Unlock insights with Business performance analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Unlock insights with Business performance analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, leaders must stay ahead of ever-shifting demands while contending with fragmented data, manual reconciliations, and reactive reporting processes. Traditional analytics tools often reside outside core systems, forcing organizations to juggle multiple data sources and spreadsheets. This approach delays timely decisions and makes it nearly impossible to pivot quickly when market conditions change.

Business performance analytics (built into ERP solutions within Microsoft Dynamics 365) tackles these challenges by bringing together financial, operational, and organizational data within a single, governed foundation. Rather than dealing with siloed systems and batch updates, you gain real-time insights that are directly process-aware—eliminating delays, data harmonization overhead, and disconnected reporting. Even more exciting, Dynamics 365 extends analytics beyond dashboards, enabling AI capabilities that can proactively recommend or even execute business actions on your behalf.

Below, we explore how Business performance analytics unifies your data estate, drives smarter decisions through Copilot and agents, and sets you on a path to fully integrated and autonomous business processes.

Bringing data together: A single, context-aware model

Most organizations rely on disparate tools and manual processes to piece together financial statements, operational dashboards, and performance metrics. Unfortunately, these patchwork efforts waste time and often produce errors or duplications. This causes even more challenges as leaders increasingly look to generative AI to automate repetitive tasks and support predictive decision making. AI’s effectiveness depends on the quality and timeliness of the underlying data. For AI Agents to deliver real value, they need to operate on a data estate that is continuously updated, context-aware, and governed.

Business performance analytics unifies data from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and third-party sources—preserving the context of your processes in a single, dimensional model. This approach delivers an analytics strategy that is:

  • Process-aware out of the box. Because it’s built into Dynamics 365, Business performance analytics inherently understands cost centers, product categories, HR structures, project operations, and more. This means no manual mapping or external reconciliation is needed to see how a product delay affects supply chain costs or how shifting budgets impact workforce allocations.
  • Always up to date. Unlike traditional, standalone analytics that require nightly data loads, Business performance analytics refreshes data frequently. Finance, HR, supply chain and operations leaders see critical changes as they happen—giving you the agility to react to rising demand, fluctuations in resource utilization, or unexpected expenses.
  • Context-rich. Business performance analytics provide dimensional analysis across financial, operational, and organizational data. Need to compare revenue by region or analyze cost variances by project? Simply slice and dice the data without wrestling with manual exports or complicated transformations.
  • Governed and protected. With role-based security, data encryption, and centralized governance, your teams—and your agents—access only authorized data. This instills confidence that shared insights won’t compromise sensitive information.

By bringing data into a single, governed model, your entire organization can speak the same language. Finance, supply chain, field service, and HR no longer work in silos. Instead, they share a unified foundation that streamlines analytics and AI investments to expedite decision making.

Agents: From insight to autonomous action

Many analytics solutions connect data to provide insight, but few connect directly to your ERP system to suggest or even execute next steps. By harnessing AI capabilities within Dynamics 365, you can move from reactive reporting to proactive, autonomous processes.

  • Autonomous monitoring and alerts. Agents can be created to continuously watch financial performance, supply chain metrics, and workforce signals. Once an anomaly is detected—like unexpected spending spikes or inventory shortfalls—they can alert the right managers in Microsoft Teams or email.
  • Proactive decision assistance. Instead of diving into massive spreadsheets, managers receive scenario-based recommendations built on historical and real-time data. Agents might suggest renegotiating a vendor contract or reprioritizing marketing spend to optimize ROI.
  • Automated execution. Imagine your system adjusting procurement orders based on forecasted demand or automatically recommending reallocation of budgets across cost centers. When data reveals that immediate action is needed, Agents can trigger or schedule tasks in Dynamics 365.

By connecting data from disparate sources and mapping directly into ERP, Business performance analytics provides the “brains” for Agents to continuously optimize operations.

