Jul 3, 2018
Part of the huge April wave of feature releases for Dynamics 365,
were some license tweaks and a some new license types. I already
discussed the new Dynamics 365 for Marketing license
here, but in this post, I want to focus on the new Dynamics 365
Sales Professional License.
A Little History
Bear with me, but we need to take a short walk down memory lane to
get back to today. When Dynamics CRM Online first launched in 2011
it was aggressively priced at $44/user/month. Compared to
Salesforce this was a real bargain. It was also one offering that
included multiple workloads, including Sales and Service. Some time
later the price was increased to $65, or $50 as an addon to Office
365. I think there was some customer concern that the price was
actually too low for the product to be very good. If the competing
product is more than double, then this must be a lesser product.
When the brand consolidation to Dynamics 365 took place, the Sales
app was renamed Enterprise Sales app and the price shot up to $95.
Still less than Salesforce, but not so much less that customers
were leery of it. To offset this jump several "transitional"
licenses were introduced to "step up" existing customers over time.
In addition, a new "Promo" license was introduced specifically for
Small and Midsized Businesses (SMB) Sales at $40. Shortly after
that a second SMB Sales and Service license was added for $65. The
sale of these "promo" licenses to
new customers ended the first
of this week.
Evolution of Business Edition to Pro
You may have heard the term "Business Edition" floating around, and
in fact it still pops up on some Microsoft documentation that has
not yet been scrubbed. Business Edition was conceived as a plan for
SMB Customers. The first, and only, product that launched under the
Business Edition concept was a light version of NAV that had been
SaaSified. In the pipeline were also Business Edition Sales App,
Service App and a new Marketing App. These "Apps" were intended to
be lower cost (+/- $40), and would have limited features, parsing
out the Enterprise stuff that SMB did not need. Seemed like a great
idea! But, well into the development of the Business Edition apps,
Microsoft had an epiphany. "Why develop a specific app to target a
customer by size? We should really focus on a solution that targets
users with simpler needs, regardless of size." As big a fan of the
SMB idea as I was, I could not argue with this logic, and it still
worked for SMB, even if SMB was no longer the specific target. For
the Marketing App, this meant any size customer could use it, if it
met their needs, and why not. But what happened to this Simpler
Business Edition Sales App that was being built? The idea of a
limited App for users with more basic needs still made sense,
regardless of customer size. But did it still need a specific
"simplified" App? Could they not just use the same sales app as
Enterprise, with some limitations placed on it? It is certainly one
less thing to support. And the Dynamics 365 Sales Professional
License was born. It is a new app, but it is the same app as
Enterprise, but with some limitations placed on this new app.
Limitations are fair, since it is priced at $65 vs $95. So as you
absorb the information below, remember, there is a difference of
$30/user/month.
Limitations
Whenever you attempt to apply any kind of limits to anything,
partners and customers will bitch and complain. Nevermind that it
costs less.. "
why can't it cost less, and be the same as the
full priced one?" This seemed to be the prevailing argument
that I was hearing, which makes no sense at all of course. "
Why
isn't the Big Mac on the Dollar Menu?" I get that nobody likes
limits, but even Mercedes Benz sells a shitload of their
entry-level vehicles... so clearly there is a market. The better
question to ask, is how many of my customers' users can fit within
these limits, allowing me to help lower their total cost... where
it makes sense. This is really no different than the exercise we
undertake for the Team Member license, a severely restricted, but
very low cost, license. Who can get by with it? I watched Microsoft
over the last year or so, tweak and fiddle with these limitations,
trying to get the recipe just right. They needed to balance
providing enough capabilities, while not so many capabilities that
they cannibalize the full Enterprise license/app. Clearly there
will be some cannibalization, but there is an alternative
goal. To revisit the Mercedes Benz analogy, some people who
bought the entry-level car, might have bought a more expensive
Mercedes if it did not exist. However, most of the buyers of that
entry-level car would probably not have bought a Mercedes at all,
if the entry-level did not exist. Mercedes opened up their brand to
an entirely new audience, many of which will upgrade from the
entry-level car eventually. So let's dive into these "limitations".
Excluded Completely
There are quite a few features of the full Enterprise Sales
License/App that are not included at all in the Sales Professional
License/App. A few that you should be aware of, that might help
your decision process are, Sales goals and Territory Management.
For most SMB customers this will not be an issue, but for larger
customers these may be important. A few of the other completely
excluded existing features are Social Engagement, Gamification,
Voice of the Customer (surveys) and Mobile offline Synchronization.
