Dynamics 365 is a suite of business applications offered by Microsoft that primarily includes ERP applications and CRM applications. In this post, we’ll focus on the two most common: 

• D365 BC is a cloud-based ERP offering, intended for SMBs who are looking to upgrade from their entry-level accounting software or legacy ERP system to one single, comprehensive solution. D365 BC is designed to help businesses manage their financials, manufacturing, projects, inventory management, shipping and more.  

• D365 Sales is a cloud-based CRM solution, whose main purpose is to support sales teams and their associated activities. It allows teams to qualify leads, manage sales opportunities, build relationships with prospects and customers, organize, and automate components of the sales process and more. 

D365 BC and D365 Sales are two separate products and must be purchased and licensed individually. 

Within D365 BC, there are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionalities to help support sales teams, however, it’s fairly basic in comparison with CRM systems that are designed specifically to manage customer relationships. 

Major concern by Business Owners when they learn that D365 BC includes CRM capabilities, why they would pay for CRM licenses if the capabilities were already there in their ERP system. 

For small-scale organizations, CRM functionality that’s available in D365 BC would be sufficient. However, for large-scale Customers, you should be looking into a CRM solution. 

D365 BC’s CRM capabilities are limited compared to what is available in D365 Sales. While D365 BC capabilities are enough for some organizations to handle contact and opportunity management needs, those looking for an end-to-end CRM solution may not find it sufficient. The basic sales management features within D365 BC include: 

• Account Management 
• Contact Management 
• Opportunity Management 
• Quote and Order Management 
• Campaigns and Segments 

companies who are looking for the above features including end-to-end solutions. See below for additional functionality available in D365 Sales: 

• Activity Tracking: An ERP system is focused mostly on tracking transactions. Whereas A CRM system’s primary focus is on tracking interactions. D365 BC doesn’t offer much in terms of planning and tracking tasks, emails, phone calls and appointments whereas D365 Sales offers many options to do this making account management and business development easier. 

• Microsoft 365 integration, Outlook, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams: D365 Sales has a strong integration to many products in the Microsoft 365 suite (previously Office 365): SharePoint for document management, Teams for collaboration and modern ways of communication between departments, Outlook for productivity and organization such as tasks, emails and appointments, Word and Excel for templates, etc. 
• Mobile App: There are many users these days who are out of the office and want to access or update customer information. D365 Sales includes a robust mobile app that can be accessed via just about any mobile operating system and includes offline data-sync.
• Configurable: D365 Sales is highly configurable which makes it easy to customize to support a wide range of needs and processes; adding new tables, fields, forms, views, charts, and dashboards is very simple and doesn’t require a developer to do so.
• Automation: D365 Sales also includes the ability to automate actions with the use of workflows, business process flows, business rules, and more.
• Marketing automation functionality: Marketing Automation tools integrated directly or work natively with D365 Sales. Having centralized customer data simplifies data segmentation and results in more powerful, targeted marketing. Another benefit of working within one platform is that it’s easy to link to your website and track customer journeys, providing you with more insights into how your prospects consume information, which makes your marketing efforts much more effective. 

• Ability to leverage other D365 applications: Organizations who adopt D365 Sales and have other areas of their business related to Customer Service, Field Service and project management can easily add other apps while using the same platform and having all data in one place.

• The Sales team works in the CRM system whereas The Finance team works in the ERP system.
• Each set of users are only licensed for the system in which they spend their time.
• Integration helps to sync between both systems such as customer information, products, pricing, financials (e.g., order and invoices), etc., to provide the right information to do their jobs.
• The other great advantage of integrating D365 Sales and D365 Business Central is that they are both part of the Microsoft suite of business applications. This means that they communicate and sync with each other seamlessly, leading to higher efficiency and productivity. With both the CRM and ERP systems under one provider, users don’t have to work with different vendors or deal with integration issues.
• By integration it is possible to eliminate manual data entry to generate the business data, which can help to build reports using Power BI integration, custom workflows, forms, and reports can be created to meet specific requirements.

In conclusion, while D365 Business Central has some Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality built-in, it may not be sufficient for organizations looking for end-to-end CRM solutions. For large scale business it’s best to consider integrating with D365 Sale