From "time to market" to "time to value"!

Kirill Tatarinov, Executive Vice President Microsoft Business Solutions during his keynote in Barcelona.The objective of the Convergence is on the one hand to give participants an update on the latest developments in Microsoft's Dynamics environment and on the other hand to promote the necessary dialog between the business and IT representatives present.Cloud services in demandKirill Tatarinov, Executive Vice President Microsoft Business Solutions, said in his keynote that the megatrends mobile, social, big data and cloud have clearly materialized in the last twelve months. What has been achieved in terms of productivity in business life over the last twenty years with the launch of "Office" is unprecedented in the software world. The fact that the entire solution has now been moved to the cloud with "Office 365" underscores the development we are seeing with regard to cloud services in general. However, the Office productivity just mentioned must also become a reality in the areas of marketing, sales and service.CRM: Time to deliver"CRM talk" is history. Now we have to deliver and the investments in solutions have to pay off - "CRM Walk" is the order of the day. We can be curious about what "CRM 2015", which will be launched in December 2014, will bring in terms of functions and, above all, convenience. It is already clear that by the end of December, 27 (industry) templates will be available to help companies get a jump-start on implementation. It was also communicated that the limitation of Dynamics CRM in the area of marketing, and specifically with regard to the management of campaigns, has been eliminated with the integrated marketing pilot.Dynamic CRM solutionA significant step by Microsoft is the effort to map the "silo permeability" between the marketing, sales and service departments also in the Dynamics CRM solution - which is already implemented in parts today. This example shows how technology can help to support organizational challenges in companies.Microsoft is involved in a network between customers, partners and over 1000 educational organizations (Academic Alliance) to reduce the European shortage of IT expertise.At last year's Convergence event in Barcelona, Microsoft management promised to invest heavily in the expansion of Dynamics CRM. My impression at the end of this year's Convergence is that Microsoft did not promise too much.