This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In modern contact centers, not every customer question can be resolved by a single representative. Complex interactions often require quick collaboration—bringing in subject matter experts, supervisors, or external partners—without breaking the flow of the conversation or forcing customers to repeat themselves.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center addresses this challenge with powerful consult capabilities, enabling service representatives to collaborate in real time while keeping conversations seamless across voice and digital channels.
To see how these capabilities come together in practice, let’s step inside Contoso Health, a multi‑specialty healthcare provider delivering patient support at scale.
Inside Contoso Health: Coordinated Care Without Disruption
Contoso Health serves thousands of patients every day through its Patient Access and Care Coordination teams. Representatives handle a wide range of interactions—appointment management, referral validation, insurance questions, post‑discharge follow‑ups, and care plan clarifications.
Their goal is simple: connect every patient to the right expertise instantly, without transfers, repetition, or uncertainty.
Here’s how consult capabilities in Dynamics 365 Contact Center make that possible.
Consult with a Representative: Real‑Time Peer Collaboration
Some situations require a quick second opinion before responding to a patient. Rather than transferring the interaction, representatives can consult another service representative or supervisor while keeping the patient on hold.
Contoso Scenario: Referral Eligibility Check
A patient calls to reschedule a specialist appointment and asks whether their referral is still valid. The Patient Access representative initiates a consult with a Scheduling Specialist, who can see the conversation context and confirm referral rules in real time.
What the patient experiences:
A short, informed hold.
No handoff or repetition.
A confident, accurate response from the same representative.
Consult to Queue: Access to Specialized Expertise
When the required expertise isn’t known upfront, representatives can consult an entire specialist queue. Dynamics 365 Contact Center uses routing logic to connect the representative with the most appropriate expert based on skills and availability.
Contoso Scenario: Pre‑Procedure Instructions
A patient asks detailed questions about preparing for an upcoming procedure. The representative consults the Nursing queue, allowing the system to route the consult to an available clinician.
Why it works:
No manual searching for the right person.
Faster access to clinically accurate information.
Safer, more reliable guidance in high‑stakes interactions.
Consult with External Numbers: Coordinating with Healthcare Partners
Healthcare interactions often depend on information outside the organization—insurance providers, labs, or partner clinics. Representatives can consult external PSTN numbers directly from the communication panel.
Contoso Scenario: Insurance Coverage Verification
A patient wants to confirm coverage for a diagnostic imaging procedure. The representative consults the insurance provider via an external number, verifies eligibility, and returns to the patient with confirmed details—without ending the call.
Outcome:
Verified information in a single interaction
Fewer callbacks and follow‑ups
A seamless, unified patient experience across organizations
Consult with Microsoft Teams Users: Bridging Contact Center and Care Teams
Many clinicians and care coordinators work primarily in Microsoft Teams, not the contact center. Dynamics 365 Contact Center allows representatives to consult Teams users directly.
A recently discharged patient calls with concerns about medication timing. The representative sees the assigned Care Coordinator is available in Teams and initiates a consult to confirm instructions before responding.
Benefits:
Faster access to care teams
No context switching or manual follow‑ups
Better alignment between service and clinical teams
Filtered Consults: Connecting to the Right Expertise with Confidence
In complex service environments, not every expert, team, or specialist should be available for every consult. An unfiltered list can slow representatives down and increase the risk of engaging the wrong resource. Dynamics 365 Contact Center supports filtered consult experiences, ensuring representatives see only the most relevant queues and users based on organizational rules and roles.
Contoso Scenario: Targeted Consults in Care Coordination
A customer interaction is routed into the Care Coordination queue based on intent. Once the conversation lands in the queue, consult options are filtered. Representatives see only approved specialist queues and users aligned to Care Coordination roles and policies. This ensures consults stay within the correct domain, prevents accidental misrouting, and helps Contoso resolve complex requests efficiently after work enters a specialized queue.
Why it matters:
Filtered consults help Contoso Health maintain clinical accuracy, reduce decision fatigue for representatives, and ensure collaboration happens within the right care boundaries—supporting safer, more confident patient interactions.
Confident Collaboration, Better Outcomes
Great customer experiences depend on confident, well‑informed conversations. Dynamics 365 Contact Center enables representatives to stay in control while collaborating in real time with the right experts—peers, specialist queues, external partners, or Microsoft Teams users.
