Customer relationship management (CRM) software has revolutionized the way companies operate and interact with their customers. With a CRM, communications are personalized, sales funnels are streamlined, and customers get help faster. For most businesses, the question isn't so much whether you should use a CRM, but which one you should choose. While there are many options on the market, one of the best choices is Microsoft Dynamics 365. In this post, we'll discuss why.

Top 3 Reasons to Choose Dynamics 365

When comparing CRM options, there are a lot of overlapping benefits that can be mentioned. We covered a few in the intro. Rather than expanding on the functionality that all CRMs can bring to your business, we want to focus on a shortlist of what makes Microsoft Dynamics 365 a more compelling option than similar software that provides the same benefits. After all, it isn't the similarities that make one option stand out over the other, it's the unique selling points of each. With that in mind, here are our top 3 reasons to choose Dynamics 365:

1. It's a Microsoft Product

While there are other big players in the CRM market, none have been around as long as Microsoft has, and none have the extensive suite of business software products that the tech giant does. Microsoft's decades-long experience building software for business has given them extensive experience in creating products that are both easy for new users to adapt and powerful enough to satisfy the needs of the most demanding businesses. Not only does this make Dynamics 365 a strong competitor on its own, but it also provides it access to a much larger ecosystem.

A CRM works best when it's integrated with as many of your other systems as possible. After all, the promise of better customer relationship management can't be met if the central system facilitating that management is siloed from all the ways your business interacts with customers. With Dynamics 365, you get seamless, native integrations with many of the products you're likely already using, such as Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Forms, Power BI, and more.

2. It's an Affordable Industry Leader

The needs of every business are different, but when a piece of software becomes recognized as an industry leader, there's usually a good reason behind it. With Gartner's Magic Quadrant research, understanding those reasons is easy. In the Gartner Magic Quadrant for sales force automation, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle are leaps and bounds ahead of their nearest competitors.

One of the problems plaguing the CRM market is high licensing costs (as well as the confusion around licensing). Unlike other leaders in the space, Dynamics 365 is lenient and more fixed in its pricing tiers. A lot of CRM competitors market upfront licensing discounts to get you hooked but very quickly increase per-user pricing to +$190.00 per month for basic CRM customization and features.

The light user within the Dynamics 365 platform is priced at only $10.20 per month which can still be used within a highly customized and automated CRM solution. As a company, we have seen numerous scenarios where if our clients had the same CRM solution on Salesforce or HubSpot they would have a significant amount of users bumped up from $10.20 per month to +$190.00 per month. For a company with 10 employees in this scenario, this would result in an increase of over $20,000.00 in licensing fees per year.

3. It's Scalable

One of the most important considerations when making software decisions for your business is how well the software will grow with your company. Simply looking at current needs can come back to bite you when your business expands and its needs become more complex. During Microsoft's long history of building business applications, they've had standalone products for field service, accounting, project management, supply chain management, human resources, and more. Recently, they've put forth a major effort to move these products into a single, centralized location. By placing all this functionality in Dynamics 365, they've created a product that better integrates with your entire business, and better scales to meet your needs as you grow. 

Switching to a new CRM isn't just a matter of having to find a suitable replacement and train employees on something entirely different, the process of transferring data over and dealing with incompatibilities in the functions offered can make the task a huge headache for everyone involved. When you choose Dynamics 365, you can be confident that you'll have a product that your company will never need to switch from.

Conclusion

With the large variety of options on the market, picking the right CRM can be a daunting task. In terms of functionality and customization options, Dynamics 365 and Salesforce really stand alone as two of the best options. Whichever you choose, the customization features are what really make the products worth it. Out-of-the-box CRMs will force you into workflows that don’t fit your business and will likely result in poor user adoption and frustration. Customization is the key to taking a cumbersome experience and turning it into one that truly streamlines your work.

At Amplify Solutions, our business focuses solely on taking the strong foundation that Dynamics 365 provides, and customizing it to something that fits the exact needs of our clients' businesses. Making these customizations on your own without the experience to maximize the potential of the software can leave major efficiency improvement unrealized. For help turning Dynamics 365 into a customer-tailored solution that will grow your business, get in touch with us today.