This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Last October, we announced a new partnership with Shopify to help our customers create a better shopping experience. The partnership was designed to better connect the easy-to-use e-commerce and merchant experience of Shopify with the comprehensive business management capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Today we are pleased to announce that a new Shopify connector is now available.
“We launched the Shopify Global ERP program to give merchants the power to manage the complexity of their business operations. The new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connector will help our merchants remain resilient and prepare for the future of commerce using real-time insights from connected data.”Colin Bodell, Vice President of Research and Development, Shopify.
The connector will help our customers get the visibility needed to speed customer inquiry responses, process more timely returns and refunds, and achieve more accurate order processing. Ultimately keeping people focused on customer experiences, by eliminating manual processes through:
Support of multiple Shopify shops
Each shop has its own setup, including a collection of products, locations used to calculate inventory, and price lists.
Bi-directional synchronization of items or products
Connector will sync images, item variants, barcodes, vendor item numbers, extended texts, and tags between systems.
Easily export item attributes to Shopify.
Use selected customer price groups and discounts to define how prices will be exported to Shopify.
Decide whether items can be created automatically or only allow updates to existing products.
Synchronization of inventory levels
Choose to use some or all of the available locations in Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Update inventory levels on multiple locations in Shopify.
Bi-directional synchronization of customers
Smart-map customers by phone and email.
Use country-specific templates when creating customers, which helps ensure that tax settings are correct.
Import of orders from Shopify
During import you can automatically create customers in Dynamics 365 Business Central or decide to manage the customers in Shopify.
Include orders created in other channels, such as Shopify POS or Amazon.
Shipping costs, gift cards, tips, shipping and payment methods, transactions, and risk of fraud.
Receive payout information from Shopify Payments.
Easy tracking of fulfillment information
Optionally choose to write item tracking information from Dynamics 365 Business Central into Shopify.
Microsoft has partnered with scapta, a Business Central ISV, to acquire their market-tested, feature-rich Shopify connector and embed it directly within Dynamics 365 Business Central. Scapta has many customer testimonials showcasing the power of connecting Dynamics 365 Business Central and Shopify. This approach allows us to offer more value to our customers that need global commerce capabilities.
“We rely on Shopify to manage commerce across three shops and to process thousands of orders each month. The connection with Dynamics 365 Business Central provides us with the visibility needed to adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better.”Stijn Lowette, CEO Kambukka.
Capitalize on the Shopify connector today
More connected data insights can help you reimagine the shopping experience for your customers, while streamlining business operations and financial management. Empower your people with more automated commerce processes so they can stay focused on more strategic work and customer outcomes. By connecting Shopify and Dynamics 365 Business Central you get the flexibility, control, and tracking needed to drive growth. The Shopify connector is available for the online version of Dynamics 365 Business Central. It is not available for on-premises versions. We expect this feature to be available as an extension in all countries where Dynamics 365 Business Central is available. The extension will be pre-installed for new customers. Existing customers can download and install the extension from Microsoft AppSource or the Shopify app store.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We are excited to return to Hannover Messe in person this year between May 30, 2022 and June 2, 2022. The pandemic has been difficult for most manufacturers, and there are still many lingering challengesyet, manufacturers are intent on digital transformation to drive resilience. There are several emerging trends that we believe are instrumental to manufacturers’ success in how they operate in 2022 and beyond.
At Hannover Messe this year, we will showcase how Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps manufacturers:
Transform work with advanced warehousing, robotics, and mixed reality.
Increase resilience with a predictive supply chain.
Manufacture and operate sustainably with minimal waste.
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
Based on a commissioned study with Forrester Consulting, more than 30 percent of manufacturing leaders face visibility challenges with inventory of raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods in the distributor network.1 Manufacturers are adopting a data-driven approach to improving operations, and doing so drives more focused improvements to systems and processes. But one-third of respondents surveyed note their organizations struggle with analyzing and applying the data to drive business and process improvements.
Visibility across operations is useful only if the manufacturers can use that data to drive action, hence the importance to driving both visibility and data improvements. Manufacturers are also keen to overcome distribution-related disruptions. Nearly half (48 percent) of manufacturing leaders expect distribution disruptions such as lack of carrier availability to increase.1 Demand fluctuations are at their peak, and so flexibility is paramount to meet this changing customer demand on time. However, this cannot come at the expense of front-line workers getting burnt out. It is an imperative to improve processes and conditions for frontline employees.
Lastly, environmental sustainability is a growing priority for manufacturing leaders to address in supply chain. Nearly one-quarter of leaders have improving sustainability metrics as a top digital transformation objective. As manufacturers transform, roughly 30 percent expect a reduced environmental impact as a result of their transformation efforts.1
Overcome disruptions and shortages with robotics and mixed reality
It is no secret that manufacturing operations have facedand continue to grapple withmultiple sources of ongoing shortages and disruptions. From port congestion, shipping delays, and material and workforce shortages, to extensive and unforeseen swings in customer demandtoday’s current challenges are as varied as they are persistent. However, these challenges have also given rise to innovative solutions capable of providing manufacturers and distributors with the capability to improve operations and overcome workforce shortages and skills gaps.
