What Sets Microsoft Dynamics NAV CRM Apart from Dynamics CRM: Different Functionality for Different Stages of Business Growth

Companies looking to implement customer relationship management systems are often puzzled as to whether to use the relationship module (RM) that comes with Dynamics NAV, or to implement an additional application in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The dilemma occurs because both applications provide CRM functionality. But in reality, the CRM functionality in Microsoft Dynamics NAV is not the same as that in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, according to Scott Pugmire, Dynamics Product Technical Advisor, Microsoft Corp.

He told a recent session of the NAV User Group that the sales, marketing, and customer service functionality available with Dynamics NAV, he says, is more geared toward the fundamental CRM-type functionality companies need to run and grow.

With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, there are a variety of optional features such as campaign management, contact classification, opportunity management, task management, and many more. These features help the sales, marketing and customer service staff build customer relationships, find new customers, encourage loyalty, and keep them coming back.  The product also has customer service options to help staff respond quickly to customer-service issues.

"Several years ago NAV had a version of CRM internally built in," Pugmire said. "It hasn't been boosted in functionality for quite awhile, but it was robust when it came out so it's still up to par with a lot of standards especially in the area of field service management."

In general, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is specifically designed for customer relationship management with high levels of sales, marketing and customer service functionality. It's highly configurable and has a wide range of tools and features for everything from lead-management to resource scheduling. And as well as being deployed as an on-premise CRM solution, hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also available.

Pugmire offered a list of functionality differences between the two systems to help customers determine which is the best fit for different type organizations.

• "If you're focused on financial and operations in addition to CRM, NAV is the better way to go," he said. "It's going to be stronger than CRM and there are more integration points. But if your main pain point is around sales force automation, customer service from a case management standpoint, Dynamics CRM is going to be stronger."
• Companies that want workflow, should look to CRM because it will tie all their process together, he said. "If you have to use workflow to collaborate all those different departments within your sales and service group, CRM is definitely going to be stronger," Pugmire said. "If you want to control which group works with what customer, which group works with which campaign and you're assigning this off to people, NAV is more geared toward that although both products can do that."
• Companies that want to focus on field service management should definitely use Dynamics NAV RM, Pugmire said.
• "If you're looking at the capability of being on the web, running offline and then coming back online and synching up, mobility needs using smartphones, things like that, Dynamics CRM is the way to go," he said. "If you want integration tightly to Exchange and give yourself that single agent desktop-that look and feel-then Dynamics CRM is the way to go."
• Companies looking for the native Microsoft user experience--the easy-to-learn, easy-to-grasp and comprehend familiar experience you get with Microsoft Office, Dynamics wins out there, Pugmire said.
• "To use some reporting tools like Microsoft Office and SharePoint Services, NAV integrates with both of those, but Dynamics CRM integrates even tighter and you can do a lot more in terms of reporting than with NAV," he said. "But NAV does integrate tightly with Office and definitely with SharePoint as well."
• As for customization with Microsoft .NET, if you have an internal person who's a .NET wizard-than you can do that with web services technology or .NET with Dynamics CRM.
• "Microsoft directly will host Dynamics CRM, but currently it doesn't host any of the ERP products that it provides," he said. "So NAV cannot be directly hosted by Microsoft, but NAV and CRM can be hosted by partners. The difference is you're not paying upfront, you're paying a monthly fee, which is pretty low. We really are pushing cloud. We think that's the future of deployment for all software going forward."