and see the benefits it will give you.

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What is CRM? | Customer Relationship Management

What is CRM? | Customer Relationship Management

Dynamics and Power Platform

What is CRM?

HINT: It’s not just about software.

Many people think that CRM is software. But it’s far more than that. 

Customer Relationship Management is about blending technology and strategy to guarantee great customer experience.

Customers are at the centre of every business. Whether you are B2C, B2B, B2B2C, etc. your business success depends on the experience your customer has with you. In every business this experience is shaped at four customer touch points:

1.  Marketing

2.  Sales

3.  Delivery

4.  Service

It’s not sufficient to be good at two or three of these touch points. Your relationship with your customer is dependent on all four.

A bitter let down

A guy in our office recently ordered a cell phone from a tele-sales company. Their marketing was excellent and they had created a strong brand that he trusted. The salesman on the phone was very knowledgeable. His easy manner made buying a simple process.

But when it came to receiving his phone, he had a different experience. On opening his package, he realised the phone was completely different to the one he ordered. When he contacted the company to correct things, nobody seemed to care. It took him a long time to get the company to deliver the phone he’d actually bought. When they eventually did, he vowed never to buy from them again.

Customers are lost through experiences like this.

It doesn’t matter how good certain teams in your business are, without consistency across the four touch points, you’ll always hemorrhage customers and revenue. This is where Customer Relationship Management comes in.

CRM gives you this consistency. A good, functioning CRM system provides great customer experience – right across your business. And because customers have a good relationship with you, you’ll be able to keep hold of them. This creates up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. Selling to current customers is far easier than attracting new ones.

Great customer relationship management doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey. But it’s a journey every company needs to be on.

Let us help you

At The CRM Team, we are experts on this journey. Whatever stage you have reached, we can assist you to get to the next one. See which stage you are at.

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10 Reasons Why We Use Dynamics 365 on the Microsoft Cloud

10 Reasons Why We Use Dynamics 365 on the Microsoft Cloud

Dynamics 365, Dynamics and Power Platform

10 Reasons Why We Use Dynamics 365 on the Microsoft Cloud

Here’s ten reasons why we’ve chosen to go with Microsoft Dynamics 365 on the Microsoft Cloud:

 

1. Higher Security

The level of data-security that Microsoft provide is far higher than many companies can afford to provide by themselves, and it is all included in the price, taking that worry away from you.

2. Less Hassle

Upgrades, maintenance, and system administration are all managed at Microsoft. This means you won’t need to spend time or energy managing a dedicated IT department or contractors when servers go down or software updates mandate a system tweak.

3. Lower Costs

Because there is not a big hardware install, your capital expenditure is much lower. So you benefit from better cash flow and greater flexibility, which reduces your overall costs.

4. Greater Flexibility

You can add or remove users as your business requires them. So short-term projects become cost-effective, because you only pay for additional license fees for the duration of the project. And as your business grows, so does Microsoft Dynamics 365. Because it can run 100,000 users concurrently, Dynamics 365 will never cap your growth.

5. Quicker Return

Time is money, and with the on-premise set up being far more complex, you will get a much quicker return in your business if you opt for an online system. The online system can be installed in a day and your business can be running it at its max in a matter of weeks, meaning you’ll quickly see a meaningful return on your investment.

6. Assistance Wherever You Are

Wherever your company expands to you’ll find that there’ll always be a Microsoft partner proficient in Dynamics 365 nearby. This means that help or advice will never be far away. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 currently operating in 40 countries in 41 different languages, it’s truly a global product.

7. Greater Access

With the world becoming more mobile, it’s essential that everyone in your business can access information wherever they are. With Dynamics 365 you don’t even need a laptop as you can get full functionality via your tablet or even your cell phone (Android, iOS, or Windows).

8. Greater Cost Efficiency

You only pay for the users that are active on the system. In traditional deployments you purchase a number of licenses up front but with Dynamics 365, you can adjust what you pay according to the needs of your business. So the cost is mainly an operational cost, and only increases as your business does.

9. Guaranteed Uptime

Microsoft promise a 99.9% uptime or they will give you your money back. With multiple global data centres, you don’t need to worry about glitches or bugs, or even cyber attacks, as Microsoft has this covered, leaving you to focus on your core business.

