Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an end-to-end cloud software solution designed to help business owners in every industry improve their operations by increasing agility, visibility and overall efficiency. Launched by the Microsoft Corporation in 2016, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is actually two ERP solutions and one CRM solution consisting of the CRM Solution Suites, the Business Central ERP solution for small to midsize organizations and the Finance and Operations ERP solution for enterprise organizations. While each of these Microsoft solutions can be leveraged separately, together, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the ultimate all-in-one enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management tool that seamlessly connects your data, business processes and organizational outcomes to help you achieve your goals. 

The TM Group is uniquely qualified to help clients select and set up the appropriate business applications you need for your organization to thrive. It’s helpful to know the basics about each of these Microsoft solutions so you can determine which one best addresses your business challenges.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the most multifaceted of the three Microsoft solutions. Composed of four different suites — Sales, Customer Service, Marketing and Field Service — the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM suites are ideal for businesses where customer satisfaction is critical. With the Customer Service and Field Service suites, in particular, small and midsize businesses can improve experiences both for service providers and customers (through embedded insights and analytics), troubleshoot problems before customers become aware of them (through the Internet of Things) and make case resolution more predictable (through AI-driven productivity tools).

Sales and Marketing offer similarly broad sweeping functionalities, all of which leverage data to create better end-to-end customer experiences and to effectively manage complex sales processes. Offered in an a la carte fashion, the CRM suites allow you to license the specific functional areas that your organization needs to be successful and includes robust integration capabilities for working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Central or other ERP solutions.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Of all the business applications we currently represent at The TM Group, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the one we perform the most new system projects for currently. An enterprise resource planning solution that, like CRM, is designed for small to midsize businesses, Business Central helps to increase visibility across your organization by aligning all the departments with a single solution. This can help to accelerate sales processes as a retailer, optimize warehouse management if you’re in manufacturing and refine resource utilization if your business processes require a lot of customer invoicing and service quotes.  

Additionally, if your business currently uses other software programs from the Microsoft Corporation — like Outlook or Excel — you can link all your business data together across the platforms for more seamless business process capabilities. Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool that makes this possible and helps your business stay connected to team members by sharing information, files, documents and more across each department of your company with all relevant stakeholders.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is an ERP solution that, as its title suggests, assists managers with the financial and operational aspects of running a company. Ideal for large enterprise businesses, Finance and Operations uses a combination of embedded analytics, financial reporting and insights driven by artificial intelligence to help enhance the outcomes related to your financial decision-making tasks. Some of these better outcomes include more accurately projecting cash flows, intelligently predicting when your customers will make their payments and adapting to budget proposals. Furthermore, with advanced reporting capabilities that can handle and translate many different foreign exchanges and monetary denominations, you can close your books faster and more seamlessly for overseas transactions.

In short, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is designed to make what is likely the most complex part of your business — money management — easier and more intuitive. While we do not perform implementations for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, which is targeted at large enterprises and multinational organizations, The TM Group is happy to discuss your business requirements and recommend if Business Central or Finance and Operations is a better fit for your organization.

Why choose Microsoft Dynamics 365?
From more productivity and business process efficiency to greater customer satisfaction with your new and long-tenured clients, the advantages of using any of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 products are far-reaching. 

Easy to use and deploy
If you have any familiarity with any of Microsoft Office tools, the transition to Microsoft Dynamics will look and feel familiar to users. Also, The TM Group has decades of experience in training to help your team with the onboarding process for a new Microsoft Dynamics solution. Although all of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions are available as cloud solutions, they are also deployable in the clients data center or on premise server room as well as a mixed cloud and on premise or hybrid cloud environments. 

Fully integrates with other Microsoft solutions
Aside from having the same intuitive user interface, Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrates with the full complement of Microsoft Office product offerings. Thus, if you have some legacy business applications or you’re looking to pair Microsoft Power BI with Business Central, you’ll be surprised by how seamlessly you can work between apps once Business Central is up and running.

Highly affordable

Just as Microsoft Dynamics is designed to work for your business, it’s also designed to work for your business’ budget. For example, if you opt for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials package — which includes Accounting, Supply Chain Management, Assembly Management, Project Management and a few other modules — it costs $70 per user per month. If you go for the Premium option, which offers Manufacturing — the price is $100 per user per month. 

There are a few other pricing options like device and team users available, depending on your need. 

Choose The TM Group

As a proud Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner since the solution was first launched, The TM Group specializes in providing small and midsize businesses with the tech tools and software systems that increase process efficiency and achieve goals. With extensive project management experience and clients in multiple industries, The TM Group has the understanding, capabilities and reach that has made us the go-to Microsoft Dynamics partner for ERP and CRM implementation in more than two dozen states. We have completed well over 1,000 implementation projects since we launched in 1984, and many of our clients return to us for all of their strategic planning, data migration and data analysis needs. In addition to implementation consulting and project management, we also have an extensive track record in app development, meaning we can build apps for CRM as well as Business Central so the solution can be used to better manage any aspect of your organization’s business processes.

For more information on The TM Group and our tenured team of implementation experts, contact us today.