The concept of the global control tower first appeared on the radar of supply chain leaders around 15 years ago. As more and more companies pursued end-to-end visibility for increasingly globalized supply chains, the idea quickly gained momentum. IndustryWeek noted global control towers as one of the hottest supply chain buzzwords of 2008.¹ Still, for an idea that has been buzzing for over a decade, many companies have been challenged to move from concept to reality.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is helping companies overcome these challenges by equipping them with the tools necessary to create digital supply chains that are highly collaborative, coordinated, agile, and demand-driven. With these new supply chain solutions in place, businesses can achieve real-time, end-to-end visibility across the supply chain, breathing new life into concepts like supply chain control towers in the process.

Supply chain control towers

It has quickly become essential for businesses to invest in technology that can help them sense and predict supply chain constraints and disruptions and spikes and troughs in demand. From using advanced forecasting techniques to real-time collaboration between trading partners and commercial teams, business processes are increasingly geared to generate and proactively shape customer demand. Companies must also integrate the agility to continuously optimize supply and production plans in real-time, as forecast and predictions shift into actual customer order receipts. Supply chains control towers help in these efforts by building both agility and resiliency into the supply chain by delivering end-to-end operational visibility, all the way from planning to delivery and back.

Resiliency in this context is about driving business continuity. This can take the form of digitizing production in factories, automating operations on the shop floor, and providing unparallel transparency, in real-time, to leadership. By utilizing Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights^preview to create a digital representation of the physical supply chain, whether called a control tower, digital twin, or supply chain nerve center, businesses can reach new levels of agility and gain the ability to sense and proactively mitigate disruptions before they occur. And to respond faster when the inevitable happens, such as an unpredictable or unforeseen event.

McKinsey & Company estimates that a $10 billion business with a high-performing supply chain can reduce cost by as much as $50 million annually through digital initiatives such as supply chain nerve centers.² This is because control towers enable supply chain organizations to blur the lines between planning and execution, allowing businesses to uncover and exploit improvement opportunities faster than ever before.

Building blocks

Visibility

Starting with the end in mind, regardless of the mixture of people, processes, data, organization, and technology used to erect a control tower, it must deliver end-to-end visibility across all supply chain nodes to be successful. This visibility should penetrate beyond tier 1 and tier 2 partners.

Agility

While visibility is the starting point, visibility by itself is not sufficient. Supply chain solutions must also deliver improvements to agility so companies can more effectively respond to changing customer demands. In practice, this means going beyond the ability to immediately grasp what is happening (system-wide visibility) and on to making predictions of what is likely to happen next. This way, business leaders can adapt and overcome challenges as they are identified in real-time.

Unified data

The value that a construct such as a supply chain control tower can deliver is proportional to the organizations’ ability to unify data from disparate sources. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, legacy business applications, supplier systems of records, siloed hard drives, PLCs, and even IoT data streams all must be incorporated and unified.

Automation

Businesses also need supply chain solutions that incorporate rules-based orchestration to model and automate responses to fulfillment constraints. By leveraging automation in this manner, organizations can proactively address issues with actionable, data-driven insights, allowing them to adapt faster to disruptions and constraints.

Vision

At Microsoft, we see supply chain control towers as a shared service process that can be brought together from a mix of supply chain solutions. For example, a control tower can be assembled using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights^preview together with Microsoft Power Platform, and our rapidly growing ecosystem of digital supply chain applications.

A supply chain control tower enabled by Dynamics 365 in this fashion positions organizations to respond faster and more intelligently to disruptions and opportunities. With seamless integration to many market-leading API-enabled applications using our configurable pre-built partner connectors, businesses can convert the action signals from what-if analysis into directives sent to the applications that guide day-to-day operational execution.

Organizational benefits

When organizations use Dynamics 365 to create a supply chain control tower, they can realize the benefits of a single platform. One version of truth brings together internal and external stakeholders to visualize constraints and disruptions at any point in the value stream. Then, affected agents and authorities can work together to analyze the upstream or downstream impacts, collaborate in near real-time to formulate and enact optimal responsesall from one location and one pane of glass.

In this way, a supply chain control tower created with Dynamics 365 enables organizations to adapt quickly to demand shifts by deliberately blurring the lines between planning and execution and effectively creating a continuous digital feedback loop across entities and distinct business processes.

Let’s now look at how a customer, Breville Group, is creating a resilient supply chain of the future with Dynamics 365.

Looking forward

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides manufacturers, distributors, and retailers with the real-time visibility and intelligence they need to move from reactive to proactive. It unifies data and uses predictive insightsacross order fulfillment, planning, procurement, production, inventory, warehousing, and transportationto maximize operational efficiency, product quality, and profitability. And, with innovative technologies, such as AI and machine learning integrated into the solution, it helps organizations accelerate performance even further.

Learn more about how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights ^preview enable companies to strengthen and expand the Four Pillars of the Digital Supply Chain. To learn more, check out our recent webinar Create Agile and Digital Supply Chains with Dynamics 365, and join a panel of Microsoft Experts in the live Ask the Expert session scheduled for December 7, 2021, at 10AM Pacific Time.

