Whether you're listening to music on Spotify or sharing a document with a colleague through SharePoint, our personal and work-related activities are increasingly moving to the cloud. There's good cause to make the switch, even for vital business applications like ERP software. Microsoft Dynamics 365 in the cloud offers a lot of compelling reasons and additional functionalities that makes you want to say goodbye to your on-premise version.

The benefits are simple: Dynamics allows for much simpler software upgrades, quicker and easy innovation, and last but not least, PowerApps will boost your operational efficiency. We wanted to share our top three reasons for why you should look at migrating Dynamics 365 now.

1. Hassle-free software upgrades
Easy version management is one of the biggest benefits Dynamics 365 in the cloud offers. Before the cloud, you installed your Dynamics software on your servers, and then when a new version with tons of new functionalities came out you had to go through a long and arduous transitioning process. By moving to Dynamics 365 in the cloud, software upgrades become an automated and continuous process with regular additions of new functionalities. No more big, one-off projects. Sounds great, right? And a since most updates happen without much effort from your IT department, you save on costly transitions and free up time to focus on more important and immediate tasks.

Automated upgrades also improve the adoption rates of new functionalities by your employees, meaning you get more out of your software than before. Instead of being confronted with a long list of new things all at once when changing versions, upgrades in the cloud are presented to your employees a few at a time and on a regular base. This makes it easier to adapt and try out new features.

2. Innovation made easier, faster and more cost-efficient
A second reason to run Dynamics 365 in the cloud is its ability to integrate with services outside of the standard scope of your package. This allows you to add innovative new functionalities as you go along, and new requirements? arise. For instance, if you want to introduce IoT or Artificial Intelligence into your business processes, you can easily connect the necessary services of Azure or external parties to your Dynamics 365 environment. In contrast, on-premise innovation often means a lot of custom coding or simply an inability to integrate if the technology isn't included in your package from the start.

Testing whether new components can be of added value for your organization becomes easier as well. For on-premise environments you had to purchase the module or even new hardware first, install it and then hope that everything clicks together perfectly. This isn’t so for Dynamics 365 online. For example: you want to test whether an AI component in Azure can help improve forecasting. You can quickly spin up a test environment within your Azure subscription and try it out. No need to purchase extra software. You only pay for the uptime of the test. Altogether, this enables you to innovate far more easily and at a much-reduced cost.

3. Let employees work more efficiently and on the go with PowerApps
The biggest advantage of Dynamics 365 in the cloud versus on-premise, is the ease of using cloud integrations like PowerApps and PowerBI. PowerApps enable you to create your own mobile apps to make tasks easier and solve smaller usability problems without the need of a developer team. For instance, forms developed for computer screens holding hundreds of data fields can slow down work you want to use this on mobile devices. With PowerApps, you can easily create your own custom view through drag-and-drop to only show the necessary information. It also offers more elaborate possibilities: you can create an app to help you approve invoices on the go or easily give your field service teams the data they need. There are a lot of ready-made applications included in PowerApps, so you can get started with streamlining your processes quickly.

Ready to make the move to Dynamics 365 in the cloud? Read the Avanade e-book with six tips for a successful migration from on-premise to cloud.