As CRM customizer and provider, we often hear this question from people coming to us,
“How Many Companies are Using Microsoft Dynamics ?”
And we answer by numbers.
What follows are accumulated figures of Microsoft Dynamics customers until year of 2015 – worldwide:
| Microsoft Dynamics® AX | 20,000 companies |
| Microsoft Dynamics® NAV | 110,000 companies |
| Microsoft Dynamics® CRM | 40,000+ companies 4.4 million users |
| Microsoft Dynamics® SL | 13,500 companies |
| Microsoft Dynamics® GP | 47,000 companies |
| Microsoft Dynamics Retail | 46,500 entities |
| Microsoft Dynamics C5 | 85,000 entities |
| Microsoft XAL,C4/Apertum | 30,000 entities |
Early Days of Microsoft CRM:
Microsoft CRM 1.0 was released in January 2003 and was developed as a solicit application.
It was originally created by developers of a company named Icommunicate.NET.
Icommuncate.NET was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.
Icommuncate.NET was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.
At that time, Microsoft CRM was sold on-premise only and Fees/Licensing was in proportion to functionalities delivered.
However, Microsoft CRM 1.x did not perform well in the market as it was complex product, and it required several different servers to host different parts of the application.
Astonishingly, one of Microsoft clients also demanded money back due to deficiencies of required features.
To overcome loopholes encountered in 1.0 series of software, Dynamics CRM 2.0 was launched.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 – The First Stable and Appreciated Product:
In the beginning of 2005, Microsoft abandoned further releases of 2.0 series CRM applications, and favoured a major upgrade – 3.0
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 was the first release that included marketing module with basic features like campaigns, management of lead lists etc.
Dynamics 3.0 introduced the idea of XRM. With this approach, CRM could be customized by end users but it was not as simple as CRM today.
At this point, Microsoft started visualizing power of Dynamics CRM with unique strengths that could help businesses develop inexpensive integrated systems to manage all of their data.
Dynamics CRM 4.0 – First Feet of The System in Cloud:
Late in 2007, Dynamics 3.0 customers started migrating to newly published 4.0 version.
Dynamics CRM 4.0 introduced several new features that we see in the modern CRM package today, like deduplication, multi-tenancy on a single server, and SQL server reporting services.
However, it was not capable to allow much functionalities on mobile devices although light access to Dynamics CRM from handheld devices was possible.
It was for the first time Microsoft started offering Dynamics CRM on internet as a hosted application.
Dynamics CRM 2011 – The Last Simple Version of CRM:
It went out approximately 3.5 years after CRM 4.0 that Microsoft launched any next major upgrade.
This time period was that of mass adoption of social media platforms like Facebook, twitter etc. when people in general started interacting with each other online.
CRM 2011 added fantastic features based on feedbacks collected from customer base that is now huge in size.
Features Like:
- Dashboards
- Wide array of plugins
- Sharepoint Integration
etc. are added in this version only.
Market for third party Microsoft Dynamics CRM providers got competitive.
All good except one thing, that Dynamics CRM 2011’s compatibility with browsers other than Internet Explorer was poor.
All good except one thing, that Dynamics CRM 2011’s compatibility with browsers other than Internet Explorer was poor.
Sales demos literally suffered for this while target audience was clearly able to see big incompatibilities with Chrome or Firefox.
Dynamics CRM 2013 – A Great Revision:
- Dynamics CRM 2013 is addressed as the largest upgrade in its history.
- Clean, intuitive and new user interfaces were written to improve user experience and to accommodate needs of various data points.
- It had a clean new interface with menus moved at the top of the screen.
Among major noticeable components, Microsoft packed Dynamics CRM 2013 solution with following things as comprehensive ‘out-of-the-box’ system:
- Business process workflow
- Mobile applications for modules
- Bing maps integration
- Quick create forms etc.
Dynamics CRM 2015/2016:
- Ever since Dynamics CRM 2013 version, Microsoft has shifted to a rapid release paradigm where new features and updates are regularly rolled out in regular six-month cycles.
- Microsoft has started putting emphasis on Cloud based CRM and shows new features first on its online version.
- Based on the strength, Microsoft also purchases several complementary products and integrates them into the Dynamics product line from time to time.
- Examples include Field One, Parature etc.
Nowadays, the CRM marketplace is like a two-way battle between Salesforce and Microsoft, while major CRM products from other competitors like Oracle, Sage etc. go as 2nd level leftovers.
Dynamics 365 – The Beginning of a New Future:
- While CRM system helps in managing customer relationships, ERP is the real geek that can handle and manage entire business process.
- Considering this fact, Microsoft finally built full-fledged ERP and integrated it with Dynamics CRM.
- On the date of July 6, 2016, Microsoft officially announced this prominent version of Dynamics 365.
- The product is equally fruitful and economic for small businesses as well as large scale enterprises.
- It is no more simply a sales focused system, but Dynamics 365 is a matured software solution that is deployed to manage functions throughout the entire organization.
Variance InfoTech is an IT solutions provider with offices in 3 countries.Our CRM practice has helped a range of SMBs in many industries to solve business problems using multiple CRM products.
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