In a letter to Microsoft employees today, CEO Satya Nadella announced a major restructuring of its business, including the unbundling of Microsoft Business Solutions, the group responsible for the Dynamics line of business systems. This post outlines why this is a positive move for Dynamics and the greater Microsoft.
Although a requirements template may appear to be a time-saving way to get to a requirements specification, this approach can actually make the project longer and cost more than it should. Moreover, they can actually lead to the wrong ERP system being selected. In this post, we identify the problems with the the use ERP requirements templates and outline a better way for specifying requirements for new ERP systems.
What do ERP customers choose when they can freely choose between traditional on-premises deployment under a perpetual license and cloud deployment under a subscription agreement? How are these preferences changing? One vendor’s experience shows that customers are turning more and more to cloud deployment and, especially, subscription pricing.
Over the past several months, a debate has been raging about whether SAP should offer its new user apps, collectively called Fiori, at no charge to customers under its maintenance program. This post summarizes the arguments, including factors not often recognized, along with recommendations on what SAP should do in its own best interest and what it all means for SAP customers.
With three strategic acquisitions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can now be considered a complete offering for sales, marketing and customer service. In addition, Microsoft’s CRM offering is showing its ability to move up-market into large enterprises. This post assesses Microsoft’s latest offering for CRM.
The major enterprise software providers promote their pre-built integration as a selling point in capturing new business from existing clients. But do suites always win? Based on recent deals observed in our work with enterprise software buyers, it appears that the integration story is not resonating as it once did.
Software-as-a-service simplifies much of the complexity involved in implementing and using enterprise software. However, some SaaS providers may be neglecting key elements of success for buyers. This post shares lessons learned from recent from recent SaaS deal negotiations performed by Strativa consultants.
CEO Steve Ballmer recently announced corporate-wide organizational changes at Microsoft. Although the reorg includes changes across many Microsoft functions, what does it mean specifically for the Dynamics group, which is responsible for Microsoft’s business applications?
Salesforce.com and Oracle this week announced a “new strategic partnership.” For their mutual customers, the announcement represents a welcome thawing of relations between the two companies. But it remains to be seen whether it represents a strategic change of direction for Salesforce.com (SFDC). Not a Radical Departure for Salesforce.com The press release is quite short, […]
Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) has many necessary elements in place with its Dynamics product line to continue its move into large enterprises, but it still needs to fill functional gaps in its product offerings. In this post we discuss Microsoft’s progress – and its limitations – in the large enterprise market.