It's been a long time coming, but InsideSales is now available within Microsoft Dynamics.
It was back in March that I covered the news that InsideSales, the sales acceleration vendor that has long had a close relationship with Salesforce, was going to be rolling out an integration into Dynamics, Microsoft’s CRM platform. The announcement was slightly less head-scratching when one took into account the fact that Microsoft is a customer, as well as a partner, of the company.
InsideSales focuses on helping sales teams chase the right deals. Part of a large cohort of new companies in the predictive analytics space, the company uses big data and machine learning to pinpoint sales patterns and provide smart recommendations to sales teams. One of the more high-flying of vendors, InsideSales has grown to the point where it commands that heady status – a unicorn valuation of over $1 billion. InsideSales uses “Neuralytics,” a predictive and prescriptive self-learning engine that aims to deliver revenue growth by delivering an optimized experience for both salesperson and buyer. And it seems to be working: ADP, Microsoft, Groupon, and Zenefits are all customers.
Today’s announcement, which is taking place during Microsoft’s Convergence 2015 EMEA event, is all around Accelerate, InsideSales’s sales acceleration platform. The platform is available for Microsoft Dynamics and, alongside that news, InsideSales’ HD Forecast, Pipeline and Sales Advisor, which assists with forecasting and pipeline management functions, will be available under an early access program.
The background to all of this is a desire among organizations to optimize their sales functions; sales acceleration tools and technology are fueling what’s expected to be a $30 billion market by 2017. With the integration, customers who use Dynamics have a direct path to InsideSales.com’s platform to apply science to sales, removing the guess work of cold calls and accelerating the sales process.
“We value the opportunity to be a unique addition to the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem,” said Mick Hollison, chief marketing officer at InsideSales.com. “Our sales acceleration platform and scientific approach to improving sales can benefit Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers by helping them increase revenue by improving contact rates, generating more quality leads, better managing their sales pipeline, and closing more sales.”
This comes at an interesting time for Microsoft with regards to the Dynamics franchise. As I wrote recently, Microsoft is keen to give Dynamics a new lease of life – partnerships and integrations like this one are a good way to deliver that.
In terms of what the integration actually offers, InsideSales.com Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides telecommunications features, including single-click dialing and automatic data capture. Accelerate also provides email and website engagement with real-time alerts for sales reps. According to the release, Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available for a limited time at the special introductory price of $125 per user per month.
It’s kind of a shame that this integration was first announced in March and has taken until now to deliver. But with that quibble aside, it’s going to be interesting to see how much InsideSales helps Microsoft with its new Dynamics focus.
