We are excited to announce that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can now display product names and descriptions in your users’ preferred languages. Supply Chain Management already offered a localized user interface (UI) but showed product information in the system language. We have now made it possible to show localized product information throughout the UI. This has long been one of the most requested capabilities from customers using our Dynamics 365 Application Ideas portal.

You might already have your product information available in multiple languages for use in printed documents. If you do, you’re ready to take advantage of this new feature. All you have to do is turn it on.

Localized product information avoids frustration and lost time

There are many scenarios where local users find it difficult to understand product names and descriptions in the system language. This affects many roles, from sales and purchasing agents to machine operators on the shop floor. Misunderstandings can lead to frustration, lost time, and, in the worst case, can even lead users to create transactions using the wrong products.

Imagine an international organization that uses English as its system language. At the plant in Stockholm, where workers use Swedish as their preferred language, all UI elements are shown in Swedishbut product names and descriptions have always been shown in English. Now they can be shown in Swedish, too.

Before: The following screenshot shows how the production floor execution interface used to appear at the Stockholm factory. As you can see, the UI is in Swedish, but the product name in English.

After: The user interface is still in Swedish, and the product name is now in Swedish, too!

Learn more

Localized product information is a public preview feature.

For more information, check out the video introduction, Dynamics 365 release plan article, and technical documentation for this feature.

The post New localized product information improves productivity and order accuracy appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Expectations for executives leading their companies’ customer experience (CX) efforts seem to grow every day. From driving sustainable growth, to aligning your teams and integrating your technology, to empowering employees to do their best work, there’s more on your plate than ever. Meanwhile, customer expectations can feel like a moving target that only goes up. Buyers today are digital first, becoming more informed, more comfortable switching between channels, more likely to ignore anything that doesn’t feel authentic, and they expect businesses to follow their lead.

To stay relevant to customers, many leaders are rethinking their approach to CX at every touchpoint. Relying on customer relationship management (CRM) to drive sales simply won’t cut it anymore. You need to connect customer insights and data across your organizationsales, marketing, and serviceto meet customers where they are and capitalize on every opportunity.

That’s why I’m excited to invite you to Customer Experience Reimagined, a digital event on October 26. Learn about the latest trends shaping CX todayand tomorrowwith Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. He’ll share his perspective about what CX leaders are facing, how they energize employees by simplifying fragmented and complicated systems, and what it means to be a digitally connected enterprise with unified, enriched data.

Hear insights straight from the experts

Customer Experience Reimagined will give you a window into what other CX leaders are thinking, with strategies to help your business adapt to a changing landscape. Learn about the evolution of CRM, along with critical technologies and skills from leaders who are shaping their customer experience strategy:

• Constellation Research Founder and CEO Ray Wangauthor of Everybody Wants To Rule The World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giantswill join Constellation Research Vice President and Principal AnalystLiz Miller to discuss the importance of AI, analytics, and automation for shifting from real time to “right time” personalized experiences.
• Accenture Senior Managing Director John Bolze will share insights from a new report by Accenture, The Human Paradox, including how 95 percent of C-suite executives say customers are changing faster than businesses are able to adapt. John will talk about why overcoming this crisis of relevancy requires shifting from a customer-centric strategy to a life-centric strategy.
• Valencia Club de Ftbol (CF) Director of Innovation in charge of Digital, Business Intelligence/Analytics, and Fan Experience Franco Segarra will discuss how to create more meaningful fan experiences, increase attendance, and improve game day experiences with a data-centric approach.
• Eika Director of Business Applications Atle Riksfjord, Northrop & Johnson Director of Technology and Intelligence Keith Perfect, and AccentureSong Global Lead Social & Emerging Channels and author of Human-Driven Experience: The Battle for Trust in the Digital AgeRobert Harles will lead a roundtable discussion on how to kick-start your CX transformation and guide your company to deliver more personalized, intentional, and relevant experiences.

Learn key lessons from Microsoft’s modern marketing transformation

Get the inside story of our own CX transformation from Stephanie Ferguson, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Global Demand Center, as she shares the vision for our Commercial Customer Platform to meet the changing expectations of customers in the business-to-business (B2B) space. Stephanie will show how we help our marketers and sellers around the globe engage our customers with greater relevancy, clarity, and purpose.

