Major shocks to supply and demand over the course of the pandemic have exposed the fragility and vulnerabilities of the global supply chain. One silver lining is the realization, across industries, that a more agile approach is needed. To stabilize supply chains, whether localized or on a global scale, every organization must architect resiliency into their supply chains, scaling operations to meet customers’ needs, and proactively overcome disruptions to ensure business continuity and operate profitably.

This year, at Hannover Messe Digital Edition, we are showcasing new Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities to help companies easily scale production and distribution, keep critical processes running, and ensure continuity on the frontlines of manufacturing. Learn more about how Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is helping create a more resilient and sustainable future through open standards and ecosystems.

Looking back to move forward: The ripple effect of semiconductor shortages

The ripple effect created by semiconductor shortages in the past year underpins the need for greater agility and resilience across supply chains. As demand for automobiles slowed down at the beginning of the pandemic, automobile manufacturers stocked less inventory of critical semiconductor components to keep operational costs low. During the same period, demand for consumer electronics like computers and tablets grew due to the surge in remote work and online schools. As a result, the same semiconductor manufacturing company that was supplying raw materials to automobile manufacturers increased its allocation to consumer electronics manufacturing companies.

When the demand for automobiles started to rise again in the latter part of 2020, automobile manufacturers struggled to ramp up production to meet demand due to shortages in critical semiconductor components, resulting in decreased revenue and temporary plant closures. To strengthen the supply chains of these critical raw materials and wither any geopolitical storms that can disrupt the supply chain for critical components coming from Asia and Europe, organizations worldwide have started to reconfigure their supply chain network and build new agile factories.

How Microsoft is helping to create more agile, resilient supply chains

IDC’s 2020 Supply Chain Survey¹ explored how companies would manage risk and enable supply chain visibility to achieve supply chain resiliency. The focus for risk and visibility from most respondent companies were primarily in supply chain planning (57 percent) and end-to-end supply chain (56 percent) including visibility into factory (39 percent). The tools that the companies expected to use to enhance visibility includes best of breed and edge supply chain application, enterprise collaboration tools, specialized BI and analysis tools, and supplier or customer portal and workflow management solutionssolutions that align to our focus areas of innovation to help organizations architect resiliency into every level of the business, from supply chains to distribution to finance and service.

At Hannover Messe Digital Edition, we are also showcasing the new cloud and edge scale unit add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which were previewed in October 2020, that enables companies to easily scale production and distribution during peaks and keep critical processes running at high throughput on the edge.

We are also showcasing how manufacturers can use Mixed Reality with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management by integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides. This enables manufacturers to reskill and cross-skill the frontline workers and augment their knowledge while they rapidly change factory layouts and bring new plants online.

Supply chain resiliency in action: Two success stories from the supply chain frontlines

Although the focus is now on resiliency, cost still needs to be controlled, and so simply ordering and holding more inventory is not the answer. What does hold promise is tighter integration and collaboration with both internal and external trading partners, faster access to data, and a new level of transparency and visibility into the end-to-end value chain made possible by digital transformation.

Wonder Cement builds a better foundation by connecting and scaling key business apps

Wonder Cement is a cutting-edge cement manufacturing company that has built its corporate culture on the values of quality, trust, and transparency. The company attributes its success to its relentless focus on customer service coupled with an emphasis on technological superiority.

Headquartered in Udaipur, Rajasthan, Wonder Cement operates three integrated cement plants and two grinding plants, with another scheduled to be online in the first quarter of 2021. Underpinning their success and growth is a reliance on innovative data technologies that enable them to maintain close connections with their markets and operations.

Wonder Cement recently brought wide-ranging process improvements to its business through the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The company is creating an improved foundation by connecting and scaling its most critical business apps. In the process, Wonder Cement has lowered inventory costs and reduced the time spent on transferring data between disparate systems. The company now has new visibility into its data and the resilience to succeed in the years ahead.

“We save 80 to 85 percent of the time we used to spend on moving data from the production system to our ERP now that everything runs on Dynamics 365. That’s a huge win for our company.” Arun Attri, Vice President (IT)

Explore how this customer-first cement company builds a better foundation by connecting and scaling key business apps with Dynamics 365.

