Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, as well as updates to its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing services, will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2014.
The new updates brings outside-in insights to sales and marketing professionals so they can understand the impact of their campaigns to customers, giving them more personalized experiences. Salespeople now have the visibility to impact campaigns and targeting with insight into marketing calendars and campaigns.
The updates also enable marketers to more effectively plan and execute marketing campaigns and better track their impact, while strengthening synergies with the sales process. Microsoft Dynamics CRM continues to deepen its interoperability with Microsoft’s productivity applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Yammer, Lync, Skype, SharePoint and Power BI for Office 365.
“Unlike vendors that want to separate businesses by selling them countless different clouds and solutions, we have designed Microsoft Dynamics CRM to facilitate the kind of collaboration that businesses need to thrive and grow,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a statement. “This means that marketers and sellers can work more closely together to engage customers, bridging the chasm between marketing, sales and service to truly deliver end-to-end experiences that customers will love.”
Microsoft Dynamics Marketing also rolled out Sales Collaboration Panel, which allows sellers to provide input into campaigns and targeting. The release also gives marketers the ability to streamline campaign creation and improve segmentation with graphical email editing, A/B testing, integrated offers and approval workflows. Marketers can more effectively collaborate with the click-to-call feature in Lync and easily schedule and execute Webinars as part of their marketing initiatives. The new Interactive Marketing Calendar allows marketers to visualize and manage their end-to-end marketing plans. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing will also be available in Japanese and Russian.
In addition, the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM release provides the ability to recommend products to up-sell and cross-sell across product families, improving their selling effectiveness. The solution enhances the Guided Sales Processes to help steer sellers toward desired outcomes and ensure the enforcement of business rules across all devices. New mobile sales capabilities across mobile platforms increase productivity with flexible RoleTailored dashboards and analytics, as well as personalized home pages.
Expanding into new markets, Microsoft also announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is available for purchase in 17 new markets in Latin America, making the service globally available in more than 65 markets worldwide. The global expansion of Microsoft CRM Online will continue and is expected to reach over 130 markets and in 44 languages by the end of calendar year 2014.