Accelerate analytics with Microsoft Fabric

Business performance analytics works seamlessly with Fabric to provide organizations with a scalable, AI-powered data foundation that extends well beyond traditional ERP analytics solutions. This integration addresses a key challenge for many organizations as they look to reconcile data between ERP systems and external analytics platforms. Fabric removes this friction by unifying data storage, analysis, and governance:

  • OneLake architecture. Easily combine data from Business performance analytics with additional structured or unstructured data—like Internet of Things (IoT) signals or historical archives. With a consistent governance layer, your analytics remain secure and compliant.
  • Direct Lake mode. Traditional analytics pipelines rely on batch processing, introducing delays. With Direct Lake, you can query data instantly. Finance teams can analyze transactions that landed minutes ago, while supply chain managers gain immediate insights into inventory fluctuations.
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio and advanced AI. Fabric extends beyond data storage. Integrate with Copilot Studio to rapidly build AI models that utilize a broader data context. This synergy helps you predict everything from late shipments to demand spikes—well before they become actual bottlenecks.

Ultimately, the Fabric integration with Business performance analytics means you can broaden your analytics scope without leaving the governed environment of Dynamics 365.

Portrait of woman holding a mug in a kitchen, leaning against a counter.

Business performance analytics

Unify data across your enterprise, and deliver near real-time insights.

Planning for the future: Integrated business planning and analytics

While Business performance analytics delivers immediate insights, organizations often need more robust forecasting, budgeting, and scenario modeling. By connecting to integrated business planning solutions in Dynamics 365—such as Business performance planning or Supply chain planning—you unite daily insights with forward-looking strategies:

  1. Unified budgets and forecasts. Finance teams can build rolling forecasts that pull live data from operations, so you’re never basing budgets on stale assumptions.
  2. Closing the loop with operations. Demand shifts can be identified by agents to automatically adjust your supply chain forecast, helping to ensure inventory and workforce capacities align.
  3. Streamlined scenarios. Business performance analytics lays the real-time foundation. Planning tools let you run what-if analyses to see how changes in demand, staffing, or market conditions might affect revenue and expenses.

By linking operational reporting and strategic planning under a single data model, you can achieve continuous planning—a major shift from the static, siloed budgeting processes of the past. Below provides an overview of planning and analytics within the ERP solutions of Dynamics 365 and how they work alongside Business performance analytics:

Capability Purpose When to use It Get started today
Business performance analytics Gain actionable insights into financial and operational performance. Use when analyzing financial statements, cash flow trends, budget versus actual performance, or identifying cost variances. Enable Business performance analytics to access prebuilt dashboards and reports, giving you near real-time visibility into results.
Business performance planning Align financial forecasting, operational planning, and workforce planning (licensed with Finance Premium). Use when creating financial forecasts, setting budget allocations, scenario modeling, or aligning operational plans. Activate Business performance planning capabilities to start integrating forecasts, budgets, and workforce planning into daily execution.
Supply chain planning Optimize demand forecasting and inventory management (licensed with Supply Chain Premium). Use when predicting demand, managing supplier lead times, mitigating risks, and balancing inventory levels with sales forecasts. Deploy Supply chain planning with demand planning to enhance visibility, align production schedules, and streamline operations.

With this approach to integrated business planning, leadership can align corporate strategy, budgeting, demand forecasting, and production capacity without juggling multiple data sets or tools. This comprehensive approach helps to ensure every team—from finance and supply chain to sales and human resources—draws on a consistent, reliable data foundation for strategic decisions and execution.

Tailored for every industry

Whether your organization is in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, or professional services, Business performance analytics adapts to your unique processes:

  • Product-centric companies. Manage production schedules, inventory levels, and logistics based on real-time demand signals, eliminating overstock or missed sales.
  • Service-centric organizations. Track resource utilization, billable hours, and project profitability in one model, reducing the risk of revenue leakage or unbilled work.
  • Asset-intensive sectors. Optimize maintenance schedules and capital investments by forecasting the impact on operating budgets and asset lifecycles.

Because Business performance analytics is built into Dynamics 365, you can seamlessly extend it for industry-specific scenarios—without the heavy lifting of third-party integrations.