CRC Industries aligns finance, operations, and supply chain management globally

CRC Industries has successfully created specialty products for the automotive, industrial, marine, aviation, and other markets for over 60 years. With customers in over 120 countries, seven manufacturing plants, and 26 facilities around the world, CRC has experienced almost continuous expansion over the past six decades.

As CRC grew, several unintegrated business solutions for finance, operations, and supply chain management were pieced together. The result was a mix of diverse systems that couldn’t communicate without significant manual intervention. This led to CRC being unable to take advantage of the cloud’s benefits and instead, having separate systems that reside on-premises at different locations across the globe.

“I consider Dynamics 365 the leading edge of the ERP frontier. Microsoft is listening to the customer and adapting quickly.”William McLendon, Global Manager Business Applications

In contemplating its future growth plans, CRC realized that its fragmented and disparate solutions were unsustainable. A push to standardize business processes, break down data silos, and create a single source of truth began. After considering other options, CRC selected Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

“We made it our goal to standardize our business systems globally. We wanted to put the company on one enterprise resource planning solution throughout the world and have one way of doing business going forward.”Brent Laurin, Vice President of Global Operations

Learn more about how this specialty products and formulations company aligns finance, operations, and supply chain management globally with Dynamics 365.

What’s new in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management in April

Increase visibility of inbound goods and automate landed cost calculation to maximize profitability

The new landed cost module in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides an innovative way to streamline inbound shipping by giving users complete financial and logistical control over imported freight, from the manufacturer to the warehouse.

With this visibility, arrivals are predictable, and warehouse planning and efficiency are improved.

Some key business outcomes are:

• Optimize the receiving process: Shipment of inbound orders such as purchase orders or transfer orders can be defined and organized into various transportation legs that will provide immediate visibility of stock delays that might impact customer deliveries.
• Help organizations predict costs: Automatic cost calculations can be configured for various transportation modes, duties, and other fees incurred to get a product to the warehouse.
• Help reduce administration and costing errors: Simulate shipping scenarios to predict a standard cost price for an item.

Citt uses Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to streamline sourcing, procurement, and management of inbound goods in transit. Now, staff members know when to replenish inventory at each store in a timely manner so that products are in stock and aren’t overstocked.

Streamline and automate rebates and royalty management to increase your bottom line

Rebates and royalty have a significant impact on a company’s margin. The rebate calculation complexity and post-event timing of claims can cause challenges for businesses to accrue, automate and track the rebate in a cost-effective way.

Rebate management provides a central place to manage customer rebates, customer royalty, or vendor rebates. It will help to identify and trace the eligibility against overlapping and concurrent agreement with accuracy and automate the claim and payment process.

Some key business outcomes are:

• Centralize, streamline, and automate rebates and royalty program management with customers and vendors. It supports tiered pricing and volume rebates.
• Increase sales, improve margins, and remain competitive with simplified trade planning and real-time reporting such as spend versus rebates.

Overcome disruptions due to quality issues and obsolete parts to keep production running

Strong product data management, formula management, and change tracking of formulations are required to succeed in a world of constantly shrinking product lifecycles, increased quality and reliability requirements, and increased focus on product safety. This helps streamline and reduce the cost of managing product data, reduce errors in production, reduce waste when making design changes, and enable new formulas to be introduced in a controlled way.

Now, companies can manage changes in your process manufacturing master data, including formulas, planning items, co-products, by-products, and catch weight items.

Some key business outcomes are:

• Ensure compliance and on-time delivery by quickly responding to changing customer or supplier specifications, regulations, and safety standards, and seamlessly managing multiple formulations.
• Minimize disruptions caused by quality issues and obsolete ingredients by quickly assessing the impact and adjusting formulas through change management to ensure production lines are running every day.

Empower frontline workforce to work with confidence and improve overall warehouse operating efficiency

The warehouse management mobile application includes a fresh, contemporary design that is intuitive, easy to use, and supported by robust enhancements to core warehouse management logic that streamline processing. The solution is designed to help workers be more efficient, productive, and better able to complete work accurately.

