Microsoft Dynamics delivers essential business solutions through apps, devices and services Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday opened its sold-out Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2014 conference with a keynote address from Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president, Microsoft Business Solutions.   The event offers attendees hundreds of sessions showcasing new innovations the company will deliver in the coming months that will help businesses succeed in a customer-centric world. In his keynote featuring Microsoft Dynamics customers, Chobani, City Harvest, Delta Air Lines, Lotus F1 Team, New Belgium Brewery and Weight Watchers, Tatarinov called on businesses to change their approach and adopt a customer centric view to enable them to deliver meaningful customer interactions. In this era of the customer, he underscored the importance of technology combined with cultural changes in the organization as critical for businesses to gain insight into their customer’s needs and deliver experiences that help build lasting relationships. To help businesses deliver amazing customer experiences Microsoft unveiled a comprehensive set of new capabilities across its business solutions portfolio. The additions will allow organisations to take advantage of cloud services, run agile operations that exceeds customer needs, and help engage them on their terms across the web, social, apps and mobile fronts to help fuel growth. “Technology has changed the social fabric, transforming how we engage, connect, and interact with one another,” Tatarinov said. “In this era of the customer, experience is the new currency. As a devices and services company, Microsoft is best positioned to help businesses deliver amazing experiences for people at work and on the go.” At the event, the company showcased Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 (expected to be available on May 1, 2014), its flagship ERP solution. This update introduces a new end-to-end apps and services framework, allowing businesses to develop modern apps for specific scenarios and mobile devices that can easily and securely connect with Microsoft Dynamics AX. Adding to the growing number of mobile apps, the company announced a new app for shop floor operators that lets them report on production jobs with standard touch-enabled Windows devices. To rapidly serve more customers in new segments and emerging markets, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 adds support for deployment on Windows Azure via infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This capability delivers high availability of data and disaster recovery, as critical business data is stored in the cloud, and can be retrieved by businesses virtually anytime, anywhere. Pre-configured environments are also available on Windows Azure, for businesses to speed deployment, and significantly reduce time to value from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 for demonstration, development, testing and production usage. Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services , available with this release helps organizations improve the predictability of Microsoft Dynamics AX implementations by simplifying and standardising processes, delivering integrated experiences for serviceability and support to all customers. Early adoption of this service has demonstrated that customers using these services have been able to significantly reduce time to resolution, and in more than 65 per cent of cases customers have been able to resolve issues on their own. Reinforcing the value Microsoft Dynamics AX is delivering to businesses, Microsoft released a commissioned Forrester TEI (Total Economic Impact) study. Based on customer surveys and interviews Forrester determined that a composite organisation using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 had a three year ROI of 92 per cdnt, a payback period of 21 months and benefits of over $6 million, highlighting the real benefit and time to value delivered by this solution for customers. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, is a significant step for the entire industry towards the future of ERP, with apps, devices and services in the cloud as cornerstones of new capabilities. The advancements it offers in business logic and data model, cloud and new apps, services and devices scenarios, all set the stage for continued future innovation evolving directly from the functionality being delivered today. Delta Air Lines, a Customer Excellence Award winner for Enterprise category at Convergence 2014, is an example of a Microsoft customer that is using devices and services to deliver amazing experiences to their customers. Designed and developed by Avanade on the Microsoft Dynamics for Retail mobile point-of-sale platform and running on Nokia Lumia devices powered by Windows Phone 8 Delta is transforming the in-flight experience for its passengers and bringing flight attendants closer to the company’s 160 million plus customers per year. “Our mission is to provide safe and efficient transportation and outstanding customer service on over 5,800 flights a day to our customers on six continents,” said Richard H. Anderson, Delta’s chief executive officer. “Technology is extremely important in helping us connect with our customers and deliver an experience that exceeds their expectations. Microsoft was the only company that offered a combination of devices and services that has enabled Delta's 19,000 in-flight professionals to meet our customers' needs on board every flight.” Delivering on the promise of rapid innovation to more than 40,000 customers and nearly four million Microsoft Dynamics CRM users, the company today reinforced the upcoming capabilities in the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM expected in the second quarter of 2014. This release introduces Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, to help businesses drive and manage their marketing campaigns; Microsoft Social Listening to empower more employees with deeper insights and new capabilities such as the Unified Service Desk to help businesses engage with and care for customers in a personalized manner on virtually any device, anywhere. Giving customers more value, Microsoft Social Listening will be offered as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online professional licenses at no additional charge; on-premises customers can get Microsoft Social Listening for an incremental cost of $20 per user per month*. Microsoft is also introducing a new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise license, priced at $200 per user per month*. This offers customers the most comprehensive set of capabilities, including all functionality offered in the Professional license plus access to Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and the new Unified Service Desk. As part of the event, Microsoft also announced that the next update of Microsoft Dynamics GP, due in the second quarter of 2014, will deliver new identity management and workflow capabilities, together with new self-service companion apps later this year. The company also highlighted the investments being made by leading global independent software vendor (GISV) and system integrators (SI) such as IBM, Avanade, Capgemini and Hitachi, in building global Microsoft Dynamics practices. In the last six months, GISV’s, ISV as well as Microsoft Consulting Services have partnered to increase the number of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics AX consulting and implementation professionals giving customers high quality resources to implement their business applications worldwide. By Mai Chi, VIR