Robotics and automation are an attractive opportunity in this regardone that is generating goodwill among industry professionals and driving increases in investment. Most manufacturing executives believe that automation will positively impact their sector. Concurrently, the number of robots sold in North America rose 28 percent in 2021, setting a record of approximately $2 billion in sales.2 These points provide the context for our first work transformation innovation that is helping manufacturers and distributors overcome workforce shortages: advances in warehousing with robotics.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is designed to incorporate robotics to improve the automation of warehousing functions. This robotic integration and automation capability allows organizations to rapidly stand up and tear down temporary and flexible warehouse capacities closer to their manufacturing sites. Ultimately, these innovations enable companies to support complex warehousing functions, improve warehouse productivity, and overcome workforce shortages.
Contributing to the workforce shortages that manufacturers face is the retirement of a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce and, to a lesser extent, normal attrition as workers move on to other roles or companies. The learning curve for new team members in a manufacturing environment can often be steep and challenging due to the complexity of numerous processes and machinery that must be operated. This can cause significant disruption to normal operations.
A key innovation that is helping manufacturers to overcome workforce shortages and close the talent gap is the application of mixed reality to accelerate the onboarding of new employees and rapidly upskill existing team members. Based on the Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, manufacturing organizations that have deployed mixed-reality solutions have reduced training time by 75 percent, at an average savings of $30 per labor hour.3
With Microsoft’s mixed-reality solutions, including Dynamics 365 Guides, HoloLens 2, and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, manufacturers can deliver interactive learning experiences that increase workforce efficiency and flexibility and improve workforce safety by providing hands-free work instructions directly in the field of vision during task execution. Let us see how Toyota Motor North America is boosting operational and training efficiency and scalability with Microsoft’s mixed-reality solutions.
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
Increasing resilience with visibility, insights, and orchestration
When organizations are slow to digitize, they lack the visibility to predict disruptions. They also lack the insights and agility to proactively mitigate these disruptions. At Hannover Messe, we will showcase our latest investments from Dynamics 365 that enhance end-to-end visibility of your supply chain and the production floor, enable flexible real-time planning, and optimize and automate fulfillment by seamlessly orchestrating business processes to proactively mitigate constraints.
These investments from Dynamics 365 are developed to help manufacturers become a composable enterprise. The capabilities are built such that they are interoperable with the manufacturer’s existing supply chain technology infrastructure. They unify data from disparate systems and leverage AI to drive actionable insights. With Microsoft Teams embedded within the Dynamics 365 supply chain portfolio, collaborating to achieve consensus with internal team members and external partners is more streamlined, quick, and almost in near real time.
Manufacturers can further add new revenue lines by moving from fixed revenue to recurring revenue by adding new service offerings. The Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management works seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Field Service so that manufacturers can predict and proactively maintain their customer’s assets.
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
Dynamics 365 can also integrate with other third-party manufacturing execution systems. This allows manufacturers to unify data in real time across multiple different systems and contextualize the transaction data you get from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and time series data you get from the production floor to proactively looks for inefficiencies and quality issues so that you can improve the overall equipment effectiveness. At the end of the day, these innovations empower manufacturers to create and run more agile and connected factories and more resilient supply chains.
Circular manufacturing advances sustainability
Manufacturers have diligently worked to minimize waste since the ascendancy of lean manufacturing techniques. Now, as the world, governments, and consumers increasingly focus on sustainability, the push is on for manufacturers to reduce another form of wastecarbon dioxide (CO2). The leading sustainability initiative that brands are investing in worldwide is circular economy or circular manufacturing. This allows customers to recycle products easily. By setting up reverse logistics flows that allow customers to recycle products, manufacturers can not only drive a more sustainable future that is aligned with evolving consumer expectations but can also realize cost savings by utilizing recycled materials to produce new goods.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides organizations with the platform and tools to design manufacturing systems, processes, and products for reuse, minimize waste and emissions, and introduce new revenue streams like subscriptions and buyback programs. At Microsoft, we use these solutions to help us keep our commitment to zero-waste and carbon-negative operations. Our pilot initiative is the Microsoft Circular Centers program, which facilitates the reuse and recycling of servers and hardware within our data centers. To date, the Circular Centers program has reduced carbon emissions by 14,500 metric tons CO2 equivalent.
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
With sustainability being a core focus for Microsoft, we are also pleased to announce the general availability of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability on June 1, 2022. Cloud for Sustainability solutions such as the Sustainability Manager gives organizations the ability to better manage their environmental footprint, embed sustainability throughout their value chain, and make strategic business investments that drive more value.
To learn more about strategies for overcoming disruptions and shortages while also improving sustainability through circular manufacturing strategies and Cloud for Sustainability solutions, see us at Hannover Messe.
Engage with Microsoft at Hannover Messe 2022
Register for Hannover Messeand visit the Microsoft booth Hall 4 Stand E34, where you can join guided tours and book meetings with Microsoft executives and manufacturing experts on hand to discuss how Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing brings together Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform capabilities that help:
Build more agile factories.
