Microsoft Adds Operational Workloads to Dynamics CRM with Project Service Solution

If you've been paying attention to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM roadmap and announcements surrounding the Spring 2016 Release, you may have learned about Microsoft's latest plans to build additional operational workloads into the platform as part of their "unified service" vision.  This article will provide an overview of a key component of this vision, the new Dynamics CRM Project Service solution. A second article will compare and contrast this new offering to the Microsoft Dynamics AX Service Industries ERP solution. 

Before we get too far into exploring this topic, you may ask what exactly CRM Project Service is.  In a nutshell, CRM Project Service extends the Dynamics CRM platform to enable it to function as a single system of engagement for sales, project delivery, resourcing, and billing activities.  In essence, Microsoft now offers a solution to manage the entire lifecycle of their client-facing services projects within its CRM platform.  

To understand Microsoft's motivation for investing in the development of CRM Project Service, it is important to recognize Microsoft's vision of enabling organizations to provide transformative customer experiences by managing all facets of their customer-facing services from within a single software application.  By expanding to a project service vision, Dynamics CRM will broaden its scope to include managing traditional customer service activities such as case or incident management as well as field-based services where you're providing in-field maintenance, repair, or preventive maintenance services and project-based professional services that require proactively manage client engagements, deliverables, resources, and billing.

Microsoft began moving in this direction with their