Business Central includes CRM features alongside its core ERP functionality, which raises a reasonable question: Is a separate CRM application necessary?
This article compares the CRM capabilities of Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales across lead management, opportunity tracking, forecasting, sales productivity, integration, and marketing.
The two products serve different purposes. Business Central is a finance and operations system with built-in CRM. Dynamics 365 Sales is a dedicated CRM application designed around the sales process. The differences in depth and flexibility become clear when compared side by side.
Business Central CRM Capabilities
Business Central is Microsoft’s finance and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for small and medium-sized organisations.
While financial and supply chain management are at its core, Business Central also includes basic CRM capabilities. As detailed in the Microsoft licensing guide, these include:
- Business Inbox for Outlook
- Contact Classification
- Email Logging
- Relationship Management
- Campaign Management and Pricing
- Contact Management
- Interaction/Document Management
- Task Management
- Opportunity Management
With inbuilt integration between these CRM capabilities and core ERP functionality, Business Central offers a connected lead-to-cash functionality.
When to Choose Dynamics 365 Sales vs Business Central
Business Central is, first and foremost, an ERP system that includes basic CRM features. In contrast. Dynamics 365 Sales is a purpose-built CRM application, so it offers a broader set of sales CRM capabilities.
Let’s explore the main differences:
Lead Management
- Business Central: standard lead tracking, notes and lead qualification.
- Choose Dynamics 365 Sales for customisable lead scoring, conversion processes, lead routing, guided lead qualification workflows and LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration.
Opportunity Management
- Business Central: track essential opportunity details, including stages, expected close dates, statuses and notes.
- Dynamics 365 Sales adds automated opportunity scoring, tracking sales interactions by type and customisable dashboards.
Sales Reporting and Forecasting
- Business Central includes a standard set of sales reports that allow basic customisation.
- Dynamics 365 Sales offers fully customisable reports and dashboards, including advanced forecasting and territorial analysis.
Sales Productivity
- Business Central enables email/task sync between Outlook and Dynamics and basic functionality to store and access customer documents.
- With Dynamics 365 Sales, you can access CRM functionality and data directly from Outlook using a dedicated app. Other differences include using sales sequences to manage work queues and increase consistency when handling lead journeys.As part of its integration with Microsoft 365, D365 Sales works with Microsoft Teams to increase collaboration with anyone in your organisation.
Additional integration options include SharePoint for document management, which enables version control and real-time collaboration.
Finally, Dynamics 365 Sales also includes Copilot assistance to help sellers save time. Examples include summarising leads/opportunities, catching up on recent changes to records, enhanced Outlook integration and using conversational Copilot chat to find information.
Integration
- Business Central combines out-of-the-box ERP and CRM integration and offers a pre-built connection for Dynamics 365 Sales.
- Dynamics 365 Sales is built on the Power Platform and offers native integration across other Dynamics 365 modules, including Customer Service, Field Service, Customer Insights, and Power Apps.
Marketing Capabilities
- Business Central basic marketing functions track campaigns through each stage using status codes. Segment rules can be used to select a group of contacts that meet specific criteria. Within each campaign, discounts can be set on individual items. Business Central doesn’t include functionality to send marketing emails to contacts in bulk.
- Dynamics 365 Sales works directly with Customer Insights (formerly D365 Marketing) to connect processes that increase alignment between sales and marketing teams. D365 Sales can also be easily connected or natively integrated with third-party marketing automation services, including Click, Mailchimp, and dotDigital. In-built marketing features for Dynamics 365 Sales include marketing lists and the ability to run quick campaigns, including email marketing.
Business Central and D365 Sales: Selecting the right CRM product
Deciding between Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales depends on your goals, the scale of operations, and specific requirements.
Business Central CRM is a compelling solution if you are a small or medium-sized organisation that wants to unify CRM, financial, and operational capabilities within a single platform.
However, if improving the efficiency of your sales operations is a priority, then Dynamics 365 Sales offers a clear advantage through its workflow management and Power Platform automation. Another distinct advantage is its built-in marketing features and flexibility to connect with marketing automation services.
D365 Sales also helps sellers save time through its integration with Outlook and other Microsoft 365 tools and embedded Copilot, which also provide additional insights.
In some instances, a combination of Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales will provide the best fit, with the Microsoft connector to keep data in sync.
How we help
Many organisations find that the best outcome is running Dynamics 365 Sales alongside Business Central rather than choosing one or the other. Microsoft provides a built-in connector that keeps data synchronised between the two systems, so your finance and operations data stays in Business Central while your sales team works in an application built for them.
ServerSys specialises in Dynamics 365 Sales. If this comparison has raised questions about whether your current CRM setup is giving your sales team what they need, we can help you evaluate the options. Contact us to arrange a conversation.
