With global volatility and inflation impacting organizations across all industries, business agility has never been more important. Leaders turn to finance teams to get real-time insight into business performance and recommendations on future initiatives that will help them thrive amid disruption. But finance teams are overwhelmed with manual tasks, cobbling together data, and disconnected teams. Achieving game-changing business agility begins with augmenting the human ingenuity of your people with intelligent process automation.

When it comes to reimagining processes with AI, automation, and analytics, many finance leaders don’t know where to start. This year, at the third annual Finance Reimagined digital event, we will delve into real-world best practices from Microsoft and industry leaders that will help you prioritize the right cost optimization, growth acceleration, and workforce transformation initiatives.

Finance Reimagined 2023

Tuesday, February 28, 2023, 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

Register now!

Finance Reimagined: Bringing the future of finance into focus

Finance Reimagined is a virtual event bringing together finance leaders from around the world. On February 28, 2023, from 9:00 AM to10:15 AM PT, you can unpack the latest trends shaping the future of finance including the strategic evolution of the role of CFO within organizations, maintaining commitments to multiple stakeholders and bottom lines against a challenging economic environment, and the opportunities to drive transformation through the partnership of human ingenuity and AI.

Learn more and register for Finance Reimagined 2023.

Discover what’s top of mind for CFOs and financial leaders

You’ll discover best practices, trends, and priorities that are top of mind for CFOs and finance leaders. We’ve lined up experts from Microsoft, IDC, Avanade, EY, HSO, KPMG, and PwC to deliver actionable insights on how to strike the right balance between the following:

Human and AI

Find harmony between automation and your organization’s most important assetyour people. We will tackle one of the top concerns for CFOs today: workforce optimization. The heart of productivity sits in employee well-beingor the organization’s ability to increase creativity, job satisfaction, and ultimately, happiness. Human ingenuity is now business’ greatest investment to drive long-term vision and needs to be incentivized. Automation changes the way we work, thus organizational structures, required competencies, and roles must change as well. Get tips at Finance Reimagined on how to prioritize automation initiatives and how to use them to augment your people resources.

Cost optimization and growth acceleration

Embrace a dual role of gatekeeper and innovator to bring more strategic value to your organization. You’ll hear from a panel of finance leaders at Microsoft as they respond to trends from a recent study of more than 500 senior finance leaders from across all industries. Learn how Microsoft is empowering our finance leaders to do more with less to guide teams through these uncertain times. We will discuss tactics to optimize cash flow, increase operational effectiveness, and reinvest to meet growth expectations.

The speed of business and risk mitigation

Organizational health has become increasingly dependent on data and tools to facilitate agile, data-driven decision making. Finance teams are doubling down on their efforts to keep up with our world’s increasingly volatile and interconnected markets that demand more fluid operating models, extending beyond the walls of an organization. This means that the role of the finance leader has evolved from being an economic guardian inside the walls of an enterprise to designing new business models that focus on delivering customer value outside of an enterprise. This evolution is only possible through a tight partnership between the CFO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure data security while activating insights at every level of the organization. Join us for a discussion with the CFO and CTO at Robert Walters, a global recruitment and talent management company with a team of experts spanning 31 countries and serving more than 4,300 clients, to hear how they partnered to speed the time to insight within their organization.

Register today to attend Finance Reimagined for your look ahead at the emerging trends and essential insights defining how tomorrow’s businesses will thrive. We hope to see you there.

The post Leap into the future of finance at Finance Reimagined 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Service leaders face continual challenges in evolving the service organization to meet customer expectations, putting their brand value and customer loyalty at riskas a recent study shows, 96 percent of customers will leave a business after a bad customer experience.¹ They feel either lost with disruptive changes in the contact center and customer service marketplace, or helpless on where to start, or confused on what to adopt and what to disregard, or fear being all over the map while making investments aligned with the business goals.

Service sophistication model

Assess and improve the effectiveness of your organization’s current service experiences.