You’ll also hear our technology vision from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Platform, along with Lori Lamkin, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing. They’ll talk about how we’re helping companies connect data from hundreds of business applications and deliver AI-enabled insights to sellers and service agents with automated tools that give them more time to spend with customers. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform combined with the new seller experience application Microsoft Viva Sales helps companies unify and automate, so they can scale their customer experience investments to get customers to “yes” faster.

See what’s shaping CX todayand tomorrow

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear strategies for elevating your customer experience and uncover new ways to sustain business growth, no matter what the future brings. Register for Customer Experience Reimagined today to join us on Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 9:00-10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7).   

Customer Experience Reimagined

Evolve your CRM to personalize and connect customer journeys

Register here

The post Evolve your CRM at Customer Experience Reimagined appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

To be effective, your sales team has to trust that the leads they’re getting are of good quality and that someone else isn’t working on them. If your sellers are calling leads that are assigned to another salespersonor that aren’t realthey’re wasting time. Better data hygiene is the answer, of course. But who has time to manually weed out duplicate leads? Certainly not your sales team. Luckily, they don’t have to. Duplicate lead detection in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales automatically identifies potential duplicates and makes merging or deleting them as easy as clicking a button.

Duplicate lead detection is available for all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Sales Premium customers. To get started, a sales admin must enable duplicate detection in the Sales Hub app settings.

AI-based duplicate lead detection improves data hygiene and sales productivity

Dynamics 365 Sales uses AI and fuzzy matching algorithms to detect duplicate leads. By “fuzzy,” we mean that not only records that have exactly matching field values, but also records that have approximately matching field values, are identified as possible duplicates.

For example, Philip, Phillip, Phil, and Filip are all variations of the same name. Searching for an exact match would miss the indication that they’re the same lead with misspelled names. But with fuzzy logic, the similarity in names flags the records as possible duplicates.

Duplicate records are identified in real-time, based on the following criteria:

• Same email address
• Same business phone number
• Similar name and company name
• Similar name and same email domain

The first two conditions look for an exact match. The last two conditions use fuzzy matching algorithms.

Empower sellers to resolve duplicate leads with just a click

An intuitive UI makes it easy for sellers to review potential duplicates and decide what to do with them.

• For easy discoverability, a notification banner appears in both the main lead form and the leads grid view.
• The field values that triggered the identification are highly visible.
• To simplify the view, sellers can hide the fields that contain similar values.
• With one click, sellers can easily fill empty fields in the primary record with data from the duplicate, or even change which version of the record is the primary.

Sellers can delete duplicate records, mark them as not duplicate by “detaching” them from the primary record, or merge them. Sellers can merge up to four records into one primary record at the same time.

As with all data in Dynamics 365, user permissions apply to duplicate lead detection. Sellers can see only records their account permissions allow them to.

Even more duplicate detection is on the way

We’re not done with duplicate detection yet. Here’s what you can expect in coming release waves:

• Proactive detection of inauthentic email addresses
• Detection and management of duplicate contacts, similar to duplicate lead detection
• Detection of duplicate leads based on fields you select

Next steps

Increasing your sales team’s productivity could be as simple as eliminating duplicates from your lead databaseand Dynamics 365 Sales makes it easy.

To start taking advantage of duplicate lead detection, read the documentation and watch a brief video overview:

• Enable the detection of duplicate leads | Microsoft Docs
• Trust lead data with advanced duplicate detection (video) | Microsoft Dynamics 365

Not a Dynamics 365 Sales customer yet? Take a guided tour and sign up for a free trial at Dynamics 365 Sales overview.

The post Duplicate lead detection increases sellers’ productivity appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

At Microsoft Ignite 2022, we are showcasing new AI, automation, and collaborative solutions that help your business be more efficient, engage better across teams and departments, and deliver more breakthrough customer experiences. By helping your business better connect people, data, and processes, you can be more agile and reduce complexity, so you can do more with less.

