In computer software market, it truly is difficult, if not impossible, to find a company mightier than Microsoft. However, the giant known mostly because of its operating systems is also a creator of numerous else applications, including ones devoted strictly to customer relationship management. In Microsoft's palette, it's Dynamics' role.

The Microsoft Dynamics family is compounded of a few products beside Dynamics CRM itself. These are Microsoft Dynamics AX (which, in short, is an application devoted to more or less advanced enterprise resource planning), Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, and Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Due to its roots, Microsoft Dynamics applications are mainly devoted to support sales, marketing, and customer service tasks, however the idea behind was to push the family of products more into the XRM (extended relationship management) direction.

Thank to wide Microsoft backup, almost no special applications are needed to work in Microsoft Dynamics as it can be operated through Microsoft Internet Explorer (7 or higher version) or through Microsoft Outlook which both are parts of commonly-used Microsoft Windows operating system.

Microsoft Dynamics versions

Currently, Microsoft Dynamics suite can be purchased in four different versions which choice depends on number of allowed licenses, subtle differences in functionalities, and - of course - price. The representatives of small businesses might be interested in basic Workgroup Edition which allows up to 5 users and one server machine. If there is a need for more client access licenses, one should turn to Professional Edition which is similar to basic one except for the user limit. Beside these two, Microsoft Dynamics comes also in Enterprise and Service Provider editions which are designated to support much more advanced needs (including multiple divisions to access one CRM platform, Active Directory user requests, external requests, etc.).

Microsoft Dynamics uses

Like almost every other customer relationship management software, Microsoft Dynamics' role is to support the work of sales, customer service, marketing, and social marketing departments. It helps to automate the work of sales department through intelligent functionalities which lead to shortening sales cycles and improving contact with former, current, and future customers. From organization employees perspective, Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps in gathering a proper insight into what's actually going in company sales sector. In case of contacts with clients, Dynamics CRM provides a great desktop for answering all customers questions as soon as possible, basing on the cooperation between different departments across the organization. Mobile access to system's data is also important when the time is strongly limited.

Marketing features of Microsoft Dynamics suite allow to create a direct and profitable connection between organization itself, its products and the customers. It helps in analyzing the market, planning strategies, putting them into practice and evaluating the results. Basically, it encourages both time saving and efficiency increasing. Finally, Dynamics CRM helps in keeping an eye on what's going around the organization in most of social media sites, while extended relationship management capabilities allow also to control workflow and manage the cooperation with company partners.

Microsoft Dynamics strengths and weaknesses

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is praised for its universality and support from Microsoft. It also features a bunch of Business Intelligence supporting tools and other apps which allow to customize the packet up to customer specific needs. Particular solutions offer very good performance what - followed with easy to use interface - makes Microsoft Dynamics CRM really a user-friendly set of products. However, Dynamics CRM itself might be not enough for more experienced users and more advanced uses could require involving external solutions. Additionally - what's understandable but, from some points of view, very irritating - Dynamics works best under Internet Explorer (from the 7th version) and Microsoft Windows. Even though it might be run under other web browsers too, the company doesn't guarantee its proper work (and - in fact - doesn't even try to ensure it). It, compared with general dullness of IE, might be a hard nut to crack.