For Microsoft's Complete Dynamics Retail Story Look to CRM as well as AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX may have the specialized retail identity these days, but as we learned recently with the Dynamics Retail event, Dynamics AX does  not own the full retail story.  And Dynamics CRM product manager Craig Dewar wants us to remember that many of the key capabilities of  Microsoft's retail vision cannot be achieved without Dynamics CRM. 

Overall, Microsoft has identified eight different retail workloads that include thing like multi-channel customer care and clienteling.  "AX for Retail does some of them, CRM does some, and by connecting them you can make them work seamlessly," Dewar believes.  Just as

Dynamics AX for Retail focuses on functional areas like point of sale (POS), store operations, supply chain, logistics, and other modules.  And today they include a customer loyalty module as well.

Different retailers may be looking to improve different sets of workloads at different times, and if they are Dynamics AX customer, they may need to consider a CRM solution to help close the gaps.  For example, a B2C company interested in improving social marketing and hooking that into call center information may be better served focusing on what a CRM solution can offer in terms of navigating the social graph and playing the role of system-of-record for customer data. 

Dewar sees the business needs in retail driving integrated Dynamics solutions over the long term, from customers starting both with Dynamics CRM and AX.

"Over time, we are going to be in there saying, you've done multi-channel retail with Dynamics AX, now look at adding in multichannel customer care and adding in social and clienteling and adding in these different pieces to form ...