In a special Into Focus session, we will showcase these and other new investments introduced in our second biannual release wave, release wave 2, to help you adapt to change, innovate, and modernize your processes across the organizationfrom sales to service to supply chain and finance.

Product updates at a glance

Be more efficient with new AI and automation updates:

• Empower sellers to focus on closing deals with Microsoft Viva Sales, the new seller experience application is now generally available.
• Make every sales conversation more useful and engaging with conversation intelligence, available for no extra charge in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Viva Sales.
• Create more consistent sales processes with sequencing for sales in Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Enable service agents to better serve customers with AI-generated conversation summaries in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Collaborate in the flow of work with new integrations between Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365:

• Solve complex service cases faster by easily collaborating with subject matter experts over Teams, right within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
• Enable Teams users to access Dynamics 365 Business Central dataeven without a Dynamics 365 license.

Improve employee and customer experiences with AI and automation

We continue to infuse AI and automation into business processes, driving more effective customer journeys. The updates we are introducing will help marketers, sellers, and service agents to hyper-personalize customer experiences.

Introducing unlimited conversation intelligence for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Viva Sales

Sellers can take advantage of new AI capabilities that help them prioritize their work and surface in-context collaboration experiences so that they can reclaim time to engage more authentically and efficiently.

Now generally available, Viva Sales is a new seller experience application that brings together any customer relationship management (CRM) system, Microsoft 365, and Teams to provide a more streamlined and AI-powered selling experience. Viva Sales captures customer insights and deal insights from Microsoft 365including Outlook emails and Teams chatsand then populates it within any CRM system, eliminating manual data entry and freeing time to focus on selling.

Additionally, while meeting with customers in a Teams call, sellers can record and transcribe the meeting to get a rich summary using conversation intelligence. The meeting summary helps sellers understand the overall sentiment of the call and tracks helpful conversation key performance indicators (KPIs), such as a seller’s talk-to-listen ratio.

We are confident that conversation intelligence will change the way sellers engage with customers, and we want to make it available to as many sellers as possible. That’s why we are announcing that users of both Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Viva Sales will have full access to conversation intelligence capabilities at no extra charge.

In addition, we are announcing several feature updates, coming to preview early next year, for sales conversation intelligence, including:

• Real-time, in-conversation content suggestions: As sellers engage customers on a Teams call or meeting, they will be guided with content to share or help inform the conversation, such as product and pricing details and competitive battle cardsall surfaced in real time as they chat.
• Recommended resources and insights: Content such as talking points, important mentions, customer sentiment, and conversation stylehelp provide a deeper understanding of what comprises winning sales strategies and how sellers’ behaviors directly correlate to business results.
• Email intelligence: This supports sellers suggesting prompts for updates needed in your CRM.

Learn more about conversation intelligence in this detailed blog post. Also, read more about what’s possible with Viva Sales.

Enable sales journey orchestration with new sequencing for sales features

We are also introducing new AI-powered sequencingfor sales capabilities for Dynamics 365 Sales that help create consistent step-by-step activities for sellers to perform in the selling process, giving them a better understanding of what to do next. With sequencing for sales, sellers are empowered to build similar customer journeys ensuring the best experiences for their customers and their sellers.

All of these updates join a host of new features for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing, which introduce moments-based marketing with real-time journey orchestration, using AI to market at scale and achieve higher levels of marketing maturity.

Watch 2022 release wave 2 release highlights for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Empower service agents to always exceed customer expectations

As a frontline for customer satisfaction and retention, service agents need modern tools to scale the personalized support customers need. In the 2022 release wave 2, our focus is on enriching contact centers with AI and automation across every engagement channel.

Earlier this year, we introduced the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, an open, extensible, and collaborative contact center solution. The platform is powered by Dynamics 365, Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, and Nuancedelivering best-in-class AI that powers self-service experiences, live customer engagements, collaborative agent experiences, business process automation, advanced telephony, and fraud prevention capabilities.   

