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 …
I got a call the other day from a customer who said that another partner told them that they should not use a solution like ours because “It can cause issues”. I thought, what a vague and crappy thing to say. I assume this partner was not a reseller of …
You cannot go to a Microsoft partner event today without hearing about AppSource. It’s not that third-parties haven’t extended Microsoft products, like Dynamics 365, in the past, but those extension/solutions haven’t driven product sales, at least not in the way Microsoft knows they could. Other companies, like Salesforce.com, have proven …
I don’t know about you, but these feel like the most “disruptive” of times that I can recall, and I can guarantee that I am older than most people who read my posts. Companies like Uber are disrupting century-old, facility, asset and people heavy industries, like the Taxi business… with …
When we designed our RapidStart CRM solution for Dynamics 365, we had a pretty specific idea of how it would be used. It turns out, that when you eliminate the complexity of customizing Dynamics 365, customers get pretty creative.
I first heard Microsoft floating the “Industry Focus” concept to partners shortly after Office 365 launched. It seemed pretty clear that this cloud shift was going to eliminate a lot of existing revenue for partners. I felt back then, that the “Industry Focus” concept was something that Microsoft cooked up …
In Microsoft’s continuing quest to make Business Solutions easier, “Configuration over Code” is where they are making the most investment. “Coding” requires skills that most customers, and frankly most partners, do not have, which leads to additional costs for the customer. How is Microsoft doing on lowering this barrier?
My flight home to Tampa from Seattle, following the Worldwide Dynamics Partner Advisory Council meeting, is a relatively short hop compared to that of many of the other partners in the group, but nevertheless, it feels long to me. But it is a perfect time to write up what little …
