Touchdown is pushing deeper into Business Central as Microsoft Partners face a familiar customer-data problem: marketing work often occurs outside the environment that runs sales, finance, and operations.
The company, founded in 2019, sells a marketing automation suite for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Apps and Business Central. Its pitch to Partners is tied to a practical question within the Business Applications channel: how much customer engagement data should reside in standalone marketing systems when clients are trying to make ERP, CRM, analytics, and AI work from a more connected data layer?
That question is becoming more timely as Microsoft shifts Customer Insights – Journeys away from outbound marketing and toward real-time journeys. For Partners serving Business Central customers, the change puts more focus on campaign execution, event data, segmentation, and follow-up workflows that still need to connect with the rest of the Microsoft environment.
Business Central marketing automation moves closer to ERP
Touchdown is trying to position itself in that opening.
“With Touchdown, we’re the only marketing solution fully integrated into Business Central,” said Lama Khalil, channel manager at Touchdown. “It is a journey.”
The company makes a similar statement on its Business Central product page, where it describes Touchdown as “the only marketing solution fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.”
The more important point for Partners may be the direction of travel. Touchdown began on the Customer Engagement side of the Microsoft ecosystem, where marketing automation, CRM and campaign management are more natural neighbours. Business Central is a different market, with a different Partner base, a different language and different customer expectations.
Why disconnected marketing data matters
Business Central customers often run leaner teams. Marketing may not be a separate enterprise function with its own dedicated martech stack and operations staff. In many SMB organizations, customer lists, sales data, financial records, event follow-up, and campaign work can quickly spread across systems.
Touchdown argues that Business Central customers should not have to keep marketing data away from the rest of their operational data.
We have to think of the marketing teams that work with Business Central, the need to keep them on a full Microsoft environment,” Khalil said. “These teams tend to opt for a standalone solution which continues to feed the disparate data sets.”
That is the problem Partners encounter as customers add more applications to their ERP and CRM systems.
The pattern is familiar across the Microsoft channel. PartnerTalks recently covered a similar move in Business Central document automation, where a long-time Dataverse ISV expanded into Business Central in response to Partner demand.
Event data becomes part of the marketing workflow
Touchdown’s roadmap also points toward broader campaign orchestration. Khalil said the company is working on LinkedIn integration, multi-channel campaign orchestration and an expanded event-management tool.
“There’s a LinkedIn integration coming, which is something partners and customers have been asking for,” she said. “Alongside that, we’re moving into true multi-channel campaign orchestration.”
The company’s event-management push is relevant to Business Applications Partners, which often build demand for conferences, roadshows, webinars, and local customer events. Khalil said Touchdown is adding a dedicated mobile app for in-person events, with QR code check-in and real-time syncing of attendance data back into Touchdown and the CRM.
Event follow-up is one of the places where Partner marketing operations often break down. A booth scan, webinar registration, or roadshow attendee list may not quickly become usable sales intelligence.
Partner services shape the channel model
Touchdown is also framing its channel model around division of labour. The Partner manages the Microsoft relationship and the customer’s CRM or ERP environment. Touchdown brings the marketing automation layer and support around campaign execution.
“Our partners bring the Microsoft expertise and the customer relationships. We bring the marketing know-how and the hands-on support,” Khalil said. “When those two things come together, it just works.”
For Partners, the services focus on data cleanup, segmentation, campaign design, event follow-up, and CRM or ERP alignment. Those are the tasks that determine whether marketing automation becomes a connected business process or another isolated system.
Marketing automation becomes a data architecture question
For Business Central Partners, the larger issue is whether marketing can remain a separate system in a market moving toward connected data. Touchdown’s answer is no. Its Business Central connector, event tools and campaign-orchestration roadmap are aimed at Partners that want marketing activity to sit closer to the operational systems their customers already trust.
That does not eliminate the need for due diligence, however. Partners still need to evaluate fit, licensing, implementation effort, feature depth and how Touchdown compares with other marketing platforms serving the Microsoft ecosystem.
But Touchdown’s Business Central push reflects a broader shift in the channel: SMB ERP customers are asking for more than accounting and operations. They want customer-facing systems around ERP to use the same data, serve the same teams and support the same AI-ready strategy.