A future-ready approach: From static reporting to autonomous execution

Typical analytics solutions stop at reports and dashboards. Business performance analytics in Dynamics 365 goes further by providing an end-to-end continuum: from real-time insights, to AI recommendations, to automated actions. As we look toward the future, we aim to ensure:

  • Integrated data, not data dumps. No external data lakes or manual extracts will be required. Your data stays within a governed, process-aware model.
  • Seamless AI. Agents will be able to shift your organization away from after-the-fact reporting to proactive decision making, drastically cutting response times.
  • Governed, scalable architecture. You can tie to Fabric for more extensive analytics, advanced AI, and the flexibility to handle multiple data sources at once.

In a rapidly evolving market, the ability to act swiftly is critical. Business performance analytics helps ensure you have the right data at the right time, with embedded intelligence and the option for autonomous execution—helping you adapt, innovate, and grow, no matter the challenges ahead.

Ready to empower your teams with better business visibility?

  • Eliminate silos. Unify visibility across your business with process-aware analytics, like record to report, procure to pay, order to cash, and hire to retire in a single, governed framework.
  • Accelerate decisions. Combine near real-time data and agents to detect anomalies and recommend the next best action—before issues escalate.
  • Scale securely. Expand seamlessly via Fabric, helping to ensure your analytics remain fast, governed, and AI-ready, no matter how large your data grows.

By adopting Business performance analytics within Dynamics 365, you lay the groundwork for an agile, insight-driven organization—one that doesn’t just track performance but actively shapes it.

Learn more about business performance analytics, contact us today.

The post Unlock insights with Business performance analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Update the connection limits for custom Contact Center reports 

Update the connection limits for custom Contact Center reports 

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides out-of-the-box analytics that monitor key operations metrics in a contact center. Customers can leverage data model customization and extend these analytics to fit their organizational needs. When customizing real-time analytics, there is a potential that the reports are slow and don’t meet the performance goals your organization expects. One way to improve the performance and latency of real-time analytics is to update the connection limits.

The importance of connection limits 

At its core, Power BI’s connection limit determines how many simultaneous connections you can make to a data source. By default, this limit is 10, which suffices for simpler or smaller datasets. However, for more intricate and voluminous datasets, this constraint becomes a bottleneck, hindering the performance and responsiveness of reports. 

Why should you increase the limit to more than 300 connections? 

Increasing the maximum connections beyond 300 provides several notable advantages: 

  • Enhanced Performance: More connections enable faster data retrieval and processing, leading to quicker report generation and smoother interactions. 
  • Scalability: As your datasets and usage grow, the ability to handle more connections ensures that performance remains robust and scalable. 
  • Optimized Custom Reports: Customized reports often involve complex queries and calculations. More connections allow these operations to be executed more efficiently, improving the overall user experience. 

Situations that require customized reports can vary greatly. One reason you might want to create a highly customized report is to show detailed information about the performance of product-based brands in a retail organization. Out-of-the-box reports can show overall conversation metrics across channels in a contact center. But with custom reports, admins can create individual reports about each brand according to the organization’s taxonomy. When managers want to review these reports regularly, it’s important to be able to optimize the speed of report generation, especially as the number of products grows and the goals of the organization change.

How to update the connection limit 

Updating the maximum connections in Power BI is a straightforward process. Here’s how to update the published data model in Power BI.  

  1. Download the Dynamics_365_Omnichannel_Realtime_analytics schematic model from the Power BI portal.
Power BI portal with Dynamics_365_Omnichannel_Realtime_analytics schematic model selected
  1. Open the schematic model using Power BI desktop.
  1. Click Options and settings and then Options.
Options and settings for schematic model using Power BI desktop
  1. Under DirectQuery, change the Maximum connections field to a number greater than 300.
Screenshot of DirectQuery to set maximum connections in Power BI
  1. Click OK.
  2. Save and publish the schematic data model to the same workspace where you downloaded the model.
  3. You will receive a warning that this will be applied to all the reports/dashboard that is referencing this schematic data model. You can accept it and proceed to publish it to the workspace. 