10. Strict Data Protection

Because we care about your data, if you go with us, we’ll place your data in centres in Europe, where the strict European laws ensure that your data remains your own. In contrast, if you house your data yourself, you come under the data protection laws of the country that you reside in.

If you are looking for a fully connected system so you can focus on your business, view Microsoft Dynamics 365 here!

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What is the Minimum Viable Product?

What is the Minimum Viable Product?

Thought Leadership

What is the Minimum Viable Product?

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a commonly misunderstood term. This video is adapted from Crisp’s blog by Henrik Kniberg explaining his, now famous, MVP drawing. His drawing shows up all over the place, in articles and presentations, even in a book (Jeff Patton’s “User Story Mapping”).

 

Many state that the drawing really captures the essence of iterative and incremental development, lean startup, and MVP (minimum viable product). However, some misinterpret it, which is quite natural when you take a picture out of its original context. Some criticize it for oversimplifying things, which is true. The picture is a metaphor. That’s why we’ve made this video to put the picture in its true context. Enjoy.

Want to find out more?

Check out how our implementation process makes use of the minimal viable product.

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Delivering projects on time, on budget, at a profit.

Delivering projects on time, on budget, at a profit.

Dynamics and Power Platform

Delivering projects on time, on budget, at a profit.

Professional Service Automation.
$1.5 trillion USD! In 2012 that was what the Professional Service industry was worth in just the US alone. It’s a huge industry that’s dependant on a company’s ability to sell people’s time. Auditors, lawyers, engineers, architects, management consultants, all do this.

 

This is very manageable if you are a few consultants, but when you run complex projects, with many professionals required at different stages, most firms opt for a fully integrated Professional Services Automation System. A system like this can be the difference between firms growing and firms staying still. Small efficiency gains can result in big profits.

The global research organisation, Service Performance Insight (SPI), backs this up. Data from their 2016 report: PS Maturity Benchmark, taken from 257 organisations (minimum of 100 employees, average employee size 1,315) showed that companies with a Professional Service Automation Solution achieved 26% more profits than those that didn’t. When this was combined with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Solution profits increased by 44% compared to those professional service organisations with neither.

We at The CRM Team love to help companies increase their profits. We sell a Professional Service Automation Solution built by Microsoft, called Project Service. It’s a complete system for project sales, resourcing, delivery and billing. We love it. See if it could help you increase your profitability by watching the two-minute overview video above.

You also might like to read our article looking at its features.

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5 reasons why Agile is better than Waterfall

5 reasons why Agile is better than Waterfall

Thought Leadership

5 reasons why Agile is better than Waterfall

Waterfall methodology used to be the way all IT deployments were done. It worked, was reliable and suited IT professionals. But then the Agile revolution happened. In a changing world, speed and the agility now matter to customers. They no longer can afford to be locked into long IT projects that, once set in motion, can’t be changed or adjusted. At The CRM Team, we joined the Agile revolution, and it’s now the only implementation method that we use. It’s better for our customers, and that means it’s better for all of us. In the realm of CRM deployments, here are 5 reasons why we believe Agile is better than Waterfall.

 

1. Less prone to error

Waterfall relies heavily on initial requirements. However, if these requirements aren’t documented precisely, or there was a misunderstanding around the detail of what the customer wanted, it makes things very difficult. Not so with Agile – requirements are checked and confirmed throughout the project.

 

2. More flexible

Once a step has been completed in Waterfall, it’s difficult to go back and make changes. In contrast, Agile builds a working version of the whole project (an MVP) so the customer can shape how it’s built. Seeing a working version early on in the project allows the customer to say ‘I like this, but I don’t like that’, and so shape the product according to their requirements. This is harder to do with Waterfall because the customer has to outline all their preferences upfront, without seeing a working version.

 

3. More predictable end product

With Waterfall, the product is mainly tested at the end of the project. If the customer’s needs weren’t captured well initially or they have changed since the start of the project, testing may come too late in the cycle to make big adjustments. The customer then has to find extra budget to get the product they now need. With Agile, testing happens regularly through the whole process, so the customer periodically checks that the product is what they envisioned. This also makes it more likely that the project will finish on time, and on budget.

