If you have been around the channel for a while, you are quite familiar with the Microsoft messaging to partners. “Add a Dynamics Practice”, or “Add an Azure Practice”, or “Add a whatever we want to sell now practice”. I suggest you ignore these messages.
I guess it’s no surprise, that 90% of my blog readers are Microsoft Partners. Most of them, operate in the same space that we do: Dynamics 365. From that, I can also assume that most of my readers were on the Executive Briefing calls last week. So what did we …
Yesterday we had the Executive Briefing for the Dynamics 365 Business Edition Sales and Marketing Apps. It was non-NDA so that means we can talk about it, that also means that lots of details were left out. I have been working with that team for some time now, and while …
As some of you may know, we were formerly Salesforce Consultants, a product that was “Cloud” from day one. For us, cloud was not something we even thought about, until we pivoted to become a Microsoft Partner in 2011. Suddenly “Cloud” was a new thing? Huh?… Okay, we’ll play along.
Yes, I know, Divorce is a nasty sounding word, and it does not seem applicable to your relationship with your Microsoft Partner… I mean you are not legally “Married”. But today, more than ever, your relationship with your Microsoft partner is feeling a lot more like a marriage, particularly, if …
Selecting the best platform and partner for you to work with, is probably the most important determining factor to your success with Business Solutions. It really is the “make or break” ingredient, and selecting the wrong one(s), can lead to disaster. Here is a fictional first-person account.
We were working with one of our larger customers the other day on their Lead Import process. We noticed that many leads were failing to import. The person handling the importing said “Yeah, if I can’t figure out the issue, I just ignore those“.
A “Meeting of the Minds” is probably the number one challenge in the SMB space, particularly with Business Solutions like Dynamics 365. Am I saying SMB customers are not smart enough to understand? Not at all, but I have learned that a nodding head, is not a good indication, that …
I just finished watching the live Microsoft Business Forward event, and it was pretty impressive. In addition to Satya Nadella giving us the Grand Vision, Microsoft also trotted out a few customers who had “Digitally Transformed” their businesses… big customers. But as I was watching this, with my SMB Customer …
Let’s get real for a minute. The typical SMB customer does not wake up every day thinking, “How can I spend more money with my Microsoft Partner?” They are more likely thinking, “How soon can I get rid of my Microsoft Partner?”
Let me preface by saying, I am not an ERP Guy. At our own firm, we use QuickBooks, even though we have access to Microsoft ERP software at no cost. Is QuickBooks better? Far from it, but is it good enough?
A tweet caught my eye the other day, it was a quote from Richard Branson that went something like, “If you look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple.” I could not shake this from my brain, so I thought I would try and crystallize my …
Many of you may wonder why I would title a post “Dynamics 365 vs. SharePoint”, as though it were an either/or decision. But many customers, particularly in the SMB space, seem to grapple with “deciding” between the two.
Okay, maybe the Outlook thick client for Dynamics 365 hasn’t actually been deprecated by Microsoft… yet… but it should be. I think the last UI refresh was in 1972. So I am personally declaring it deprecated! Fully three quarters of our customer support issues for Dynamics, have involved the Outlook …
When Microsoft launched Dynamics 365, they launched an entirely new licensing model based on Apps and Plans. The community became aware of this deconstruction, before they were made aware of the pricing, which led to some early speculation on how it would roll out… then in November, the associated pricing …
Unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you know that Microsoft is developing versions of their Dynamics 365 business applications, that are geared for smaller businesses. Across the Dynamics Partner community, you are either very excited about this, or ambivalent, depending on the customer base you cater to. So, …
In my last post, I wrote about Evaluating Dynamics 365. In that post I glossed over the part about demos, because it felt like a bigger topic, that deserved a post of its own. I will start writing now, and we’ll both see if that is case shortly. A product …
A big part of the job for a Dynamics 365 Partner, is talking to customers about their business problems. They heard about Dynamics 365 somewhere, and are hoping that it is “the” Silver Bullet that will solve all of their issues. Maybe it is… and maybe it isn’t… how can …
The other day I wrote a post about Account Based Marketing “ABM”. This was prompted by a short blog post I read on ABM, and it resonated with me as a pretty cool idea. I received a lot of responses from people “in the know”, and I quickly realized that …
When you have been around as long as I have, you will have seen “The Next Big Thing”, many times. An article caught my eye they other day about “Account Based Marketing”. Now, I don’t know if this is the next big thing or not, but it seemed interesting, and …