A brand new feature called Dynamics 365 for Sales Intelligence is
also not included. One more item that is not included, that could
be a key point, depending on your plans, is PowerApps. This one
bothers me a bit for SMB, as I saw PowerApps coming not play there
in the near future. But Microsoft can always adjust this later if
it makes sense.
The Case for a New Case
The Customer Service capabilities of Dynamics 365 are quite
significant. They are also part of a separate license/app. A
license that might make sense for your Customer Service
Organization, but what about the occasional case that needs to be
created by a Salesperson. A missing part, or some other issue the
customer shared with the Salesperson. The Salesperson certainly
does not need the full Customer Service capabilities, but they do
need some way to engage and initiate simple cases. Microsoft
recognized this need and created a new "Lite" case management
capability, specifically for this scenario. It is included with
either the Professional or Enterprise Sales license/app. A
Salesperson can create, assign and resolve these types of cases
themselves, without needing the full-blown Customer Service
license. This is an important factor to consider.
Specific Limits
Microsoft took a two-pronged approach to the Sales Professional
limitations. The first was to completely eliminate some features
that they felt their target user would not need. The second was to
apply some "limits" to other features. This is probably where most
of the partner controversy came from. But again, partners would
like a full-blown product at a lower cost, because it's easier to
sell. Duh. This is also the area where Microsoft spent the most
time refining. I recall a conversation where someone on the team
told me, and I am paraphrasing here, "
We can always raise a
limit that is determined to be too low, but we could not easily
lower one that was too high". So consider this a test for a
brand new license/app, if it does not accomplish the goals,
Microsoft can adjust the levers. Freaking out is not required...
yet.
- Custom Entities are limited to a maximum of 15.
- Business Process Flows are limited to a maximum of 5.
- Custom Workflows are limited to a maximum of 15.
- You can install a maximum of 10 3rd party apps (ISV
solutions).
- Each entity can have a maximum of 2 forms.
- You are also limited to 5 custom reports.
I will take credit for the 2nd form, as I reacted almost violently
to an earlier plan with a single form. There are some further
caveats to understand. 3rd party ISV solutions do not count against
the limits of custom entities, process flows or workflows...
however those third
party apps
may be subject to
those limits in their own solution. I am seeking clarification on
that now. But, if that is the case, then an ISV solution that you
install, could itself have no more than 15 custom entities, 5
business flows or 15 workflows. Why might this be the case? Because
partners and ISVs are sneaky. Without these limits an ISV would
just backfill a customer's Sales App with all of the things that
were limited out, and we're right back to cannibalization of the
full product license. That's cheating. But again, I am seeking
clarification, and will update this post when I get the official
public answer.
How will this work?
This is a question I posed to Microsoft. You can mix-and-match
Enterprise Licenses with Professional Licenses. This got my head
spinning. If half of my users have limits, and the other half do
not, how does that work in a single instance? With different App
modules. So beyond just a specific license for Sales Professional,
there is also a specific app for Sales Professional. A person who
has an Enterprise Sales License can access a Sales Professional
app, however, they will be subject to the same limitations, because
the Limitations are being applied at the app level. This particular
caveat will make you think a little harder about this. Why have an
Enterprise Sales license at all for a Sales Professional app? The
thinking here is that an Enterprise customer might have people in
multiple roles. For example a full app for the main business unit,
and maybe a Sales Pro app for another business unit, as one
example. An Enterprise user could access both; a Sales Pro user
could not access all of the mothership from their app. How will
these limits be applied to the Sales Pro App? It will be your
responsibility to not expose within your Sales Pro App, any more
capabilities than are allowed. Eventually, there will be some
telemetry to let you know if you strayed out-of-bounds. Of course,
Microsoft will have this telemetry also, so cheaters beware.
Upgrading
For many customers the Sales Professional License/App will be a
great long-term solution. For others, it will be a great
introduction. So there will absolutely be circumstances where a
customer who started on the Sales Professional License/App will
want upgrade to the Enterprise Sales License/App. What does that
look like? Simple, just apply an Enterprise Sales License to the
user, and give them access to the Enterprise Sales App. This is way
better than an earlier discussed concept of separate instances. So
that's all I got on the new Sales Professional App. I'll update
this post when I have the other answers. Update: 04/09/18 I got the
answer from Microsoft. While it was discussed previously, there is
no limit on the size of the actual solutions that are installed
from AppSource, just a limit on the number of them.