D365 ROI (Return on Investment), often when I speak to people about D365 price is a ‘shock factor’. Have you looked at the ROI? How much is your time worth to you?

If you decided to use D365 you will need the following;

  1. A License for each user
  2. A budget to ‘develop’ the D365 application so it holds the information unique to your organisation.

What does Dynamics cost?

Now if you have an in house system you developed or one one you have already paid why would you spend money and move to D365 when you have something that does what you need?

It’s a really good question and one myself as a small company also had and I thought I would take you through my train of thought (and calculations). Currently the prices per user are as shown below. (information from https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/sales/ )

Dynamics prices January 2020, work out your D365 ROI

Based on my requirements yes I would love the functionality for the most expensive license but, at this stage I don’t need it so the £49 a month would work.

I now have a system and 1 user but I need to ‘adapt’ it to work for me. OK in this respect it only costs me time as I do my own development. If however you look at my consultancy page on the web https://d365lifewithoutcode.com/consultancy-2/ you will see I offer packages from £750 to £3,000. Lets base this example on my Silver package which is £1,250.

So the costs I am now looking at are as follows.

1 User @ £49 *12 = £588

1 Development package @ £1,250

Total spend year 1 = £1,838

Now lets equate that to hours. If I employed someone for £1,838 to look after my administration and to over see what jobs were coming in / out. How many hours would you be able to employ them for? What is my D365 ROI?

Hourly RateNumber of hoursNumber of daysnumber of week
1018424.54.9
1512316.43.3
209212.32.5
25749.92
30618.11.6
40466.11.2
50374.91
60314.10.8
70263.50.7
80233.10.6
90202.70.5
100182.40.5

What was ‘developed’ for the cost (D365 ROI)?

What you would get as a person would depend on your company and needs, for me I wanted to streamline a process and reduce my admin so I have done the following.

If you go onto my website and complete the contact me form this automatically goes into a lead.

What are the workflows?

Workflow 1

This looks at all the information passed through and codes the lead so I know what I am looking at and moves the text from the contact form into the correct fields in the lead. No typing needed for me to do this (this is done via 2 word press plug ins, both have a free version which is what I am using as I don’t need the advanced features)

Workflow 2

When the request is for a webinar I manually confirm the session to be booked (I have a maximum number so don’t want to automate it). If the person is a new contact I set to create the contact. Once that is done I click to create the delegate record.

What are the results?

At this point a few things happen. A delegate record is created. The contact is sent an email saying that we have received their request and they will revive joining information shortly. This email also explains we have their details on our database and gives them a link to opt out.

A delegate record is created with a ‘confirmed’ state. If I have already set the webinar fully up on my system then it knows it can send joining information straight away so the person then gets a confirmation email and a meeting request. A third email is scheduled for the day before the webinar.

So how long has this taken me to send? Honestly about 10 seconds, I get an alert in outlook then I click in and do it. I can even do all of this from the D365 app on my Mobile phone. I ran 5 webinars on Wednesday and I believe this saved me in excess of 20 hours effort.

Lets put this into my maths…

Number of hours savedNumber of times run in yearTotal number of hours
208160

Have the cost and license paid for itself? What is your D365 ROI?

If you look up the screen onto the hourly rates then we are almost break even on the £10 hourly rate if i was employing someone to do the work for me.

However for me I am actually getting those hours back to work on other things which is actually more important to me at this stage,

BUT…. this is just one of my workflows. I have a lot more 🙂 Workflows are use for Course booking, course confirmation (these are different to webinars as there are costs) and for all of them follow ups after attending. I mark people as attended and then they receive emails asking if they have any further questions and giving them a link to review.

When I am running a training I use workflows to set up all my training data / exercises – time invested once, the next time a single click and that’s 7 hours work saved!

So my total time savings over a year must be at least 400 – 500 hours as it stands at the moment – but I have only just got started on my environment 🙂

How can it work for you?

Now if you offer webinar and training come speak to me anyway as I have a package for this ready to go into your D365 today 🙂 If you don’t do this lets have a look at how you work?

Do you have ‘sales people’ on the road?

Do they go and meet people to gather requirements and produce estimates? Where is this information?

Here we could create a custom entity (or power apps form) that is on the mobile phone. They capture all the information whilst there using their phone. A series of text boxes (where you can do talk to text using the phone as a Dictaphone), tick boxes and numeric fields to capture everything needed.

As they leave the customer they click on ‘details complete’

This then ‘fires’ the information straight to your back office team.

They look at the details, make a few tweaks on wording, identify the template needed and press a button.

Admin Complete

Your customer has an email thanking them for their time and plays back all the information to them.

If you have fixed price components you may be able to generate an immediate financial quote as well.

The question here, how quickly has the information got back to the office for them to work on items? How much time has your person on the road saved compared to your current process? Could they then fit in another visit each day as we have reduced their admin?

If you are able to do one more estimate a day, that if 5 a week, 20 a month. What is your current conversion rate? 50%?

So for you would a license for each user and the initial development give you a ROI if you had an extra 10 sales per month per sales person?

D365 and any CRM isn’t a magic tool, what it is though is a technical friend who can help you organise your leads / pipeline/ customers and jobs. That organisation can increase your ‘spare’ time allowing you to direct your efforts on other items.

What next?

IF you would like to learn more please contact me on here or, click at the top of the screen tobook an hours consultation.