We are introducing the ability to automate an AI-generated conversation summary in Dynamics 365 Customer Service when an agent uses the embedded Teams capabilities. This accelerates issue resolution with an auto-generated structured conversation summary that shares context, including the summary of the customer issue and the result of the resolution tried by the agent. In addition, agents can review a customer’s previous chat history to get visibility and context to conversations. This is especially helpful in scenarios where a customer service agent has a case transferred to them.

The feature is in preview as part of Dynamics 365 Customer Service and is expected to be generally available in October 2022.

Watch 2022 release wave 2 release highlights for Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

More ways to collaborate in the flow of work with Teams and Dynamics 365

At last year’s Microsoft Ignite, we introduced Context IQ, a set of capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 that enables business users to access documents and records, colleagues across the organization, and conversations in the flow of work, whether from within Dynamics 365 or Microsoft 365 applications.

We’ve already embedded Teams within Dynamics 365 Sales, helping sellers to team up with other sellers and subject matter experts to close deals faster. Now, we’re extending the integrated Teams experience to other Dynamics 365 applications.

Now in preview and slated for general availability in October 2022, service agents can engage with colleagues over Teams chat right from within Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This enables agents to solve complex service cases faster by easily collaborating with subject matter experts within the organization, such as agents from other departments, supervisors, customer service peers, or support experts. Chats over Teams will be linked directly to customer service records, enabling a contextual experience.

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), 2022 release wave 2 updates for Dynamics 365 Business Central include new ways to collaborate and share data over Teams. Starting November 4, 2022, Teams users will have access to Business Central data from within the collaboration app, regardless of whether they have a Dynamics 365 license. Admins will be able to set permission and access rules to restrict access to business records. Business Central users can invite people from across the organization to connect and collaborate in the flow of work, no matter where they work.

With Business Central embedded in Teams, people can collaborate on critical initiatives and projects directly where they connect. SMBs can now ensure that all team members are empowered with Context IQaccess to the right information and insights contextually, wherever, and however they work.

Learn more

These updates are just a few of the hundreds of new and updated capabilities in the 2022 release wave 2. We invite you to virtually attend our Microsoft Ignite Into Focus session on Wednesday, October 12, streaming live at 3:00 PM Pacific Time, then on-demand, for a first look at the new innovations coming to market. In addition to overviews of new innovations in release wave 2, we will spotlight customers using these new technologies to drive better operational outcomes and customer success.

Be sure to also check out our roadmap for detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. 

The post Live from Microsoft Ignite 2022: Introducing new AI, automation, and collaboration capabilities for Dynamics 365   appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We know that life for sellers has seen some massive changes recently as buyers are becoming more digital-first in their buying journeys and they are opting to spend less time with sales representatives. This means that when sellers get the opportunity to get in front of buyers there is a lot riding on that single interaction and the subsequent follow-up actions. Sellers must get it just right to land the deal.

We also know that when sellers have the right tools, at the right time, they win more with customers. In fact, according to LinkedIn’s State of Sales report this year, 80 percent of sellers who reached 150 percent of quota or more use sales technology.¹ This gives us profound insight into the power that technology can play in enabling sellers to do more.  

AI has already begun to play a major role in helping sellers to get to “yes” faster with customers, and that influence will only continue to grow in the coming years. Whether it be to automate the sales process, know customers more deeply, or simply help sellers be more productive, AI holds unrivaled value to sellers and sales organizations.  

We think that AI should be infused at the core of all our business applications. This is why Microsoft is investing and will continue to invest in AI-powered sales solutions. Take, for example, the game-changing AI of natural language processing that supports our sales conversation intelligence. By embedding AI directly into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and the newly released Microsoft Viva Sales, we’re making it easier for every seller to receive this intelligence directly in their flow of work.

Full access to sales conversation intelligence

With sales conversation intelligence, sellers can quickly understand where their customers are in their sales journey and what they can do or say next to get the most from the interaction. It’s great for sales managers too, who can see what’s working for their top sellers and help coach the rest of the team.

We believe that sales conversation intelligence is so transformative for sellers that everyone should be able to experience it.