The primary representative remains the single point of contact, preserving continuity while bringing in additional insight when needed. Customers experience faster resolutions, fewer handoffs, and clearer answers—without repeating themselves or losing context.
Learn more
To explore the consult capabilities in detail, visit the official documentation:
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re pleased to introduce a new capability for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations archive with Dataverse long-term retention: parallel processing for archive jobs. This enhancement allows the Archive job scheduler to run multiple archive jobs at the same time, dramatically reducing the time required to archive high volumes of transaction data across legal entities.
The challenge: Sequential bottlenecks
Previously, archive jobs within the same scenario were processed sequentially. For organizations operating across dozens of legal entities—each with millions of transaction records in General Ledger, Sales Orders, or other scenarios—this approach created a bottleneck, and archiving could take days or even weeks to complete.
For example, a multinational organization may have 50–200+ legal entities, each containing one fiscal year of General Ledger transactions. Archiving one legal entity data at a time delays storage optimization, increases SQL Server load, and slows the movement of data into long-term retention in Dataverse.
The solution: Use Job criteria key partition to enable parallel processing
Parallel processing introduces the Job Criteria Key—a partition identifier you set when you build the archive job contract. The job criteria key tells the archive job scheduler which archive jobs operate on independent data sets. This allows them to run simultaneously without conflict.
How it works
Define the partition key — When you build the archive job contract, set the criteria key (typically the legal entity) that represents the data partition.
The scheduler identifies parallel candidates — The archive job scheduler detects that jobs with different criteria keys target non-overlapping records.
Jobs run concurrently — Rather than waiting in a queue, archive jobs for different partitions execute in parallel.
The zero-overlap guarantee
The job criteria key depends on one critical invariant: when multiple archive jobs run within the same scenario, each job with a different job criteria key must process a completely distinct set of records with zero overlap.
For example, if you run two Sales Order archive jobs at the same time—one with job criteria key “USMF” and another with “DEMF”—the records archived by the USMF job must not overlap with those archived by the DEMF job. This is why DataAreaId is a natural choice for many scenarios: it inherently partitions data by legal entity.
Monitoring parallel jobs
You can monitor archive jobs running in parallel from the Archive with Dataverse long term retention workspace in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Each job shows its criteria key value, making it easy to confirm which partitions are being processed concurrently.
Join the private preview
Parallel processing for archive jobs is currently available in private preview. If you’d like to try this capability in your environment, we’d be happy to have you participate.
By joining the preview, you’ll get early access to parallel archive job execution. You’ll also have an opportunity to provide feedback that helps shape the final release. The preview is open to all Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations customers and partners.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Work is changing at a structural level.
Three forces are converging. The interface layer is shifting to AI assistants. Agents handle workflow orchestration. And an intelligence layer is consolidating information across structured and unstructured sources. Together, these forces mark Frontier Transformation, where AI moves beyond basic efficiency to open new opportunities for creativity, innovation and growth.
This transformation also creates a new kind of business application: one that is integrated with the AI assistant people use every day, accessible to agents and grounded in the unique intelligence of each organization.
We call these agentic business applications. The applications themselves still reflect real business processes. But how people interact with them, how work moves through them and how they connect to the rest of the business is fundamentally different.
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Interact with business applications inside Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot is becoming an interactive workspace for business applications. Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and custom apps built with Power Apps will surface directly as agents with rich UX inside chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Agents using Apps SDK and MCP Apps can also bring Microsoft partner apps into the conversation, including tools teams already use, like Adobe Express, Figma, and Wix. This is the interface layer shift in practice. Instead of switching between applications, users state what they need in Copilot and the system responds. You can review data and take action without leaving the conversation. Copilot becomes the place where work gets done.
As an example, a human resources (HR) employee can now call on their custom HR app, built with Power Apps, right within Copilot to compile a list of office locations with the highest new hire counts this quarter, viewing the results in an organized table with filter options. Additionally, they can prompt the application to show the results in a map view, all without leaving their Copilot interface.
