Top Microsoft Dynamics ERP & CRM News of 2023

If there is one word to describe Microsoft in 2023, it would be Copilot. Messaging for its AI brand spans Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Teams, Azure, Microsoft 365, Bing, and beyond. AI dominated Microsoft presentations, blog posts, and earnings calls, with cloud services not far behind.

If MSDW article popularity rankings are any measure, the Business Applications community did care about Copilot progress. But 2023 also mattered for other reasons. Partner program updates brought even more focus to cloud migration of ERP and CRM. Channel M&A continued to signal partner priorities and outlook as customer trends evolved in the Dynamics space. And other architectural and functional updates from the year are likely to bring interesting new options to customers.

Let’s look back at the most popular articles on MSDW in 2023 to understand more about the technology and the ecosystem trends that mattered to our readers.

Microsoft Dynamics passes $5 billion in revenue: New Business Apps performance data (July 27)

Microsoft has not shared customer base counts on Dynamics products for many years, and the chances of those figures coming back have mostly gone to zero now that Business Apps are an element of the company’s earnings reports. While the ecosystem typically settles for untethered numbers like revenue growth percentages and customer count “floors” (“more than 30,000…”), in July the company did reveal something more. They reported that Dynamics is now a $5 billion business, "with our customer experience, service, and finance & supply chain businesses all surpassing $1 billion in annual sales," CFO Amy Hood told analysts after announcing Q4 and full year results.

Microsoft extends Copilot AI features across Microsoft 365, Power Platform (March 16)

Every Business Apps product now has a range of copilot experiences, ranging from niche to broadly useful. And Microsoft CVP Charles Lamanna recently predicted in an interview with Microsoft MVP Steve Mordue that “we’ll have 100 more Copilot features just in Dynamics and Power Platform…over the next six months.”

One could argue that the days of Microsoft extending Copilot, as noted in this March 2023 article, are over, and that the effort is now on fortifying the enhancing, refining, and the work of adding copilot experiences to solutions has just begun. While not every customer knows why they want AI copilots in their users’ lives, many will be willing to trial Microsoft’s latest ideas and decide for themselves if they are worth the price, both in terms of subscription costs and user adoption burden.

Where should customers start? Summarization stands out as an ideal first use case, according to some. Another good option could be a generative scenario like sales and marketing emails, product descriptions, or coding suggestions.

Copilot news in 2023 dealt with issues like security, the ongoing introduction of new features, personnel changes, pricing, and safety.

• Microsoft sheds more light on Dynamics 365 Copilot's security and privacy guardrails
• Leader of Dynamics 365 Copilot AI technology leaves Microsoft for SAP
• Microsoft reveals new AI tools for ERP and CRM with Dynamics 365 Copilot
• Microsoft emphasizes AI safety in planning launch of Dynamics 365 Copilot for Business Central
• Microsoft Commercial CFO talks Copilot pricing and holding early market advantages in AI

2023: Microsoft's pursuit of new Business Apps opportunities (January 9)

Coming out of 2022, 2023 seemed poised to be a year of contrasts. Microsoft appeared to have ambitions to both introduce new non-Dynamics business applications and reposition existing solutions for the future. The lead item in this piece, related to the future of Viva Sales, shows how quickly Microsoft shifted its product positioning this year. Viva Sales became Microsoft Sales Copilot in July 2023, and then in November it became Microsoft Copilot for Sales, alongside Copilot for Service and Copilot for Microsoft 365. The changes reflect a dual approach of Copilot products and copilot features within existing products like D365 Customer Service and D365 Sales.

Microsoft to end new Dynamics GP sales in 2025 and 2026 (April 5)

Microsoft set an end point for new GP sales when it alerted partners of plans to the end the sale of Dynamics GP to new customers over the next three years. Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises solutions will also be shifting to subscription-based licensing only, ending the perpetual license option.

Existing customers can continue to run their GP and BC on-prem systems, add users, and license more capabilities. As GP supporters have repeatedly stressed, this decision does not require existing GP customers to make any changes to their plans for the foreseeable future. Knowing that the product has no meaningful improvements in its future will matter to some customers, but others have already committed to getting the most out of their existing ERP investment by running their business with these systems for years to come.

Build 2023: Microsoft Fabric to offer SaaS approach to using analytics and data services (May 23)

Fabric reached GA late in 2023, so the real story of its uptake among Microsoft customers will start to play out in 2024 as customers factor in its value proposition of a more SaaS-oriented platform that combines its own lakehouse offering with ADLS Gen 2, analytics, warehousing, and data factory, and reporting.