Empowering everyone to collaborate as one business, everywhere.

Across industries, businesses are undergoing a once-in-a-generation shift in how, when, and where people work. This shift to flexible, hybrid work modelswith some workers on-site, others remoteis forcing many businesses to rethink how people digitally engage and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers in the flow of work.

As we talk to business leaders about the new era of hybrid work, a resounding theme is the need for new ways for people across business functions to collaborate as one business, everywhere. Collaboration needs to empower anyone to find and connect with people across the businessmaking it easier to exchange ideas, information, and expert guidance.

We checked in with two companies reinventing how people collaborate, enabling a new era of work that engages people everywhere across the business. These leaders in their industriesinsurance and legendary music brandsshared how Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams are helping them bring people, information, and processes togetheracross physical locations, departments, and time zones.

The “expert” approach to a collaborative sales culture

In the world of hybrid work, sales teams need access to experts across the organization to build proposals and service that fits the unique needs of each customer. Sales teams can now invite anyone across the company to collaborate on Dynamics 365 sales records right within the flow of a Teams chat or channel.

Insurance and advisory company Willis Towers Watson (WTW) needed to centralize sales data and processes into one platformin its case, across sales teams around the world. Formed by a merger in 2016, nearly 90 percent of client-facing staff are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to centralize all engagement into one platform and Power BI to add powerful analytics capabilities. The result: a boost in sales leads thanks to better visibility into data, an increase in actionable insights, and more personalized services.

WTW now wants to build even more structure around how it manages clients with a consistent set of tools to enable better collaboration across account managers and sellers and a full 360-degree view of clients. The company plans to tie its Microsoft Teams channels in closely with Dynamics 365 so that staff can store individual records in Dynamics 365 but have the option to edit them in Teams. By putting Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales in the hands of the whole company, they will enable anyone from sellers to service agents to share and collaborate from within Teams or Dynamics 365 Sales without switching apps.

“We tested this Teams functionality with some operational leaders recently, and it went really well,” says Amanda Duffield, Director, Corporate Risk and Broking, Great Britain, Willis Towers Watson. “It’s early, but staff understands the bigger-picture possibilities with collaboration from anywhere and how easy it is to connect another Microsoft product and maintain that continuity.”

Connecting conversations and customer experiences across the organization

Every day, employees at a typical organization carry out hundreds, if not thousands, of conversationssharing ideas, information, and insights that move business forward. In the new world of hybrid work, businesses need ways to bring conversations together, so that separate, disjointed work efforts can contribute toward the shared goals and visions. At one of the most beloved and recognized music brands, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams are enabling cross-organizational collaboration to take center stage.

Gibson Brands, the world’s most iconic guitar brand, transitioned to Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Teams to simplify internal processes and provide a more immersive experience for customers. The combination has improved communications and cross-functional collaboration within the company, helping to transform retail sales by providing a platform to meet customers everywhere they arethrough retail, direct sales, or a dealer network.

The result has broken down siloes between teams, from production to sales to operationsa level of transparency that lets everyone understand how each team impacts the customer experience.

Cheryl Morgan, Business Analyst at Gibson Brands, explains, “When we decided to go with Dynamics 365 and implement across the business, we were forced to start working together as a collaborative team. We’ve all learned so much about how production works, how that affects sales and how that affects our customers. Dynamics 365 creates the accountability between the different business units. Everybody is having to work together. It’s been a real eye-opener.”

When the Gibson workforce shifted to remote work during COVID-19 lockdowns, the seamless integration with Microsoft Teams ensured no one missed a beat. As Morgan added, “we would not have made it through COVID-19 had this not been a cloud-based environment. Everything I do is Dynamics 365 and Teams and Outlook, which has been pivotal.”

One business, everywhere. Create your own story

These examples are just a snapshot of organizations reinventing collaboration with the tightly integrated capabilities of Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365. Catch up on the four essential capabilitiesbuilt into Dynamics 365 and Teamsto help everyone across your business work together from anywhere in a more seamless and natural way. Then, learn more ways to bring together people, data, and processes in the flow of work.