Or a customer service representative can begin their day in Microsoft 365 Copilot by reviewing a summary of priority cases they need to focus on, easily viewing and updating their data from Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
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Public preview for this capability will be available later this month for Power Apps, with availability for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service launching in early April 2026. Throughout the next month, we’ll also introduce support for this capability across a handful of Microsoft partner apps, including Adobe Express, Adobe Acrobat, Base44, Box, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Miro, Monday.com, Optimizely, and Wix. All pre-built partner app experiences will be accessible via the Microsoft 365 Agent Store for users with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
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Bring Copilot and agents into Dynamics 365 and Power Apps
The experience works in both directions. Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents like Researcher and Analyst will be accessible directly within Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and custom apps built with Power Apps. Employees get the same Copilot capabilities they trust across Microsoft 365 while staying grounded in their operational systems.
Consider a seller working in Dynamics 365 Sales who asks Researcher to generate a full account overview: customer relationship management (CRM) context, internal knowledge, and external research combined in one response, surfaced in place. The unit of value shifts from “find the right screen” to “get the answer and act.” This creates a more consistent experience across productivity tools and business applications. Work moves from insight to execution with less friction between systems.
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Microsoft 365 Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and canvas apps in Power Apps will be available in public preview by early April 2026. Microsoft 365 Copilot in model-driven apps built with Power Apps will reach general availability by early April 2026. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. This experience with Power Apps also requires a Power Apps premium license.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Power Apps allows us to ask questions and make decisions directly against our Dataverse data, while also combining insights from Microsoft 365 when needed. The experience now feels truly unified, allowing our users to summarize complex operational data, trigger actions, and seamlessly access insights. We’ve seen significant increases in the value provided to both our internal solutions and customer-facing products.
Peter Kestenholz, Founder & Head of Innovation, Context&
Grounded in your organization’s intelligence with Work IQ
Underpinning all of this is Work IQ. Work IQ connects signals from Microsoft 365 with operational data from Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. It follows work as it happens across documents, meetings, chats, and business processes. This is the intelligence layer: the thing that resolves entities and relationships across structured and unstructured sources, so agents and Copilot share a common understanding of what is happening across the business.
Decisions discussed in a meeting or email can connect to live data in a business application. Changes in one place surface where attention is needed elsewhere. And because this intelligence is grounded in Dataverse and your organization’s own data, actions stay aligned to real processes and real context.
For example, when a pricing change is discussed in a meeting, Work IQ understands how that decision impacts active opportunities in Dynamics 365 Sales, surfacing the affected opportunities within Copilot for review.
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Work IQ plays an important role in making business applications agentic. Without it, agents operate on partial information. With it, they act on the full context of the business.
Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can experience Work IQ with Dataverse integration directly inside Power Apps, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service in public preview by early April 2026.
Copilot, agents, and Work IQ come together as a system of work. Within that system lies a new generation of business applications: applications that understand context, respond to intent, and support execution where work actually happens. The business application stack is entering a significant architectural shift. What we’re announcing today is one step in that larger transition. We are building a platform where applications, intelligence and execution converge so teams operate with more clarity and less overhead.
You’ll see this foundation expand across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft 365 as we bring more agentic capabilities into the flow of work. Agentic business applications are already taking shape.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Customer expectations for service interactions continue to rise. They want conversations that are fast, accurate, and increasingly human.
Today, we’re excited to announce Custom Voice for Dynamics 365 Contact Center. It’s a major step forward in delivering more natural, personalized voice experiences across AI-powered customer interactions with as little as 50 voice samples!
Custom Neural Voices enable organizations to move beyond generic text-to-speech and create voice experiences that reflect their brand, values, and customer promise—while still benefiting from the scalability and intelligence of AI-driven contact centers.
Why Voice Still Matters in Customer Service
Voice remains one of the most trusted and emotionally rich channels for customer engagement. Whether resolving an issue, providing updates, or guiding customers through self-service journeys, voice interactions shape how customers perceive your brand.
Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to reinforce your brand. With Custom Voices, organizations can ensure their voice interactions match the tone, pacing, and personality customers expect. Voices are calm and supportive, confident and professional, or warm and conversational, enabling richer interactions across automated and agent-assisted workflows.
By combining advanced neural speech synthesis with Azure AI capabilities and native integration into Dynamics 365 Contact Center, organizations can now offer voice interactions that are:
More natural and expressive
Consistent with brand identity
Inclusive across languages and accents
Scalable across highvolume customer scenarios
Within Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Custom Neural Voices can be used across scenarios such as:
Virtual agents and self-service flows
Intelligent IVR experiences
Voice is personal, and with that comes responsibility. Custom Neural Voices are developed and deployed with a strong emphasis on ethical use, transparency, and consent. They are only offered on a limited basis for verified customers and valid use cases. Microsoft’s responsible AI framework guides how these capabilities are offered. This helps organizations use advanced voice technology in ways that respect users and build confidence in AI-driven experiences.
