Amanda Easton wrote a great internal summary on the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Business Platform” whitepaper by Jason Hunt and Aaron Elder of Ascentium. The whitepaper is a great read and a fantastic approach to building custom applications using Dynamics CRM as a Platform and thus reducing overall development time, mitigating risk and decreasing update time as technologies change.

“It Doesn’t Pay to Grow Your Own”

• When building a custom application, most organizations “spend most of their time on the plumbing” (see below) and don’t have enough time for  business functionality.
• Ascentium has found from their experience they SAVE  “50% to 70% of the development time” using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the Platform
• Using Dynamics CRM as a Platform allows Developers to “focus on solving the employees’ problems and solving them well [functionality], so that they choose to use your application”
• “Custom business applications are often not extensible or scalable over the long term” due to time restraints around development
• When technology changes you have to update and modify your Platform, using Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Microsoft takes on that cost
  • New versions of SQL Server, Exchange, Office, SharePoint

Benefits to the Business

• Centralization of data (Prevent Silos of information)
• Standardization of user experience – inherits Dynamics CRM web-like UI (user adoption, lower training costs)
• Simplification of development (Using Customization UI, Web Services, SDK, Service Oriented Arch [SOA], any .NET language)
• Integration with organizations existing systems (Web Services, common SQL Server tools)

What Dynamics CRM provides (The Plumbing)

• Security Model with Authentication tied to Active Directory
• Presentation Layer :: UI Framework (Tool build forms, tabs, add fields, IFrames without any coding)
• Data Model
  • Structure of the Data (Tables, Fields, Etc.)
  • Integrity of the data (Relationships, Dependencies on one another)
• Extensibility of the Data Model without SQL (Tool to add tables, fields, relationships without any SQL)
• Software Development Kit (SDK) – access to the entire SDK used by the developers of Dynamics CRM themselves
• Workflow Engine (Windows Workflow Foundation – build through simple UI)
• Built In connection with Outlook / Office

Don’t miss the “The Skeptical Developer” a great real world story.