One year ago, generative AI burst onto the scene and for the first time since the smartphone, people began to change the way they interact with technology. People are bringing AI to work at an unexpected scale — and now the big question is, how’s it going?

As AI becomes ubiquitous in the workplace, employees and businesses alike are under extreme pressure. The pace and intensity of work, which accelerated during the pandemic, has not eased, so employees are bringing their own AI to work. Leaders agree AI is a business imperative — and feel the pressure to show immediate ROI — but many lack a plan and vision to go from individual impact to applying AI to drive the bottom line.

At the same time, the labor market is set to shift and there’s a new AI economy. While some professionals worry AI will replace their job, the data tells a more nuanced story — of a hidden talent shortage, more employees eyeing a career change, and a massive opportunity for those willing to skill up.

“AI is democratizing expertise across the workforce,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft. “Our latest research highlights the opportunity for every organization to apply this technology to drive better decision-making, collaboration — and ultimately business outcomes.”

For our fourth annual Work Trend Index, out today, we partnered with LinkedIn for the first time on a joint report so we could provide a comprehensive view of how AI is not only reshaping work, but the labor market more broadly. We surveyed 31,000 people across 31 countries, identified labor and hiring trends from LinkedIn, analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals and conducted research with Fortune 500 customers. The data points to insights every leader and professional needs to know — and actions they can take — when it comes to AI’s implications for work.

1. Employees want AI at work — and won’t wait for companies to catch up.

Three in four knowledge workers (75%) now use AI at work. Employees, overwhelmed and under duress, say AI saves time, boosts creativity and allows them to focus on their most important work. While 79% of leaders agree AI adoption is critical to remain competitive, 59% worry about quantifying the productivity gains of AI and 60% worry their company lacks a vision and plan to implement it. While leaders feel the pressure to turn individual productivity gains into organizational impact, employees aren’t waiting to reap the benefits: 78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work. The opportunity for every leader is to channel this momentum into ROI.

2. For employees, AI raises the bar and breaks the career ceiling.

We also see AI beginning to impact the job market. While AI and job loss are top of mind for some, our data shows more people are eyeing a career change, there are jobs available, and employees with AI skills will get first pick. The majority of leaders (55%) say they’re worried about having enough talent to fill open roles this year, with leaders in cybersecurity, engineering, and creative design feeling the pinch most.

And professionals are looking. Forty-six percent across the globe are considering quitting in the year ahead — an all-time high since the Great Reshuffle of 2021 — a separate LinkedIn study found U.S. numbers to be even higher with 85% eyeing career moves. While two-thirds of leaders wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, only 39% of users have received AI training from their company. So, professionals are skilling up on their own. As of late last year, we’ve seen a 142x increase in LinkedIn members adding AI skills like Copilot and ChatGPT to their profiles and a 160% increase in non-technical professionals using LinkedIn Learning courses to build their AI aptitude.

In a world where AI mentions in LinkedIn job posts drive a 17% bump in application growth, it’s a two-way street: Organizations that empower employees with AI tools and training will attract the best talent, and professionals who skill up will have the edge.

3. The rise of the AI power user — and what they reveal about the future.

In the research, four types of AI users emerged on a spectrum — from skeptics who rarely use AI to power users who use it extensively. Compared to skeptics, AI power users have reoriented their workdays in fundamental ways, reimagining business processes and saving over 30 minutes per day. Over 90% of power users say AI makes their overwhelming workload more manageable and their work more enjoyable, but they aren’t doing it on their own.

Power users work for a different kind of company. They are 61% more likely to have heard from their CEO on the importance of using generative AI at work, 53% more likely to receive encouragement from leadership to consider how AI can transform their function and 35% more likely to receive tailored AI training for their specific role or function.

“AI is redefining work and it’s clear we need new playbooks,” said Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn. “It’s the leaders who build for agility instead of stability and invest in skill building internally that will give their organizations a competitive advantage and create more efficient, engaged and equitable teams.”

The prompt box is the new blank page

We hear one consistent piece of feedback from our customers: talking to AI is harder than it seems. We’ve all learned how to use a search engine, identifying the right few words to get the best results. AI requires more context — just like when you delegate work to a direct report or colleague. But for many, staring down that empty prompt box feels like facing a blank page: Where should I even start?

Today, we’re announcing Copilot for Microsoft 365 innovations to help our customers answer that question.