Some key business outcomes are:

• Improved worker efficiency with the most important information made easy to read and in large font, large input controls to quickly dial in quantities, and saved worker preferences and device-specific settings that can be managed centrally.
• Faster ramp-up of new workers with clear titles and illustrations for each step and full-screen photos to verify product selections.
• Improved ergonomics with a high-contrast design that provides clear text even on dirty screens, custom button locations to match each worker’s grip, device, and handedness, large touch targets that make the app easy to use with gloves, and possibilities to scale font and button size independent of each other.
• Alignment with Fluent Design System visual style and interaction, a similar user interface across Dynamics 365 Guides, and production floor execution interface.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, how to build resilience with an agile supply chain, or if you are ready to take the first step towards implementing one of the most forward-thinking enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution available, then contact us to see a demo or start a free trial.

Find out what’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and listen to our recent podcast “Preparing for your supply chain’s next normal” with Frank Della Rosa and Simon Ellis.

Learn how Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is helping create a more resilient and sustainable future through open standards and ecosystems.

1 IDC White Paper, sponsored by Microsoft, title, doc # US47207320 published in January 2021 – “A New Breed of Cloud Applications Powers Supply Chain Agility and Resiliency.”

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Navigating the past year has been a challenge as organizations have had to predict the unpredictablehow their business will adapt, how to retain and even grow customer relationships, and how to think long-term when circumstances can change daily. As we continue through 2021, the path is still uncharted, but what’s clear is the importance of knowing your customer. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a powerful, real-time customer data platform (CDP) can help you bring together transactional, behavioral, and demographic data to create a 360-degree view of your customers. With the 2021 release wave 1 updates for engagement insights (preview) and audience insights in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, we are elevating our Microsoft customer data platform with even more capabilities to help businesses: Get a holistic view of customers Predict customer needs Drive meaningful actions Rely on a trusted platform to optimize security Get a holistic view of customers To know how your customers are behaving, you need to see the data, whether that be how customers navigate your webpages, what they purchase and when, or why they are contacting customer service. But if this data is scattered across disparate IT systems, it’s hard to see a clear picture. With the addition of engagement insights, you can connect digital analytics with customer profile data to see your customers across touchpoints like web, mobile, transaction, and customer service. By pulling fragmented data together, you can rely on a single source of truth to inform your strategy. We believe you should be empowered to integrate your dataregardless of where it sits. Whether it is in the Microsoft ecosystem or any other system, you can ingest data into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with prebuilt connectors. In this release, we are providing even more prebuilt connectors such as Experian for you to easily use. In this 2021 release wave 1, we are also introducing the seamless experience between Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and customer journey orchestration capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing. With this new feature, you can build segments in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to orchestrate real-time customer journeys in Dynamics 365 Marketing. Predict customer needs Data, even unified data, can mean little for your business without insights. But waiting for data insights can often take weeks or months, which can slow down the speed of your business. We offer out-of-the-box AI models, which are ready to apply as-is, and what would normally take weeks or months takes mere hours with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. We know that your time is valuable and AI-driven insights can help you get value fast. We’ve added AI-powered suggestions to help segment your customers for more personalized messaging. In this 2021 release wave 1, we’ve also added predicted customer lifetime value as well as transaction and subscription churn to make it easier to identify high-value and at-risk customers. With the addition of the next best action and recommended product features, you can pinpoint which product to recommend a customer next and why. Drive meaningful actions Now that you know what your customers are doing and how you want to foster these relationships, it’s time to take action. Share your data insights with any application, whether through Microsoft or third-party platforms. Our vendor-neutral approach enables you to activate insights through apps like AutopilotHQ, Bing Ads, dotdigital, Facebook, Google Ads, HubSpot, LiveRamp, Marketo, Mailchimp, SendGrid, and more. Rely on a trusted platform to optimize your security Data privacy has become all the more important in recent years and we help you keep your data safe by letting you maintain full control of it. By replacing internal data storage with your own data lake, you can manage your data without relying on third-party data integration tools and APIs. In this 2021 release wave 1, we’ve added incremental data ingestion so that Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will only look for new and updated records since its last run, saving your business valuable time. And because Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is built on the trusted cloud platform Microsoft Azure, you can power your custom machine learning scenarios with the latest version of Azure Machine Learning web services. UNICEF Netherlands turn donors into lifetime supporters Private donors and volunteers are crucial to supporting UNICEF’s mission to help every child thrive, all over the world. With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and customer journey orchestration in Dynamics 365 Marketing, UNICEF Netherlands can better engage donors and build lifetime loyalty by delivering real-time, personalized messages through the right platforms at the right time. “Dynamics 365 Customer Insights really helps us to segment the right audiences, to focus on them, to engage them in a very relevant way, and to retain them.”Astrid van Vonderen, Director of Fundraising and Private Individuals Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and customer journey orchestration in our blog post, “Drive personalized interactions with real-time customer journey orchestration.”

