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Where is the limit in Business Central CRM capability and when integrating it with D365 Sales? (part 1)

Marko Totovic Business Central, CRM, Dynamics 365, ERP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We know that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (previously NAV) is primarily an ERP solution. But even so, this product has some customer relationship management capabilities. And name ‘Business Central’ probably comes because this solution can provide all business activities in one solution. But as this is primarily an ERP solution, the biggest strength comes in ERP, and in other areas, such as CRM or HRM, the level of functionalities is significantly lower. But let us make an overview of what is already in Business Central, but we can say it can be treated as CRM.

First, what we can find are a good customer and contact management. Still, as customers play an essential role in every ERP solution, we can emphasize more about contact management where we have some basic information about contacts and some segmentation.

You can also find some level of creating and tracking opportunities and sales quotes and interactions. You can also have some possibilities to make direct phone calls from BC or send an email. This is more or less what we have, but this is not a small number of functionalities.

Today I’ll not go into details about all these features. I just wanted to show some basic information about them and explain on a high level in which situation you should think about an additional and full CRM solution. As a full and independent CRM solution, I’ll focus on Dynamics 365 Sales Professional:

  • First, naturally, if you don’t have enough functionalities, you will take a specialized CRM solution, but let’s talk in detail on another occasion.
  • Second, the price can be an issue. If you have pure CRM users, they still need to pay $70 or even $100 for the license as they must pay a BC license even if they need only CRM capabilities. Sales Professional full license price is $65, and you can get full CRM. But with the new attach license for Dynamics 365 Sales Professional, BC clients can add a full CRM solution for an additional only $20.
  • Third, as I mentioned in the beginning, Business Central is still primarily an ERP solution, meaning its UI is built for ERP and not for CRM. Even if you have many CRM features, when we compare usage of these features, this is definitely not even close to being useable as in a regular CRM solution.
Dynamics 365 Sales Lead to Opportunity Business Proces Flow

Today I wanted just to make a high-level overview, but in future texts, I’ll try to be more accurate about when CRM in Business Central is enough for you and when you should think about integration with Dynamics 365 Sales.

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Dynamics 365 Sales Professional vs Sales Enterprise

Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM , , , , , , , , , ,

In my previous post (video), you could learn how to create Dynamics 365 Sales Professional demo environment. If you are experienced with Dynamics CRM solutions you can recognize differences between this solution and enterprise version, but if you are newbie I would like to introduce you with all differences you can find there.

03-What-is-Dynamics-365-for-Sales-Professional

On the first place, we can split them to the two types of clients:

  • Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise – full sales capabilities
  • Dynamics 365 Sales Professional – core sales functions at a reduced rate for businesses with simpler sales force needs

But if you want more details and especially if you need to promise something to your client, you should have details. Let’s start with details. First list is list of all features Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise has, and Sales Professional has not:

  • Access via Portal or API
    • Non-employees only: Work Orders
    • Non-employees only: Opportunities
  • Entities (Create, Update, Delete)
    • Max 15 Custom Entities
    • Competitors
    • Embedded Intelligence
    • Forecasting
    • Product Families
    • Product Hierarchies
    • Product Relationships
    • Quick Campaigns
    • Sales Goals
    • Sales Hub
    • Sales Literature
    • Territories
  • Entities (Actions)
    • Business card scanning as add-on (10 users/month: pooled at tenant level)
    • Business Units (Define and Configure)
    • Knowledgebase (create, update, publish, configure, search)
    • Teams (Define and Configure)
  • General System Use (Actions)
    • Max 5 customized Business Processes Flows
    • Max 2 customized Forms and Views per entity
    • Max 15 custom Workflows
    • Max 5 custom reports, charts, and dashboards
    • Without custom system reports, charts, and dashboards
  • Additional Services and Software
    • Dynamics 365 Gamification (Player & Admin)
    • Microsoft Forms Pro
    • Microsoft PowerApps
    • Dynamics 365 Sales Insights
    • Max 10 ISV solutions

If your conclusion is that Sales Professional doesn’t have a lot of features it is not a true. Sales Professional has a pretty big number of very good features and it can cover probably the most of SMB company requests.

But let’s add some of advantages of Sales Professional. This list is maybe not so big, but quality of this list is more important than quantity:

  • Price: full price is 65$ and this is 30$ less then enterprise version
  • Attach license to Business Central; if you already have Business Central, you need to pay only 20$ for license. As you already have integration in Business Central with D365 Sales, it is a real benefit both a price and functionalities.
  • UI is better (mostly in configuration) as this is intended for SMB customers.

If you need core CRM functionalities and solution easy to implement, Sales Professional is the right solution for you, but if you need all CRM functionalities you should choose Sales Enterprise.

As I see Sales Professional as a great opportunity for small companies and especially for those who already use Business Central, I’ll be focused on this solutions with the following posts (probably mostly videos).