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Has your perception of the cloud kept up with advancements in technology? Economic and logistic disruptions from COVID-19 have compelled most organizations to reassess whether their legacy systems can deliver on modern goals and priorities. While shifting market conditions have accelerated cloud adoption, some are still weighing the benefits. These businesses have allowed on-premises nostalgia to take hold and determine their cloud strategy.

Don’t allow misconceptions to dictate your journey. Get expert help through the Microsoft Dynamics 365 migration program to move from Dynamics AX or Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365.

Addressing misconceptions about cloud migration

Moving to the cloud is no small decision. Dynamics 365 on-premises customers historically point to cost, timing, and complexity as reasons to delay or not to migrate. Cloud innovation and process advancements will only continue to erode these inaction arguments, further widening the gap with on-premises solutions.

Cost is always a decision factor. Are the benefits gained greater than the expense? Migrating, like anything, requires funding and resources. However, the hidden costs of remaining on-premises and maintaining your current solution are growing. Consider the graveyard of customizations you’ve built over the years that are no longer in use. Organizations need to weigh the total cost of ownershipinfrastructure costs, support costs, and upgrade coststo make a true cloud and on-premises comparison.

Migrating to the cloud should be a business priority. While customizations and data can make the process time-consuming, few business investments can provide similar efficiency gains. Microsoft engineered the On-Premises to Online Migration Factory to help Dynamics CRM customers. This end-to-end migration process provides a guided way to move on-premises instances without the need of reimporting the datathus reducing time and costs.

Customizations often hold on-premises systems together, allowing to adequately function in our modern environment. This can make knowing how to untangle your solution or what to migrate difficult. The Dynamics 365 migration program offers technical assessments to guide our Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM customers through this process. Want to identify organization-specific benefits or optimize the transition process? Our Standard Migration Assessment can help you identify goals, understand migration benefits, and reduce outlay as you transition.

Adding value with Dynamics 365

The gap between on-premises and the cloud solutions is growing, and there’s a good reason. Innovation among cloud now outpaces on-premises development. With end-of-support dates nearing, this gap will only continue to grow, limiting productivity gains and configurability an organization might see with Power Apps, Power Automate, or Power BI functionality. Data centralized in one source only enhances the potential. Knowing usage patterns, adoption rates, and performance metrics, we can continuously update the cloud service without significant business disruption. When it comes to providing updates, Microsoft’s priority is the cloud because it’s the most efficient way to innovate, ideate, and provide value to customers. Customers no longer need to:

• Host and secure software
• Build a data center
• Handle identity management
• Manage connections to other systems

Instead, the cloud platform empowers an out-of-the-box mentality that allows users to get started with no expertise or additional tools.

The cloud is the future

As businesses continue to prioritize remote work and collaboration, the cloud will continue to be the fiber that connects employees, systems, and resources regardless of time zone. Reducing your physical footprint today is a great way to reduce costs and prepare for tomorrow. Migrating to Dynamics 365 will ensure your organization is prepared to meet future needs and challenges. To see how other companies have made this transition, visit our Dynamics 365 migration community.

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A decade ago, marketing was focused on guiding the customer through predictable stages of awareness, consideration, and purchase. We were relatively assured that if we reached x number of eyeballs, we could expect y number of responses and z number of conversions.

That world no longer exists. Eighty-one percent of consumers¹ want to purchase from brands that get to know them, but nearly three-quarters² are frustrated by tons of irrelevant content which makes them feel so disconnected. That feedback exposes how the customer experience is falling short and reminds us that it’s no longer enough to employ tactics that focus on volume, or even segmentation. Traditional approachescampaigns, offers, and adsexist in siloes. The customer journey doesn’t. It doubles back, skips forward, and spans digital and physical channels. The marketer’s approach should likewise cut across traditional siloes of existing functions, roles, or channels.