YouTube Video

• If you’ve got the start of a prompt, Copilot will offer to auto-complete it to get to a better result, suggesting something more detailed to help ensure you get what you’re looking for. That not only speeds things up, it offers you new ideas for how to leverage Copilot’s power.
  
• Other times, you know exactly what you want — you’re just not sure how to ask. With its new rewrite feature, Copilot turns a basic prompt into a rich one with the click of a button, turning everyone into a prompt engineer.
  
• Catch Up, a new chat interface that surfaces personal insights based on your recent activity, provides responsive recommendations, like “You have a meeting with the sales VP on Thursday. Let’s get you prepared — click here to get detailed notes.”
• We also know that every role, team and function has unique needs and ways of working. To help create prompts for exactly the work you do, you’ll soon be able to create, publish and manage prompts in Copilot Lab that are expressly tailored to your closest teams.

These features will be available in the coming months, and in the future, we’ll take it a step further, with Copilot asking you questions to get to your best work yet.

LinkedIn has also made free over 50 learning courses to empower professionals at all levels to advance their AI aptitude.

Head to WorkLab for the full Work Trend Index Report, and head to LinkedIn to hear more from LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, Karin Kimbrough, on how AI is reshaping the labor market.

And for all the blogs, videos and assets related to today’s announcements, please visit our microsite.

The post Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In Dynamics 365 Customer Service, agents use Copilot to resolve issues based on the corpus of data in their organization’s knowledge base or SharePoint. Additionally, we are introducing prompt plugins, enabling agents to securely access Dataverse data such as customers, products, and cases, through Copilot. This enables agents to gain a better understanding of customer needs, preferences, and history, which empowers them to provide more personalized and effective support. 

With Copilot Studio, we enable customers to build and manage their prompt plugins to address various types of customer scenarios based on the organization’s needs. Plugins reduce the need for customer service representatives to switch to other tabs and tools to do their work. The result is improved resolution time and customer satisfaction. Organizations can build a single plugin and use that plugin in all copilots. So, regardless of where an agent asks a service-related question, they benefit from a consistent experience. 

Create prompt plugins

You can create a prompt plugin using Copilot Studio and choose the data from Dataverse based on your needs.  

Once you generate prompt plugins, the Customer Service administrator can manage plugins in the Customer Service admin center.

Administrators have the following capabilities:

• Turn on and turn off the plugins
• Provide access to all Copilot users or manage user access by roles
• Map data field input parameters for the plugin, reducing how much context agents have to manually add to the prompt during plugin use
• Manage the plugin data storage in Dataverse

Use prompt plugins

Empower agents to access solutions from multiple entities through Copilot, offering unified and enlightening experience. Agents can use targeted phrases in Copilot to get responses from plugins to quickly gather information about a case.

Copilot automatically identifies the plugin based on the agent’s question. With deep understanding of the user’s intent, Copilot can select the right plugin to help the agent, resulting in better experience for customers who have their issues addressed faster.

When the agent clicks Check sources, they can see the plugin used to generate the response. They can also click the Learn about plugins documentation link to understand how plugins work and their use in Copilot.

If Copilot didn’t identify a plugin, it falls back to the knowledge source to create a response to the agent.

Coming soon: Other types of plugins

Connector plugins extend Copilot’s value by connecting to a variety of external data sources and applications that agents rely on to answer customer queries. The plugins let your agents securely access data from those systems through Copilot without juggling multiple different systems to deliver service. For example, the agents can retrieve information like purchase orders and shipping details via Copilot without logging in to order management systems. The agents simply ask for what they need, and Copilot responds, resulting in decreased time to resolution.

Learn more

Below are the detailed steps to create and configure prompt plugins for your organization.

1. Create prompt plugins in Copilot Studio
2. Configure plugins in Customer Service admin center
3. Use plugins in Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

The post Extend Copilot capabilities with plugins    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In Dynamics 365 Customer Service, agents use Copilot to resolve issues based on the corpus of data in their organization’s knowledge base or SharePoint. Additionally, we are introducing prompt plugins, enabling agents to securely access Dataverse data such as customers, products, and cases, through Copilot. This enables agents to gain a better understanding of customer needs, preferences, and history, which empowers them to provide more personalized and effective support. 