Start the assessment

Evolve service organizations to meet customer expectations

The business goals differ across service organizations, as some are managed as a siloed cost-center, some are intent on matching up with industry peers on competitive metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), some have embraced digital transformation to the extent that it enables data visibility and automation across the organization, and a few view them as profit centers, ready for the future with AI-powered experiences.

Regardless of where they are in this spectrum, service leaders always want to know:

• What is happening in the customer service and contact center market today, and how does it matter to us as a service organization?
• How can I assess where our service level is positioned, and how can we prepare for the future?
• What service solutions are available to help us?

We had a chance to discuss this topic with a leading analyst. Watch our guest Kate Leggett of Forrester discuss the state of service and how to elevate and deliver more sophisticated customer service:

Deliver the best customer service experience with consolidated solutions

As they say, change is the only constant, and it aptly applies to the different categories that define the contact center and customer service market today. Broadly speaking, the lines are no longer distinct between unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center, and the customer relationship management (CRM) market categories. They are all transitioning to cloud, and the capabilities are overlapping to the extent possible. They are powered by contact center AI (CCAI) and carrier voice technology innovations that drive the efficiency and experience of customer service interactions. This also shifts the preference from best-of-breed solutions which have a side effect of fragmentation, to the possibility of consolidated solutions that can deliver the best experience.

Given the myriad capabilities from the technology innovations and market categories, and the fact that service organizations are across the spectrum, what service leaders need is a convenient way to map them to different service levels of sophistication. Essentially, a service maturity model that groups major capabilities and maps them to appropriate levels in the spectrum. This allows service leaders to visualize where they are relative to the market and determine at what level they’d like to be based on their business goals, investment, and timeline. In addition, they can decide practically and prioritize on the capabilities that matter to themacross voice and digital channels, self-service, agent productivity, and service operations.

Receive a customized service level guidance report

We are with you on this evolution. Microsoft is pleased to provide the service sophistication model to help service leaders chart their course. It is a simple web-experience that should take less than five minutes. The model groups capabilities into personalized customer engagement, including omnichannel access and routing, scale, and automation with self-service, empowering agents with productivity tools and AI-powered and analytics-driven service processes and workflows. And the service leader would look at four different levels of service in each group and pick the option that best describes their organization. As an example, do they have just a call center, or do they include some self-service capabilities, or do they already deploy a contact center with digital channels, or are they ahead with AI-powered personalized experiences? Once they answer a few questions, they will receive a customized guidance report on where they are and where they can go incrementally to the next level.

To learn more about how Microsoft can help service organizations evolve, or to take the assessment, visit Microsoft Dynamics 365 service levels.

Transform your customer service journeys with the leading capabilities

Sometimes, evolution is about leaping ahead rather than taking incremental steps. What if you want your organization to transition to an altogether new experience? We also offer you the full picture on the possibilitiesjust take a moment to register and download the service sophistication model whitepaper. It’s worth the read to understand comprehensively the spectrum of service levels and capabilities, the pain points and metrics that matter, where the industry is going, and where service leaders can take their organizations.

Personalize the customer service journey with Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Microsoft is in a unique position to bring together the service solution that addresses the different categories and the spectrum of capabilitieswith Microsoft Teams for unified communications and collaboration, omnichannel and CRM capabilities with Microsoft Dynamics 365, and CCAI with Nuance, along with Azure cloud.

Evolve at your pace with an architecture that fits your service experience

The Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform brings these products together, along with partner innovations, as an open, flexible, and collaborative platform that allows service organizations to keep their existing contact center infrastructure, and create the best experience for their customers.

Learn more about how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service empowers your agents to personalize the customer service journey.

On a final note, our guidance is not just about service levels of sophisticationwe also have an array of reference architectures to fit different customer scenarios.

Be sure to check out Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform documentation, including a link to reference architectures to guide the deployment that can make the service experience you have in mind into reality.

