Apr 07, 2017 11:08 AM EDT By Lucy McClaren, UniversityHerald Reporter

Microsoft Dynamics 365 enriches its extensive portfolio by integrating InsideSales Playbooks, designed to aid sales team to identify persons and accounts that could lead to sales. Microsoft's strategy of bundling products like it did with Office enabled it to be the leading Software as a Service (SaaS) provider.

Microsoft has had a substantial investment in the startup company InsideSales so it is no surprise that the two companies will expand their relationship further. Microsoft will be integrating InsideSales Playbooks into the Dynamics 365 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

Playbooks provide customers a set of recommendations and suggestions to help the sales team close deals. This includes knowing whom to call or identifying which accounts will most likely lead to a successful sale.

The InsideSales product makes use of Artificial Intelligence that requires a fairly reasonable amount of data as revealed by InsideSales CEO Dave Elkington. The startup company with a valuation of $1.5 billion actually has its own data sets but not as immense as Microsoft's.

By riding on Microsoft Dynamics 365, the smaller company gets more freedom to tweak algorithms in different platforms and user base. InsideSales partnership with Microsoft also allows it access to various sales teams where it can pitch its products, Tech Crunch reported.

On the other hand, Microsoft also has something to gain having invested $50 million into InsideSales in January. Moreover, another product bundled with its existing subscription will only make Dynamics 365 more attractive to customers.

Microsoft's strategy on building products like it did with its Office tools has been instrumental in its success as the overall leader in SaaS. Dynamics 365 boasts of a rich portfolio bundling CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), PowerApps, Flow and other products pertaining to the Cloud business platform into one subscription, Market Realist reported.

Incidentally, Microsoft saw huge growth in the SaaS space with the ERP and Collaboration segment. ERP grew by 40 percent year-over-year while Collaboration posted 30 percent growth.

Microsoft's strategy has always been holistic combining all its cloud offerings and making subscriptions like Dynamics 365 able to meet varying requirements. It is no wonder that the recent 451 Research survey revealed the highest score for Microsoft Azure in the "understand my business" category.

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