With Copilot Studio, we enable customers to build and manage their prompt plugins to address various types of customer scenarios based on the organization’s needs. Plugins reduce the need for customer service representatives to switch to other tabs and tools to do their work. The result is improved resolution time and customer satisfaction. Organizations can build a single plugin and use that plugin in all copilots. So, regardless of where an agent asks a service-related question, they benefit from a consistent experience. 

Create prompt plugins

You can create a prompt plugin using Copilot Studio and choose the data from Dataverse based on your needs.  

Once you generate prompt plugins, the Customer Service administrator can manage plugins in the Customer Service admin center.

Administrators have the following capabilities:

• Turn on and turn off the plugins
• Provide access to all Copilot users or manage user access by roles
• Map data field input parameters for the plugin, reducing how much context agents have to manually add to the prompt during plugin use
• Manage the plugin data storage in Dataverse

Use prompt plugins

Empower agents to access solutions from multiple entities through Copilot, offering unified and enlightening experience. Agents can use targeted phrases in Copilot to get responses from plugins to quickly gather information about a case.

Copilot automatically identifies the plugin based on the agent’s question. With deep understanding of the user’s intent, Copilot can select the right plugin to help the agent, resulting in better experience for customers who have their issues addressed faster.

When the agent clicks Check sources, they can see the plugin used to generate the response. They can also click the Learn about plugins documentation link to understand how plugins work and their use in Copilot.

If Copilot didn’t identify a plugin, it falls back to the knowledge source to create a response to the agent.

Coming soon: Other types of plugins

Connector plugins extend Copilot’s value by connecting to a variety of external data sources and applications that agents rely on to answer customer queries. The plugins let your agents securely access data from those systems through Copilot without juggling multiple different systems to deliver service. For example, the agents can retrieve information like purchase orders and shipping details via Copilot without logging in to order management systems. The agents simply ask for what they need, and Copilot responds, resulting in decreased time to resolution.

Learn more

Below are the detailed steps to create and configure prompt plugins for your organization.

1. Create prompt plugins in Copilot Studio
2. Configure plugins in Customer Service admin center
3. Use plugins in Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

The post Extend Copilot capabilities with plugins    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This post was co-authored by Safiyyah O’Quinn, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Fast, efficient service, it’s what everybody wants. And today’s field service organizations are answering the call by adopting next-generation AI technologies that can help them be more flexible and responsive to customers while also driving revenue, reducing overtime, and ensuring more predictable arrival and completion times. Service managers, field technicians, and customers all benefit.

Streamlining work order and resource management to improve service metrics is always top of mind for field service managers. Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service brings the power of next-generation AI to field service managers, enabling them to automate work order management and optimize scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on travel time, resource availability, and skill sets. Recently, we announced new capabilities in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service web app that enable field managers to interact with Copilot using natural language to find pertinent information about work orders. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, field service managers can now configure data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service for more advanced reviews before closing work orders to ensure they’re meeting customer needs.

Resource Scheduling Optimization (RSO) is an add-in to Dynamics 365 Field Service that automatically suggests the technicians, equipment, and facilities (such as warehouses) best equipped to handle a given job. Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting at Visionet, a Microsoft Managed Partner, believes that having the ability to extend Field Service in conjunction with Resource Scheduling Optimization and Microsoft Copilot Studio can help service organizations be more customer-centric, flexible, and efficient.

“Dynamics 365 Field Service has catalyzed a shift towards smarter, more efficient field services management. With the integration of Microsoft Copilot into Dynamics 365 Field Service, service organizations are now more equipped to consistently exceed customer expectations and build long-lasting relationships at every point of interaction.”

Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Microsoft’s latest update to Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces enhanced Copilot capabilities, designed to serve as a field service manager’s AI assistant. Using natural language, managers can now converse with Copilot to swiftly extract essential details and summaries from work orders and transform complex data into clear, actionable insights. Field service managers can also use Copilot to adeptly navigate Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, and opportunities, for a more holistic view of the customer landscape.

Additionally, field service managers can tailor how Copilot generates work order summaries to help ensure the best possible schedules for field technicians and the best possible outcomes for customers. By using Copilot in Dynamics 365, field service management becomes a more intuitive and intelligent experience, ensuring customer needs are not just understood but anticipated and met.

Let’s take a closer look at how Visionet extended Dynamics 365 Field Service and RSO capabilities to achieve a more customized, adaptable system and greater efficiency in resource scheduling scenarios.

