Lifecycle Services coming to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NAV

Lifecycle Services (LCS), Microsoft's Azure-based toolset for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers to manage their solution from pre-sales to support, will be coming to Dynamics CRM and NAV. Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) CVP for marketing Wayne Morris made the announcement during a WPC 2014 keynote session on Monday, but added that further details of the LCS expansion are not yet available.

Kevin Hall, CEO of Dynamics partner eBECS took the stage to explain how his firm began using LCS as a pre-sales tool. He was joined by Microsoft's Pepijn Richter.

"LCS is fairly hidden, but it is an excellent tool," said Hall. "We use LCS to accelerate the sales cycle and bring consistency to your delivery processes," Hall said. He noted that in competition with SAP, the process modeling and process library have helped convince prospects that AX can hold its own in terms of process flexibility and best practices.

Richter showed off some of the recently released enhancements to LCS, including new process sets for manufacturing and retail. He said the current process library now has over six hundred business processes covering a range of industries and methodologies.

Hall added that for eBECS, their use of LCS in pre-sales has reduced the company's cost of sales by identifying and building out business processes in much less time than before. He also acknowledged that his organization still had parts of LCS left to adopt. The company wants to take the tool ...