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Join us for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Launch Event streaming live April 13, 2021 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time and then available on-demand. See what’s next for Dynamics 365 Business Central and get access to breakout sessions available on-demand as well as live chats with product experts. Read our preview below, and then register to join the event. In a recent Microsoft-commissioned IDC survey of small and midsized businesses (SMBs) across the globe, 60 percent of leaders indicated that 2021 will be spent on pivoting and focusing on recovery. These leaders stated that their top three business challenges included increasing business agility, productivity, and revenue. While the good news is that moving to the cloud with a modern business management solution can help SMBs address these challenges, many leaders within SMBs struggle to carve out the time to create a digital transformation strategy. That’s where we can help. Dynamics 365 Business Central helps SMBs adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a connected cloud business management solution for growing small and midmarket organizations. Connected means you can bring together your finance, sales, service, and operations teams within a single application to get the insights needed to drive your business forward and be prepared for what’s next. We focus our product innovations on investments to help SMBs: Adapt fasterBe prepared for disruption with the insights needed to pivot quickly, shift business models, and cultivate strategic plans. Work smarterStop app switching and boost productivity using interoperability with Microsoft Teams, Excel, Word, and Outlook. Perform betterEnable better business performance with continuous process improvements, real-time insights, and responsiveness across your entire businessnot just financials. Take a look at a few of the updates that we are introducing in the 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Business Central to help you adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. Adapt faster: Onboarding guidance Pivoting quickly is only possible if you can get everyone across your company to adopt new business apps, processes, and models. While to go-live is critical for all new business management solutions, time to productivity for your people is the better measurement of success. In the 2021 release wave 1, we are investing in getting started checklists, a welcome banner, and in-app contextual help with teaching tips to ensure your people can onboard and deliver results faster. Work smarter: Better together on the Microsoft cloud Microsoft is the only company that provides productivity, collaboration, development, AI, business intelligence, and business applications all within a single cloud. The result goes beyond the ability to support remote work, improve security, and control costs. By connecting Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform you will empower your organization to be more collaborative, more productive, and more impactful. In the 2021 release wave 1, we have improved interoperability with Microsoft Teams, Word, and Excel, along with enabling integration between Dynamics 365 Business Central virtual tables into Microsoft Dataverse solutions. Additionally, we have enabled support for Universal Print to streamline the way companies manage printing from Dynamics 365 Business Central. Perform better: Improved dimensions and expansion to more geographies We continue to invest in capabilities that help our customers optimize financial performance and drive continuous business process improvements. The 2021 wave 1 release supports global expansion, as we bring Dynamics 365 Business Central to more countries, with availability in India, Greece, Romania, and Turkey. We have also invested in simplifying working with dimensions and general ledger entry corrections. Consistent and accurate dimension value attributes on operational and financial transactions ensure greater insights from your business data. Learn more This is just a glimpse of the latest innovations for Dynamics 365 Business Central. We have also invested in delivering improvements requested by our partners and customers, including enhancements across banking, payments, performance, supply chain optimization, and usability. Learn more about how Dynamics 365 Business Central can help you adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. Register for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Launch Event streaming live April 13, 2021 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time and then available on-demand and get access to breakout sessions and live chats with product experts. Sources: IDC, SMB leaders survey, 2020