Optimizing schedules for field service technicians

With rising customer expectations, many service organizations have opted to supplement their operations by using contractors or other third-party services to address any gaps in service. In these cases where contractors or third parties are involved, knowing what resources to use—especially when automating resource scheduling for efficiency—can be tricky and time consuming. In addition, contractors and third-party resources are often more expensive than in-house technicians, so many service organizations want to ensure they’re using those resources strategically.

Service managers often find themselves manually reallocating contractors or other third-party resources, consuming valuable time. Visionet identified an opportunity to enhance Field Service RSO, which facilitates automated schedule creation, by extending its capabilities to offer improved scheduling insights and enable automation on a larger scale.  Service managers can efficiently assign bookings by setting preferences for factors such as cost (weighing the use of in-house technicians against contractors), skill set, territory, and availability. With these preferences established, service managers and dispatchers can use this enhanced RSO feature to optimize daily or weekly schedules more effectively and generate precise recommendations.

Visionet is collaborating with service organizations to further augment Field Service RSO by integrating Copilot automation capabilities. Using natural language interactions, field service managers can quickly pinpoint specific resources or assets needed for jobs. This helps ensure that work orders are evenly distributed, skill sets are appropriately matched to tasks, and more costly resources are employed judiciously to maintain cost efficiency.

Managing downtime for field service technicians

Downtime for field technicians, particularly when it’s unexpected, can disrupt service and revenue. Service managers often find themselves needing to reorganize schedules due to unforeseen circumstances such as illness, emergency calls, mandatory training, or meetings that prevent technicians from being in the field. Recognizing this challenge, Visionet enhanced the Field Service RSO by incorporating customizations that improve scheduling flexibility.

Now, service managers can specify planned, non-productive events like mandatory training sessions, weekly team meetings, work breaks, and other time off directly within the system and specify whether they are one-time or recurring. The RSO uses this information to automatically adjust schedules accordingly and ensure no service interruptions occur.

Responding in real time to daily schedule changes

For many service organizations, things can change from minute to minute. Customers can experience outages due to weather, utility maintenance, road construction—the possibilities are endless. In addition, field technicians can get held up by traffic or an accident on the freeway, or even by a customer issue that was more complicated than what was initially scoped. And sometimes, customers need to cancel or reschedule service—even when a technician is already on the way. To help with this, Visionet enhanced Field Service RSO so service managers can use the Intra Day feature to help optimize work order schedules on the fly. With this feature, service managers can dynamically adjust a day’s schedule in response to various situations such as cancellations or rescheduling, incoming high-priority trouble tickets, unexpected gaps in technicians’ schedules, delays in ongoing assignments, or fluctuations in resource availability. This level of agility in scheduling ensures that service disruptions are handled with maximum efficiency.

Take, for instance, a scenario where a customer faces an unexpected broadband outage during the day, and the problem can’t be fixed remotely. In that case, a service manager may dispatch a field technician to the location to resolve the issue quickly and limit service interruption. Reviewing the Field Service RSO board, the manager can find an available technician with the expertise that’s best suited to address the customer’s issue promptly. The manager then assigns the new work order and reorganizes the day’s schedule to accommodate this change.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Interact with Copilot using new capabilities in the Field Service web app.

Learn more

Stepping up field service with next-generation AI

We’re excited to be sharing all the ways you can use Copilot Studio with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service to extend AI capabilities that can help make your field service organization more efficient, productive, and responsive to customers.

We invite you to visit the Microsoft booth (216), along with our partners, at Field Service Palm Springs to discover how Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service works alongside frontline teams to streamline work order management and increase technician productivity. Learn more about AI-powered experiences for your frontline on Monday, May 6, by attending:

• Chair Opening Remarks by Héctor Garcia Tellado, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Frontline Applications
• The Customer Journey Panel: Revaluating and Remapping Service Workflows to Optimize Automation Tool Adoption and Enhance CX

The post Enabling fast, flexible, cost-effective service with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This post was co-authored by Safiyyah O’Quinn, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Fast, efficient service, it’s what everybody wants. And today’s field service organizations are answering the call by adopting next-generation AI technologies that can help them be more flexible and responsive to customers while also driving revenue, reducing overtime, and ensuring more predictable arrival and completion times. Service managers, field technicians, and customers all benefit.