Brands should recognize these fundamental shifts and look for solutions that keep up with surging expectations. Customer journey orchestration in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing delivers an individualized, end-to-end experience to every customer, across all touchpointsat scale. Each individual travels a unique path, based on evolving needs. The result is a refreshing two-way conversation that’s customer-centric, rather than brand-centric. Where one customer may need additional education and proof points, another may be ready to select among different models. In the past, they would both receive the same, predefined, offer after signing up on the brand’s website. This traditional approach falls flat, failing to take into account key contexts like previous interactions and intent. With customer journey orchestration, brands can harness everything they know about the customer, across all channels, and mobilize the organization to engage in the moment to deliver a fluid and seamless experience. For an organization with thousands or millions of customers, optimizing individual experiences at scale can have an enormous impact on growth through increased acquisition and retention.

According to BCG, organizations implementing customer journey orchestration have achieved³:

• Revenue gains of 10-20 percent
• Cost reductions of 15-25 percent
• Customer advocacy score improvements of 20-40 points

Optimizing customer experiences with customer journey orchestration might seem daunting, but it helps to focus on three areasdata, decisioning, and delivery. Most organizations already have a lot of customer data, but they need to bring together the data to gain a 360-degree view of the customer. Then they can turn the data into actions with real-time decisioning to determine which offer to surface or what content to display or what kind of communication to send. Next is the delivery of the actions through alignment and integration with the MarTech stack.

Building a resilient data foundation

Journey optimization begins with a strong data foundation. With help from a customer data platform, organizations can create unified profiles to gain a single view of customers. Savvy organizations go a step further and consider the ever-changing nature of datafrom new data sources to regulatory and compliance requirements that seemingly spring up overnight. Adapting by identifying and bringing in new data sources like digital behavior, customer sentiment, third-party enrichment, or emerging channels contribute to a resilient data foundation that easily flexes to the ever-changing environment. With always up-to-date rich and adaptive profiles, organizations maintain an edge by gaining a deeper understanding of customersas long as it’s built with a privacy-first approach. Growing mistrust over data privacy has promoted big changes like the sunsetting of third-party cookies and data reform. A future-proof customer data platform needs to be designed from the ground up to be consent-enabled, allowing the organization to automatically honor customer consent and privacy across the entire journey.

Scaling with real-time decisioning

Decisioning enables organizations to automatically determine the next best action for an individual customer. The real-time nature of decisioning ensures immediate action, converting an expression of interest (or dissatisfaction) into continued engagement. Based on signals that reveal customer intent, decisioning determines, at the precise moment, the exact interaction to optimize the customer experience. Decisioning goes hand in hand with customer journey orchestration, mobilizing data and AI to decide how best to design and adjust individual journeys to increase customer lifetime value while decreasing cost to serve through intelligent automation and scale.

Delivering connected experiences

The focus on the longer journey, instead of a single touchpoint, is the key to elevated experiences. This end-to-end approach requires continuity and contextevery time. Decisioning works in tandem with customer journey orchestration to move analytics outputs and insights through the MarTech and AdTech stack, informing activation in the application layer, resulting in a cohesive journeybubbling up the next best offer, content, conversations, and experiences seamlessly for each customer, regardless of the place or time.

Looking ahead

Brands that recognize the fundamental shift in customer expectations are boosting their customer experience capabilities. Learn how the new customer journey orchestration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing can make one-to-one experiences a reality. Visit the Dynamics 365 Marketing website and sign up for a free trial.

1-“From me to we: The rise of the purpose-led brand,” Accenture, Dec. 5. 2018

2-“Harness change to create 360 value,” Accenture

3-“Customer Journey Programs Are Hard to Get Right,” Bharat Poddar, Yogesh Mishra, and Prateek Tandon, BCG, Jan. 29. 2020

The post Customer journey orchestration: The next frontier of connected experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The pandemic has been challenging in many ways. It has impacted nearly every facet of our lives with disruptions in supply chains, millions furloughed, and much more. Despite such, the pandemic was positive in one regardit tested our capacity to come together and innovateand frankly, we soared on so many levels. In a blink of an eye, we united to create solutions to blend the human spirit and technology to deliver resilient solutions to outlast the pandemic. This was never more evident than in customer service.