Updating the maximum connections in Power BI from 10 to 300 or more is a strategic move that can markedly improve the performance of your customized reports. 

Learn more

For more information about creating custom reports in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, read the documentation: Overview of data model customization | Microsoft Learn 

For more information about optimizing reports in Power BI, refer to  Evaluation configuration settings for Desktop – Power BI | Microsoft Learn

The post Update the connection limits for custom Contact Center reports  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Unlock the Microsoft Copilot Studio-powered customer survey

Unlock the Microsoft Copilot Studio-powered customer survey

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are excited to announce the Copilot Studio-powered customer feedback survey in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, now in preview. Now, contact center managers can use Copilot Studio Survey in the Contact Center admin center to dynamically respond to customer feedback.  

Traditionally, management can take a long time to act on the feedback that customers provide. Additionally, managers may have to use various tools to capture customer feedback across different channels. In the era of AI, we can reimagine customer feedback management in Dynamics to enable real-time, automated, and personalized feedback loops, helping our customers unlock immense business value. 

With this feature, contact center managers can use the generative AI capabilities of Copilot Studio bots to streamline the survey configuration process across channels. Supervisors get a holistic view of the feedback, all while maintaining flexibility and customization. 

Choose your customer feedback survey

Starting in Dynamics, you can quickly author survey bots using either a blank template or one of three standard survey metrics:

  • Customer Satisfaction Score
  • Net Promoter Score
  • Customer Effort Score.

After creating the survey bot, you can open it in Copilot Studio for bot authoring and customization. Add additional questions, use Power Automate to trigger workflows based on customer responses, and design your bot to meet your business needs. Best of all, once your bot is published, you can use it across voice, live chat, and social channels. The result is a unified, centralized survey configuration process. 

Set up the Copilot-powered customer feedback survey in Dynamics 365 Contact Center admin center

Copilot-powered customer feedback in action

For a real-world example, let’s use Contoso Bank, which places a high value on customer feedback. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric is of particular interest, as it helps them measure customer loyalty. To leverage this, they use the new Copilot-powered customer feedback survey feature to quickly create an NPS survey bot from the Dynamics 365 Contact Center admin center and deploy it across all their channels. In Copilot Studio, they customize the bot to trigger a Power Automate flow to create a follow-up case if the score is less than 5. This bot engages with customers at the end of the call or conversation and gathers their feedback. If the NPS score is less than 5, it triggers Power Automate to create a follow-up case. This ensures they promptly attend to any unhappy customers, thereby quickly improving overall customer satisfaction and loyalty for Contoso Bank. 

In today’s world, where customer feedback is crucial, this feature is a game-changer. Businesses can quickly gather and act on feedback, ensuring they stay responsive and attuned to customer needs. The result is customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Learn more

To learn more about enabling and using the Copilot-powered survey, read the documentation.

The post Unlock the Microsoft Copilot Studio-powered customer survey appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

What’s new in Copilot Studio: January 2025

What’s new in Copilot Studio: January 2025

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Welcome to What’s new in Copilot Studio. This is your go-to series for all the exciting announcements and updates from Microsoft Copilot Studio.

The post What’s new in Copilot Studio: January 2025 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Spatial annotations for frontline technicians with Dynamics 365 Field Service & Microsoft Teams

Spatial annotations for frontline technicians with Dynamics 365 Field Service & Microsoft Teams

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of spatial annotations in Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft Teams! This milestone marks a significant step forward in enhancing mixed reality collaboration for frontline workers. 

Customers using Dynamics 365 Field Service, Guides, and Remote Assist licenses get the new spatial annotation capabilities automatically enabled in Teams mobile and desktop at no extra cost. 

Before, spatial annotations required a standalone mobile app or a HoloLens 2. Now, frontline workers can benefit from 3D inking and arrow placement directly in the Teams mobile and desktop apps during any 1:1 call, group call, or Teams meeting. 

