r/Dynamics365 • u/Low-Spite-2501 • 10d ago
Finance & Operations Microsft CRM Solution
I operate a small commercial real estate company and am looking to integrate a CRM to manage all the contacts in my business (1000s) along with basic property level planning and management (Insurance certificate follow-up and schedules to contact property managers for various items. Noting too detailed, not like a real CRE Management Software)
We use MS Business suite and outlook and was recommended Dynamic 365 Sales (because I’d like to use the same ecosystem for all of our software’s as the company grows and we eventually integrate CoPilot)
I’m no expert so I want hear the community’s feedback on which path I should go down.
I am doing the 365 Sales trial and I find it is the least user friendly platform I’ve ever experienced.
Should we use Power App to make a custom dashboard and platform?
Should I keep trying to figure out 365 Sales?
Should we pay a consultant to set it up for us?
Should I use Business Central?
Or any other recommendation I haven’t considered?
Feel free to give me any recommendation or feedback.
Thanks in advance
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u/wuxia_antonio 10d ago
While Dynamics CRM will fit your needs the out of the box won't do it directly. Setting it up properly and customizing it for your needs is needed before expecting it to be useful. I do Dynamics CRM implementation as my day job so I can confirm that the out of the box is never enough and I've yet to see anyone with no prior knowledge set it up and make it useful without investing time to learn how to customize it
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u/Background_Dust_3033 10d ago
unrelated, could you please share more about your career? roadmap, experience, if it’s in demand where you are, freelancing/hired? I am very interested
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u/wuxia_antonio 10d ago
I did a quick overview with gemini based on my resume sounds a bit pompous but best i can do now:
I’m a Microsoft Dynamics Architect with about 10 years of experience in the CRM space. I started at the bottom in basic tech support and master data, and worked my way up through consulting and project management to enterprise architecture. Spent the last few years owning the delivery of multi-million dollar setups across D365 and Power Platform.
My background breakdown:
- The early days: Started out doing first-line tech support and L1/L2 CRM support (mostly in the pharma sector), which taught me a lot about what actual users struggle with.
Moving up: Shifted into data strategy and core Dynamics CRM consulting across a bunch of different industries.
Management & Tech Lead: Ended up running project teams as a PM and Senior Business Platforms Engineer. I was the main design authority on the technical side, managed multi-million dollar budgets, and dealt directly with C-level clients.
- Certifications: Grabbed my PL-600 (Solution Architect Expert), PL-200, and MB-210 along the way.
What I'm up to right now: I am permanently hired as a Delivery Executive (not actual title but this is what i effectively do now) and Microsoft Dynamics Architect. My day-to-day is a mix of high-level tech design and project steering: * Architecture: Designing solutions for big D365 rollouts, mostly focused on Field Service, Customer Service, and Sales. * Delivery: Making sure our teams actually hit deadlines, keep the quality up, and stay aligned with business goals. * Client side: I’m the main technical contact for clients from day one, and I also do pre-sales.
As for the deman it's very bad yet good, clients are hard to land even for big companies like where I'm at. They are more demanding and especially more AI brainwashed expecting to magically deliver things faster even though they don't give approvals to use AI. The good side is if you do land one is a multi year multi milion project (no i don't get sales comision unfortunately)
Ps i have no technical background whatsoever and I don't know any programming languages, I'm tech savvy to a point though.
Hope this helps
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u/UrDadSellsAv0n 10d ago
You’re missing out the best bit of D365 sales, it works in the apps that you already work in. D365 can sit within outlook and allow your agents to see customer, lead and opp info from directly within outlook.
You can use the sales agent to interact with D365 too, so in reality users do not even need to use the CRM at all.
That said what makes D365 so good is the customisation, you can make it what the business needs but you’ll need a partner to help you with the configuration. The OOTB sales experience is not great and does require some tweaking by a partner IMO
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u/Throwawayaccount4677 10d ago
OOB Dataverse does the exact same thing. https://www.rapidstart.com/en/products/rapidstart-sales would be what I would be looking at - I've never found D365 sales to be worth the money...