Together, we transformed into superheroes. Turning our kitchen tables into remote workspaces, sliding into our commuter slippers each morning, and logging in with a few taps on a keyboard. We accepted our instinctual need for human interaction and turned to relationship-building using communication tools like Microsoft Teams to maintain relationships and fight the isolation. We built AI-driven solutions that focus on the human element with conversational chatbots designed to answer questions at any hour of the day. We accelerated transformative changes that were expected to take years to deploy, but through sheer determination, these changes were achieved in a matter of weeks. We reached deep and ascended to new heights with empathy resonating with every word.

Customer service organizations became the epicenter of resilience, moving forward and boldly going where no customer service organization had gone before. We shifted mindsets and conquered the foreboding of implementing change and pivoted in ways we never thought possible. While the changes made were sometimes uncomfortable initially, we quickly adjusted and thrived. Customer service organizations did not combust or implode, but blossomed and prospered.

Customer service organizations overcame pandemic-induced barriers to safety and wellbeing. Maintaining social distancing and protecting employees within a contact center was next to impossible. But in a matter of weeks, agents began logging into their customer service app and resolving customer issues from the safety and comfort of their homes. Not only did cloud-based customer service and omnichannel communication solutions bridge the always-on customer service gap and help keep companies solvent, but agents also continued to strengthen relationships while resolving customer issues, growing call volumes, and less than patient customers.

Customer service managers learned much about themselves and their agents. But more importantly, they learned empathy. They learned to listen more and acknowledge the concerns of their team. Organizations that came out to stand behind their agents and their safety were rewarded with increased loyalty.

During the peak of the crisis, customer service agents became a life ring where both the organization and the customer held on tightly to maintain some sense of normalcy. The degree of empathy shared by the organization was reciprocated by the agent in terms of loyalty and lower turnover. The empathetic agent influenced the customer, creating a reciprocal and symbiotic rapport. Empathy created a domino effect and has now become a critical force in building trust and strengthening relationships with both employees and customers alike.

Empathetic organizations create a dynamic of mutual loyalty and dedication. Managers and agents are inspired and lend extra effort to achieve organizational goals. It’s no surprise that these organizations are more agile and resilient than other organizations in a volatile economic landscape.

In a recent study, empathy in the workplace positively related to job performance, and managers who practice empathetic leadership were viewed as better performers. Empathetic managers have lower turnover and increased productivity. Agents pay this empathy forward by humanizing the connection and personalizing the customer conversation. Empathetic agents are proactive, thinking, and connecting to make sure each interaction supports the customer. By demonstrating empathy, agents have the power to deliver the short-term benefit of resolving an issue and the long-term benefit of building brand loyalty through a two-way emotional connection.

Building empathy

Empathy is a skill and cannot be faked. It’s a mindset, a culture, and the core of a healthy organization. Empathy should be a driving force that envelops all activities inside an organization, whether or not it’s customer-facing. Empathy starts with listening, understanding, and anticipating the needs of another. In customer service, this means putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and seeing the issue from their point of view. Empathy is anticipating what the wants and needs are of the customer at a specific moment within their journey. Then, it is all about delivering on these wants and needs by creating a positive and friction-free experience. Remember, being empathetic doesn’t mean you have to agree with the personit simply means you understand their point of view. And unlike sympathy, in which you may feel sorrow or pity the customer’s situation, empathy reduces the distance between the two parties building upon respect and trust.

