Going All-In with The Cloud
More recently, and in close alignment with the drive to Office 365, now Microsoft 365, and the Azure cloud platform, Microsoft improved upon all four on-premises products to create two comprehensive ERP platforms that are delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS) from the cloud. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) is ideal for the small to medium sized business, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) is designed for enterprise use. Each of these platforms is a complete business process management software system that manages and integrates a company’s financials, operations, commerce, reporting, manufacturing, human resource, and other activities. We’ll focus more on each of these and what features are key for professional service firms later in this guide.
Along with these two ERP platforms, Microsoft also transitioned their customer relationship management (CRM) to the cloud as Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement. This platform is easily extensible to manage all the stages of a customer relationship, including Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Service Automation. Moving the Microsoft Dynamics 365 family to the cloud removed the burden of operating computer services from the customers themselves and put it in the best possible hands, those of Microsoft’s own experts.
