Celebrating twenty years since Opsis started helping organisations with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Why did I select a picture of crockery for this blog - rather than a celebratory cake? Here’s why.  When I realised that this month was twenty years since I founded Opsis, I had to research what gift is traditionally given for a twentieth anniversary.  I was surprised to learn that the traditional gift is China.

In the twenty years since Opsis came into life, with the vision of helping organisations with Microsoft CRM, Microsoft CRM has changed beyond recognition.  It has gone from a single product – that only had sales and service, as marketing only appeared in v3 – to the keystone of a suite of products that support almost all aspects of your business.  This journey from Microsoft CRM to Power Apps as part of the Power Platform family has been fascinating to watch and I am blessed to have been part of it.

Not surprisingly, the integration options that enable you to share data between Power Apps and other software have matured by leaps and bounds.  I remember when a clunky and memory hogging Microsoft Outlook add-on – a feature that gave Microsoft CRM a huge edge over the competition as they had limited or no email functionality - was a real benefit.  Early versions of Dynamics had the ability to share data with Word and Excel, and so solved some data analysis and simple reporting challenges.  One of the areas where Microsoft have always done well is leveraging existing functionality in other members of their family to provide richer functionality without reinventing the wheel.

Now, we have new and improved versions of all of these and about a thousand connectors that enable D365 to link to almost every other software tool on the planet.  Although, when we look back on these earlier features we smile, Microsoft CRM / Microsoft Dynamics CRM / Microsoft Dynamics 365 and now Apps and the Power Platform family have always been groundbreaking.

Today, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a key part of Microsoft Power Platform.  The Power Apps part of the Power Platform family provides solutions - the first party apps - to meet your sales, marketing and customer service requirements.  For those organisations who are more creative, or want functionality that cannot readily be delivered by the first party apps, Power Platform supports your users to develop their own apps – canvas apps or model-driven apps – to solve specific business challenges.  These apps can use data from across your environment; you can meet your reporting needs, creating more traditional reports, online reports and dashboards with Power BI; reduce manual work using a wide range of automation options including Power Automate.  The final member of the Power Platform family, Power Pages allows people outside your organisation to access selected data via a portal and without requiring a licence.  The opportunities that these tools provide your organisation are huge.

When Opsis and I first deployed Microsoft CRM, on-premise and using several dedicated servers was the only option.  Today, Microsoft runs a dedicated, global network of data centres including some that are exclusively for Government users.  Microsoft Dynamics Power Platform is deployed on Microsoft Azure in these data centres.  Now, it is extremely rare to come across anyone considering an on-premise Microsoft D365 deployment, and a surprising amount of the functionality is only available when you are using online.

Since that day, twenty years ago, I have witnessed the not-so gradual switch to Online.  Over those two decades, CRM has moved from being something that only the top-end of town could consider to something that every business requires - if they are to be successful and meet their clients' demands. 

During those twenty years, Opsis has also changed, and many lessons have been learnt.  We are still focused on client success more than other factors.  We provide the full range of implementation, from helping you to design your requirements through to post go-live support.  You can join the Opsis family wherever you are on this journey.   Now we are building a technical team, whose members love the mentoring that they get while helping our clients.  Rather than letting the team become a 'cast of a thousand’, we keep the team small and ensure that all members are fully across the projects.  This team gives me time to focus on speaking and education as well as working with clients to ensure that we jointly design the best solution for them.

If you would like to chat to someone who has been part of this evolution from its very beginning - I first cut my teeth on Microsoft CRM 1.0beta, and I have worked with every version since - and is still excited to be part of your success, as well as playing with CoPilot! – which is how I created the crockery - please get in touch.