Empathy helps agents personalize the interaction, predict customer follow-up questions, and proactively answer them. Empathetic agents can also predict the customer’s response by understanding the customer’s point of view. Empathy has a direct effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty as customer satisfaction and loyalty translate to increased sales. Telling a customer “no” or that what they want will cost more or that the warranty has expired, for example, can be hard enough, but when conveyed with empathy, the agent can build trust and strengthen the relationship despite not being able to resolve the issue to the customer’s liking. When the customer’s point of view is understood, empathetic agents can address and make customers feel heard and respected, which is the first step in resolving issues.

When you don’t understand where the customer is coming from, it’s easy to assume they are overreacting. It’s not easy to be empathetic under these circumstances. To overcome this reach, figure out who your customers are and what your product or service means to them. Identify the age, gender, education, and other attributes so you can bridge the gap and grow more empathetic.

Expressing empathy

Active listening. Listening can be a challenge, especially in a noisy environment. To truly empathize, you must focus on the customer and determine the issue the customer is experiencing. Typically, customer service is contacted during the peak of customer frustration so notice not just what the customer is saying, but how they are saying it. For example, determining the tone and language used during service delivery. Real-time customer sentiment analysis is a must-have tool for agents in identifying slight nuances in the customer’s mood and responding accordingly. This may mean mirroring the tone to help navigate through the problem. It can also mean remaining silent for much of the time so the customer can converse without interruption. Be sure to ask questions to delve deeper into the customer’s issues to avoid misunderstandings. Try to put yourself in the caller’s situation. Listen for subtle cues so you can tell when you’ve achieved a positive customer interaction.

Personalize interactions. When you see the customer’s profile, strive to see the person, not just the summary of their journey. Recognize the issue and validate the customer’s feelings. Respond, restate, and summarize using the same words your customer used. Validate their point of view to encourage additional information. Promote trust, respect, and understanding by asking pertinent questions about what course of action they have already tried. Never assume the customer hasn’t tried to resolve the issue before contacting customer service.

Collect feedback. Want deeper insights into the quality of your service delivery? Ask your customer. Gather feedback directly from your customers via email, SMS, live chat, or social media. Automatically sending customer service surveys following a service interaction can help deepen customer retention. Once the survey is completed, you can share insights across applications. If you spot patterns about customers not feeling heard, respected, or helped to the best of an agent’s ability, you can bridge those gaps.

Better together

COVID-19 has touched us all, but the gift we least expected from this tragedy was learning to empathize with other human beings. Empathy has become a vital ingredient to an organization’s ability to persist, to remain resilient in times of social and economic volatility. From empathetic managers becoming better leaders to the empathetic chain reaction of frontline workers paying it forward, we all benefit by returning dividends of kindness to each other. We don’t have to agree there is a problem, but we can agree that we all deserve respect and understanding of our point of view.

Learn how Dynamics 365 Customer Service can help your organization become more resilient by personalizing the customer experience and cultivating greater empathy toward the customer by better understanding their journey.

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It’s time for us to bring all new and future HR capabilities and enhancements within Dynamics 365 Human Resources to all our customers.

We currently have two separate sets of human resources capabilities on two different infrastructures within Dynamics 365:

• Dynamics 365 Human Resources, which is a complete stand-alone application running on an independent infrastructure. Our customers use this application to increase organizational agility and get workforce insights. All investments over the last three years have been focused on this application.
• The HR module, which is a legacy set of capabilities that was previously part of our Unified Operations licensing bundle. Our customers received these HR capabilities as part of Dynamics 365 Finance or Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. We have not been adding capabilities or enhancements to this module. The HR module runs on the same infrastructure as the other applications within our operations portfolio, which was previously named Finance and Operations.

As you can imagine, having two ways to access HR capabilities creates a lot of confusion. It also prevents our customers from experiencing the benefits that each set of capabilities offers.

By merging these capabilities onto the same infrastructure, our customers will see:

• All the enhancements that we have added over the last three years, including improved leave and absence, benefit management, and reporting.
• Improved extensibility through the Microsoft Power Platform and the ability to extend business logic to personalize screens and forms.
• Improved deployment, updates, and maintenance with consistency in terms of Application Life Cycle Management, Lifecycle Services, Geographic availability, and more.
• More technology innovation within the roadmap, as our engineering team now can utilize shared services, tooling, and reduce platform costs.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources will continue to be licensed and sold as a stand-alone application. With the merge, it will tap into the power of the Dynamics 365 shared infrastructure, the Power Platform, and the Dataverse.

