Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Family

Over the last few releases Microsoft Dynamics CRM has evolved from being a single product to a set of products that work together in delivering the customer engagement solutions. Dynamics CRM product family now includes 4 products and 2 Solutions.

 

 

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM (CRM) ??? Full CRM suite with Marketing, Sales & Service functionalities. Supports Online and On-Premises deployments, native integration with Outlook, Offline availability, cross browser support, Mobile Apps for Windows/iPhone/Android phones etc. You can use the trial version to check the full feature set.
• Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) ??? Provides a full suite of data segmentation, behavioral tracking, digital asset management, and brand management capabilities. Available for a 30 day trial.
• Microsoft Social Engagement ??? Offers hosted online services available to a wide variety of customers and is comprised of the following social capability components within the software application:
  • Social Media Monitoring ??? ability to listen to and monitor publicly available social communications across public and managed networks administered by third parties.
  • Social Analytics ??? ability to identify, compute, and project queries related to publicly available documents and posts. 

    Limited functionality trial version is now available.

• Parature, from Microsoft ??? Empowers organizations deliver consistent care anytime, anywhere through a powerful combination of knowledge management, self-service, multi-channel engagement and social customer service.
• Unified Service Desk (USD) ??? Framework to configure and manage call center agent applications that provide customer service agents with immediate and unified access to business critical information about customers that helps them effectively handle their customer interactions. Refer TechNet article for more details.
• Marketing Sales Collaboration (Seller Portal) ??? The seller portal is designed to be accessible by Microsoft Dynamics CRM users, with handy links and integrated functionality available inside CRM. Sales people have visibility into the Marketing Calendar and can to see and manage which messages are reaching your contacts. Refer this article for more.

While Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available as both an Online and On-Premises solution, the rest of the products are available only as Online Solutions. However, they integrate with both CRM Online and On-Premises deployments.

Microsoft had acquired MarketingPilot & NetBreeze in late 2012 and Parature in early 2013. These products have been reengineered to align with other Microsoft products, added additional features and integrated them with CRM. Microsoft Social Engagement and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing were made available to customers as part of CRM 2013. With the upcoming release ???Carina??? (CRM 2015 Spring release), we will see integrated Parature knowledgebase within CRM. Note that Microsoft follows the Cloud-first approach and releases the product updates to CRM Online before CRM On-premises. So, the on-premises users will be able to use Parature a little later (hopefully in Fall???15 release).

It is beneficial to know that you can take advantage of some of these products upon purchase of certain Dynamics CRM Online licenses. Below is a brief summary

 

Included with License Type (?) Product (?)	Microsoft Social Engagement	Microsoft Dynamics Marketing	Parature, from Microsoft	Seller Portal	Unified Service Desk
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	Professional USL	Enterprise USL	Enterprise USL	Professional USL	Professional USL
Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-premises	–	–	–	–	Professional CAL Software Assurance

Tip: If you want to try both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing then create a trial instance of MDM first and then start CRM trial in the ???Purchase Services??? of Office 365 portal.

 

Update

Microsoft announced the acquisition of field service management solution provider, FieldOne yesterday (July 16, 2015). FieldOne is a leading provider of field service management solution that includes functionalities like schedule & dispatch, service agreements, automated routing, inventory management (including return material authorization (RMA)), multi channel customer communication, customer & partner portals and mobile app. FieldOne???s solution was built using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and hence is expected to be made available by Microsoft soon. Inline with MIcrosoft???s strategy, this would be a cloud first offering. This new addition will bring wealth of features to the Customer Service module.