That’s why I’m delighted to share that all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Viva Sales customers now have full access to sales conversation intelligence. This means that now all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers and those running other customer relationship management (CRM) systems with Viva Sales can get as much of the insights they need. This is just an example of how we believe all business applications should be infused with AI at the core.

New features supporting sellers

What’s more is that in the coming months, we’re excited to roll out additional sales-specific insights based on Microsoft’s powerful AI and natural language processing capabilities:

• Sellers will gain guidance in real time as they talk with customers on a call or in a Microsoft Teams meeting.
• Sellers will be presented with suggested resources like talking points, product and pricing details, and competitive battle cards to help enrich their conversationsas they happen.

These features will provide real time insights based on customer conversations to help sellers make the most of their customer interactions.

Learn more

With AI, natural language processing, and conversation intelligence seamlessly supporting sellers, we’re at a point where technology can truly revolutionize the sales process.

These game-changing capabilities are amazing to see in practice, but the best part is what comes nexthow organizations like yours deploy them in the real world. If you are not already a Dynamics 365 Sales customer and want to know more, start your free trial today.

To learn more, please watch our Microsoft Ignite session.

End Notes

¹LinkedIn Global State of Sales 2022

The post Bringing more intelligence to sales teams with Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For better or worse, customers have come to expect short lead times. Responding to those expectations has become more complex from a supply chain perspective: product availability has become less predictable, which lowers forecast accuracy; parts have long lead times; and there’s pressure to maintain leaner inventories to reduce holding costs. Is it possible to have high customer service levels while not holding too much inventory? With Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP), it is.

What is Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning?

DDMRP is a formal method for modeling, planning, and managing supply chains. It has been proven to improve performance in these volatile, complex, and ambiguous environments, where cumulative lead times are longer than your customers’ tolerance. It’s based on maintaining a stock buffer at strategic decoupling points, absorbing variability to avoid the bullwhip effect.

DDMRP methodology consists of five sequential components:

1. Strategic inventory positioning: Determine decoupling points where stock buffers can be placed.

2. Buffer profiles and levels: Determine the amount of protection (“shock absorption”) at the decoupling points that’s needed to mitigate variability in both directions. Historical and forecasted usage rates and DDMRP part settings are used to create unique, three-zone, color-coded buffers.

3. Dynamic adjustments: After the initial buffer sizes are determined, allow the level of protection to flex up or down based on factors such as operating parameters, market changes, and known or planned future events.

4. Demand-driven planning: Generate supply orders (purchase orders, manufacturing orders, and stock transfer orders) from qualified (as opposed to planned) sales orders within a short planning horizon. The equation On-Hand + Open Supply Qualified Sales Order Demand determines each day’s net flow position. If the net flow position is below the top of the yellow zone, a supply order is generated for the amount needed to reach the top of the green zone.

5. Visible and collaborative execution: Manage open supply orders using intuitive, easily interpreted signals on open supply priorities against the on-hand buffer position. The lower the on-hand level, the higher the risk to maintaining flow and the higher the execution priority. That is, priority is assigned by buffer status, not due date. It’s easy to get an overview of the state of the buffers.

Benefits of Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning

DDMRP has proven benefits across many industries:

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is DDMRP-compliant

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is DDMRP-compliant according to the Demand Driven Institute, the leading authority on demand-driven methodologies. To be compliant, software must meet five compliance criteria. By compliant, we mean that Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management follows the methodology according to the DDMRP industry standards as indicated by the Demand Driven Institute.

How to get started with DDMRP

DDMRP is a new concept for many companies. We suggest you start with a small pilot or simulation involving a subset of items to determine if DDMRP would be valuable for your organization. It’s simple to set up. Just enable Priority Driven MRP support for Planning Optimization and DDMRP for Planning Optimization in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Next steps

• Find more information about DDMRP, including articles, videos, and other educational material, at the Demand Driven Institute’s DDMRP page.
• Watch our tech talk, Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
• Read our blog post, Strike a strategic inventory balance in your supply chain with demand driven material requirements planning (DDMRP) .
• Read about DDMRP in the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management documentation.

Sources

Demand Driven Institute. What is DDMRP?

The post Use Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning to increase service and decrease lead time appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.