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Planning on attending the upcoming Hannover Messe Digital Edition? If so, come discover how mixed reality business applications like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist are helping transform organizations like Schaeffler. The Hannover Messe industry (HMI) conference covers all core themes of the industrial value-adding chainfrom individual components to the complete smart factory. Join us at the “Transform Your Workforce” panel session to hear from Schaeffler on how they are using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to transform their manufacturing operations and boost productivity while saving cost. Also, learn how Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is helping create a more resilient and sustainable future through open standards and ecosystems. What manufacturers can do with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist The manufacturing industry has proven to be one of the earliest adopters of mixed reality technologies, successfully leveraging mixed reality business applications like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist across discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, automotive, and more. With Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, global manufacturing companies such as Ecolab, Musashi, and Saint-Gobain have been able to get real-time remote assistance from experts around the world anytime, anywhere while still being able to access and anchor critical work order details, schematics, and diagrams within their physical work environment. Additionally, many manufacturers today are also now using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to conduct remote audits and inspections with videos, screenshots, and 3D annotations, ultimately driving cost savings and efficiency, and avoiding travel costsall while minimizing their carbon footprint. According to the Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) report on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, studies conducted by Forrester showed that Dynamics 365 Remote Assist typically helped achieve the following impact in labor and travel costs savings for field technicians and experts, unlocked labor savings for manufacturing site technicians, and avoided lost income, labor, and direct costs stemming from common manufacturing issues: Customers resolve throughput-impacting issues five days earlier, saving approximately $20,052 per issue. Experts and technicians can now collaborate to solve costly issues days or weeks faster. With issues modeled to cause an estimated 5 percent drop in throughput for the composite organization, resolving issues five days faster helped prevent approximately four hours of lost production and costly downtime. Experts avoid 17 trips per year, saving $53,550 in travel costs and 384 hours valued at $39,744 per expert. Experts can now virtually see, annotate, and direct onsite users, avoiding trips for inspections and last-minute issue resolution. Each avoided trip saves $3,500 in travel costs and three to four days of labor. Field technicians avoid 55 trips per year, saving 188 hours valued at $4,230 plus $2,498 in travel costs per technician. Field technicians shift 50 percent of inspections to virtual, improve first-time fix (FTF) by 10 percent for tier 1 issues and by 40 percent for tier 2 issues, and can now self-resolve 75 percent of tier 3 issues with remote expert support. Manufacturing site technicians save 124 hours per year valued at $2,790 per technician. Using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for collaboration with onsite technicians and office staff plus remote experts boosts inspection productivity by 25 percent, halves labor for tier 2 issues, and slashes tier 3 issue resolution labor by 75 percent. Additional benefits of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist include the ability to: Accelerate manufacturing with fewer throughput drops, improving customer experience Improve quality and accuracy of work with remote collaboration and guidance Speed up decision making as plant workers demonstrate proposed work in real-time, helping remote stakeholders quickly understand, align on, and approve the work Boost inspection frequency plus recording capture of work and inspections for auditing and compliance. Ensure critical business continuity, especially with evolving macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions Improve employee health and safety by avoiding travel and minimizing physical contact (especially with driving and pandemic-related risks), allowing onsite workers to complete tasks while still getting access to remote experts when needed Enhance employee experience by avoiding time-consuming, often last-minute work travel. These experts can also now avoid travel-related fatigue and jetlag. An improved work-life balance helps improve employee satisfaction, and enables the company to attract, hire, and retain talent. Improve knowledge acquisition, retention, and sharing with hands-on completion of task work with remote expert support enhanced with mixed reality 3D annotations, plus real-time or recorded observation for future training purposes. Achieve sustainability goals by reducing travel-related emissions and carbon footprint Learn more about Dynamics 365 Remote Assist in manufacturing Read the full Total Economic Impact Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist report Be sure to also check out the following customer evidence stories to discover how your organization can similarly leverage Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for accelerated deployment, thorough inspections, and efficient break/fix resolution. Ecolab Watch the video with Ecolab’s David Goforth, Vice President Sales North America, and Rick Stokes, Area Technical Support Manager, as they speak with Rodney Clark, Vice President IoT and Mixed Reality Sales at Microsoft, about how Ecolab Food and Beverage is transforming business processes to better serve customers and employees in the face of emerging challenges. Musashi Musashi Seimitsu Industry is an automotive parts manufacturer with production and sales facilities in 14 countries and 35 hubs worldwide. The global brand slogan, Power to Value, has represented its innovative manufacturing style since 1938. This can-do spirit has protected corporate infrastructure amidst COVID-19. By merging the real and digital worlds with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens 2, the company launched a new production line in Mexico without a single engineer leaving Japan. Musashi Seimitsu is embracing the post COVID-19 new normal with its swift digital transformation. Saint-Gobain Saint-Gobain is a global leader in the manufacture of sustainable, high-performance building materials. The craftsmanship and innovation underlying the company’s technologically advanced products, particularly its specialized glass offerings, hinge on stellar production machine maintenance and in-depth training. Since the Saint-Gobain process experts who provide that deep expertise can’t be everywhere at once, the company turned to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to deliver remote expert assistance in real-time. Now, maintenance and training are faster, more impactful, and with dramatically less travel required, helping Saint-Gobain be aligned with their sustainability goals. Dynamics 365 Remote Assist resources Learn more about Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. Register to attend upcoming Dynamics 365 Remote Assist Microsoft Reactor sessions. Complete the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist Learning Path. Read Dynamics 365 Remote Assist customer stories. See how mixed reality solutions on HoloLens 2 can help your business be more productive. Find information on Microsoft Dynamics 365 partners for manufacturing. Listen to the Dynamics 365 Connected and Ready podcast episode on mixed reality, “Ford goes from vehicles to ventilators, with Dr. Graham Hoare OBE.” Sources: The Total Economic Impact Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, June 2020

