Understanding Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 approach to business applications unifies Microsoft's current CRM and ERP cloud solutions into one cloud service with new purpose-built business applications that work together seamlessly to help you to manage specific business functions.

Let's now get an insight at a high level into the various apps available in the Dynamics 365 family. Let's look at some of these apps, along with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Dynamics 365 Customer Service is an omnichannel solution to unify the way customers and prospects experience your business. There are several dashboards in Dynamics 365 for customer service as well. The following screenshot depicts one of the dashboards:

Users can create consistency and loyalty at all touchpoints across various experience channels such as self-service, peer-to-peer service, and assisted service. It also proactively addresses issues by detecting the customers' intent and social sentiment.

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Service: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/customer-service/overview/.

Expect an increase in CSAT (short for Customer Satisfaction) and retention by providing personalized and consistent engagements and proactive addressing of service issues.

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations apps

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is now available as two separate products as Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management (SCM) for licensing purposes. These two products are collectively called Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations apps. If the customer buys licensing for both Finance and SCM, then they will get all of the features that were previously available in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

For the purposes of this book, we will call the product Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Microsoft has done a complete re-architected Dynamics AX and introduced cloud-based Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations to the world. Microsoft offers users an interface that is so natural to use that they just use it with an accelerated adoption, thereby raising productivity. Since the first release in July 2017, Finance and Operations, has gone through various updates, and introduced various new features and processes, which we will learn about later in this book.

The fact that it works seamlessly anywhere on any device and on any platform is among the key features that make Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations very attractive to implement.

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations offers a wide variety of role-specific dashboards and workspaces to make work life easier for folks using it day in and day out. The following screenshot shows a dashboard that comprises several workspaces in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations:

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is a very flexible application, and it can be used for many scenarios as needed by any organization. Some examples are the following:

• Enterprise: An end-to-end solution that looks after the financials and core operations for a company
• 2-Tier Subsidiary: Solution that handles the financials and operations for subsidiaries or business units and integrates with the headquarters ERP
• Operational workloads: Manages specific business functions/workloads of business and integrates with corporate systems

It would be very nice to get a glimpse of all workloads available in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, suggesting their core functionality. The following diagram shows a full-suite visual for various workloads:

As shown in the preceding diagram, there are several modules/capability areas spanning different workloads, namely, vertical, horizontal/operational, and administrative.

We will be getting into the details of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations throughout this book; however, there are a few key features that are in line with other D365 business apps, as follows:

• Full-suite business management solution
• Multiple industry capabilities, namely, retail, distribution, manufacturing, public sector, and service industries; all built in a single solution
• Availability in 18 countries/markets with local compliance met and local language support
• Choice of deployment—in the cloud or on-premises
• Elevate business financial performance
• Run smarter with connected operations
• Automate and streamline supply chain process
• Innovate with a modern and adaptable platform
• Simplify configuration of your regulatory services

Several new navigation concepts are introduced in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, and the following are the key ones:

• Dashboard: The dashboard is a new concept and is the first page that users see when they access the client. The dashboard contains tiles that show important details from the system.
• Navigation pane: The navigation pane provides access to workspaces, main menu elements, recently opened forms, and user-defined favorites.
• Workspaces: Workspaces are activity-oriented pages that are designed to increase a user's productivity by providing information that answers the targeted user's most pressing activity-related questions and allows the user to initiate their more frequent tasks.
• Tiles: A tile is a rectangular button that behaves like a menu item button. It is used to navigate to or open pages. In addition, tiles can display relevant data, such as counts or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

The following screenshot shows the navigation page:

The following screenshot shows workspaces and various tiles used within workspaces in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations user interface:

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Finance: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/finance/overview/.

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/supply-chain-management/overview/.

Let's move on to the next app that Dynamics 365 offers!

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central is an accounting application offering from Microsoft, but it is more than accounting software. It is a comprehensive business management solution for small and midsized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also has dashboards similar to the role-driven dashboards in other Dynamics 365 apps:

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Business Central: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/business-central/overview/.

Dynamics 365 Commerce

Earlier a part of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Commerce is now separated as its own application as part of the Dynamics 365 product portfolio. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Commerce provides an intelligent platform to enable retailers to combine the best of digital and in-store to deliver personal, seamless, and differentiated customer experiences by empowering people and capturing insights to drive growth.

The following screenshot depicts a Dynamics 365 Commerce solution:

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Retail: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/commerce/overview/.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources was an earlier part of the Finance and Operations and is now a separate SaaS-based independent offering out of Dynamics 365. Dynamics 365 Human Resources brings your human capital management to the cloud for a mobile, employee-focused, strategic HR approach that helps you to find and hire the right people, nurture success, and deliver high-impact, sustainable results.

The following is a talent solution dashboard showing various modules and capabilities:

Use the following link to learn more about Dynamics 365 Human Resources: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/human-resources/overview/.

Microsoft is trying to make use of the Dynamics 365 suite easier by providing access to various tools that work very seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications. These tools complement the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite to make it more personalized and easy for information consumption and informed decision making. Let's have a look at these complementary tools in the following section.