Streamlining work order and resource management to improve service metrics is always top of mind for field service managers. Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service brings the power of next-generation AI to field service managers, enabling them to automate work order management and optimize scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on travel time, resource availability, and skill sets. Recently, we announced new capabilities in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service web app that enable field managers to interact with Copilot using natural language to find pertinent information about work orders. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, field service managers can now configure data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service for more advanced reviews before closing work orders to ensure they’re meeting customer needs.

Resource Scheduling Optimization (RSO) is an add-in to Dynamics 365 Field Service that automatically suggests the technicians, equipment, and facilities (such as warehouses) best equipped to handle a given job. Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting at Visionet, a Microsoft Managed Partner, believes that having the ability to extend Field Service in conjunction with Resource Scheduling Optimization and Microsoft Copilot Studio can help service organizations be more customer-centric, flexible, and efficient.

“Dynamics 365 Field Service has catalyzed a shift towards smarter, more efficient field services management. With the integration of Microsoft Copilot into Dynamics 365 Field Service, service organizations are now more equipped to consistently exceed customer expectations and build long-lasting relationships at every point of interaction.”

Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Microsoft’s latest update to Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces enhanced Copilot capabilities, designed to serve as a field service manager’s AI assistant. Using natural language, managers can now converse with Copilot to swiftly extract essential details and summaries from work orders and transform complex data into clear, actionable insights. Field service managers can also use Copilot to adeptly navigate Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, and opportunities, for a more holistic view of the customer landscape.

Additionally, field service managers can tailor how Copilot generates work order summaries to help ensure the best possible schedules for field technicians and the best possible outcomes for customers. By using Copilot in Dynamics 365, field service management becomes a more intuitive and intelligent experience, ensuring customer needs are not just understood but anticipated and met.

Let’s take a closer look at how Visionet extended Dynamics 365 Field Service and RSO capabilities to achieve a more customized, adaptable system and greater efficiency in resource scheduling scenarios.

Optimizing schedules for field service technicians

With rising customer expectations, many service organizations have opted to supplement their operations by using contractors or other third-party services to address any gaps in service. In these cases where contractors or third parties are involved, knowing what resources to use—especially when automating resource scheduling for efficiency—can be tricky and time consuming. In addition, contractors and third-party resources are often more expensive than in-house technicians, so many service organizations want to ensure they’re using those resources strategically.

Service managers often find themselves manually reallocating contractors or other third-party resources, consuming valuable time. Visionet identified an opportunity to enhance Field Service RSO, which facilitates automated schedule creation, by extending its capabilities to offer improved scheduling insights and enable automation on a larger scale.  Service managers can efficiently assign bookings by setting preferences for factors such as cost (weighing the use of in-house technicians against contractors), skill set, territory, and availability. With these preferences established, service managers and dispatchers can use this enhanced RSO feature to optimize daily or weekly schedules more effectively and generate precise recommendations.

Visionet is collaborating with service organizations to further augment Field Service RSO by integrating Copilot automation capabilities. Using natural language interactions, field service managers can quickly pinpoint specific resources or assets needed for jobs. This helps ensure that work orders are evenly distributed, skill sets are appropriately matched to tasks, and more costly resources are employed judiciously to maintain cost efficiency.

Managing downtime for field service technicians

Downtime for field technicians, particularly when it’s unexpected, can disrupt service and revenue. Service managers often find themselves needing to reorganize schedules due to unforeseen circumstances such as illness, emergency calls, mandatory training, or meetings that prevent technicians from being in the field. Recognizing this challenge, Visionet enhanced the Field Service RSO by incorporating customizations that improve scheduling flexibility.

Now, service managers can specify planned, non-productive events like mandatory training sessions, weekly team meetings, work breaks, and other time off directly within the system and specify whether they are one-time or recurring. The RSO uses this information to automatically adjust schedules accordingly and ensure no service interruptions occur.

Responding in real time to daily schedule changes

For many service organizations, things can change from minute to minute. Customers can experience outages due to weather, utility maintenance, road construction—the possibilities are endless. In addition, field technicians can get held up by traffic or an accident on the freeway, or even by a customer issue that was more complicated than what was initially scoped. And sometimes, customers need to cancel or reschedule service—even when a technician is already on the way. To help with this, Visionet enhanced Field Service RSO so service managers can use the Intra Day feature to help optimize work order schedules on the fly. With this feature, service managers can dynamically adjust a day’s schedule in response to various situations such as cancellations or rescheduling, incoming high-priority trouble tickets, unexpected gaps in technicians’ schedules, delays in ongoing assignments, or fluctuations in resource availability. This level of agility in scheduling ensures that service disruptions are handled with maximum efficiency.