This transition will impact customers that are currently running Dynamics 365 Human Resources and those that are using the HR module.

Here are some frequently asked questions and answers to help with the transition.

When will the Dynamics 365 Human Resources infrastructure merge be completed?

The infrastructure merge will roll out in phases to better support all customers and provide time for transition planning. You will see new capabilities begin to roll out in the 2021 Wave 2 release. For more details, see the Dynamics 365 Human Resources 2021 release wave 2 plan. These phases will align with the version service updates, which start with the One Version service updates that start as a preview in December 2021. The merge will be complete in the 2022 Wave 1 release. (These dates are subject to change, so refer to the release plans for the most up-to-date information.)

When should my organization transition into the new infrastructure?

The transition for each company will depend on your current configuration and readiness to move to the new infrastructure. We recommend working with your business partner to determine the best path forward for your company.

• Organizations that use the HR module will receive new functionality as part of the regular One Version update process. Features are planned to become generally available beginning in January 2022 (dates are subject to change, so refer to the release plans for the most up-to-date information).
• Organizations using Dynamics 365 Human Resources will have access to migration tools to complete the infrastructure merge. Please check the release plans regularly to get up-to-date information on when these tools will be available. We will work with our customers to make the transition without an interruption in service. Customers will need to make the transition 12-18 months from when the migration tooling is available.
• Organizations that use both Dynamics 365 Human Resources and the HR module will also need to use the migration tooling.

Will I lose any features or capabilities that I currently use?

Our objective is to minimize the impact of this transition for our customers, and we will not be removing any features. There will be functional parity between Dynamics 365 Human Resources and the HR module. In cases where the feature exists in both infrastructures, the Dynamics 365 Human Resources experience will be used.

Will the experience change for my users?

New capabilities will be managed through Feature management. This will allow our customers to decide which features they want to utilize. In some cases, we may need to change the experience; however, in those cases, documentation will be provided.

Are there any licensing changes or minimum number of user requirements?

Customers that have purchased Dynamics 365 Human Resources will not require license changes. The additional sandbox stock-keeping unit (SKU) that was specific for Human Resources will no longer be applicable. Instead, customers can choose to buy a Finance and Operations apps Tier 2 sandbox at a lower cost. Existing customers who have purchased a Human Resources sandbox will be migrated to a Finance and Operations apps Tier 2 sandbox at no additional cost. We will continue to require five minimum users for Dynamics 365 Human Resources.

Customers using the HR module will be required to purchase licenses for Dynamics 365 Human Resources starting in February 2025. These customers will get the new functionality as part of their current contract until February 2025 or until the current licensing agreement expires, whichever is earlier. Customers can also choose to move to Dynamics 365 Human Resources licenses earlier if it helps them achieve better cost savings.

What training and resources will be available to help with the migration process?

Full documentation will be provided to describe each step of the migration process in detail. We will also determine if any additional training resources, such as videos and workshops, are needed to help our partners and customers with a smooth transition to the new infrastructure.

Next steps

We recommend that you work with your partner to determine a transition plan that works best for your company. Our objective is to provide customers with the time needed for a smooth transition. You can also email specific questions to the Microsoft Team.

• Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources
• Dynamics 365 Human Resources 2021 release wave 2 plan

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Consumers and businesses are increasingly turning to digital platforms for relevant product and service information, making it critical for companies to effectively meet and exceed customer expectations through digital services and technology. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is helping organizations meet this challenge by connecting and unifying commerce and marketing activities.

By bringing together solutions such as Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Marketing, businesses can more effectively target and deliver engaging, intuitive, and user-friendly digital commerce buying experiences. These tools allow organizations to leverage machine learning models, artificial intelligence infused-personalization, and event and data-driven customer journeys, to deliver bespoke buying experiences across B2B and B2C markets.