The Future of Voice in Customer Engagement
Custom Neural Voices for Dynamics 365 Contact Center represents a significant evolution in how organizations think about voice automation. Rather than treating voice as a transactional tool, this capability makes it a strategic part of the overall customer experience. An experience that is intelligent, expressive, and aligned with the brand.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Global ERP environments are under increasing pressure. Regulatory requirements continue to evolve, compliance processes are moving to digital channels, and authorities expect structured electronic reporting delivered in prescribed formats and on local timelines. At the same time, IT teams are responsible for keeping ERP platforms current, reducing custom code, and supporting expansion into new markets without increasing operational complexity.
Dynamics 365 ERP applications are built to support these needs through comprehensive localization capabilities and extensible, upgrade-safe tools. As part of our ongoing investment, we are introducing localization for Türkiye. This addition expands Microsoft’s out-of-the-box localization coverage to 58 countries and regions, helping organizations address local regulatory requirements while maintaining a consistent, standardized ERP platform.
A modern foundation for localization: Globalization Studio
Globalization Studio is the extensibility framework in Dynamics 365 ERP apps for configuring and extending localization-related functionality without extensive custom development. It provides a consistent set of tools and services to support financial, tax, and regulatory processes while maintaining application upgradeability.
Key capabilities of Globalization Studio include:
Electronic Reporting (ER) for defining regulatory reports and electronic documents using configurable formats.
No-code and low-code extensibility to adapt formats, business rules, and calculations without modifying core application code.
Centralized management of localization functionality aligned with Microsoft-delivered country and regional solutions.
Support for regulatory changes, enabling updates to be applied as requirements evolve.
This approach allows organizations to manage localization at the legal entity level while maintaining a common application foundation across regions. It also provides partners with a consistent framework for delivering additional localized functionality.
Introducing Türkiye localization in Dynamics 365 ERP
With the 2025 Release Wave 2, Dynamics 365 ERP introduces built-in localization for Türkiye. This release expands Microsoft’s country and regional coverage and provides a supported starting point for organizations operating in the Turkish market.
The Türkiye localization is built using Microsoft Globalization Studio tools and services and works across Dynamics 365 ERP applications. It follows Microsoft localization patterns and is designed to support updates as local regulatory requirements evolve.
Considerations for IT and partner teams
For organizations operating in Türkiye, or planning future expansion, this localization can reduce the need for custom-built solutions or separate localization add-ons. From an IT perspective, this can support:
Faster configuration using Microsoft-delivered localization functionality.
Reduced reliance on custom code that can complicate maintenance and upgrades.
Use of extensible tools to adapt localization as regulatory requirements change.
Alignment with localization approaches used across other Dynamics 365 ERP countries and regions.
For partners, built-in localization provides a solid foundation for focusing on industry-specific or customer-specific requirements, rather than developing baseline regulatory functionality.
Türkiye localization highlights
The Türkiye localization includes capabilities designed to address common regulatory and operational scenarios, including:
Import of currency exchange rates from the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye.
Continuous serial numbering for packing slips and invoices.
Currency conversion in purchase and sales orders.
Exchange rate difference invoices.
Generation of electronic packing slips and invoices.
Enhancements for cheque and promissory note processing.
Prorated depreciation and allocation of final-year depreciation across months for fixed assets.
E-Ledger generation in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format.
These capabilities are designed to help organizations meet local reporting and operational requirements when using Dynamics 365 ERP apps in Türkiye.
Getting started with Türkiye localization
Localization functionality in Dynamics 365 ERP apps operates at the legal entity level. To enable Türkiye localization:
Set Türkiye as the primary address for the relevant legal entity.
In Feature management, enable the Globalization expansion – Türkiye feature.
Once enabled, Türkiye-specific fields and user interface elements become available within the legal entity. For example, you can configure serial prefixes and enable continuous serial numbering of various documents, such as sales invoices or product receipts for purchase return orders.
You can also complete the monthly closing process by creating an e-Ledger journal and exporting an e-Ledger file in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format. Using the Globalization Studio’s Electronic Reporting tool, you can easily extend the format to meet your integrator’s requirements.