¹Shep Hyken

The post Evolve the service level of sophistication with Dynamics 365 Customer Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Marketers design customer journeys to provide the right message at the right time for customers to take the next step. With more opportunities than ever for interaction, you must take care not to overwhelm customers with unwanted messages. That’s why we’re delighted to introduce advanced real-time customer journey orchestration tools in Dynamics 365 Marketing that help you engage customers at key moments without bombarding them with spam.

Engage the right audience effortlessly with the new segment builder

Targeting the right audience is critical for creating highly personalized marketing campaigns that yield high conversion rates and improve engagement. Previously, the segment builder in Dynamics 365 Marketing required a deep understanding of database schemas. The new real-time segment builder in customer journey orchestration is marketer friendly. Easily reach customers through segmenting on demographic, firmographic, and behavioral data.

Here are some of the benefits of the new real-time marketing segment builder:

• It’s powered by artificial intelligence. Just describe, in plain English, how you’d like to create the segment, then review and use it.
• There’s no need to memorize relationships between tables. The builder automatically populates all the possible paths between customer profiles and the selected data table for you.
• View segment size and membership estimates before publishing.
• Enjoy a consistent creation experience between static and dynamic segments.
• Include or exclude individual members.
• Query segments based on their customer data in a consistent manner, without having to worry about which segment type to choose first.
• Adjust segment refresh frequency after publication.

Test your journey triggers to provide seamless experiences

Customers expect consistent and uninterrupted experiences in their interactions with brands. With custom trigger testing, marketers can simulate a customer’s experience, using themselves as a test subject. They can evaluate the journey based on the attributes defined in the custom trigger to identify and address issues before they affect real customers.

Boost your productivity when sending journey reminders

To improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, it’s crucial to remind customers to take action on key tasks such as filling out a registration form or completing a purchase.

With enhanced real-time customer journey orchestration, it’s easy to set up recurring reminders to streamline the process of moving customers down the funnel. The reminder feature allows sending emails, text messages, and push notifications to increase engagement chances, instead of simply repeating the same marketing messages in the same channels. You can even set the number of repetitions or a time limit to make sure that messages aren’t sent indefinitely.

Track the customer’s exit from the reminder loop, too. By capturing different branches separately, such as cart checked out, cart not checked out, and cart expired, you can target and follow up with each segment appropriately.

Optimize customer engagement by controlling the number of messages sent

Consumers’ mailboxes are overflowing. Marketers must be careful not to overwhelm their customers with email, which can result in lower message engagement rates, increased unsubscribe rates, spam reports, or important messages being missed. With frequency capping, you can optimize engagement by controlling how many messages are sent.

Frequency capping allows marketers to define the maximum number of messages their customers receive through a particular channel per day, week, and month. Transactional messages are always excluded, and individual journeys can be left out of the cap so that important messages can be received. You can view whether a message was blocked by the frequency cap and for which users.

By monitoring engagement rates with marketing messages, you can fine-tune your message frequency. You’ll make sure that you’re striking the right balance between keeping the brand top-of-mind and overwhelming customers with too many messages.

Deliver personalized experiences at scale with advanced customer journey orchestration tools

Real-time journey orchestration now has interactions capabilities to deliver personalized experiences at scale. Reach up to 100 million contacts and deliver up to 300 million monthly interactions through email, text messages, push notifications, or custom channels, and create segments of up to 30 million contacts. That’s up from the previous limit of 100 million outbound interactions to 30 million contacts and 10 million contacts per segment.

Key takeaways about advanced real-time customer journey orchestration

Get greater engagement from your customers in 2023 with Dynamics 365 Marketing. Thanks to our advanced customer journey orchestration features, you’ll interact with customers on their terms, engaging them when and how they expect, without delivering disjointed experiences or spamming them. You’ll spend less time designing and maintaining your customer journeys and feel more confident that you’re delivering seamless, high-quality experiences.

Next steps

Start using our new features and get ready for the ones coming soon:

• Target the right audience using the new segment builder | Microsoft Learn
• Test all paths customers take before publishing journeys | Microsoft Learn
• Send reminders within journeys to drive customer actions | Microsoft Learn
• Prevent message fatigue with message limits | Microsoft Learn
• Scale your business with confidence with 300M maximum monthly interactions | Microsoft Learn

Consult the release notes to learn more about exciting updates to Dynamics 365 Marketing, including preview and general availability dates.

