Familiarity Breeds Lower Costs - Klaus Holse Andersen, Microsoft

Medium-sized companies have been put off by the cost and complexity of business intelligence systems in the past. However, as Klaus Holse Andersen, corporate vice president of Microsoft business solutions sales and operations, explains, that is no longer the case.

In the three years since Microsoft Dynamics was launched, we have seen healthy business growth for our set of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products and we are clearly gaining market share from established rivals.

We are providing a cost-effective and cohesive portfolio of easy-to-use products for a connected business that are strongly integrated with all the other Microsoft software that people use in their daily working lives.

INTEGRATED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

In the past, users have been pushed into navigating business intelligence systems that have been organised by process, but we have organised them by role. Thus with Microsoft Dynamics, the analysts can use the familiar Excel interface with which they are familiar to pull down any data they want from the system to run their models and analyses.

Likewise, salesmen will still be working within their customary Outlook user interface, but which is tightly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide integrated business intelligence.

INTERFACE FAMILIARITY

This immediate familiarity with the interface drastically reduces the amount of training required to benefit from the applications. It is enhanced by our online e-learning courses, which allow our customers to understand and take fuller advantage of the power of Microsoft Dynamics more quickly. This ease of use also radically reduces the initial cost of ownership.

Until recently, many medium-sized companies in our target market did not buy sophisticated ERP systems because they could not sustain the cost. Now they have Microsoft Dynamics with a great deal of functionality straight out the box, with lower costs per user.

In addition, we have thousands of partners who are using Microsoft Dynamics’ very open-system orientated architecture to develop and tailor the software for very specific business needs, which is known as ‘micro-vertical integration’.

The common thread throughout is the ease of implementation and the simplicity of using familiar interfaces to do much more powerful work. We are serving what we call ‘the well connected business’.

SOFTWARE AGILITY AND LONGEVITY

It is important that we allow our customers to take the vision they have for their enterprise and turn it into reality.

The way to achieve that is to make sure that the software is agile enough to follow that vision and be reconfigured when that vision changes. Customers do not have to go out and buy new modules. They get longevity from a system that people have already learned to use, and Microsoft Dynamics will work with any Windows operating system and Office application that Microsoft supports.

HIGHLY COST EFFECTIVE

It perhaps says a lot about the power versus cost of Microsoft Dynamics that very big companies are also buying it. Typically, they have high end central systems supporting the business hub, but hundreds of subsidiary branches worldwide that do not need such complex solutions. They are implementing Microsoft Dynamics because they want a lower total cost of ownership.

You also have large enterprises that do not have complex businesses processes for whom Microsoft Dynamics is proving an highly cost effective solution.

Even in the finance space, Microsoft Dynamics will work with highly complex treasury systems. But its biggest impact on corporate finance is the way it is slashing the total cost of ownership for powerful and sophisticated business intelligence systems.