Microsoft’s preview program expands to include business management tool ‘Project Madeira’

Kareem Anderson

Over the past couple of years, Microsoft has opened up several of its program and services to participation from the public. With several public previews that include Office 365, Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile as well as its cloud offering Azure, Microsoft has opened its doors to feedback from the people who actually use the services day in and day out.

Microsoft is looking to add yet another service to its preview program under the code name Project Madeira. Project Madeira is designed to enable small and medium-sized companies with a management solution for connecting to Office 365 apps and solutions on both mobile and PC.

Microsoft is on a mission to reinvent productivity with a comprehensive business management solution that works right within Office 365. Start your preview of Project “Madeira” to see how easy it is to manage your sales, finances, billing, purchasing, and inventory — all without leaving Outlook. This Project “Madeira” for Windows app extends the experience to your mobile and touch-enabled devices for productivity on the go.”

According to a tipster over at Windows Central, there is a list of features and functionality announced by Microsoft, coming to the preview that include:

  • A new level of productivity – Project “Madeira” reduces time wasted switching back and forth between business applications and email. It automatically identifies business context such as invoices and quote requests within Outlook and presents the user with the tools and data needed to take immediate action – all without leaving Outlook. If you know how to use Office, then you know how to use Project “Madeira.”
  • Cloud first – Project “Madeira” is designed from the ground up as a true multi-tenant public cloud service on Microsoft Azure, meaning SMBs can get up and running quickly, manage costs and rest assured knowing their data is more protected in hyper-scale, enterprise-class data centers.
  • Mobile first – Project “Madeira” is built for a mobile workforce, with a consistently great user experience across almost any device or form factor. Customers can access the service through a Web browser, or using apps for Windows, iOS or Android devices.
  • Built for growth – Project “Madeira” is a comprehensive business management solution for growing companies with roughly 10 to 100 employees. These are companies that need more than the simple financial and accounting tools they started with but aren’t yet ready to make a big investment in a customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Without sacrificing ease of use or speed of setup, Project “Madeira” offers a fully powered business management solution in the cloud, with capabilities spanning financials, dimensions, sales and purchase management, inventory, CRM (opportunity management), multi-currency, and business insight. In addition, Microsoft’s ecosystem of independent software vendors are building rich extensions for Project “Madeira.” These extensions cover horizontal add-on functionality as well as full industry-specific vertical solutions. They will be available in a marketplace soon.

As far as availability details are concerned, it appears that the preview will last a for a few more months as the Project Madeira folks evaluate the feedback given by the preview community. The apps for mobile and PC can be snagged through the Windows Store today!