 

4. More open to changes/additions

Waterfall isn’t geared to take into account a customer’s evolving needs. If business processes change during the project Waterfall isn’t set up to adapt to this. Often a client feels locked into a project that no longer meets the current business need. In contrast, Agile not only has the ability to adapt to changing needs, but it expects them and plans for them.

 

5. More customer involvement

Agile sees the customer as part of the implementation team and includes them at each part of the process. In contrast, Waterfall tends to spend a lot of time with the customer at the start, trying to document all the perceived requirements. But once this has happened, the implementation team usually take over.

Want to find out more? See our approach to CRM implementation.

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Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Kevin’s face went white! He just realized he’d left his phone in the taxi. An older man at the bar was confused. ‘Is it insured?’ ‘Yes’ he replied. ‘Then why’s it a big deal?’

When people get more freaked out about being separated from their phone than their cash you know a paradigm shift has occurred.

Yellow Cabs in New York City
Look what happened to the taxi industry. In less than seven years, Lyft and Uber have turned the industry upside down. Yellow Cabs in San Francisco and Chicago both filed for bankruptcy recently. They were the big players in their cities. They had the infrastructure, the cars, the drivers, the connections. They should have beaten new start-ups easily. But they adapted too late.

Here’s the rub: like Yellow Cabs, your company may be late in embracing digital transformation – but your customer’s aren’t. They’ve already digital and they’re looking for businesses who understand how they operate and who talk their language.

Here’s another example: My business partner recently took his wife away for a long weekend. He went all out. Do you know where he stayed? In an AirBnB. He booked his beautiful, luxurious getaway through an app on his phone. The Marriott or Hilton didn’t get a look in.

Franschoek Villa
Don’t get confused. Digital transformation isn’t just connecting with customers over apps and cell phones. It’s about using digital technology to find better, easier ways of doing business. Many people confuse digital transformation, with having a digital strategy. But it goes far deeper than that.

Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, who’s carried out his own digital transformation, says this:

“… [Digital Transformation] isn’t just about procuring a CRM, ERP, or office automation system. It requires building out… systems of intelligence — digital feedback loops that help you better engage with your customers, empower your employees, optimize your operations, and reinvent products and business models…. they will ultimately define your competitiveness and ability to change the landscape of the industries you participate in.”

Engaging your customers… empowering your employees… optimizing your operations… reinventing your business models – this is nothing new. Every great business leader in history has been on top of these. The difference nowadays is that the pace of technological advance is so great that if you don’t keep up you can quickly become a dinosaur – and you won’t even know it until it’s too late. Save & Exit

Aman Chowla, CEO of Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad puts it simply:

“Organizations must embrace a digital culture now or be embarrassed by it later.”

How is your industry doing in the realm of digital transformation? Could your industry be the next one to be disrupted by a tech-savvy start-up?

Last year, Accenture Interactive commissioned a Forrester survey of 396 organisations (minimum 1000 employees or more). They found:

  • Only 5% of organisations feel they have mastered digital to the point of differentiation from their competitors.
  • 58% now look to digital to help them sell profitability.
  • 63% of them plan to improve their online customer experience’ this year.
  • 88% of them use third-party providers for at least one component of their digital transformation.

Taken from ‘Digital Transformation in the Age of the Customer’

So. You’re aware of the threat/opportunity. What should you do?

The first thing you need to do is take Braden Kelly’s advice:

“You must look at your business and your industry in the same way that a digital native startup will if they seek to attack you and steal your market.”

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What aspect of their interaction with you feels old fashioned or clumsy? What are better ways of doing this? If you were a start-up and looking at things from a fresh perspective, what would you do to disrupt the industry?

For the Huffington Post, an online newspaper founded in 2005, that meant using the web, rather than print, to take on the big newspapers of the day. It sounds straight-forward, but HuffPost has also embraced marketing automation technology and has a highly-developed social media strategy.