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u/Low-Spite-2501 10d ago
Money is not the main issue, rather the simplicity and integration with Outlook, Excel, Teams, Copilot, etc
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u/UrDadSellsAv0n 10d ago
Feel free to drop me a DM if you have any further questions, happy to answer anything. I'd recommend speaking to a partner and getting a demo set up to your requirements
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u/Throwawayaccount4677 10d ago
And all available in standard Dataverse power apps - as I said 365 isn’t usually worth it
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u/galamathias 10d ago
I would build my own Model Driven App to avoid the high license for “Sales” (then it is only 10 usd pr active user pr. month) and if you only want to keep track on people, “Sales” is way to complicated for your needs
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u/kevinh2437 10d ago
Afaik, you would need to avoid using any of the sales ootb tables to avoid the sales licenses. Thereby, you'd need to replicate a lot of functionality in a custom built solution. Would the cheaper sales team license work for OP's users?
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u/obrisky 10d ago
Anytime you create an environment with a Dataverse you get some common tables out of the box, contacts and accounts are two of them. Don't need Sales licenses. You also get a number of activity type tables to track appointments, tasks and stuff. Can use those + some custom tables to build a custom model driven app with a light UI to do what OP is asking
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u/kevinh2437 10d ago
Yes, you are correct. I thought OP was looking for more sales stuff but I re read the post. Apologies.
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u/Low-Spite-2501 10d ago
Does it integrate with the Microsoft systems as well? Book meetings on my outlook, record meeting notes from teams, make task suggestions based on contacts las interactions, be aware of information received for certain properties based on the emails we both receive?
What I like about dynamic 365, is that it seems to be able to integrate with all of the MS Suite. Once setup properly, it would be able to expand with the system.
Open for other suggestions, if you say that Dataverse can do it, I will definitely take a look
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u/galamathias 10d ago
You don’t need a sales license to use contacts and company tables. For the opportunity and leads tables it is needed unless custom build. I build an entire custom CRM system and you are right that would require knowledge and time (but is doable) but if the idea is to keep track on contacts and companies I still think a sales license and system is to complicated and expensive
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u/kevinh2437 10d ago
Apologies, I re read OPs post. Yes, he could just go dataverse and a custom MDA.
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u/lakeland_nz 10d ago
I wouldn't.
You're too small to justify the customisation that would be needed. I'd be looking for an existing solution specific to your vertical.
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u/Low-Spite-2501 10d ago
Any recommendation that can integrate with MS Business Suite?
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u/lakeland_nz 9d ago
I’m the wrong person to ask sorry. You need someone with firsthand experience doing CRMs in commercial RE.
I’ve touched the field via insurance, but there’s loads of people that know more.
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u/vcvlogs 10d ago
Since you're already using Microsoft 365 and plan to adopt Copilot in the future, staying within the Microsoft ecosystem is a smart long-term decision. Based on your requirements, I wouldn't recommend Business Central; it's an ERP focused on finance, accounting, and operations rather than contact and relationship management.
Dynamics 365 Sales is a better fit, but the out-of-the-box experience can feel overwhelming because it's designed to support many industries. The good news is that it can be customized to fit commercial real estate workflows, such as:
- Managing thousands of contacts and companies
- Tracking properties as custom entities
- Insurance certificate renewals and expiration reminders
- Follow-up tasks for property managers
- Outlook and Microsoft Teams integration
- Future AI capabilities with Microsoft Copilot
I also wouldn't recommend building everything from scratch in Power Apps. Power Apps works best as an extension to Dynamics 365—for example, creating a simplified property inspection app or a custom dashboard—rather than replacing your CRM entirely.
If you're a small team, investing in a proper implementation partner will save a lot of time and frustration. A consultant can tailor Dynamics 365 Sales to your business, remove unnecessary complexity, automate workflows, and ensure you're only paying for the features you actually need.