1- IndustryWeek, A Guide to the Hottest Supply Chain Buzzwords of 2008, January 2008

2- McKinsey & Company, Building a digital bridge across the supply chain with nerve centers, January 2021

The post Enhance visibility with Dynamics 365 digital supply chain solutions appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Thank you to everyone from across the globe who attended Microsoft Ignite last week. This year’s virtual event was packed with learning sessions, announcements, engaging conversations, and Q&Asfar too much content to absorb in just three days. To help you catch up on the news and content from Microsoft Ignite, we’ve rounded up the highlights for you.

To get started, we recommend watching three featured sessions. Start with Satya Nadella’s opening keynotean overview of trends and innovations across the Microsoft cloud that will transform your business. Then, watch the session, “Microsoft Ignite into Focus: Business Applications,” for a closer look at new and upcoming capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Also, learn about innovation across the Microsoft cloud that will allow every organization to build a hyperconnected business, providing the agility and flexibility for organizations and employees to thrive now and into the future.

Next, explore innovation across Dynamics 365 discussed in breakout and on-demand sessions during the event, starting with the highlights below.

Context IQ: Connect and collaborate in the flow of work with anyone, anywhere

We’re making it easier to connect with people, information, and conversations from Dynamics 365 workspaces, reducing the need to switch between apps to access who and what you need in the moment. At Microsoft Ignite, we announced Context IQ, a set of capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 that make information, people, and conversations more accessible in the moment, reducing the need to switch between apps. Context IQ helps ensure business users can access documents and records, colleagues across the organization, and conversationsall in the flow of work, whether from within Dynamics 365 or Microsoft 365 applications.

Read a deep dive on the Dynamics 365 blog and watch the Microsoft Ignite sessionto see Context IQ in action.

Build deeper connections with Microsoft Customer Experience Platform

Organizations must be able to unlock the power of customer data to create experiences that build strong relationships. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, introduced at Microsoft Ignite, is a complete solution that puts organizations in control of their customer data to personalize, automate and orchestrate journeys during the entire customer lifecycle of awareness, to purchase, to service. With a deep understanding of customers and rich, out-of-the-box insights, organizations can now determine and predict intent to deliver the right content on the right channel and in the right moment.

Read a deep dive on the Dynamics 365 blog and watch the Microsoft Ignite session to see these capabilities in action.

Create an all-in-one digital contact center with Dynamics 365 Customer Service

At Microsoft Ignite, we announced the general availability of our first-party voice channel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, built on the planet-scale communications platform that powers Microsoft Teams. The addition of the voice channel helps your organization provide consistent and personalized service to customers across all channels with one data-driven, AI-infused, end-to-end solutionno integration required.

The new first-party voice solutions join a host of other capabilities demonstrated at Microsoft Ignite, including conversational IVR, call transcription, sentiment analysis, proactive recommendations, and other built-in AI capabilities that empower your agents to resolve customer issues quickly.

Read a deep dive on the Dynamics 365 blog and watch the Microsoft Ignite session to see these capabilities in action.

Build a trusted and resilient supply chain

The current supply chain crisis spotlights the need for new levels of visibility across your entire supply chain. At Microsoft Ignite, we announced Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights, providing organizations with the visibility they need along with the intelligence to predict and proactively manage supply chain challenges.

We also announced updates to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to optimize production processes. New capabilities enable your organization to innovate with intelligent manufacturing operations by easily adapting to new business models, improving planning agility, enhancing the visibility of your shop floor, and ensuring round-the-clock uptime and business continuity.

In addition, Microsoft introduced the preview of the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, which connects experiences across the end-to-end product and service lifecycle and lights up the entire Microsoft cloud with capabilities specifically tailored to manufacturing.

Explore updates to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, learn how to mitigate disruptions with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights, and read about theMicrosoft Cloud for Manufacturing preview. Also, watch Microsoft Ignite sessions that take a deep dive into Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.

Bridge the physical and digital worlds with Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces

Announced at Microsoft Ignite, the preview of Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces, previously Dynamics 365 Connected Store, signals our expansion from retail scenarios to all spaces, from retail to manufacturing. With Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces, your organization can harness observational data (the data we generate as we move throughout the world), use AI-powered models to unlock insights about your environment, and respond in real-time to trends and patterns.

Learn more on the Dynamics 365 blog and watch the Microsoft Ignite session to see these capabilities in action.

Read more news from Microsoft Ignite

Be sure to catch up on all the news and sessions from Microsoft Ignite, now available on-demandincluding downloadable videos of sessions, transcripts, and related resources. If you need a roadmap, check out our guide to Microsoft Ignite.

The post Microsoft Ignite recap: Dynamics 365 news and announcements you may have missed appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Customer engagement professionals still need to build relationships, trust, and loyalty to be successful, but how we achieve these outcomes has fundamentally changed. Those changes offer the opportunity to be more effective than ever at driving these results.

To meet customer expectations, marketers are looking to create end-to-end customer experiences that are customer-led, highly personalized, and that reach their customers wherever they are, across all physical and digital channels. Data and AI make all these things possible and bring us into an exciting new frontierfrom the reactive to the predictive era.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing brings together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation, empowering businesses to orchestrate individualized journeys across all touchpoints to strengthen relationships and earn loyalty.

