INFINIT Consulting Offers its Patrons Invaluable Insights into Microsoft’s Project “Madeira”

Microsoft continues to evolve, making its enterprise-level offerings like Outlook even more feasible for smaller businesses. Microsoft’s latest cloud offering, built within the Office 365 ecosystem has been named Madeira. It is essentially a host of service-oriented apps within Outlook, aimed at improving business productivity, ensuring Microsoft email users don’t need to exit cloud-hosted, Microsoft email platform.

How is Madeira positioned?

Madeira is definitely a budgeted option that delivers a host of options to business owners, embedded within Office 365. It makes a lot of sense for SMEs and start-ups who don’t have the financial bandwidth to adopt full-scale, Microsoft enterprise applications. Based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Project “Madeira” is basically a codename for a budgeted business solution from Microsoft, designed to allow business owners get access to the core of Office 365 productivity tools.

Did you know?

Madeira was actually supposed to be the codename for the newer version of Dynamics NAV that has been a highly crucial component of Azure and Office 365

Once operational, Madeira will allow smaller-sized businesses to avail the service across all the mainstream operating system platforms such as Android, Windows, or iOS. First impressions suggest that Madeira is a very practical approach that allows businesses to make their Office 365 subscription even more productive. From creating invoices to sending automated e-mailers or issuing invoices to exporting data in CSV format, Madeira seems rather smart and immediately usable. Madeira is basically a public cloud service initiative, a SaaS offering, running on Microsoft Azure. For small business set-ups, it provides an easy way to streamline their operations and sales channels.

The SME Perspective on Madeira

Microsoft has projected “Madeira” as a holistic business management solution for companies with strength of 10 to 100 employees.

Smaller firms usually don’t have the funds to make long-term, substantial investments in tailor-made Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Project “Madeira” has been designed to address such issues by acting as a comprehensive business management solution hosted in the cloud. It should work without sacrificing usability as well as the set-up times.

Why Madeira should Benefit
Small/Medium-sized Businesses:

  • Leverage of a familiar, existing ecosystem: Users would not have to leave Outlook as Madeira will automatically identify the business context and quote requests, empowering users with tools that will drive faster-to-market practices
  • Mobility-related business benefits: Mobile workforce should benefit from the business-ready version of Madeira. It is designed to perform consistently across various devices and mobile platforms. Users will be able to manage the service using apps designed for Android devices, Windows, and iOS or even a Web browser. The Madeira experience is supposed to be consistent across an array of devices – tablet, desktops, and phones.
  • Cloud-fueled advantages: This multi-tenant public cloud service will run on Microsoft Azure. SMBs get the assurance of their data being secured in enterprise-class data centers which used to not be possible due to cost constraints.

Scaled down but Madeira is a Performer!

Yes, the concept makes sense. The capabilities of Madeira span across finances to getting crucial business insights. Many experts believe Project Madeira is essentially a scaled-down version to make Outlook more appealing, helping Microsoft penetrate deeper into the small business digital solutions space. We believe Microsoft is reinventing, reimagining to ensure its portfolio of enterprise-ready solutions is consumable for every type of business using a digital platform. We are using the term ‘reinvented’ for Project Madeira as it comes with a bundle of new functionalities. From augmented productivity to acting as a mobile first and cloud first platform, this project from Microsoft is driven to help businesses manage better and grow.

More about Madeira’s Range of Solutions

Project “Madeira” allows you to visualize your data as it can create interactive reports using Power BI on operational data. This translates into invaluable assistance for driving your business forward, effortlessly keeping a tab on emerging trends. Moreover, the independent software vendors that function within the Microsoft ecosystem are ready to offer both horizontal add-on functionalities as well vertical solutions that will become available in the market immediately after the launch of the project.

Is Madeira within reach for businesses at this moment?

Madeira is most likely to become available for use in the US in 2016. Microsoft plans to extend it to other countries after fine-tuning the user experience based on feedback from its US pool of SMEs

Right now, Madeira has been opened to public preview: bit.ly/22cOYX6

You simply need to sign-up and get valuable insights about how it can help businesses that want more of the mainstream, full-sized enterprise solutions Microsoft offers without spending too much. The launch is heavily anticipated. We will be tracking the progress of Madeira, and update you as soon as it is ready for deployment.

What to expect from the first phase of Madeira?

Initially, Madeira will offer CRM, sales and purchase management, business insight, multi-currency and inventory solutions while extensions/upgrades for Madeira will be created by 3rd party developers, most probably priced enticingly in the apps marketplace. It is important to remember companies that adopted NAV 2015 and 2016 are already able to connect their existing ERP solutions to Office 365 or Azure Active Directory. Madeira takes this feature one step ahead. With hosting handled by Microsoft, the onboarding process will become more uncomplicated. Running on Outlook, Madeira should provide an industrious interface for managers and workplace teams.

How Can INFINIT Help in Your “Madeira” Endeavor?

INFINIT Consulting has been awarded the Northwest Area Partner of the Year by Microsoft’s US Small and Mid-sized Business (SMB) Champions Club

Just like many Microsoft offerings for smaller, medium-sized and bigger enterprises, Madeira will present a learning curve, a utility assessment challenge, and an ROI reality check.

  • We have comprehensive experience in assisting small businesses to adopt Microsoft solutions in their entirety.
  • Our team has already acquainted itself with this latest offering from Microsoft to help you ease into Madeira, i.e. as soon as it is available in the market.
  • We have the expertise to deploy Madeira for extracting the maximum business outcomes, from controlling leads to maintaining complete visibility throughout the payment process, or creating new opportunities for your business using Madeira.

We would recommend signing up for the preview so that you can get a glimpse into what is in store for your business in Project “Madeira”.

Also, connecting the moving parts of your supply chain, controlling costs, and managing inventory becomes simpler with this solution. Our team will provide hands-on assistance during the trial period and when subscribing to Madeira as a business solution.

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