News and Notes: Dynamics Partners Arrive at Convergence with Questions for Microsoft Executives

On Sunday, Microsoft held a pre-Convergence question and answer session featuring seven Dynamics executives  - Bob Stutz, Wayne Morris, Hal Howard, Mike Ehrenberg, Neil Holloway, Doug Kennedy, and Rich Wickham.  Resellers and ISVs in attendance brought a range of questions and concerns, from the management of enterprise sales to CRM mobile plans to Microsoft's broader efforts at achieving better unification of user experiences across the product line.

New mobile platform features coming to Dynamics CRM in 2013

According to Bob Stutz, CVP for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in Q3 of calendar year 2013 his team will release what he called "a dynamic framework for building mobile apps for sales, marketing, and service," that will support  management  of mobile apps at the platform level and will allow for the building of native interfaces for any device. Mobile plans cover Windows 8, IOS, as well as the other major platforms.

Navigating the new boundaries between enterprise and traditional sales of Dynamics AX

Rich Wickham and Doug Kennedy sat side by side during the Q&A session, fielding a number of the questions on the recent changes to enterprise and traditional sales of Dynamics ERP and CRM.

One partner wondered - who owns Dynamics AX at Microsoft with regard to enterprise agreements?  The partner cited inconsistent processes across regions and a broken process when it comes to CSA fee compensation. The responsibility is going to land in both sides of Microsoft's organization to some extent - enterprise sales and the Dynamics partner organization, said Wickham.  Doug Kennedy noted that Microsoft needs to improve its own enterprise sales ...