After Dreamforce: How Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stays Ahead of Salesforce on Productivity

When Microsoft announced Dynamics CRM 2016 two weeks ago, the emphasis on productivity enhancements seemed like perhaps little more than an effort to parcel out the buzz on a release that promises a broad range of updates in December.

But with CEO Satya Nadella set to deliver a keynote address at Dreamforce 2015 ten days later to show off Microsoft's latest productivity tools working with Salesforce CRM, the urgency couldn't have been higher to get the Dynamics CRM productivity story out first.

The Microsoft-Salesforce partnership, we learned from last week's Dreamforce event, remains strong. The two firms have committed to ongoing improvements in integrating the Office productivity suite - the same software bundle that for so many years had supposedly set Microsoft's CRM apart from its rivals.

But the Dynamics CRM team's pre-emptive message was clear: we provide more Office productivity more quickly and with better features than our main CRM competitor.

Webcast Sept 25: Get an MVP perspective on Dynamics CRM 2016 at our live panel discussion.

The top line story out of Dreamforce is that Microsoft will continue to work with Salesforce to tie Microsoft productivity tools like Outlook, OneNote, Skype for Business, Delve, and Windows 10 into the Salesforce platform.  And they will improve on previously announced integrations for Power BI, Excel, SharePoint and OneDrive.

Let's piece together how those announcements compares with Microsoft's own productivity ...