Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM providing sales, marketing, and service functionality. It is offered as SaaS and on-premise. Dynamics 365 is part of the larger Dynamics suite of business intelligence and ERP products.
$44
per month
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Companies use Interaction Studio to tailor interactions with customers and prospects to increase loyalty, engagement, and conversions. Using real-time cross-channel personalization and machine learning capabilities, Interaction Studio adds to Marketing Cloud’s robust customer data, audience segmentation, and engagement platform.
1. Lead Management - Microsoft Dynamics 365 is well suited for lead management. It provides a streamlined process for capturing, tracking, and managing leads. It allows users to capture leads from a variety of sources, such as web forms, emails, and social media. It also provides a centralized view of all of the lead data, allowing users to quickly identify hot leads and take action.
2. Automating Sales Processes - Microsoft Dynamics 365 is also well suited for automating sales processes. It allows users to create custom workflows and assign tasks to team members. This helps increase efficiency and streamline sales processes. It also allows users to track and analyze customer data, allowing sales teams to better understand their customer's needs and provide tailored solutions.
3. Customer Service and Support - Microsoft Dynamics 365 is also well suited for customer service and support. It provides a central platform for tracking customer inquiries and requests. It also allows users to create custom dashboards and reports, helping to easily identify customer trends and issues. This helps customer service teams to quickly address customer needs and provide a better level of service.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is particularly well suited for automated marketing that includes multiple touch points like email, SMS, etc., where we need to automatically send triggered messages to customers based on their behavior or recommend products by sending personalized messages. It is a great tool that allows us to easily create and manage campaigns and to track and analyze customer behavior in order to optimize the campaign.
Some useful out-of-the-box features, like mass uploads of Leads from trade shows or when qualifying a Lead, CRM automatically creates the Opportunity, Contact, and Account for you, etc.
Really powerful customizations through the user interface to improve user experience. Things like Business Rules, for example, if Field A = 1, then Field B = 2 and Field C = 2, if Field A = 2, then Field B and Field C don't apply, so automatically hide them.
Or other functionality that improves user experience, like Business Process Flows. These walk users step by step through our business process, helping them know when certain actions should take place, and at what point other data is now required. We've used this extensively with our Lead to Opportunity to Quote to Order process, helping users understand the business process each step of the way.
Customizations built on top of the platform now called model-driven PowerApps. You can have connections to "typical" data, like Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities, for example, but then connect that data to custom entities, records that only apply to your specific business. This is all done through the user interface and allows you to customize and automate specific line-of-business applications for your specific needs.
Behind the scenes, D365 CE is built on SQL. So the data conforms to industry standards and makes it much easier to interact with. Your developers and IT team will thank you.
Evergage plays nicely with most code frameworks and has been very stable. The only situation in which we could not (yet) find a way to use Evergage is in conjunction with Handlebars.js templates.
Enterprise-level data security considerations are well-handled by Evergage. Trust me... as a top-level PCI compliant company that builds travel loyalty solutions for major US banks, we have no greater concern than data security.
"No flicker" synchronous integration is a VERY important feature Evergage offers -- I'm unsure if any other competitors offer the same as I think Evergage has a patent on this. So when the webpage loads, users don't see the original page contents flash before being replaced with personalized/alternate contents.
The powerful user interface is easy-to-use and comes in two flavors: a more traditional CMS-style "admin" view and an on-page WYSIWYG view.
Test use cases in the browser prior to going live.
It's easy to build and measure A/B/n tests, either as rule-based tests, or as % split testing.
I love the ability to create user segments based on "sentence-style" logic structures that incorporates actions, KPIs, even third-party data.
Evergage is built to accommodate everyone from non-technical users to coders. Use the WYSIWYG editor to bring things to life, build complex front-end use cases with Javascript/JQuery, or use the API for control from the server side.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 storage & license cost can prohibit some large deployments or even cost-sensitive small projects from using the platform (although I'm certain most deployments would realize a positive ROI if implemented correctly with process automation).
The cost and licensing document for Dynamics 365 is 61 pages and will take a rocket scientist to understand it. It's better to just have your Microsoft help estimate the cost if they are willing to help you that.
The documentation on how to first fully understand the Out of the Box default solution and settings is lacking or even non-existing. This has the potential to derail Dynamic 365 launches and implementations from the gitgo. Want to use an out of the box entity?.. well it's probably related to 5 other entities that require configuration and full understanding of it to successful implement. And you ask where is the laymen guide or instructions?... User groups and forums. In Summary, Microsoft can up its game in deployment training and supporting documentation.
Microsoft needs to incentivize more external platforms to build app connectors for easy integration, such as ZenDesk, Slack, Tableau, etc. Even the current connector apps such as Salesforce, MailChimp, Docusign are useless or don't work at all.
Several limitations inhibit successful Dynamics 365 deployments such as: limited number of Rollup field calculations (summarizing fields on child/related records), limited number rows that can exported to Excel via advanced find, Dynamics 365 files, log and database storage size limit is extremely small and will always require purchasing additional storage (for Online deployments).
New user buy-in or acceptance or system platform changes can be difficult if a solid change management plan isn't enacted.
Don't expect much help from Microsoft on implementation or solutions unless it's a technical flaw with the platform. Microsoft relies on their MVP partner network to consult for implementations at a hefty cost. Hiring a knowledgeable and savvy Dynamics 365 System Administrator can reduce the need for consultant support; of course, this is dependant upon many many variables.