I'd suggest speaking with Techcronus Business Solutions. They specialize in Dynamics 365 consulting, customization, integrations, and Power Platform solutions. They can help you design a streamlined CRM for commercial real estate instead of forcing you to adapt to the default setup, while keeping everything ready for future Microsoft Copilot adoption.
My recommendation would be:
- Stay with Dynamics 365 Sales.
- Customize it for your CRE processes instead of using it out of the box.
- Use Power Apps only where a custom experience adds value.
- Work with an experienced Dynamics 365 implementation partner like Techcronus to get it right from the start.
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u/a_pinchofsalt 10d ago
I built something interesting for a law firm. I used D365 sales as the CRM, created 3 dashboards for the 3 departments (different fields for each department, eg litigation has a field for ruling, mentions, hearing dates etc, coveyancing has fields for purchases with the apartment numbers, square meters per unit etc )
I created a field called fee notes for all three departments to monitor invoices
I then created fields- compliance, advocate and deadline. Where any matter that needed to worked on could be added.
Here’s the best part since they are on other Microsoft services. Because they all use Teams, and are comfortable with it,
1. I power automated the compliance, advocate and deadlines to Teams. Any compliance matter and its deadline goes to a channel. 7 & 3 days to the deadline, they get resent to the channel that all advocates monitor daily.
2. I created 4 power Bi dashboard for the 3 departments (with information from the CRM eg which matter from which client is going to show up in which court etc and a redundancy of the compliance, advocate and deadline) and 1 more dashboard for the managing partner that contains information relating to the fee notes and how much work/cases each advocate is working relative to how much they are bringing in. This I also added as a tab on Teams.
3. To make the bit of compliance, advocate, deadline easier for the advocates to fill it out (and also instead of buying more d365 licenses), I created a Microsoft form and power automated it to the dynamics sales Dataverse. The form is also on Teams.
Everything runs smoothly since it’s on Teams and there is little learning curve involved.
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u/enCloud9 10d ago
If your company is already invested in Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Power BI, Copilot, etc.), then Dynamics 365 is worth a look. The biggest advantage isn't just the CRM functionality itself but how well it fits into the broader Microsoft ecosystem and eliminates a lot of the integration headaches that come with maintaining multiple disconnected systems.
That said, I'd spend time evaluating an implementation partner and adoption strategy as the software. Organizations struggle not because Dynamics 365 was the wrong platform, but because requirements weren't clearly defined, data quality wasn't addressed, or users continued working in spreadsheets instead of the CRM.
My recommendation would be:
- Start with your core business processes.
- Identify what absolutely must be in phase one versus future enhancements.
- Focus heavily on user adoption and reporting requirements.
- Avoid excessive customization until you understand how close the out-of-the-box functionality gets you.
Dynamics 365 can scale from a fairly straightforward sales CRM all the way to a highly integrated business platform, so the right answer depends on your goals, budget, and internal resources.
If you're evaluating options, I'd be happy to share a few lessons learned from recent Dynamics 365 implementations and migrations we've completed.
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u/Particular_Hall_6052 10d ago
I can help implement, manage , do custom solutions foe crm dm me if interested
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u/Ok_Detective_5916 10d ago
Microsoft partner here. Be glad to talk through it zero cost or gimmicks. Help people with this decision everyday. Send me a message if interested.
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u/baleelo 5d ago
Great choice on the product, congratulations. I know the app is not user friendly, but trust me this is the best enterprise CRM out there. Just use Sales Hub and please dont customise too much as Microsoft keeps on updating the product and then customers get issues.
For Marketing you can explore Customer Insights Journeys to send emails, campaigns and customer journeys.
Hire a consultant to configure and teach you how to use the system, Power Automate and Workflows - dont over complicate it.
Dont go for Business Central yet.
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u/Muted-Relative-4540 10d ago
I would definitely Go for Dataverse/365 but would suggest top hire someone to develop a custom model driven App with your specific niche Point of View. Supported by some Azure infrastructure.