Standards and Interoperability for CRM

Tomorrow I will be presenting on "Standards and Interoperability for CRM" at the CRM Evolution Conference in Washington, DC. Standards are important for many technologies, but in business software standards are often sacrificed as companies compete with one another for a share of the market.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has not been known as a field which fosters cooperation among competitors such as Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, and others. But at the same time, standards can benefit organizations that rely on CRM for engaging with customers. Privacy regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compel compel companies to treat customer data with greater care than ever before, and privacy breaches have become routine and costly.

Acceptance of CRM standards for data make it easier to share data among applications and build data warehouses or data lakes which bring together many sources of data into one pool for discerning new patterns and relationships.

Last September, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP announced the Open Data Initiative (ODI) which called for an industry consortium to adopt shared standards and facilitate data exchange among their products. Other companies joined the effort, and a Partner Advisory Council was formed to contribute to the ODI effort.

Each of the lead partners of ODI is prominent in one sector of the CRM/ERP world. Adobe is prominent in marketing automation software, especially for website engagement with consumers. Microsoft Dynamics 365 has gained significant market share for CRM in recent years. SAP remains a global leader in ERP for large companies and the manufacturing sector.

The proliferation of standards will remove some technical barriers to data integration, and reduce the cost of enterprise data efforts. It will also create opportunities to share data schemas for vertical markets which can be used to create new apps in the future.

Companies that do not join the ODI may create standards initiatives of their own which compete with ODI. We are still in the early stages of CRM standards, but they are showing promise and moving quickly to become practical for CRM users.

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises. These concepts also apply to Power Apps. The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps. This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant . A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni

Understanding Dynamics 365 and Office 365 Admin Roles

Managing Dynamics 365 instances If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) in the Microsoft cloud, you need to understand how your Dynamics instances relate to Office 365 and choose which of your administrators receives which roles and permissions to manage Dynamics 365. In on premises deployments, your network administrator would create and delete user accounts. The Dynamics 365 admin would then assign permissions to users in Dynamics 365. This post explains three administrator roles: Office 365 Global Administrator Dynamics 365 System Administrator Dynamics 365 Service Administrator You may think that the Dynamics 365 system administrator would have power to do all the actions needed to manage Dynamics 365, but this is not the case. What's different in Microsoft cloud deployments is that licenses and user accounts are managed in Office 365 by an Office 365 Global Administrator. This role is analogous to a network administrator for an on premises

My Favorite Microsoft Power Apps Bloggers and their Blogs

by James Townsend Updated 7/5/2022 Microsoft Power Apps is one of my favorite subjects, and I enjoy reading blog posts from members of this thriving technical community. Here are some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs: The Official Microsoft Power Apps Blog I have to start with the official Microsoft Power Apps blog. It has many contributors, largely Microsoft program manager, including frequent posters Denise Moran , Greg Lindhorst , Kartik Kanakasabesan , and Adrian Orth . This is the place to go for product announcements, updates and technical how-to for a broad range of Power Apps topics. April Dunnam April Dunnam was formerly focused on SharePoint and now devoting herself to Power Platform. April offers highly understandable explanations of Power Platform, Dataverse and other top Power Apps topics. She joined Microsoft in late 2019 and has a thriving YouTube channel . Carl De Souza Power Apps Blog and eBook This is one of the most extensive and best organized blo

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