Some of the reporting functionality could use some work, but they are making vast improvements.
The catalog user interface for available promotable items could benefit from the ability to customize the viewable columns and add filtering.
The amount of time that Evergage considers a user's session to be active could be increased. I find myself having to log back into the tool multiple times throughout the day, as I will leave the tool to check emails and during that time, I get logged out.
CRM has allowed us to keep all of our data in one place that is easy for all users within the company to view. I came into the company after they had been using CRM for about 4 years. They have all said that since we have used this it has helped us control work processes better, it has allowed us to be able to track things so much better, and has been something that has helped unite many processes that used to be all over the place. We are currently using CRM 4.0 and are planning on upgrading in the next 18 months to the 2011 version. Support for 4.0 is almost all but dried up. Understandably so. Some of the customization we have done, and a plugins we use, are now contained within the 2011 version so we are looking forward to that upgrade. We use an email marketing company as well, and they primarily support the 2011 version, but their product connects and is integrated within CRM. This is a great benefit as well so that all of our marketing information can be contained in one location.
When you first engage with Evergage you have to make a choice on how you're going to use and deploy their product. Are you going to use it for, as is my case, an "in-app" deployment for your SaaS application or for your public facing website. We elected to use it for "in-app" first so we could build knowledge and have a measure of churn reduction. We've done well enough that we're developing a strategy for use on our public facing website now for better lead building and qualification. We're about to double our engagement with Evergage essentially. Evergage has been incredibly responsive. They use great customer service tools and eventually gave us our own account manager. As an IT person, once setup, I intentionally worked to remove myself from the product as a support means so our customer service people are working directly with Evergage and great things are happening. Evergage has just been constantly improving for the better.
My review can help others to choose the correct CRM like Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. I see lots of great things in Microsoft Dynamics 365 that make your business easy and smooth also MS allows users to customize the software according to their needs. So Thought I should share my experience with others.
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
Evergage is quick loading and very responsive. We always have concerns about page load time and the integration of Evergage with our websites has never once caused any issue in this regard.
Our partner, Ledgeview Partners has been FANTASTIC to work with. They are always timely in their response and have taken time to understand our business and our specific needs. We've made a lot of advanced customizations and they have been a great help in making those updates.
It would be a full 10 except for a couple of times when it took over a week to get a response. Otherwise they are very responsive, very knowledgeable and very helpful. They really have a great team overall, not just support but even account reps are always eager to help and provide ideas and best practices.
Training program is not very well established. There is very little documentations. More often than not it's in-person training. I wish there were more video tutorials so that somebody can learn the system quickly. Their documentation is very much like an RFP. Long and very technichal. They should definitly improve on this area.
We used a data warehouse to house our data, and our IT team and implementation vendor worked diligently ahead of time to construct idea implementation plans. Out of millions of records- we had less than a dozen errors, which is remarkable. My major insight is simply having a group of completely devoted individuals working towards your goal who fully understand the desired outcome. Focused resources for implementation season are critical to success.
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
Microsoft Dynamics was part of a system overhaul for a local school, and we looked at many products. If we had used it for a company with low turnover, then it might have been more feasible. They needed something a new person could learn quickly, someone who might also be learning marketing terms at the same time - especially if there is nobody to train the individual now expected to know the system. Similar issues occurred with all of these programs (we called it being too big for their britches), and one of the bigger things we liked was that it is more compatible with MS Office products in both technical and visual appeal. If you have a steady employees who use a CRM consistently, low turnover, and those who are very familiar with Office products, Dynamics would be the smartest option for you. Unfortunately, this was just not true for the school environment
Appcues - I like them. Very easy to use, which is the one main advantage they have over Evergage. That said their simplicity means the tool is limited in what it can do compared to Evergage. Plus Evergage's data logging capabilities in addition to messaging make it more useful for my needs.
On our purchase, I'd been interrogated about our usage. Our needs are met by Microsoft Dynamics 365, which is simple to use. With so much data and information available, we must ensure that it is presented correctly to managers. Due to a lack of use, we don't have to spend as much money on Salesforce.
My company's preferred program right now is Microsoft Dynamics 365. We use it to keep track of customers and important sales metrics in a streamlined manner. Anyone familiar with CRMs will find the tool extremely useful. Considering that we have a good turnover, this product will be used for its basic segments. As a result, there are few chances of error with Microsoft dynamics because it is so easy to use. Many options for recording data on these leads are available. It meets our needs and pays off.
For those without a centralized, all in one solution for major HR, Finance and other departments, Microsoft Dynamics 365 has vastly improved employee time utilization and profit.
Migrating clients from on-premise to the cloud has reaped benefits including better security, no unscheduled downtime and frequent updates to functionality.
Those transferring from cheaper solutions have lost money in the aim to be better integrated with other Microsoft products and AI they don't really utilize.
Positive: allows better functionality without hiring or diverting a whole team of developers, which would be extremely costly.
Positive: fits into our existing campaign structure neatly without needing a complicated separate process.
Positive: support has been excellent and responsive, quickly aiding and resolving problems.
Negative: can be too powerful, leading to campaigns that break if they are not thoroughly checked before deployment. Also, can become a crutch acting as merely a content management system when it's segmentation capabilities are not understood or explored.