Mobile mixed reality collaboration platform 

Previously, frontline workers used Teams within the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Guides applications to collaborate with spatial annotations. The Remote Assist mobile app was a popular choice for workers on the go. It allowed fast and easy connections with collaborators on a call, showed the task over video, and allowed annotation together.  
 
Now, this core functionality is available directly in the Teams mobile app. For workers who are on the move, having all their core collaboration capabilities in a single app simplifies their job. It eliminates the need to switch apps, ensuring that all collaboration capabilities from Teams are readily available.  

A screenshot of a device

No more context switching

Using spatial annotations is as straightforward as joining a Teams meeting or making a call. With the front-facing camera, users share their view with remote participants for real-time collaboration while in the flow of work.  Technicians in the field can place 3D arrow and ink annotations by tapping on their video to discuss with remote peers.  

Desktop users can see this video feed and add their own annotations to overlay important information on physical objects. This enhances comprehension and enables workers to fix issues faster. Users can move and change angles without losing track of annotations anchored to their environment. This advanced level of interaction empowers Teams users, sharing insights and reducing miscommunications which could lead to mistakes or rework. 

Spatial annotations for Dynamics 365

Streamlined and secure enablement

Accessing spatial annotations directly in Teams mobile means fewer apps for administrators to provision, update, and audit.  Users benefit from end-to-end encryption, data loss prevention, and compliance certifications in Teams mobile. These additional security measures protect against unauthorized access to confidential company information.  
 
Infusing spatial capabilities into apps technicians are already using, on devices already in their pockets, is just one way we’re evolving mixed reality workflows at Microsoft. We’re excited about this step towards democratizing mixed reality and bringing advanced and intuitive solutions to more people across industries. 
 
This integration ensures that frontline workers have all their collaboration tools in one place, simplifying workflows and enhancing productivity. Learn more here.

Please Note: Spatial annotations is now generally available directly in the Teams mobile app. The standalone Remote Assist app on mobile devices is being deprecated. Affected users will be notified about this change. 

The post Spatial annotations for frontline technicians with Dynamics 365 Field Service & Microsoft Teams appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

What’s new in Copilot Studio: January 2025

Discover the Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft 365 E3

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

AI is at the forefront of today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape and top of mind for IT leaders worldwide. AI tools demand a robust foundation that improves security and privacy to keep organizations protected. Combing this secure foundation with productivity tools will empower every employee to take full advantage of the potential of AI.

The post Discover the Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft 365 E3 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Essential Clean-Up Guide for Partners: 2025 Release Wave 1

Essential Clean-Up Guide for Partners: 2025 Release Wave 1

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft is doing some housekeeping in Dynamics 365 Business Central–and significant changes are coming with the 2025 release Wave 1 clean-up. We want you to know about these changes and how to prepare your applications.

The Dynamics 365 Business Central Release Wave 1 clean-up means that all tables, table extensions, and table fields remaining in the Obsolete::Removed state for more than one major release will be permanently deleted. This sweeping clean-up affects the Base Application as well as all other first-party apps. Already, the removal of over 150 tables has optimized and cleaned up the application code.

With the Release Wave 1 clean-up, Microsoft will adopt a clean-up cycle every fifth release, ensuring a smooth transition.

Why this matters: Benefits of the clean-up

The April 2025 Release Wave 1 clean-up effort isn’t just about reducing database size, it’s part of a broader vision:

  • Improved database performance: Removing unused schema elements will optimize performance and reduce technical debt.
  • Unified Base Applications: Multiple countries (such as, Sweden, Denmark, Czechia, India, and Iceland) and partner-localized regions will move towards a unified Base Application. The goal is to have all countries based on the same codebase.
  • Improved maintainability: By removing more than 10% of tables and table fields, we’ve simplified development and made it easier for developers and product owners to manage changes.
  • Streamlined codebase: Cleaner code results in fewer errors and easier maintenance for developers.
A female programmer works at the computer at her desk

Key updates and concepts

Platform support for the clean-up

2025 release wave 1 (v26) introduces platform-level support for dropping tables, table extensions and table fields that have been in the Obsolete::Removed state for more than one major release. This ensures an automated clean-up process, consistent and in alignment with Microsoft’s ongoing breaking changes process and optimization strategy.