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Marketing customer? Take a guided tour and get a free trial!

The post Customer journey orchestration levels up with advanced tools in Dynamics 365 Marketing appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Starting Saturday, April 1, 2023, we will be deprecating the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service application and encouraging customers to migrate to the Customer Service workspace application. This upcoming change will affect your multi-session agents currently using the Omnichannel for Customer Service application in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

We have decided to consolidate our two multi-session customer service applications, Omnichannel for Customer Service and Customer Service workspace. This change is being made to ensure that our customers benefit from all Dynamics 365 Customer Service capabilities in a single multi-session application. To this end, we will be focusing our future developments on the Customer Service workspace application.

Key Dates

• Disclosure Date: January 11, 2023 
  We sent communication to affected customers and partners that we are planning to deprecate the Omnichannel for Customer Service app. 

• Deprecation Date: April 1, 2023
  After this date, we are no longer going to invest in the Omnichannel for Customer Service app.

• End of Support: June 2024  
  After this date, we are no longer going to support the Omnichannel for Customer Service app. 

• End of Life: December 2024   
  The Omnichannel for Customer Service app will be taken out of service.  

Next Steps

Starting Saturday, April 1, 2023, we will no longer provide updates to the Omnichannel for Customer Service application. We will continue to support the Omnichannel for Customer Service application, and there will be no change to product availability. 

To help with this transition and prevent potential interruption of service, we have developed a migration guide detailing the steps to move your configurations from the Omnichannel for Customer Service application to Customer Service workspace. You can also refer to our migration frequently asked questions document to help answer any questions you may have about the migration process. 

Please contact your Success Manager, FastTrack representative, or Microsoft Support if you have any additional questions.

The post Use the Customer Service workspace app for omnichannel interactions appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Innovation is a fundamental element for businesses to remain competitive and achieve success. Innovation leads to increased efficiency and effectiveness and contributes to improved business performance. With the ongoing economic challenges and recession facing global economies, the importance of innovation is even greater. The finance team plays a vital role in this endeavor by incorporating innovation into its strategies and operations. CFOs must not only fulfill their responsibilities as the financial stewards of the business but also actively collaborate with other departments to foster innovation and prepare for potential disruptions. In this challenging environment, CFOs must accomplish more with limited resources; innovation is the key to achieving this goal.

This blog post will explore the advantages organizations can gain by implementing a Finance Center of Innovation to review internal operations and discover ways to improve efficiency. Additionally, we will highlight a practical example from our Microsoft, where implementing robust and flexible technology enabled swift closing of technical deficiencies and automation of previously labor-intensive manual tasks.

Finance Reimagined

Learn how low-code applications can help your finance team accomplish more with less.

Register here

Address complexity, manual processes, and inflexible legacy systems

One of the biggest challenges facing finance teams today is the sheer amount of data being generated, which can be challenging to manage and use effectively. In many cases, legacy systems that were once sufficient are now unable to keep up with the times and are costly to replace. Furthermore, there needs to be more tools available to finance teams to anticipate the growing complexity of businesses. Manual and inefficient processes and errors continue to plague finance teams and cost valuable time and money. Additionally, with increasing risks and threats worldwide, the regulations and compliance requirements that finance must abide by are growing in complexity. To mitigate these challenges and ensure business success, implementing a Finance Center of Innovation can help identify opportunities to use digital technologies, enabling finance teams to stay focused on the future and remain agile.

