One area where Microsoft has always excelled is in integrating data from multiple sources. Throughout the years, this excellence has served the company well, allowing it to enter markets later than competitors yet still gain a foothold and quickly expand.
Microsoft Dynamics is an apple not far from the tree. In spite of entering a market dominated by other companies, Microsoft Dynamics has quickly gained a significant portion of the market, taking only six years to pass the 1 million customer mark. Additionally, recent reports show that Dynamics CRM’s growth in the industry is outstripping IBM, SAP and Oracle.
One of the key elements of Dynamics’ growth is its underlying data synchronization abilities, allowing Dynamics to share data with other applications easily, as well as among the various Dynamics products. What are some of the practical applications of Dynamics’ sync abilities?
Integration with Other Applications
One of the most obvious benefits of Dynamics’ data synchronization abilities is the opportunity to share data between different applications. Many companies (along with their software) run differently, sometimes overlapping software and platforms. As a result, it’s not uncommon to see Salesforce and Dynamics running side-by-side within the same company. Effectively keeping the data synchronized across these applications, however, can make all the difference between the different applications complementing each other or creating more work and headache than they’re worth.
Thanks to Dynamics’ underlying capabilities, it’s possible to easily keep the same information up-to-date across multiple software lines. Other companies have even built on that underlying ability, further extending Dynamics’ data sharing. Scribe is one such company, promising to “integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce and other business applications to provide a complete picture of the customer.”
Dynamics 2015 builds on this ability by introducing change tracking to help large organizations reduce server load while keeping their data up-to-date across applications.
“Large Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations that synchronize their data with external data sources can now enable entities for change tracking. You can export or retrieve a selected set of CRM data, and then keep the external data warehouse in sync.”
Integration with Your Website
Another important area where data synchronization can save time and money is between your website and your Dynamics installation. Website Pipeline is a company that has built a business around enabling customers to streamline website to Dynamics data sharing. Their “ERP Driver Sync Tool is software that automatically syncs data (like orders, products, customers, and inventory levels) between your Microsoft Dynamics GP financial & inventory software system and your ecommerce website or other applications.”
The benefits of this kind of integration are obvious, saving you time and money by automating tedious data entry and duplication, making valuable employees available for more important tasks.
Integration with Your Workflow
Few aspects of a business are more important than really great customer-to-vendor communication. Deals and opportunities can be squandered if important communication falls between the cracks. This is another area where Dynamics’ underlying data synchronization can be put to good use, especially if your company already uses Microsoft’s other products, such as Outlook.
“Integrating your Microsoft Outlook account with Microsoft Dynamics CRM can greatly improve the way you work, your customer service and the productivity of sales and marketing for your business,” writes eImagine CRM Team. “Microsoft Dynamics integrates seamlessly with Outlook to help increase your customer service by allowing you to send messages and track conversations within CRM. Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Outlook is a great way to improve your business efficiency.”
Nowhere is this integration as evident as it is in the Dynamics to Office 365 integration. Whichever Dynamics line your company depends on, Microsoft has continued to strengthen data sharing between Dynamics and Office 365.
For example, according to the release notes (PDF link), NAV 2015 “provides interoperability with Office 365, which enables customers to drill down, analyze, share and collaborate with peers. And with new usability enhancements that make their solution easier and more familiar to use, customers will enjoy working seamlessly and effortlessly across all applications.”
Microsoft Dynamics is a powerful ERP platform and, like much of Microsoft’s offerings, benefits from the company’s focus on data integration and availability. To get the most out of your Dynamics installation, look for ways to streamline your workflow by taking advantage of Dynamics’ underlying synchronization abilities.
About the Author:Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx, a Certified Microsoft Partner. Journyx maximizes the value of Microsoft Dynamics by adding enterprise time tracking. Journyx Accountlink for Microsoft Dynamics allows companies to quickly implement a complete time tracking solution using existing business data in Dynamics. Connect with Curt on Google+.
About Journyx
A Certified Microsoft Partner, Journyx enterprise time and expense tracking software is an add-on that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics GP as well as Project Accounting. Learn more at http://journyx.com/dynamics.
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