Introducing the Step Release

A new concept, Step Release, plays an important role in cloud migration and the upgrade process:

  • Mandatory for cloud migration: Customers migrating from earlier versions must upgrade to a Step Release before proceeding to newer versions.
  • Purpose: The Step Release ensures all schema elements in the Obsolete::Removed state for more than the defined period are cleared out before transitioning to the latest version.
  • Impact on upgrade code: The updated upgrade process excludes objects marked for removal in this release.

Important: The data from deleted tables, table extensions and table fields will also be permanently removed. Tables, table extensions and table fields in the state Obsolete::Pending are not impacted.

How to identify impacted tables, table extensions and table fields

With the Release Wave 1 clean-up, Microsoft has introduced a new preprocessor symbol, CLEANSCHEMA, to help developers identify and handle obsolete schema elements. Here’s how it works:

  • The CLEANSCHEMA symbol operates similarly to the existing CLEAN symbol, with a version number showing when a table, table extension or table field was marked as Obsolete::Removed.
  • For example:
    • CLEANSCHEMA24: The table, table extension, or table field marked as removed in version 24 and deleted in version 26 (2025 release wave 1).
    • CLEANSCHEMA25 or later: The object remains for at least one more cycle of 5 releases. Deletion happens in future releases- version 31 (2027 release wave 2).

What should developers do?

If your app references objects in the Obsolete::Removed state then you need to:

  1. Refactor your code: Replace or remove references to these objects before April 2025.
  2. Check upgrade code: Ensure that upgrade code doesn’t rely on removed tables, table extensions or table fields.
  3. Monitor preprocessor symbols: Use the CLEANSCHEMA symbol to anticipate removal timelines.

Implications for cloud migration

The cloud migration path will change as part of the clean-up:

  1. Customers will first migrate to version 25 (2024 release wave 1).
  2. Upgrade code then handles the transition to the latest version after clearing obsolete objects.

This new process emphasizes the importance of preparing early, especially for legacy applications with dependencies on obsolete schema elements.

What if you need data from removed tables?

Microsoft recommends that you use the Point-In-Time Restore (PIT) procedure for data recovery, which is consistent with current best practices. If you anticipate needing data from obsolete tables, table extensions or table fields, ensure you plan for PIT backups before the clean-up.


Preparing for the future after the Release Wave 1 clean-up

With these changes, Microsoft continues its dedication to enhancing the maintainability of Business Central.

Next steps for partners:

  1. Inspect your code: Identify any dependencies on Obsolete::Removed schema elements using the CLEANSCHEMA symbol and refactor the code accordingly.
  2. Prepare migration plans: Incorporate the Step Release process into your upgrade and cloud migration strategies.

By being proactive, you’ll ensure a smooth transition and take full advantage of the benefits of a cleaner, faster, and more unified Business Central.

Additional resources:

Deleted objects in 2025 release wave

Maintaining Apps

Microsoft will host two Office Hour calls for partners to join for questions about this process and next steps:

Option 1: February 13, 4:00 – 5:00PM CET. Please register here

Option 2: February 18, 8:00 – 9:00AM CET. Please register here

The post Essential Clean-Up Guide for Partners: 2025 Release Wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Accelerating sales with unified data in the AI era

Accelerating sales with unified data in the AI era

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Data is the lifeblood of decision making in the digital age. Almost every interaction a company has with a customer adds to an ever-growing data pool. For sales leaders, the challenge is transforming this raw data into actionable insights that drive delightful customer engagements and ultimately boost revenue. 

While organizations collect many types of information, optimizing data in a clear sales strategy can often create blind spots for them. Success is not simply a matter of collecting more data. It’s about having better data—and, more importantly, understanding what to do with it.  