Personalized and intuitive experiences

To effectively compete in omnichannel retail, businesses need technology solutions that allow them to deliver personalized and intuitive shopping experiences. Many customers want their shopping experience to be somehow personalized. Effective personalization can also increase store revenue. Yet, delivering personalized and intuitive experiences can be challenging for businesses that, despite multiple in-person interactions with customers and ongoing engagements with them online, cannot collect and connect the data from these experiences.

By unifying the data from every customer touchpoint, retailers can develop a more meaningful and holistic understanding of their customers. This deeper understanding can then be leveraged to quickly move customers from evaluation to purchase decision, regardless of the channel in which the customer chooses to engage. Ultimately, by delivering personalized and intuitive shopping experiences, retailers can improve overall conversion rates and maximize the lifetime value of their customers.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

One retailer that is seeing the benefits of delivering personalized and intuitive experiences is Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, one of the largest premium wine companies in the United States, prides itself on superior consumer experiences. To unify its consumer data and provide opportunities for innovation, Ste. Michelle deployed Dynamics 365 Commerce across all of its wine brands.

“The more we know about the consumerand the more adept we can be at using that information in intelligent waysthe better we can make technology an enabler of consumer satisfaction.” Joe Gregg, Chief Information Officer, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

Learn more: Ste. Michelle Wine Estates customer story

Seamless omnichannel services

Personalized digital customer engagement extends well beyond the confines of online marketplaces and digital storefronts. To deliver a fully seamless and frictionless buying experience, merchants must be able to effectively transition from online to brick-and-mortar and back againand do this without losing the personal touch.

Consumers are more likely to buy from retailers who reference past purchase experiences. These are easy feats for properly configured information systems in online environments, but transitioning to in-store, team member-led experiences can be tricky.

To be effective in this effort, retailers need to empower in-store team members with relevant and timely consumer data. Providing the correct data at the right time can be difficult when retailers are amassing a large amount of consumer data. Fortunately, Dynamics 365 Commerce can leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to deliver personalized recommendations, insights, and loyalty programs access directly into the hands of brick-and-mortar team members. Ultimately, by connecting digital, in-store, and back-office operations in a single retail platform, merchants can deliver the seamless purchase journeys that modern consumers and businesses have come to expect.

Signature Cosmetics & Fragrances

A retailer positioning itself to take advantage of the benefits of seamless omnichannel service is Signature Cosmetics & Fragrances. Signature Cosmetics & Fragrances, a leading cosmetics and fragrance group, understood the impact the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns would have on its network of more than 170 stores across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia.

When the company began its modernization program by implementing Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, it did not immediately consider the benefits of connecting its commercial activities in a seamless omnichannel service. As the project moved forward and they gained experience in e-commerce, they quickly grasped the value of such an approach. By implementing Dynamics 365 Commerce, Signature Cosmetics & Fragrances can now deliver a seamless experience across product categorization and loyalty programs in its brick-and-mortar stores and online. One example is that the company can now directly connect a customer’s online wish list with in-store sales opportunities.

“Part of the project plan is once we have all this data following through the productivity software in retail, e-commerce, and supply chain, we will have Power BI sitting above everything and drawing from various departments to present it as reports that really help us make decisions.” Akheel Pragjee, Managing Director of the Signature Group

Learn more: Signature Cosmetics & Fragrances customer story

Next steps

As we have seen, delivering a personalized digital customer engagement is a fundamental necessity for modern retailers. Dynamics 365 provides the ability to adapt and innovate with the only portfolio of business applications that empowers your organization to deliver operational excellence and delight every customer. Two of our solutions, Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Marketing, combine to allow your company to provide a unified, or connected, commerce solution. Try our free Dynamics 365 Commerce trial today to get started creating personalized and friction-free digital commerce experiences for B2C and B2B businesses.

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