No doubt most Dynamics 365 partners would pitch the Dynamics 365 as a less-expensive solution, but switchers from Salesforce are likely to bite into the argument if they see a greater value solution. One that is not only affordable but also one that can extend to the full functionality they really need. There’s a reason, after all, that they built their previous business on Salesforce.
Customers who are considering making the switch will surely find that Dynamics 365 has improved significantly.
The issues before, around configurability for vertical solutions and with technology such as Power BI, have been well addressed. It wasn’t always that way with its predecessor, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Partners small and large are beginning to create a big market around templates that couple directly with Dynamics 365 for office automation, Internet of Things, industry connections to Azure, and more. This is making Dynamics 365 solutions commercially compelling apart from the other key advantages of integrated user experience and other flexibilities.
There’s Power BI to bring analytics to any user on any device.
Microsoft offers a wide variety of options and also gives the ability to integrate them easily. Microsoft’s local data centers help them meet data sovereignty needs for customers in public sector industries including financial services.
Many see the universe of companies running on Salesforce now—and that could benefit from a switch.
Improving data structures, functionalities, and user experience are key to a successful switch. Moving a “bad” Salesforce design over to Dynamics CRM will bring over all the things that are disliked about the current Salesforce environment and will not add much regarding new/improved data structure.
A Salesforce environment review can help understand and create a winning value proposition.
An admin level access to the Salesforce Dev and production environment can help snap a copy of production which also allows us to evaluate the number of records in the various entities and see what you are actually using in production. This gives us the chance to see the number of custom entities/fields, how many workflows exist, and if there is much custom code so that effort sizing can be done more completely.
To help those companies migrate to Dynamics 365, many partners are offering a swap-out program to make migrations faster, easier, and more successful.
It includes IP to address licensing issues and reduces risk. It also includes onshore and offshore development resources that can implement vertical-industry solutions most cost-effectively. Similarly, for offshore resources in various locations, getting the developers that are ready for Dynamics 365 is not difficult and only required them becoming familiar with the 365 version, rather than calling for any formal retraining if they already have experience on the dynamics 2016 versions.
Those migrating from Salesforce face issues like any other system migration involves: ensuring data quality, using text fields that should have been option sets (and converting along the way), etc.