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Digital transformation is rapidly expanding, the workforce is aging, and organizations are looking for technology to upskill their workforce faster. Manufacturers, in particular, rely on a highly skilled workforce that must keep up with the pace of technology change. Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute estimate that up to 2.4 million United States manufacturing jobs could remain unfilled between 2018 and 2028 because of a lack of adequate skills.1 What’s needed to address the skills gap is a scalable solution to training and operations. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides, no custom coding is required, and employees get guidance right where the work happens with step-by-step holographic instructions. Move away from traditional training methods, gain insights into what is working, and reduce downtime and associated costs with guides that enable employees to be hands-free while learning. Ensure compliance with hands-free learning According to a Deloitte and MAPI survey2 of manufacturers, the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, further exacerbating the growing skills gap on the shop floor, and it’s also introducing new challenges for worker safety and production. With Dynamics 365 Guides, organizations get a scalable solution for on-the-job guidance with no coding required. Employees simply follow instructions they see right in front of them while they are hands-free for faster learning. Keeping employees safe is critical, and Dynamics 365 Guides gives employees confidence in taking care of their regular tasks and tackling unexpected challenges. Guide employees through procedures, whether it’s their first time or a recurring task, by using holographic step-by-step instructions where the work is done. Surface urgent information quickly using Dynamics 365 Guides to provide warnings and cautions to your users with needed details in view as they work. Maximize hands-free time by increasing efficiency and flexibility with improved voice commands that allow more hands-free time. Improve operations with employee insights According to the latest “Future of Jobs” report from the World Economic Forum, “94 percent of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job” but only 16 percent of those surveyed have made significant progress in improving knowledge gaps.3 Closing knowledge gaps isn’t just about training; it’s about optimizing operations across the workforce. But manufacturers need visibility into where the gaps are and what training is working. Dynamics 365 Guides empowers organizations to aggregate employee task performance data into real-time Microsoft Power BI dashboards, making it easier to identify where process improvements are needed. Gain data-driven insights over time with Dynamics 365 Guides to improve employee effectiveness. Quickly deploy skill-building initiatives that target specific gaps identified in Dynamics 365 Guides’ usage reports and create consistency across teams. Pull employee performance data into real-time Power BI dashboards, making it easier to improve processes and share analytics within your organization. Integrate with other Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions to do more We are continually integrating the rest of the Dynamics 365 suite of solutions with Dynamics 365 Guides to unlock new scenarios. Greater integration means more seamless workflows and more opportunities for use cases across industries. Incorporate Dynamics 365 Guides with existing workflows using powerful services like Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate to view and save data. Extend the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Guides when work orders are assigned to technicians with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service. The dedicated Dynamics 365 Field Service tab in the Microsoft HoloLens application launches any assigned guide. Integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management with Dynamics 365 Guides to create mixed-reality, step-by-step instructions for production processes such as assembly, service, operations, certification, regulations, and safety procedures. Kruger brings factory handbook to life with Dynamics 365 Guides Kruger, a North American paper products and energy specialist, is an established company that leads its industry in terms of innovation. With experienced operators retiring every year, Kruger knows how important it is to capture their expertise to share with the next generation. With Microsoft Hololens 2 and Dynamics 365 Guides, Kruger brings its factory handbook to life. Now Kruger employees have an intuitive yet powerful tool to exchange knowledge and practical experiences. Dynamics 365 Guides empowers Kruger operators to be agile in their training by providing an entirely new way of learning on the job. “In today’s manufacturing world things are moving so fast. People need to be agile and find ways to learn faster and it is our responsibility, as a company, to provide them the best tool that exists and make them more comfortable to perform their task.”Gino Levesque, Senior Vice President Containerboard Kruger Packaging Using the branching feature, operators can easily select different pathways within the same procedure, depending on their experience. The spatial trigger feature intuitively leads workers to perform the next step, making it seamless for employees to learn on the job and build muscle memory. This quick access to information, regardless of experience, boosts productivity and empowers employees to take on new challenges. Using Dynamics 365 Guides and HoloLens 2, Kruger meets its growing workforce demands while capturing the expertise of their experienced operators. Get started with Dynamics 365 Guides Want to learn more? Learn how MSR and Sheba Medical Center meet urgent staffing demands with HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Guides. Ready to empower your frontline employees? Read more about Dynamics 365 Guides capabilities and get your questions answered using our Dynamics 365 Guides documentation. Take the next step by trying a 30-day free trial of Dynamics 365 Guides. Learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing for a more resilient and sustainable future through open standards and ecosystems. See how mixed reality solutions on HoloLens 2 can help your business be more productive. Find information on Microsoft Dynamics 365 partners for manufacturing. 1Deloitte Insights and the Manufacturing Institute, 2018 Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute Skills Gap and Future of Work Study. 2A 2020 Deloitte and MAPI Study finds ecosystems can create a competitive edge for manufacturers facing ongoing disruption, Smart Manufacturing Ecosystems: A Catalyst for Digital Transformation? 3World Economic Forum, 2020 Future of Jobs Report

