Channel Post speaks with Karim Talhouk, Business Solutions Lead at Microsoft Gulf on how Dynamics 365 can help organizations optimise their business.
Channel Post (CP): What is Microsoft’s strategy for digital transformation?
Karim Talhouk (KT): Digital transformation is leading the latest technology trends globally and Microsoft recognized it as an opportunity for businesses to better engage with its customers and enhance their processes for better returns and smooth functioning. Our latest offering, Microsoft Dynamics 365, provides organisations with a cost-effective way to accelerate digital transformation and achieve their business goals. Through extensive integration with Office 365, it enables businesses to streamline their processes and enhance their productivity and efficiency. As part of our strategy, we also enable our customers to be at par with market demands by helping them optimise their product so that it is more relevant to the market.
(CP): What are the key features of Dynamics 365?
(KT): The most important feature of Dynamics 365 is the integration of enterprise resource-planning (ERP) and customer-relationship management (CRM) into one seamless application. We are proud to say that Microsoft is the first vendor in the history of business applications to have accomplished this. Dynamics 365 is mobile enabled and comes with Intelligent Cloud integration which makes it a very useful solution for business optimization.
(CP): How can Dynamics 365 help in generating new business opportunities?
(KT): With Dynamics 365, Microsoft enables businesses to meet the changing needs of customers, innovate in real-time and therefore capture new opportunities. Choosing Dynamics 365 ultimately results in meaningful benefits that enable organizations to empower employees, optimize operations, and reinvent products and business models.
(CP): What kind of adoption of Dynamics 365 do you see in this region?
(KT): We are very optimistic about the adoption of this product as it comes with all the features required for business enhancement in one integrated bundle. It also includes intelligent applications that are purpose-built for specific business functions. Majid al Futtaim and Commercial Bank of Dubai are among the early adopters of Dynamics 365 in this region, who have understood its potential and want to implement it to enhance their product with better customer engagement.
(CP): How do you educate businesses to adopt this solution?
(KT): We invest most of our efforts in developing a strong and educated channel. By organising regular training sessions, we make sure that our partners are well equipped to understand our product. In addition to this, we also have a sales team that directly engages with organisations to demonstrate our product and showcase its value to them.
(CP): Dynamics 365 will be deeply integrated with Office 365, Cortana intelligence, etc. In addition to this will you be offering any apps for back-office functions (marketing, sales, finance, etc) as well?
(KT): Yes, with this product we are able to offer a complete business application suite to our customers on a cloud platform. Dynamics 365 is designed to digitize and integrate CRM and ERP cloud offerings into one cloud service with specific, purpose-built applications that are designed for various roles, industries and key business functions, including sales, customer service, finance, field service, operations, marketing and project service automation.
(CP): What support do you offer post implementation?
(KT): Post-implementation support is mostly handled by our partners, however, we do have a dedicated technical team in Dubai that directly engages with our customers to offer support. With Microsoft’s consultancy services, we provide our customers with quality assurance and project management services after implementation.
