Everyone is moving to the cloud. Right Scale released their annual state of the cloud survey, where they polled IT professionals on their use of cloud services for infrastructure, platform, data storage, software, and more. Their survey found 2018 to be the year of the cloud for even the most reluctant and slow to switch enterprise organizations:

Having the right tool within your organization makes all the difference, especially with many teams having members working in disparate locations. The distance can make collaborating on high-priority projects a challenge. It’s the reason so many software-as-a-service SaaS providers felt the impetus to step up to the plate, developing quality document storage and collaboration tools that help teams get work done.

The cloud migration is well underway. Gartner says the worldwide public cloud revenue will take another 21% jump this year. According to MarketWatch, the category of platform experiencing the biggest growth in the cloud in the coming years is enterprise resource planning or ERP software. They predict, “that the global ERP Software market will register remarkable success in the coming years.” With revenues expected to exceed $47 billion by 2022, the growth of cloud-based ERP is a virtually guaranteed. In fact, Panorama Consulting’s latest ERP report shows cloud ERP adoption rates have surpassed on-premise deployments for the first time in history.

You might be surprised by the high number of customizations that can be done in the new Dynamics 365 Business Central application. There are a lot of sophisticated SaaS platforms on the market today that allows very little customization. But Microsoft knows that one size does not fit all, especially in ERP software that is so highly sophisticated and all-inclusive.

Microsoft SharePoint services have gone by a number of different names since it was launched in 2001. But the purpose of the software hasn’t changed in the past 17 years. In simple terms, SharePoint is about communication between dispersed office teams, bringing people together around a specific goal. The software lets you develop internal or external websites, store files, and collaborate on one online portal.

As a business development tool, you can’t get much better than Dynamics 365 Business Central. Released in October, Dynamics 365 Business Central is NAV reimagined as a software-as-a-service tool. At its core, Business Central is primarily an enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool, which took the old NAV product for the small to mid-sized company, improved it, and renamed it for all companies.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a sophisticated and robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool that houses finance, operations, sales, customer relationship management, and business analytics. It’s a one-stop-shop for all the things your business needs to succeed in today’s competitive markets.

SharePoint online is Microsoft’s answer for remote team collaboration. Use SharePoint online for everything from business intelligence to document sharing. It’s a great tool to keep teams informed, allowing users to develop Intranet sites and web portals for constant communication and collaboration. 

Software changes. It’s the cardinal rule, whether you’re Oracle, Microsoft, or Apple. As a Microsoft partner, we know that the organization is constantly iterating to make their products better for the end user. While it’s important to embrace the spirit of continuous improvement in the digital era, we also recognize that Microsoft has been changing their products a lot lately, including renaming and rebranding these new and improved tools.

Here’s the hard truth about even the best software; it cannot fix broken processes. This is especially true in the area of sales and customer service, where the best practices your team adopts can have a real impact on the corporate bottom line.