Today, AI systems are revolutionizing industries by helping organizations derive insights from data efficiently so they may understand customers in ways never before possible. But to do that, organizations need a platform-centric approach to unify, analyze, and manage data. This is precisely where AI-powered customer profiling supports a shift from reactive decision making by sales teams to proactive customer engagement.

From data overload to strategic advantage 

Organizations are sitting on mountains of data. Every interaction, click, or transaction provides potential clues into a customer’s needs and behavior. However, extracting actionable insights from this data can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. For sales leaders, the problem is twofold:  

  1. Siloed data. Customer data is often scattered across different departments—marketing, sales, service—making it difficult to gain a holistic view of the customer.  
  2. Data overload. With so much data available, it’s tough to focus on the insights that matter most, leading to inefficient processes.  

This fragmentation leads to missed opportunities to engage customers more deeply. Sales teams frequently report struggling to turn vast datasets into actionable strategies, leading to inefficient engagement. But using AI to convert complex datasets into real-time insights supports personalized, customer-first strategies. That’s how AI-powered profiling creates an advantage. 

Learning about your customers vs. anticipating their needs: A change in focus

Forming a deep understanding of customers is a core aim of sales teams. Still, most sellers operate with an incomplete view. Limited visibility into previous purchasing decisions, open issues with the service team, or ongoing engagement with marketing campaigns are all factors that cloud a clear picture of not only how a customer behaves, but why. It’s the difference between collecting information about a customer and understanding how that data can help anticipate and meet the customer’s needs.

It’s imperative for modern sales teams to not only see what a customer did, but gain insight into why they did it—because then you can anticipate their next steps. That’s the promise of AI-powered customer profiling. It provides real-time behavioral insights, supporting sales teams to engage prospects with personalized offers at exactly the right time.

Sales teams can now maintain a much more seamless connection with each customer with continuous messaging, promotions, and events that are tailored to individual behaviors and interests. This shift supports a simplified and more cohesive selling experience—resulting in, according to one recent study, as much as a 15% increase in revenue per customer journey.1 

AI-powered customer profiling in action 

Here’s how AI-powered customer profiling is reshaping the future of sales: 

  • Faster sales preparation. Time is money, especially in sales. Traditional sales prep involves hours of research, reviewing transaction histories, and piecing together fragmented data. This manual process is not only time-consuming, but prone to error. Instead of sifting through data, sellers can rely on AI agents to aggregate comprehensive customer profiles instantly, allowing for faster, more effective engagement. 
  • Crafting personalized offers. Personalization is key, but delivering tailored offers at scale is a challenge. AI can solve this by analyzing customer behavior in real time, identifying patterns and preferences. For example, AI can identify when a customer browsing premium products is ready to purchase and suggest a personalized offer, such as a time-limited discount. This increases conversions and fosters long-term loyalty by showing customers they are understood and appreciated. 
  • Actionable intelligence for better decisions. AI not only processes data but provides clear recommendations for next steps, whether it’s following up on a lead or prioritizing opportunities. AI’s guidance ensures no opportunity is missed, improving win rates and creating a seamless customer experience. 

The Microsoft solution: Copilot and agents to turn data into action   

While the promise of AI is compelling, businesses need the right tools to make it a reality. Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights seamlessly integrate AI into sales strategies, turning data into action. Here are some use cases: 

  • Unified customer profiles: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights unifies customer data from sales, marketing, and service into a 360-degree view. This real-time profile allows sales teams to see the full customer journey, delivering insights that lead to timely and relevant engagement and more efficient collaboration between marketing and sales 
  • AI-powered recommendations: With the Sales Qualification Agent in Dynamics 365 Sales, sales teams receive real-time insights on lead prioritization and strategic next steps. This proactive AI assistance allows sales reps to focus on high-impact opportunities, accelerating decision-making and enhancing sales effectiveness.  
  • Predictive analytics: Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights don’t just report on past actions—they predict future ones. By utilizing predictive analytics, sales teams can anticipate customer needs and engage prospects at the right moment with personalized offers that resonate. 
  • Time-saving automation: Sales automates repetitive tasks, freeing up sales teams to focus on relationship-building. Whether it’s generating follow-up emails or creating personalized reports, AI does the heavy lifting, letting sales reps focus on what matters most: closing deals. 

