It was five years ago when I joined Theta to create a brand new CRM Practice in October 2015.
Looking at the application Microsoft Dynamics 365 today and comparing it to the system we had available in October 2015 it is incredible to consider the advancements we have witnessed. There has been a radical change to the landscape into which I launched the new practice.
At that time there was Microsoft Dynamics CRM on premise and Microsoft Dynamics 365 online and many organizations were moving from on premise to online.
I am very proud of the team that we have assembled at Theta. These really smart people have injected enthusiasm have been flexible, adaptable and take the changes that are encountered in their stride.
There are now 2 upgrades every year and typically the release notes document we need to digest is in excess of 300 pages for Microsoft Dynamics 365 in general.
Here is a small list of some of some of the changes to the product that we knew as Microsoft CRM that have been introduced since October 2015. For the sake of brevity I have restricted my list to 15 items, and am just skimming the surface.
- Logic Apps was introduced in 2016 and this revolutionized how we could do integration to this platform
- CSP for Licensing was introduced making licensing easier
- Power BI integration has been updated and has become the norm for advanced reporting
- The consolidation of Dynamics 365 overall has continued with many new products and services added
- The Power Platform was introduced with the CDS
- A completely new User Interface was released for the application
- The retiring of the term “CRM” occurred at Microsoft, to be replaced with Customer Engagement
- Microsoft bought ADX Studio and incorporated the Portal into the platform
- A new Power Apps Portal was introduced with Model and Canvass driven apps that can be created using Power Apps
- Microsoft bought LinkedIn and simplified connectivity between these applications was established
- A new Marketing application was released last year together with an Event Portal
- Project Service Automation was released and then withdrawn and has been released again
- The IoT has been integrated into the Dynamics application
- Power Automate was introduced, this is a game changer for business automation and a whole new way of working with Workflow
- Customer Insights and AI have been included in the application
And
- Microsoft incorporated Field Service into the application which came from an acquisition of FieldOne.
This Field Service offering is very significant, as I heard someone once saying about the acquisition, “For every sales person out there selling products (The traditional market for CRM) there are nine other people out there, repairing things, installing things, inspecting things and generally doing work”. Therefore an application that addresses a larger slice of the market can only be considered to be a good thing.
And amid all of the change and fantastic new things we have had to adapt to, along came Covid-19, changing our working arrangements and adding a whole new perspective to collaboration.
If someone had told me in 2015 that we would do a large CRM rollout to 160 users with all of our staff and all of the customer staff working from home, I would probably have asked them had they taken leave of their senses. We can adapt and we have to, the constant change keeps us on our feet and nimble.
So did I expect in October 2015 to be implementing Field Service systems to help organisations manage work and assets, conduct inspections etc. and with the system wired up to “Internet of Things” IoT devices? Probably not. I expected change, but not at the pace that it happened. Am I excited to be doing this kind of work? Absolutely.
Maybe I’ll watch Back to the Future again this weekend.
Ivor's D365 Campus 