Posted by Jonathan Crowell
Nothing… sort of. You may also be asking yourself “What is Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement?” I’ll address both questions.
As of November 1, 2016, Microsoft Dynamics CRM was renamed and became part of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The Dynamics CRM we have known and loved was more or less re-labeled and licensed in a different manner. At that time, there was set to be two “editions” of the CRM applications – Business and Enterprise. The Business Edition was geared towards companies with more basic requirements in Sales and Customer Service and aligned with then called Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Edition, which is now called Dynamics 365 Business Central (see my blog “What Happened to Dynamics NAV” for more information on the evolution of Business Central). Things changed, as they do, and there never really was a business edition for CRM. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Edition offered more robust functionality in Sales and Customer Service, as well as more applications for Field Service and Project Service Automation. Marketing was somewhat of an unknown in 2016, as Microsoft positioned Adobe Marketing Cloud for “enterprise” needs, and was in the process of sunsetting Dynamics Marketing for a “business edition” version of the marketing app. You could license individual applications or plans for users who needed access to multiple apps, and there was tiered pricing for the plans if you had a large number of users.
Fast-forward to October 1, 2019, and the above seems like a faint memory. In true Microsoft fashion, the naming and licensing has changed, again. I’ll attempt to make sense of it all in this blog, but if you’d prefer to discuss these changes, we welcome you to give us a call (704-846-6750)!
Let’s start with the name. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the name, and it’s the full suite of “CRM” applications available from Microsoft. Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, and Marketing are all included within Customer Engagement. There are no longer Business and Enterprise versions of these applications, but rather “Professional” and Enterprise versions. Nothing has changed with the Enterprise applications, as far as functionality, and the Professional versions look and feel the same as Enterprise, but with limited functionality (mainly around what entities are included and extensibility – see our video on Professional vs Enterprise). As of now, only Sales and Customer Service are available as “Professional” SKUs. Licensing will be covered below, but before I do that, I want to address some of the under-lying technology changes for Customer Engagement.
As of November 1, 2016, Microsoft Dynamics CRM was renamed and became part of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The Dynamics CRM we have known and loved was more or less re-labeled and licensed in a different manner. At that time, there was set to be two “editions” of the CRM applications – Business and Enterprise. The Business Edition was geared towards companies with more basic requirements in Sales and Customer Service and aligned with then called Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Edition, which is now called Dynamics 365 Business Central (see my blog “What Happened to Dynamics NAV” for more information on the evolution of Business Central). Things changed, as they do, and there never really was a business edition for CRM. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Edition offered more robust functionality in Sales and Customer Service, as well as more applications for Field Service and Project Service Automation. Marketing was somewhat of an unknown in 2016, as Microsoft positioned Adobe Marketing Cloud for “enterprise” needs, and was in the process of sunsetting Dynamics Marketing for a “business edition” version of the marketing app. You could license individual applications or plans for users who needed access to multiple apps, and there was tiered pricing for the plans if you had a large number of users.
Fast-forward to October 1, 2019, and the above seems like a faint memory. In true Microsoft fashion, the naming and licensing has changed, again. I’ll attempt to make sense of it all in this blog, but if you’d prefer to discuss these changes, we welcome you to give us a call (704-846-6750)!
Let’s start with the name. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the name, and it’s the full suite of “CRM” applications available from Microsoft. Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, and Marketing are all included within Customer Engagement. There are no longer Business and Enterprise versions of these applications, but rather “Professional” and Enterprise versions. Nothing has changed with the Enterprise applications, as far as functionality, and the Professional versions look and feel the same as Enterprise, but with limited functionality (mainly around what entities are included and extensibility – see our video on Professional vs Enterprise). As of now, only Sales and Customer Service are available as “Professional” SKUs. Licensing will be covered below, but before I do that, I want to address some of the under-lying technology changes for Customer Engagement.