AI-powered customer profiling boosts sales  

The future of sales will be powered by Copilots and agents. The ability to transform vast amounts of customer data into clear, actionable insights is no longer optional—it’s essential for staying competitive. AI-powered customer profiling, supported by Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, empowers sales teams to turn raw data into strategic insights that drive personalized engagement, increase sales efficiency, and deliver tangible results. 

In an age of exponentially rising customer expectations, businesses that fail to harness AI will fall behind. But those that do will turn unknown customers into loyal advocates by using AI to unlock the full potential of customer data, transforming it from a challenge into a strategic advantage. 

A woman wearing glasses and a tan suit

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

AI-powered customer profiling can transform your sales. 


Source:

1 “The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights” 2024 Forrester Consulting study, Page 2. Microsoft, Inc., and Forrester, Inc., 2024 

The post Accelerating sales with unified data in the AI era appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Mobile Offline Data with Application Insights

Mobile Offline Data with Application Insights

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Introducing Enhanced Mobile Offline Data Monitoring with Azure Monitor Application Insights 

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, it’s essential for organizations to have comprehensive visibility into their data. It’s particularly important for mobile offline data, often constrained by limited resources of the mobile device and cellular network bandwidth. By understanding and optimizing this data, organizations can enhance data synchronization processes, improving efficiency and providing a superior experience for end users.

We are excited to announce a new capability that empowers admins to create queries and dashboards to monitor their mobile offline telemetry for Power Apps including Field Service Mobile.   This feature, enabled via Application Insights, provides comprehensive insights and provide the telemetry needed to make informed decisions as you manage your offline-enabled mobile workforce.

Key Capabilities 

Admins can now proactively identify challenges, monitor Mobile Offline telemetry, and optimize offline sync performance. Here are some of the key benefits: 

  1. Gain early visibility into potential issues. Test offline mode to understand real-world synchronization times and error visibility during user acceptance testing. Doing this early in the process sets expectations with mobile users and avoids more widespread errors after a general release.
  1. Enhance the performance of offline sync processes. Two of the most common things that impact Offline sync performance are query complexity and data volume. Offline telemetry, shows which tables are regularly synced and how many records are being synced in aggregate and per user. You can further fine-tune the queries to reduce volume, while leveraging existing ODATA end points to investigate slow-running queries that be overly complex. This helps you create an offline profile optimized for a performant sync experience.
  1. Keep track of data changes. Monitor record volumes and sync duration to see how enhancements impact your offline mobile experience and new business scenarios. This helps maintain good performance and decision-making on Offline as your business and use cases evolve with new capabilities.
How It Works 

This feature uses Application Insights to provide detailed analytics and reporting capabilities. Within Application Insights, you can create queries to drill down to data most relevant for your organization.  Based on those queries, create dashboards with visualizations tailored to your specific needs.  

To help support onboarding, we created a dashboard template with some common queries available for importing into your Dynamics 365 environment.  

Having access to this data helps you manage and monitor your mobile offline workforce, leading to increased operational efficiency and better decision-making.

Next Steps 

We hope you find this data is a valuable resource which can help identify and resolve mobile offline synchronization challenges. If issues are observed, you’ll be empowered with the insight to troubleshoot and resolve them quickly. For more information about mobile offline, along with best practices and troubleshooting tips please reference the following blog series: 

Get started by setting up your first dashboard today!

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Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

What’s new in Copilot Studio: January 2025

Use Microsoft 365 Copilot to drive growth for businesses of all sizes

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Across industries and companies of all sizes, people are using AI to work faster and smarter, allowing teams to spend more time on more valuable strategic work. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are leading the way, using Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline workflows, boost productivity, and drive growth.

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Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.