written by Ryan Carolan, Founder of Bond Patrick

When actively recruiting for a Dynamics 365 position, you can’t search or review resumes effectively without understanding the terminology- & thanks to the marketing team at Microsoft, the terminology in Dynamics changes very often! 

So we’ve put this cheat-sheet together to help with searching and reviewing resumes:

Know your CRMs from your ERPs:

In 2017 Microsoft gave Dynamics a complete rebrand, which led to confusion. Microsoft now names all of their latest ERP and CRM products “Dynamics 365”, understanding the difference when it comes to searching for talent is crucial:

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

ERP manages operational data across your business, including financials, supply chain, manufacturing, commerce & HR.

• Before 2017- Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (F&O for short) used to be called Dynamics AX
• Prior Versions of AX include AX 2012 and AX 2009
• Since 2021, this is now also often referred to as Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management (aka D365 F&SCM)
• This is not to be confused with other Microsoft ERP’s such as: Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, or Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Definitely not to be confused with other ERPs such as SAP, Oracle or NetSuite

CRM: Customer Relationship Management

Handling data across Sales, Marketing & Service departments:

• The only CRM product made by Microsoft used to be called Dynamics CRM
• Prior Versions included Dynamics CRM 2015 and 2016. 
• Post-2017 it is now known as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, or CE for short
• Not to be confused with other CRM vendors such as Salesforce.com, Zoho or Hubspot

To Recap:

• ERP’s and CRM’s are completely different systems, serving different business purposes
• This means: ERP and CRM talent within Dynamics should be distinguished between
• D365 F&O and D365 CE are 2 very different skill-sets!
• Microsoft now call everything D365, but it pays to look for clues as to the flavor of D365 that is specific to your companies’ needs:
  
  • Dynamics 365 F&O – Dynamics 365 F&SCM – Dynamics AX
  • Dynamics 365 CE – Dynamics CRM