Co-Creation: How Microsoft
continues to refine its
Business Central rough Diamond

More than 1,000 new Customers per Month - Dynamics 365 BC is growing unstoppably

Every six months, Microsoft releases new versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central - its comprehensive cloud ERP solution for business applications. The company designed it for small and medium-sized enterprises and is constantly optimizing it. In April last year, the group released the latest version of the solution and in April 2021, Business Central passed the 15,000 customer mark worldwide. Microsoft is currently acquiring more than 1,000 new customers every month.

With the Move to the Cloud: new Version and Release Policy

Since Microsoft entered the “cloud ERP arena”, the company has also changed its version and release policy. Traditionally, new major versions of the on-premises ERP and CRM solutions were brought to market every two years. In recent years, Microsoft has switched to an annual cycle and finally to a bi-annual cycle. This is the standard in the cloud world, so to speak. What is not at all standard, however, is the amount of innovation that Microsoft releases in the new versions - it goes beyond that.

Continuous Stream of Innovation - even beyond the ERP Area

Due to its huge research and development budgets, Microsoft can afford to employ numerous developers to further improve its business solutions. This results in a continuous stream of innovation - often with a (much) larger volume and greater business impact. And these innovations are by no means limited to the ERP area. It is also increasingly about integration with “environment products” such as Outlook, Teams and Power BI. This is one of the aspects why Microsoft’s platform approach is so attractive to users.

Home office: Integration with Teams and Outlook creates Automation

As most companies now also allow their employees to work from their home office, improved integration with the collaboration tool Microsoft Teams is particularly important. Of course, it is a great advantage that Microsoft not only offers business applications, but also occupies a leading position in office automation with tools such as Outlook and Teams. Other ERP vendors can also connect their solutions with Teams. However, the deep integration of Business Central and Teams is already created “on the drawing board” - i.e. at the very beginning of development. And this creates the real added value for Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers. Useful features such as creative background design in Teams are an additional “nice-to-have”.

Intelligent Data Analysis: Hand in Hand with Power BI

In times of Big Data, it is also becoming increasingly important that you also have a robust BI solution with which you can systematically evaluate and visualize your company data. Microsoft Power BI is ideal for this - because integration is also easy here so that Business Central and Power BI go hand in hand.

Feedback Loop for Continuous Improvement

For the continuous optimization of Dynamics 365 solutions, Microsoft has implemented a so-called feedback loop and promoted its new way of working on the market. The principle of co-creation involves partners and customers in the innovation process from the very beginning: this enables the thousands of implementation partners as well as the tens of thousands of end users worldwide to suggest product improvements, because in order to optimize its products even further, Microsoft actively harnesses the richness of ideas and creativity of its global partners and users.

Also thanks to Co-creation: BC on the Way to becoming the best ERP System in the World

In the past, the development department was still hidden away in a kind of ivory tower. This made it difficult to push through new ideas. Today, Microsoft product management reviews these feedback loops on a daily basis. And with every new product release, it reports that more and more ideas from partners and customers are being added, which have now become part of the solution. For Microsoft, this is a great new way to improve Business Central even further - to refine the rough diamond and build it into the [best ERP system in the world for SMEs] in the near future.