Designed for global scale with local flexibility
With this release, Dynamics 365 ERP apps continue to expand Microsoft’s localization footprint while maintaining a consistent approach to extensibility and upgradeability. Equipped with Globalization Studio tools, organizations can support operations across multiple countries and regions while addressing local requirements within a unified ERP platform.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Twenty-five years ago, SharePoint set out to help people share knowledge and work better together, a mission that today operates at extraordinary scale.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As enterprise workloads become more agentic, the expectations of ERP systems—and the teams that operate them—are shifting. Batch jobs, workflow orchestration, data import/exports, and background processes are no longer “just” technical plumbing–they are critical pieces of the operational fabric. They deliver timely financial results, accurate supply chain data, and reliable business intelligence driving process optimization.
To support this shift, observability needs to evolve beyond simple logs and reactive troubleshooting. Observability needs to provide meaningful insights into execution behavior, performance patterns, and operational context. This ensures IT teams can run ERP with confidence and reliability.
In Dynamics 365 ERP apps, we’ve long provided integration with Azure Application Insights to help organizations collect telemetry about user activity, failures, and application behavior. Now, with the expansion of batch telemetry signals — including start/stop events, failure data, throttling conditions, thread availability, and queue behavior — administrators and IT architects can gain deeper visibility into the health of critical batch-based workloads.
Why Observability Matters Now
ERP observability historically focused on basic monitoring. It observed which jobs were running, whether a job failed, or whether alerts were triggered. These indicators are useful, but they lack operational context. Modern enterprise workloads are increasingly interconnected, and automation driven. Delays or failures in one workload can ripple outward, affecting downstream processes, reporting accuracy, and service delivery.
At the same time, teams are beginning to rely on AI agents to help monitor, diagnose, and in some cases suggest remediation steps. These tools need high-quality signals to be effective.
Batch workloads are a prime example. Batch jobs directly impact business outcomes, from overnight posting to inventory sync and settlements. Without execution insights, teams guess root causes and waste time on manual investigation.
What Batch Telemetry Brings to the Table
The monitoring and telemetry capabilities in Dynamics 365 ERP enable customers to send application telemetry to Azure Application Insights for analysis and alerting. The recent expansion of telemetry signals for batch workloads builds on this foundation by adding behavioral data specifically for batch execution patterns.
These signals include:
Batch start and stop events to show how long jobs take to run, not just whether they completed.
Failure information that correlates with info log entries and execution context.
Throttling indicators that highlight contention due to system load.
Thread availability data that helps reveal when jobs are waiting because capacity is constrained.
Queue depth metrics shows number of waiting tasks for all queues that are part of the Priority Based Scheduling queues.
Emitting these signals into a customer-owned Application Insights resource means teams can apply their existing monitoring pipelines, dashboards, and alerting logic without changing how data is consumed.
From Visibility to Insight
Once batch telemetry data flows into Application Insights, teams can query it using Kusto Query Language (KQL) and build dashboards that correlate workload behavior with other operational metrics.
This richer observability enables several practical outcomes:
Faster investigation of execution behavior without sifting through logs.
Trend analysis to detect regressions or capacity bottlenecks before they impact business cycles.
More informed capacity planning based on actual observed patterns.
Alignment of SLA expectations with real operational performance.
Here are some real‑world business scenarios that show how telemetry insights are helping customers troubleshoot issues and resolve problems faster.
A global consumer goods company frequently sees high priority jobs completing late. Batch Queue telemetry exposes queue congestion and thread exhaustion, showing when noncritical tasks bury priority workloads.
It helps surface when priority-based scheduling queues build up and delay time‑sensitive workloads, while also revealing misconfigured priorities that cause jobs to be processed out of order. It further enables teams to closely monitor queue health during cutover or high‑load events, ensuring critical workloads flow smoothly.
Similarly, a finance team’s bank reconciliation jobs remain “Waiting” for long periods. Thread telemetry reveals thread starvation—jobs were queued, but threads were fully consumed.
It helps explain why jobs remain stuck in a “Waiting” state by revealing when thread capacity is fully consumed by parallel workloads. It also highlights thread saturation patterns, enabling teams to right‑size AOS batch capacity for smoother, more predictable processing.
A Foundation for Intelligent Operations
The expanded telemetry signals are not just a diagnostic tool. They serve as a foundation for smarter operations in an era where agents play an increasing role. High-fidelity Batch telemetry enables experiences like:
Automated detection of anomalies based on execution baselines.
