XRM

XRM, in the context of Microsoft Dynamics, refers to a framework and philosophy for building applications on the Dynamics platform that extend beyond traditional customer relationship management. XRM stands for eXtended Relationship Management, and is sometimes described as Anything Relationship Management; the idea is to model arbitrary business domains by creating custom entities and defining relationships between them.

The concept emerged as a way to extend CRM beyond sales and service by using the same platform, data model, and customization capabilities to represent other domain objects such as assets, contracts, projects, or suppliers. It gained prominence during the Dynamics CRM 4.0 era and continued through subsequent versions. In practice, XRM solutions rely on custom entities, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships, forms, views, business rules, workflows, and optionally plugins or code to implement domain-specific processes. Data security and governance follow the same role-based access controls and deployment mechanisms used by standard CRM.

In modern Dynamics 365 implementations, XRM capabilities are delivered via the Dataverse data platform and the broader Power Platform. The branding around XRM has shifted over time, but the underlying concept remains: the platform can model and automate complex relationships across any business domain, not solely customer-facing interactions. Common use cases include asset and contract management, project tracking, vendor or supplier relationships, and regulatory or case handling.

Overall, XRM remains a core concept in Dynamics 365 and related Microsoft technologies, illustrating the platform’s flexibility to support diverse business needs beyond traditional CRM.