Here at QGate, I get involved right at the beginning of the sales process. I’m the first port of call for any new prospective customer, and the process always starts the same: discovery.
Now, for some organisations, the term ‘discovery’ can mean a multitude of things, but for us it’s a pre-sale, lightweight exploration of the customers needs, to do two things: 1) understand if Dynamics 365 is the right platform for them, and 2) if so, to make sure we’re the right consultancy to be helping them.
If the technology is right, then I’m happy to say that 99% percent of the time we’re a very good fit for the project. We do miss out occasionally, but if so, it’s often because I’ve let the prospect know they’d be in better hands elsewhere (say for example if they need a solution for an offshore oil rig organisation, and I know of a consultancy that has some pre-developed systems for that market specifically), so I send them on their way with blessing.
The reason I mention the first sales funnel stage in the context of the title of this blog post, is that I’ve seen a rather large shift in the type of customers we’re seeing.
So, why is that?
I think it’s the indication of mass-market adoption of D365 CRM.
Dynamics has been around in various guises for a long, long time, so it’s not that the Microsoft offering as a whole was immature at this point, I believe it was just that MS had other priorities in the business application space, so it didn’t have the investment that it truly needed.
But that had to change when the pandemic hit, and it had to change fast.
The necessity of employers being able to work from home meant that systems had to accessible and feature rich, to ensure no drop off of productivity. Along with this, companies’ ability to promote their products and services were subject to a paradigm shift overnight, with lockdowns being imposed globally. No more sides of buses to shout about new films, or magazines being bought in shops to show off new cars. Smart, on demand TV and streaming services have practically rendered adverts moot, so where does that leave the fervent marketer?
Online.
Microsoft, as you’d expect, figured this out pretty quick, so they did something spectacular to make sure they lost zero footing in the race to enable organisations around the world put their wares in front of prospective consumers.
“Two years of innovation in 2 months” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in April 2020 (1).
Now this isn’t just around Dynamics 365 CRM, admittedly, but it did encompass their cloud-based ecosystem in it’s entirely, and it worked.
They pumped huge investment into development across the suite of applications, and if you were to take a look at any number of Gartner Magic Quadrant charts for 2021/22, Dynamics 365 is in the magic quadrant for everything from CRM Customer Engagement (2) to Field Service (3) and ERP (4).
Over the last few years, business consumers have realised that if they’re already using Outlook, Azure, Sharepoint, PowerBi, Teams or any other Microsoft tech, then deploying Dynamics is only going to enhance their working experience – because guess what? It plays incredibly well with all of them. Integrations and enhancements by the bucketful.
I heard the term Microsoft House only this morning on a discovery call. What look outside of what you know and love?
This is why I believe we’re seeing more and more companies come to us to help with their already in-use Dynamics 365 CRM system. They saw that it was the right system for them to choose, so they went out and got it.
The problem is, is that whilst everything Power Platform (the foundation of Dynamics 365) is marketed as low code/no code, it really is a fine art to get the most out of it… there must be a reason why QGate (a consultancy that focuses entirely on developing ‘within’ the Power Platform) even exists, right?! If it were truly that simple to deploy, we absolutely wouldn’t be in business.
That means that whilst there are a lot of companies that have gone with D365, there have also been a large number of poorly, or even broken, deployments – and these are the companies that are coming to QGate.
CRM is nothing short of indispensable in their day-to-day WFH operation, so it needs to work, it needs to be supported, and it needs to be maintained.
We do CRM. We’ve done it for over two and a half decades, so we’re really good at supporting the systems we create (check out our 9.1 out of 10 for over 500 reviews), and because of this, we have a marketing-leading support programme; Support Plus.
If you need help with your D365 CRM, or you need that assurance that you and your staff will be able to do their jobs all the time, Support Plus provides unlimited break/fix and a small change budget to make system changes to make sure it’s always attuned to your way of working.
We use D365 CRM, and you could bet if we suddenly lost it for any length of time, it would significantly impede our ability to do business.
What would happen to your business if it happened?
If you’d like to have a chat about support, please feel free to book one of those discovery calls I just talked about, or give us a call on 01329 222800.
Connect with Steve Clarke on LinkedIn here.
- 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months (microsoft.com)
- Microsoft named a Leader in 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CRM Customer Engagement Center – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
- Dynamics 365 Field Service named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
- Microsoft recognized as a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