Correlation of workload performance with business-critical thresholds.
Enhanced alerts that tie operational conditions to business impact.
By making execution behavior more observable and actionable, Dynamics 365 ERP helps teams focus on outcomes, not just symptoms.
Once telemetry is configured, expanded batch signals can be toggled on from within system administration and begin flowing to your Application Insights pipeline for analysis.
Rich observability is a core requirement for running modern ERP workloads, especially as organizations adopt more automation and begin exploring agent-assisted operational tooling. By bringing deeper insight into batch execution behavior, our ERP portfolio apps in Dynamics 365 helps IT teams move from reactive troubleshooting toward proactive reliability and informed decision-making.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) decisions are among the most consequential investments a business can make; shaping how organizations operate, scale, and compete for years to come. Yet many ERP transformations have historically carried risk: high costs, long timelines, heavy customization, and uncertain returns.
To bring clarity to these decisions, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct two independent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) studies examining the business value of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP on enterprises and midmarket organizations.
From fragmentation to integration: Why ERP modernization matters
Across both 2026 studies, Forrester’s projections showed organizations from a similar place: fragmented ERP landscapes, siloed data, manual processes, and highly customized legacy systems that were difficult to upgrade or scale. These environments could limit real-time visibility, slow decision-making, and increased operational risk; particularly as organizations grew, expanded into new markets, or managed increasingly complex supply chains. These constraints didn’t just slow operations; they could limit a leader’s ability to respond to volatility, growth, and supply chain disruption with confidence.
In response, organizations turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP to consolidate finance and supply chain operations with a unified, cloud-based platform. By centralizing data and standardizing processes, organizations can improve operational efficiency and gain timely, actionable insights across the business.
Importantly, this shift reframed ERP from a back-office system of record to a platform for informed, faster decision-making that connects data, people, and processes across the enterprise.
Quantifying business value with Forrester’s TEI methodology
The strength of the TEI studies lies in their focus on quantifiable business impact. Forrester evaluated benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks over a multi‑year period, modeling a composite organization based on real customer interviews and survey responses. This approach allows leaders to evaluate ERP investments using a transparent financial framework rather than vendor claims alone.
Enterprise ERP: Financial impact at scale
In the enterprise TEI study, Forrester modeled a composite organization representing large, complex businesses using Dynamics 365 ERP. The analysis projects that over three years, the organization achieved:
101% return on investment (ROI)
Net present value (NPV) of $12.9 million
These results were driven by a combination of operational efficiency gains, productivity improvements, and cost reductions, particularly from consolidating legacy systems and reducing infrastructure and IT operations spend.
The study highlights that value did not come from isolated features, but from standardizing processes, unifying data across finance and supply chain functions, and reducing reliance on heavily customized, on-premises ERP environments.
Key enterprise findings business leaders should note
For business decision makers evaluating ERP at scale, several findings stand out:
Improved operational efficiency and productivity can be enabled through streamlined workflows and better access to real-time insights
Reduced infrastructure and IT operations costs can be enabled by retiring multiple legacy systems and shifting to a cloud-based ERP model
Faster, more confident decision making enabled by unified financial and supply-chain data
Together, these benefits contributed directly to the projected positive NPV and ROI modeled in the study, reinforcing ERP modernization as a business investment, not just an IT upgrade.
Midmarket ERP: Enterprise-grade value without enterprise complexity
While enterprises face complexity at scale, midmarket organizations often face a different challenge: how to grow without adding disproportionate cost or operational overhead. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP for midmarket organizations examined how modern ERP can support expansion, improve visibility, and standardize operations without the burden of traditional enterprise‑scale implementations.
In the study, Forrester modeled a composite midmarket organization based on customer interviews and survey data. The analysis projects that the organization would achieve:
Payback in 16 months
Net present value (NPV) of $3.3 million over three years
These outcomes were driven by streamlined finance and supply chain operations, automation of manual processes, and the replacement of disconnected legacy systems with a single, cloud‑based ERP platform. By consolidating systems and standardizing processes, organizations can reduce operational friction while supporting improved visibility and control across the business.
