I am continuously seeing leaks in advance of the launch of Dynamics 365 next week. Many of these are not painting a complete picture. I mean, if you are going to violate an NDA, you might as well go all in, Microsoft can only kick you out of the CRM Partner Advisory Council once, right?

I will neither confirm nor deny

Personally, I am not interested in being kicked out of the CRM PAC, so I will not be revealing any NDA information here, but I will suggest some things to focus on in the coming days. I fully expect a lot of peoples’ lightbulbs to pop on when they understand the whole story. It is a big story, and there are a lot of moving parts, and first impressions, my own included, change significantly as you peel back the layers of what is about to happen here.

The SKU to Watch

Let’s recap the current pricing structure of the current Dynamics CRM Online. We have the Professional Subscription, which provides full access to everything, for $65/mo/user (or $50/mo/user as an add-on to certain Office 365 Skus). We have the Basic Subscription, which provides limited capabilities, for $30/mo/user. Lastly, we have the Essential Subscription which is primary a useless Sku, for $15/mo/user. On November 1st, with Dynamics 365, we will have quite a few more Skus to chose from than the 3 we have today. In my opinion the new “Salesforce Killer” Sku will be “Team Member”.  This Subscription appears to promise similar, and in some cases, better capability than the current Basic Sku, at a ridiculously low cost.

A New Subscription Array

Today, in the Small and Midsized Business space for CRM we see a combination of Professional and Basic Skus. We never see Essentials. We probably see a lot more Professional than Basic also, due to the limitations of the Basic Skus around Opportunities. With Dynamics 365, I think we will see a new combination of some Sales Skus, some Plans, and a whole bunch of Team Member Skus. I know that will be the case in the Enterprise space, where I expect the vast majority of users to use Team Member Skus. This is the part of the conversation that seemed largely missed in the “leaks”. This is also Microsoft’s “Salesforce Attack Plan”… the new Team Member sku will be your best friend in a Salesforce steal or compete scenario.

So this was just a short post in advance of next week’s launch. I want to make sure you have your eye on the ball, and in particular the Team Member Sku… learn it, know it, love it.