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Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2021 release wave 1 includes enhancements that give admins greater control over knowledge management configuration and help agents access the information they need to resolve customer queries more quickly. This release makes it easier for agents to filter and find the most relevant knowledge articles. Admins can set the knowledge article authoring language at the organizational level, while agents have the flexibility to set their preferred language. Filter knowledge articles and set filter preferences Administrators can configure standard or custom fields for agents to use as filters, allowing agents to narrow down search results to view only the articles they need to resolve a customer issue. Key capabilities of filter configuration allow admins to: Add or delete custom filters for their organization. Set the visibility of the filter values by choosing which values are shown to agents at runtime. Set multiple preselected filter values by defining multiple default values based on which search results are filtered. Activate or deactivate filters to support business scenarios. Configure whether personalization of filter values is enabled or disabled for agents. Agents can set their own preferred search filters. Key capabilities of filter personalization allow agents to: Change the preselected default filter values their administrators set for them. Activate or deactivate filters to support business scenarios. Multiselect filter values to increase their productivity. Configure and personalize language settings for authoring With the April release, admins can set the organization’s default language for authoring new knowledge articles. In addition, authors can override the organization’s authoring language and set their own preferred language for writing new articles if desired. Key capabilities of language configuration for authoring knowledge articles are: Ability for admins to set the default language for authoring knowledge articles to match the language used for the organization’s user interface. Ability for agents to set a language of their choice as their preferred authoring language. Example screenshot for filters Enable the knowledge management feature Enable this feature on the Customer Service Hub > Service Management > Knowledge Base Management > Settings screen. Next steps Read more about knowledge management and other capabilities included in Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2021 release wave 1 or check out the documentation for Dynamics 365 Customer Service

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