Key midmarket findings business leaders should note
For midmarket decision-makers, the study highlights several critical outcomes:
Enabled faster time-to-value, with measurable financial returns realized in just over a year
Enabled improvements to operational efficiency and productivity through streamlined finance and supply chain processes and automation of manual tasks
Potentially reduced complexity and IT overhead by replacing disconnected legacy systems with a unified cloud ERP platform
These benefits contributed directly to the projected positive NPV and rapid payback modeled in the study, reinforcing ERP modernization as a financially disciplined investment for midmarket organizations focused on growth and resilience.
Why independent research matters for ERP decisions
ERP investments shape the future of an organization for years—sometimes decades. That’s why independent, third-party validation is critical. The Forrester TEI studies do not ask leaders to accept conclusions at face value; instead, they provide:
A transparent financial model
Explicit assumptions and risk adjustments
Clear linkage between operational improvements and economic outcomes
For executives, CFOs, COOs, and IT leaders, these studies offer a common language for aligning stakeholders and setting realistic expectations for ERP transformation.
Go deeper: Explore the full Forrester TEI studies
This summary only scratches the surface. The full Forrester Total Economic Impact™ studies include detailed benefit breakdowns, cost considerations, and financial modeling that business leaders can adapt to their own organizations.
For organizations considering ERP modernization, these studies provide a data-driven foundation to evaluate options, build a credible business case, and make informed decisions with confidence.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to introduce Desktop Companion App (DCA) support for Dynamics 365 Contact Center in Embedded mode, delivering lower latency, improved reliability, and resilient voice continuity when Customer Service Reps (CSR) work inside third party (3P) CRM environments. With DCA running alongside the embedded conversation widget, contact centers can maintain active calls even if the browser refreshes or becomes unresponsive without forcing CSRs to leave their CRM workspace.
Why it matters
Embedded deployments let organizations use Dynamics 365 Contact Center inside a nonMicrosoft CRM through a lightweight widget, so Customer Service Representatives (CSR) don’t have to switch tools. Pairing that embedded experience with DCA provides a dedicated voice path that’s independent of the browser, helping eliminate dropped or interrupted calls caused by page reloads, page freezes, or tab navigation. The result is faster call setup, steadier audio, and consistent CSR workflows across CRMs.
Real world outcomes from earlier DCA adopters include reduced average speed to answer and fewer connectivity issues, underscoring the operational value of a desktop resident voice companion.
What’s new for Embedded mode
DCA + Embedded widget: a resilient voice experience inside your CRM UI
Call continuity during browser events
Active calls remain connected when the CRM page refreshes or becomes unresponsive; CSRs can continue the conversation and regain full web context when the tab recovers.
Lower latency, better audio consistency
DCA’s desktop process helps reduce connection delays and smooths device handling, complementing the embedded browser experience
Familiar, lightweight controls
CSRs can mute/unmute and end calls from DCA while the embedded widget reloads; when recording or transcription is enabled in the web app, they continue uninterrupted.
Built for crossCRM
Works alongside the embedded experience in third party CRMs that host the HTML/JavaScript widget.
The internal brief for Embedded mode reiterates these benefits specifically for external CRM workspaces, including continuity across inbound/outbound workflows.
How it works
Route and render: Dynamics 365 Contact Center routes the voice interaction; the embedded widget renders in the CRM for CSR workflows
Establish desktop voice path: DCA runs as a companion process on the desktop and maintains the call even if the 3P CRM browser reloads, freezes, or loses focus
Resynchronize: When the page returns, the call state resynchronizes with the embedded widget so the CSR continues in one unified flow.
Business value
Higher reliability: Fewer dropped calls and better resiliency against browser variability and tab navigation.
Lower latency: Faster connection setup and more responsive audio device handling
CSR productivity: CSRs stay in their CRM UI; DCA protects the call while the page recovers minimizing context loss and reducing redial effort
Operational consistency: A common voice experience across standalone and embedded deployments, aligned to voice best practices.
Getting started
Enable Embedded experience
Follow the guide to configure and surface the conversation widget inside your 3P CRM. Retrieve the widget URL from the Copilot Service admin center and complete the setup steps in your CRM.
Install and manage DCA
Deploy the Desktop Companion App to CSR devices, install the browser extension(s), and (optionally) control updates via policy/registry settings.
CSR usage
CSRs sign in, handle calls as usual in the embedded widget, and use DCA as needed (e.g., during a refresh). Recording and transcription continue if configured in the web app
Validate with best practices
Review voice channel best practices for network, device, and telemetry guidance to ensure optimal call performance across your environment
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