Take, for instance, a scenario where a customer faces an unexpected broadband outage during the day, and the problem can’t be fixed remotely. In that case, a service manager may dispatch a field technician to the location to resolve the issue quickly and limit service interruption. Reviewing the Field Service RSO board, the manager can find an available technician with the expertise that’s best suited to address the customer’s issue promptly. The manager then assigns the new work order and reorganizes the day’s schedule to accommodate this change.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Interact with Copilot using new capabilities in the Field Service web app.

Learn more

Stepping up field service with next-generation AI

We’re excited to be sharing all the ways you can use Copilot Studio with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service to extend AI capabilities that can help make your field service organization more efficient, productive, and responsive to customers.

We invite you to visit the Microsoft booth (216), along with our partners, at Field Service Palm Springs to discover how Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service works alongside frontline teams to streamline work order management and increase technician productivity. Learn more about AI-powered experiences for your frontline on Monday, May 6, by attending:

• Chair Opening Remarks by Héctor Garcia Tellado, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Frontline Applications
• The Customer Journey Panel: Revaluating and Remapping Service Workflows to Optimize Automation Tool Adoption and Enhance CX

The post Enabling fast, flexible, cost-effective service with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Editor: Denis Conway

Introduction

This blog post is a follow-up to the Leverage Warehouse management only mode to optimize your business blog post. Warehouse management only mode was presented as a transformative tool for enhancing warehouse operations without the need for extensive system overhauls. Warehouse management only mode improves efficiency, and flexibility within existing infrastructure. The preview release of Warehouse management only mode was explored to discover its potential in revolutionizing warehouse management practices.

In this blog post you will learn about how a wholesaler used the Warehouse management only mode feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to handle shared warehouse operations for multiple sales subsidiaries.

Business requirements

The client’s requirement was to distribute product master data among all sales subsidiaries, and to restrict each one to managing only their own physical inventory in the same distribution centre (DC) building. The DC building needed to handle all inbound, outbound, and correction updates for all sales subsidiaries.

Implementation

The client chose to use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management in a single-instance deployment model. They set up a separate legal entity for each sales subsidiary and an additional legal entity for distribution.

The implementation uses an inventory owner dimension for each sales subsidiary to control the physical inventory in the DC for the same item numbers. This ensures that the DC only allows shipping an item when physical inventory exists for the related legal entity.

The distribution legal entity maps item numbers using a dedicated source system record to define the source system items.

Each sales subsidiary has an external warehouse linked to the DC building in the distribution legal entity.

The system automatically creates inbound and outbound shipment orders each time a sales subsidiary releases purchase and sales orders against the DC.

The DC can combine several shipment orders from different sales subsidiaries into a single load and report back via an external warehouse shipment order updates message to each of the legal entities, when it completes the receiving or shipping of the requested inventory.

In each sales subsidiary an automated process updates the related purchase and sales order line transactions, so each sales subsidiary can continue with the order processing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the integration of Warehouse management 0nly mode within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management has effectively addressed the intricate demands of the wholesaler, facilitating streamlined management of shared warehouse operations across multiple sales subsidiaries. Through the utilization of this advanced feature, the client has realized significant improvements in efficiency and flexibility within their existing infrastructure.

The establishment of separate legal entities, coupled with meticulous configuration of inventory owner dimensions and source system mappings, has ensured seamless management of physical inventory for each sales subsidiary within the distribution centre. Moreover, the automation of inbound and outbound shipment orders, alongside the capability to consolidate multiple orders into a single delivery, has greatly enhanced logistics processes and overall operational efficiency.

As a result, the wholesaler is positioned to capitalize on the benefits of this implementation, with optimized warehouse management practices fostering smoother operations and laying the foundation for future growth and success. Don’t miss this opportunity to try out this feature and see how it can transform your business. 

Learn More

Try out the preview release today and get ready to experience the power of Warehouse management only mode.

To learn more about how Warehouse management only mode works and how to set it up, see Warehouse management only mode in Supply Chain Management.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management capabilities

Modernize your supply chain to enhance visibility, improve planning, streamline procurement, and optimize fulfilment – Learn More

The post Maximizing Efficiency: Operating an External Shared Warehouse with Warehouse Management Only Mode appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.