But in doing so, it’s been successful. In 2011 it was acquired by AOL for $315m. In March 2016, the British national newspaper The Independent followed it’s lead and also became an online-only newspaper – halting its print run, that at its peak, had a daily production of 97,000 newspapers. The newspaper industry is in a fast-paced digital transformation.

A look at what’s possible

You might be saying ‘this is great, but I don’t actually know what is possible in my industry?’ This is understandable, but in the digital age, it’s become the job of every business leader to be familiar with the latest technology trends. It might give you just the advantage you need over your competitors.

Have a look at what is trending currently:

  • Machine Learning – Get supercomputers to work for you. Imagine taking the data you’re collecting, analysing it and automatically adjusting your business processes in response to the results. The more data the system is fed, the better its predictions become. For example, in the insurance industry machine learning is helping companies better predict which offers certain customers will respond to. As the customer data is fed into the call centre program the salesperson will be prompted with certain deals. If the deal is taken, the system learns that deal is a good fit for that customer. If not, it adjusts it algorithm and tries a different deal next time, evolving with every iteration.
  • The Internet of Things (IoT) – Imagine the benefit you’d obtain by connecting the assets you own to the cloud. Each vehicle or piece of machinery you own can have its own IP address. You can monitor and make interventions in real time, from anywhere in the world. For example, machines can generate their own service tickets so that repairs happens before things go wrong. Weather data can be combined with automated irrigation machinery so that only the crops that need watering actually receive it. The options are endless.
  • Bots – You may already have interacted with these without realizing it. These are pieces of software designed to run automated tasks (scripts) for you over the internet. Typically, they are designed to be as conversational as possible. For instance, there is a medical bot that you can type in your symptoms and it will suggest relevant medical websites to go to. Facebook already has 11,000 bots ready to launch with its Messenger service. Siri, Cortana and Google Now are very advanced bots hosted on your cell phone, tablet or computer. The popular company communication app, Slack, has been using bots for a while. And Microsoft is preparing to launch bots in conjunction with Skype, and Office 365
  • Integrated Business Applications – Most companies already use Microsoft Office 365 to optimize employee productivity, but Microsoft’s announcement of Dynamics 365, means that businesses will be able to give their employees continual access to the software they need, wherever they are, from any device. Cloud applications have done away with the need to dial into company servers, and with Dynamics 365 built on the same data model as Office 365, multiple sets of customer data will be a thing of the past.

Beginning the Digital Transformation Journey

Of course, you don’t even need to use these technologies for your company to begin the journey of digital transformation. You need to see a new way of operating and adopt the technology that helps you do that. Technology is simply the tool that you use.

Let’s talk

Whatever your industry, here at The CRM Team we are helping many companies take their first step (or next step) along the digital transformation journey. Whether it’s as simple taking your sales team off Excel, or more complex projects, such bringing consistency with the way you engage with your customer over the four customer touch points, we can help. And of course, we’re also geared up to help you use some of the trending tech such as IoT, Machine Learning, Integrated business apps, bots etc.

What opportunity will digital transformation create for your business?

What risks does it pose?

We’d love to assist you to take your next step. And in a digital world, it doesn’t matter where you are based. Why not arrange a conversation about it today?

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Microsoft | LinkedIn: Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

Microsoft | LinkedIn: Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

Digital Transformation

Microsoft | LinkedIn – Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

It’s been three short months. Satya Nadella, Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman stood outside the LinkedIn Headquarters in Mountain View, California and announced the third biggest tech acquisition of all time.

Since then we’ve learnt 3 fascinating facts about the deal:

  1. LinkedIn went with Microsoft over Facebook, Google and Salesforce.com (Say what!?)
  2. LinkedIn went with Microsoft even though Microsoft wasn’t the highest bid. (Say what!?!?)
  3. The battle was fierce and went down to the wire. (Understandable)

And the deal is still making waves!

Last week Salesforce.com’s stock crashed on less-than-expected projected earnings for the third quarter (one wonders why!) Meanwhile, Microsoft quietly overtook them as the world’s biggest enterprise SaaS provider. And that’s without counting LinkedIn’s contribution!

Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is obviously rattled. After a period of collaboration and partnership, he has now declared the rivalry with Microsoft is back on. His words are defiant, but it doesn’t look great for the CRM-focused company. Microsoft’s new combined cloud CRM/ERP offering, Dynamics 365, with LinkedIn’s mighty Sales Navigator is going to be a potent combination and a big worry for them. This was a big win for Microsoft and LinkedIn. Salesforce.com lost out – big time.

Much more than CRM

But it would be unfair to make this a deal about Dynamics CRM vs Salesforce.com. It was much bigger than that. And both Microsoft and LinkedIn know this. You can’t box the 10,000 strong, 433 million member, professional network megalith as a simple CRM add-on. Jeff Weiner, who remains as LinkedIn CEO, said that Microsoft gives LinkedIn “advantages most companies can only dream of leveraging”. That’s got to hurt, Marc.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, was also very excited about the deal:

‘[it] brings together the world’s leading professional cloud with the world’s leading professional network’

We agree. With a combined reach of 1.5 billion+ people (Microsoft’s customer base and LinkedIn’s membership), the possibilities are staggering.

Nadella told his 114,000 employees:

“Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world.”

Microsoft already helps over 1.2 billion people become more productive through the Microsoft Office suite. Imagine integrating LinkedIn with this. LinkedIn’s reach increases dramatically, and Office’s usefulness gets better and better. Nadella has stated that Microsoft wants to integrate the LinkedIn data with their artificial intelligent assistant Cortana. As Nadella said, “Imagine walking into a meeting and Cortana tells you about people you are meeting and what you need to know about them”.

But it won’t just be Microsoft Office that benefits from LinkedIn. Microsoft wants to integrate their powerful machine learning capabilities with the professional network. And being part of the world’s biggest software company will have also have its benefits. Not only can LinkedIn now get input from the best engineers from Microsoft’s 114,000-strong workforce, but partnering with Microsoft also brings a healthy financial stability. Jeff Weiner said we are now,

‘not pressured to compromise on long-term investment… or hamstrung in the way we can reward and acquire new talent due to stock price concerns’.

Weiner predicts that through combining with Microsoft they’ll now be able to innovate and disrupt in some of the following areas:

“the corporate directory, company news dissemination, collaboration, productivity tools, distribution of business intelligence and employee voice…”

Prepare for more creativity and innovation from LinkedIn.

And the timing is great.

Digital Transformation is going to be a huge thing for companies in 2017 and much of this will result in big growth for cloud computing (read: Saas, PaaS and Iaas).

The SaaS (Software as a Service) market is growing rapidly (33% growth last quarter) and there is plenty of scope for Microsoft | LinkedIn to dominate here.

  • LinkedIn: Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn has been extremely successful at SaaS. On its own, it’s been in the top SaaS providers in the world for years. Last year it’s recruitment suite, Talent Solutions, brought in $2 billion (!) in revenue alone. Combined with its sales tool, Sales Navigator, it already has a healthy subscriber base of 2 million people. This will grow rapidly through the access to Microsoft’s 1 billion plus customer base.
  • Microsoft: Microsoft has already had a successful transition over to SaaS. Its launch of Office 365 five years ago saw it move its famous desktop brand into the cloud. (Recently, even Facebook announced its adoption of Office 365). It also offers SharePoint Online and now, this Fall, their ERP/CRM clouds solutions will be relaunched as Dynamics 365. We at The CRM Team, have already stated our belief about how seismic a shift this will be. Integrate this with LinkedIn and it becomes even more powerful.

When it comes to IaaS and PaaS (Infrastructure/Platform as a service), Microsoft are already positioned well here, second behind Amazon, but ahead of Google and IBM. If, as predicted, LinkedIn moves its hosting to Microsoft’s Cloud (Azure) then that will bolster Azure even further.

But the Microsoft | LinkedIn deal is not just a strategic move to stop Amazon getting LinkedIn’s business. What Microsoft and LinkedIn realise is that currently their offerings and customer base are quite different. Place them all on one platform and the combined graph is eye-watering for developers:

Who can compete with that?

This deal is a great move for both Microsoft and LinkedIn and it’s going to shake up many industries. There should be lots of companies having sleepless nights – for a good while to come.

Don’t miss more articles by The CRM Team 

 

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