Learn how Microsoft embraces resourcefulness to innovate

At Microsoft, we are proactively adapting to the dynamic landscape by implementing a resourceful approach throughout our business operations. By embracing this “do more with less” philosophy, we are able to accelerate innovation, empower our employees to accomplish more, and ultimately drive better results. To achieve this, Microsoft has established a “Center of Innovation” strategy to facilitate the collaboration of technical and non-technical finance professionals to optimize existing processes. This allows our finance teams to direct their attention towards high-impact activities that foster growth and increase profitability. By thoroughly evaluating internal operations, the team identifies opportunities for improvement and efficiency, then deploys low-code applications, such as Microsoft Power Platform, to rapidly automate processes and streamline operations.

How can a Finance Center of Innovation (FCI) benefit my organization?

A “Finance Center of Innovation” (FCI) is a specialized team or department within an organization focused on driving innovation and creating new solutions in finance. The FCI aims to improve financial performance by exploring innovative technologies, approaches, and business models. FCIs will range from a diverse group of financial experts, engineers, data scientists, and business leaders to a small, dedicated team of finance professionals with an aptitude for using technology and solving problems. The specific composition and approach of an FCI will depend on the organization’s needs and goals. There are many valid approaches to take when building an FCI team, both simple and complex. The benefits of an FCI are numerous, so CFOs should get started with whatever resources are available and add complexity over time.

Having an FCI can bring many benefits to finance teams, such as:

• Enhanced financial planning and analysis: The FCI can use data and technology to provide better insights and support more informed decisions, leading to improved financial performance.
• Streamlined financial processes: The FCI can identify opportunities to automate and optimize financial processes, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.
• Improved risk management and financial reporting: With access to more advanced tools and analysis, the FCI can help organizations identify and mitigate risks and improve the accuracy and timeliness of financial reports.
• Compliance: The FCI team can help the organization stay up to date with the latest regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Innovate through automation of routine finance tasks

Assembling a team of experts is a crucial first step toward driving innovation within your organization. However, the next step is equally importantidentifying opportunities for acceleration. Finance teams should work closely with their Center of Innovation to identify and prioritize areas where automation can be introduced to optimize routine tasks. Some common examples include data entry automation, accounts payable and accounts receivable, expense management, compliance, and audit functions. However, it is crucial to note that the implementation and specific tasks will vary depending on your company’s unique needs. By collaborating with your Center of Innovation and identifying critical opportunities for automation, you can streamline processes, reduce costs, and free up your employees to focus on more strategic initiatives that can drive growth and revenue for your organization.

Accelerate innovation and automation with low-code solutions

Once optimization priorities have been identified by your FCI, the next step is selecting the appropriate resources to solve the problem. This can be challenging, as many teams are held back by inflexible legacy systems and processes that can only be easily corrected with significant technical resources. However, with low-code automation tools, FCIs can make these improvements and innovations without replacing expensive legacy systems, effectively breathing new life into their solution ecosystem without an expensive rip-and-replace. Microsoft Power Platform offers a powerful solution for finance teams looking to solve complex business challenges within their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) quickly. Our low-code tools empower innovation, conquer business hurdles, and open new opportunities to do more with less. Whether you are a pro developer or not, our user-friendly tools allow anyone to create solutions, saving time and costs while reallocating resources to focus on what matters most.

Case example: Microsoft streamlines payment term exception requests and improves the compliance process with Microsoft Power Platform, saving thousands of hours

Microsoft identified an opportunity to streamline payment term exception requests and improve the compliance process. Historically, contract payment term exception requests were received through multiple email inboxes, often needing more information for quick and accurate evaluation. The process owner was required to research and develop a compliant response. Still, finance controllers could not track the requests, measure impact, and analyze cash flow implications, leading to a lack of accountability and consistency in understanding payment policies. To improve this, the team used Microsoft Power Platform to automate the payment terms exceptions workflow for intake, dispositioning, decisioning, and reporting. Then, a Power Apps and Power Automate flow was developed to standardize request intake, automate alerts, and establish accountability. Finally, a Power BI dashboard was created to give executives visibility into change requests and cash flow impact. Within six months from the start of the project, the team had a more than 14 percent improvement in payment compliance while saving 5,000 hours (about seven months) per year of manual processing time, which reduced the average service time from 8 to 10 days to approximately 3 days.

