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Microsoft, Adobe & SAP Partnership to Raise the Bar in CRM

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Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) announced partnership with Adobe (ADBE - Free Report) and SAP (SAP - Free Report) as part of new Open Data Initiative at its Ignite conference at Orlando, FL. As the name suggests, the initiative is aimed to add value to data and obtain more effective consumer data insights.

The segregation of customer data will facilitate data exchange among Dynamics 365, Adobe’s Experience Cloud and Experience Platform, and SAP’s S/4HANA and C/4HANA platforms through common data architecture.

The Open Data Initiatives is aimed at removing data silos in order to aid organizations in handling data better along with providing support and security measures to their customers.

Each of the three companies involved will benefit from robust data driven insights consequently strengthening the respective customer experience management (“CXM”) platforms.

Taking the Fight to Salesforce

The customer relationship management (“CRM”) and enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) providers including Salesforce.com (CRM - Free Report) and Oracle, among others are striving to enhance their portfolio by integrating their offerings with AI.

However, Microsoft intends to get ahead of the curve by innovative techniques in CRM domain. In this data-driven era, the new initiative is expected to poise the company and its partners well to better assess purchasing behavior and other trend about customers.

Azure Platform: A Key Catalyst

Notably the“common data lake service” will leverage Azure cloud platform. This unified data store will enable customers their choice of development tools and applications to build and deploy services in Azure.

The fact that the data service is deployed on Azure provides the developers with a secure as well as privacy compliant infrastructure.

What the Investors Need to Know?

Shares of Microsoft have returned 35.8% year to date, substantially outperforming the industry’s rally of 29.6%. The stock has also fared better than the S&P 500 index’s rise of 10.7%.



This outperformance can primarily be attributed to its rapidly expanding efforts in AI and IoT based developments. Undisturbed focus on Azure remains a key catalyst.

Consumer data holds immense potential in this digital era, particularly for retail companies. The new initiative is already witnessing support from notable retail players, including the likes of Walmart, The Coca-Cola Company and Unilever, among others.

We believe as more companies join the initiative, the common data platform will gain strength and businesses will be able to lock meaningful insights.

Zacks Rank

Microsoft carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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