Gates ushers in live online business with joined up systems and services
1 min read
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says Microsoft Dynamics is gearing manufacturing users for the online and ‘live’ era, with its systems retuned to link personal productivity right into the business systems.
In his keynote address at the first Convergence 2006 event for Europe in Munich this week he said that Microsoft was responding to the challenge of “bridging the last mile” between front office software and back-end systems to maximise productivity.
Microsoft Dynamics business management solutions will, he said, integrate Microsoft Dynamics and Office software and online services to make business applications more usable and their staff more productive.
“Business applications should make companies more agile, but in practice this often isn’t the case,” said Gates. “While a decade’s worth of software innovation has transformed the workplace, linking the work people do every day directly into business processes is still too complicated.
“Microsoft Dynamics solutions connect people and processes so businesses can empower their employees to work with greater speed, effectiveness and intelligence.”
The first set of processes to be available online are marketing, sales and service in Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM. Microsoft adCenter integration, for example, enables Microsoft Dynamics CRM to create online marketing campaigns that place keyword advertising on MSN. And there are similar integrations with Yahoo and Google, with eBay integration allowing Microsoft Dynamics AX customers to use that as an online sales channel.
Beyond these, online collaboration services will enable organisations to connect other business processes to those of customers, partners, suppliers and businesses. At the event, delegates saw Microsoft Dynamics sharing processes via hosted Windows SharePoint Services technology with other businesses, enabling them to create flexible collaboration and supply chain scenarios that would previously have required a lot of work configuration work using extranet, VPN (virtual private networking) and firewall technology.
Microsoft also announced expanded opportunities for its partners by adding a hosted subscription model for Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV, SL and AX. This, said the giant, will enable Microsoft customers to subscribe to a partner-hosted version of Microsoft Dynamics ERP on a monthly basis.