Help finance stay strong for the future

At Microsoft, we understand the various challenges that finance teams and CFOs face in today’s business landscape. To address our challenges, we have implemented a finance-first innovation approach that utilizes our low-code platforms to enable the rapid creation of solutions to handle almost any business challenge. Our low-code apps are compatible with any ERP, including Microsoft’s own Dynamics 365 Finance,making it easy to get started. With easy-to-use technologies and helpful best practices, you can help your organization to optimize its resources and free up time for more value-adding activities, demonstrating the power of doing more with less. By embracing this approach, you can transform many manual and time-intensive activities into streamlined and efficient financial operations, keeping your organization agile and prepared for the future.

Learn more at Finance Reimagined

Discover the power of innovation and automation at Finance Reimagined on February 28, 2023. Join us for a session specifically designed for CFOs to learn how low-code applications can help your finance team accomplish more with less. Register now to take the first step towards revolutionizing your financial process.

The post Finance Reimagined: Microsoft uses low-code and automation to streamline processes appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We know how important it can be to see a product, test drive all its capabilities, and explore different features before you are ready to buy. With the Dynamics 365 Customer Service trials, you can quickly and easily experience the product for free. There is no credit card required or software to install! Here is what you get: 

• A tenant with preloaded sample data that you can modify, plus the ability to create new data  

• The ability to visualize the power of out-of-box analytics based on the sample data  

• A voice and chat channel experience for both the customer and the agent that simulates real contact center processes with no configuration 

You’ll learn how these intelligent business applications go beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems to help you adapt, innovate, and delight every customer. You can even make customizations to the trial to see how the product would look within your organization. 

In the trial, you’ll discover how to: 

• Engage customers and provide omnichannel support 

• Empower agents with the right information at the right time for quick resolutions 

• Monitor and improve operations with insights for increased productivity 

Sign up, launch the product, and then follow along with curated tours that show the breadth and depth of Dynamics 365 Customer Service capabilities without any manual effort required.

How to Sign up

You can sign up for a trial with a work account (onmicrosoft) here or a personal (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) account here. To learn more, watch this short demo.

There are a few differences in the trial experience depending on whether you log in with a work account or a personal account. With a personal account, you will have access to the full trial except the ability to do the following: 

• Extend the trial beyond 30 days 

• Buy now and purchase a license directly from the trial environment

• Customize the PVA bot (the default out-of-box bot will work)  

• Enable some features like case swarming 

But no matter which email you use to sign up, you will get the out-of-box Power Virtual Agents (PVA), omnichannel, unified routing, and other core D365 Customer Service capabilities as part of the trial. You can see the full list of licenses that come with the trial here.  

Once you’re logged in and on the home page, you can watch a short video showcasing the all-encompassing value of engaging customers with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and then start the tours. 

Engage customers and provide omnichannel support

Voice tour

You can now simulate the end-to-end experience of a customer calling your company and how it will be routed to an agent. You can see real-time sentiment analysis, real-time transcription, knowledge articles, and agent scripts already populated. 

Chat tour

Like the voice tour, you can explore how customers will interact with your company through your company’s chat widget. Just click the Chat demo and see how the PVA bot greets customers and how they are routed to agents. 

Empower agents with the right information at the right time for quick resolutions 

Explore cases by seeing what it’s like to take a case in the unified agent workspace. See incoming items for agents across a wide spectrum of channels. While issues can come from any supported channel, Customer Service workspace helps agents stay on top of their work with one unified agent desktop. 

Monitor and improve operations

Delve into the depth and breadth of our insight capabilities that help supervisors learn about their operations and provide meaningful, actionable data.

With these features, you can test drive all that Dynamics 365 Customer Service has to offer in seconds. Embark on your journey to empower your agents and set up your organization for success. And if you like what you see, and you logged in with a work account (onmicrosoft.com email), you can buy a license today! 

Resources

Get your free trial.

Read the trial FAQ.

The post Create a Digital Contact Center in seconds with the Customer Service free trial appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.