Jul 2, 2018
Microsoft recently announced the availability of the Common Data
Service (CDS), as a platform, accessible with a PowerApps P2
license. A few folks got kind of excited, many others said "So
what?", and most have no idea what I am talking about right now.
But our firm has bet the farm on it.
Star Alignment
Several things have happened that have led to where we are today.
First, CDS 1.0 gave way to CDS 2.0, which is what we used to know
of as the XrM Platform. All of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
(CRM) runs on top of this platform, with other Dynamics 365
products making their way there over time. Second, an effort has
been underway to decouple Microsoft's Dynamics 365 First-party apps
from one another, and the underlying "CDS" platform. This would put
them in the same position as third-party applications. Think of the
Enterprise Sales App as now being a standalone product, that can be
"installed" on CDS, either by itself, or alongside other first, or
third-party apps that are similarly installed, like Dynamics 365
for Marketing, Field Service, ClickDimensions, etc.. Or... CDS can
exist, without any first-party apps. I covered some of this in
my last
post, so excuse the redundancy.
A Door Opens
This last bit, about CDS existing without any First-party apps, is
what we are focused on with the new
RapidStart CRM. But before I get
into why we think that makes sense for us and our customers, we
have to take a short stroll down memory lane. I wouldn't be a post
be me, if I didn't drag you back there, but the context is
necessary.
RapidStart 1.0
The original idea for RapidStart, was not original at all. In fact,
other partners had been in the market with many variations of a
"*Start", before we even became a Microsoft Partner in 2011. The
idea is simple, and straight-forward, provide an ability for new
users of Dynamics 365 to get started, with basic features, at a low
cost. For us, like the other partners that were doing similar
things, it was a "door-opener". We'll get you to come on-board with
us, get you setup with some basics, and then help you grow from
there. While some partners had created some I.P., maybe a solution,
for many it was offered as a "Service"... maybe even a loss-leader.
At about this same time, Microsoft was chirping in every partner's
ear, that we needed to create repeatable I.P., otherwise, we were
all doomed. Most partners heard this, many dismissed it as
hyperbole, and most are doing just fine without converting their
project services practice into an application development company.
But, others took the bait, including us.
I.P. Anyone?
RapidStart began in 2011 as a Service offering. Later we created
some I.P. in the form of a solution, and later still, we created
some external I.P., our Wizard Portal. The entire offering was
announced on stage at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in
2015 (what is now called Inspire). With Microsoft on-board,
RapidStart really started taking off, averaging over 100
deployments a year. I will confess, that I got a little nervous
when Microsoft announced the "Business Edition" for SMB, followed
by great relief, when they later dropped the approach. In the
meantime we had continued to evolve the RapidStart offering based
on customer feedback. RapidStart had transcended from a "means to
an end"... it had become an end of its own. At Microsoft's
suggestion, we built a channel and together we signed up over 300
partners globally to resell and support RapidStart. Today
RapidStart is the leading global solution for what Microsoft calls
a
"Packaged Deployment". It is one of the few third-party
apps to receive the
Certified for Microsoft
Dynamics designation... and it's available pretty much
everywhere. Things were looking pretty good.
The Other Shoe
While some larger companies had utilized RapidStart, by and large,
it was mostly SMB focused. When Microsoft made the branding change
to Dynamics 365, a new licensing model debuted with it. With much
higher prices than we had previously seen for Dynamics. To be fair,
this was not just a price increase for the same thing, many
features and capabilities had been added, and a price increase was
long overdue. But most of these new capabilities were Enterprise
focused: so for most SMB customers, it was basically just... a
price increase. Fortunately, Microsoft announced some promotional
pricing for SMBs, dropping their price down to $40. Whew! These
promos were originally intended to fill the gap until
Business Edition was ready to roll out, but once
Microsoft abandoned the Business Edition approach, these promos
were doomed. Indeed, they fell off the price list a few months ago.
While not specifically an SMB motion, Microsoft did create a
licensing version of their Sales App called Sales Professional.
Sales Pro is designed for users with more basic needs.. sounds kind
of like SMB. This new Sales Pro App is priced at $65, 61% higher
than the expired SMB promo. Ouch, that is going to make things
tougher (granted, I know it is not an apples-to-apples comparison).
But, while targeting users with more basic needs, the Sales Pro App
is actually not any different from the full Enterprise App, except
there is a list of written limitations that go with the price. I
wrote about those limitations
here,
and about paper licensing
here.
So where does all that put US today?
Actually... in a much better position. The primary goal of
RapidStart 1.0 was to take an "enterprise level" product, and knock
it down to size, so that companies of any size could actually get
it successfully launched and adopted. While the needs of SMB are
typically less advanced, this was also true for many enterprise
level customers. RapidStart 1.0 did an excellent job of taking
something complex, and making it simple. A lot of the way
RapidStart 1.0 did this, was by "hiding" advanced things. There
were a lot of advanced things in the enterprise apps, so RapidStart
1.0 was a pretty robust solution. But there were some challenges.
Even though the bag looked light, it was actually very heavy, as it
still held all of this hidden complexity. Also, customers were
paying for all of this hidden complexity that they neither needed,
or wanted.
A Platform License
As recent as 6 months ago, I was told by Microsoft that a platform,
without any first-party apps, was never gonna happen. It appears
that they have revisited that stance. With a PowerApps P2 license,
you can indeed provision a CDS environment, without any first-party
apps. For certain ISVs, like us, this "pivot" was a "game-changer".
We have all no doubt heard a lot about PowerApps, mostly in the
context of Canvas Apps. But "Model-Driven" PowerApps was the new
secret sauce for us. This allowed us to approach the problem we are
solving for, from the other side. Instead of starting with a
mountain, and shaving it down to a hill, we started with a bump,
and built our own hill.
RapidStart CRM 2.0
The new RapidStart CRM is a simple-to-use CRM solution, built on
top of CDS, without any first-party apps. The original goal remains
unchanged: "provide an ability for new users of Dynamics 365 to get
started, with basic features, at a low cost". Like RapidStart 1.0,
we expect that many customers who launch with RapidStart,
particularly larger customers, will "graduate" to the full
first-party apps. In fact we are making this transition very simple
to do... just one click. No migration, no downtime, no issues. Of
course the licenses will need to be upgraded to the desired
first-party app licenses. Also, like RapidStart 1.0, we expect many
customers to be perfectly served by RapidStart CRM, particularly
smaller customers, who will continue using it indefinitely. So I
will have a lot more to tell you about RapidStart CRM in future
posts, including our Industry specific "RapidStarts". In the
meantime, you can learn more at
https://rapidstartcrm.com.