With the 2021 release wave 2, we focused on improving processes and capabilities for creating moments-based customer journeys that span all customer touchpoints, and on taking personalization to the next level, all with less effort. Here are a few highlights of these exciting new innovations that will be releasing over the next few months and what they can mean for marketers and business users alike.

Engage your customers in moments that matter across all customer touchpoints

To truly embrace customer-led journeys you must be ready to engage and respond when the customer wants to engage, in the moments that matter to them. Here are new ways Dynamics 365 Marketing will help you do just that.

Send SMS messages using Twilio and TeleSign integration. Engaging customers in moments that matter means that connecting with mobile users is a must. Dynamics 365 Marketing enables you to utilize the SMS channel to send fast, transactional communications and marketing messages. In this release, we have extended these capabilities by enabling integration with Twilio and TeleSign for the ultimate level of flexibility.

Reach more customers with a 10X increase in the scale of interactions in real-time marketing journeys. To reach your customers in moments that matter to them, you must be able to scale. Prospects and customers are starting to take the lead on how frequently they want to interact with companies they do business with. Companies must be able to respond to customers whenever they want to engage. We now support up to 100 million outbound interactions (email, SMS, or push notifications) per month to a maximum of 20 million contacts using real-time marketing journeys. With the added interaction capacity, you can communicate as much as you need to help move prospects and customers along their buying journey.

Personalize engagement for each customer

Engaging your customers in an individually personalized way is easier than ever thanks to the innovative new capabilities added to Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Deliver rich customer experiences by raising custom events from journey steps. Because every business is unique, you may need to define custom processes to enhance your journeys. By using Microsoft Power Automate Flows, you will have limitless customization and precise control of your customer experience.

You can call a Power Automate Flow from the journey canvas to connect with proprietary and external business systems. This end-to-end integration allows you to leverage the entire Power Automate ecosystem of connectors and controls to deliver the unique experience your customers demand. And what’s even better, is that anyone, from citizen marketing developers to pro marketing operations teams, IT professionals, or partners, can create very advanced custom scenarios in only a few clicks.

Personalize emails to include lists of related data. To save time and to further personalize your emails, you can now include lists of related data that are specific to the individual receiving the email. For example, you can add a list of sessions in a conference registration email or a list of items purchased in an order confirmation email. The ‘helper tool’ in real-time marketing generates the code for conditional statements and lists for you, making it easier to ensure your syntax is correct.

Gain more control over journey branching conditions through increased attribute support. Creating personalized journeys for customers based on their demographics and behaviors can help increase engagement. With this release, you can now create journey branches based on any attribute associated with the customer or event trigger that started the journey. In addition, for attributes based on date and time, you can create branches based on relative or partial dates.

Make faster and better decisions leveraging the power of analytics and AI

A deep understanding of your customer coupled with knowledge of what has worked before can bring amazing customer experiences to life.

Use AI-powered ideas to automatically generate content for emails. Looking for the right email copy to catch a customer’s eye? Use Content Ideas to help you get writing inspiration and move faster from concept to execution. No more needing to start from a blank screen. This new capability uses powerful AI technology to generate custom text ideas in your Dynamics 365 Marketing email editor.

We’re taking an intentional approach to integrating our responsible AI principles by building this experience with transparency and control, while boosting value for you. The automated ideas are based on your key points and recent emails sent by your organization. Now you can take advantage of this breakthrough technology to deliver the most impactful content to your audience.

Optimize the performance of emails in the new outbound marketing email editor with A/B testing. A good way to create an email that resonates with your audience is to test different versions with subsets of your recipients, and then analyze interaction records to determine which one is better received. The new editor in Dynamics 365 Marketing now can A/B test your emails, allowing you to optimize the performance of your emails.

Use natural language to create targeted segments. You can also use natural language sentences to build segments faster in Dynamics 365 Marketing. We introduced a preview of this capability in our previous release and have been working to refine, enhance, and continue the AI model training, so it’s better than ever before. Just use simple words to specify the attributes and logic for the segment you want to target, the AI-powered model does the rest for you. For example, using natural language, you can create a segment of “Contacts who were born between 1970 and 2000 and make more than $50K”, the correct query fields will be filled in for you and the segment will be generated automatically.

Leading the next generation of business applications

The innovations in this 2021 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Marketing support our Dynamics 365 vision to build data first, AI-enabled applications. Starting from data, we bring new insights and automation to your business processes and customer experiences. We power those processes and experiences with AI and next best actions while upholding Microsoft’s commitment to building AI responsibly, using our six principles as a lens for innovation. I’m excited to take you on this exciting journey with usas always, there will be more to come.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Marketing

To learn more about how your organization can elevate your customer experiences, visit the Dynamics 365 Marketing webpage and sign up for a free Dynamics 365 Marketing trial to explore real-time customer journey orchestration and the other rich capabilities offered in Dynamics 365 Marketing.

The post Dynamics 365 Marketing is leading the way with personalized engagement appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.