Transform your workforce.
Engage customers in new ways.
Create more resilient supply chains.
Unlock innovation and new services.
Secure manufacturing solutions from edge to cloud.
We will also be showcasing Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which brings the anytime, anywhere experience through the self-service capability for manufacturers.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Manufacturing supply chains are experiencing a post-pandemic paradigm shift. As business models evolve to solve market disruptions, such as changing or adding direct-to-consumer (D2C) to a business-to-business (B2B) model, supply chains require agility and innovation to build resiliency and stay ahead of trends. United States D2C e-commerce sales have more than tripled in the past six years. 1 The market gained almost $100 billion in about half a decade from 2016 to 2021. It is expected to grow by nearly another $100 billion in the next three years, reaching $212.90 billion by 2024.1 With added supply chain complexities, including D2C, B2B, and advanced last-mile delivery bots, drones, and self-driving vehicles, manufacturers need strategies that go beyond cost reduction and can easily scale across the network. Supply chain networks able to scale their ecosystems will gain a competitive advantage, and the intelligent solutions to achieve this are composable and modular business applications.
Composable business applications are cloud-based technologies that provide unlimited scalability. They seamlessly integrate with other applications and are easy to use through a low-code or no-code interface. This composability allows organizations to combine different modular applications in an incremental and agile way through rapid sprints instead of embarking on time-consuming and costly rip-and-replace projects. Therefore, reach faster impact regardless of where manufacturers might be in their digital supply chain transformation journey.
The effectiveness of organizations’ digital supply chain in orchestrating supplier and fulfillment partnerships to meet anticipated customer demand determines the quality of the customer experience, as outlined in our on-demand webinar: A Smart Approach to Supply Chain Resilience Using Intelligent Order Management, featuring George Lawrie, Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst.
To summarize, composability makes supply chain network innovation possible, as highlighted in the three advantages below.
1. Modern open platforms pave the way for innovation
Recent years show that siloed data has no place in today’s supply chain network. Traditional networks support predictable environments, which are no longer the case with current market dynamics. From raw material shortages to non-traditional emerging channels, supply chain networks require agility that extends to all stakeholders and foster fluid collaboration.
According to a Forrester report, platforms make it easier to assemble complex technology portfolios across a range of packaging alternatives, leveraging modular components while allowing for customization and custom development.2
Composable and modular business applications seamlessly integrate with existing enterprise systems with modern open platforms and low-code/no-code interfaces. In addition, they support innovative features such as predictive analytics or agile manufacturing for real-time and cross-channel inventory visibility. They also enable manufacturers to enhance network strategies and allow rapid deployment of digital supply chain control towers another advantage of composability.
2. End-to-end visibility to scale supply chain networks
Improving the customer experience is a top priority for many organizations. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw customer loyalty easily swayed. This trend gave new brand entrants a foothold into e-commerce and catalyzed many established brands to engage D2C to maintain market share. Similarly, the rise of the omnichannel’s ease of purchasing, delivery, and return options has set high customer expectations and introduced new buying behaviors. These dynamics present significant risks as ongoing supply chain disruptions continue. But extensible composable tools arm the supply chain network with another advantage: the digital control tower with end-to-end visibility to anticipate and mitigate order management turmoil.
According to a Forrester survey, the most common planned improvement (49 percent) retailers and CPG companies are making, is better visibility across the supply chain (from factories to raw materials suppliers).3 Consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers with newly launched D2C business models recognize that complete visibility is essential for favorable customer experiences.
Digital supply chain control towers take real-time data from multiple supply chain network workloads and provide a holistic, multi-dimensional view. The partnership with FedEx and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for the cross-platform, logistics-as-a-service solution for brands exemplifies these capabilities, offering features like a seamless return experience and transportation optimization to proactively avoid delivery delays. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management also allows organizations to set up the first step to incrementally build a composable digital supply chain platform with different module solutions for end-to-end visibility and deliver highly valued unified customer experiences.
3. Composability with AI drives actionable insights
Finally, composable business applications enable optimization at each node level letting manufacturers know where opportunities exist. Composable business applications give manufacturers advantages that are counterintuitive to previous assumptions. Advanced analytics powered by built-in AI and machine learning capabilities allow manufacturers to test hypotheses with predictive data-driven outcomes.
A Forrester survey shows that 56 percent of respondents report that one of the most important aspects of supply chain agility is increasing the use of machine learning and AI to drive process automation.3
An innovative supply chain network leverages composable digital tools with embedded AI and machine learning to improve decision-making, unify disparate data, foresee disruptions, and utilize deeper insights.
To start building composability in your supply chain network watch the video:
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
Achieve more with agile and resilient supply chains
Dynamics 365 innovates supply chain networks, making them resilient and sustainable through composability. These intelligent solutions work seamlessly with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to respond to market dynamics quickly and integrate with many market-leading API-enabled applications. Pre-built connectors extend business capabilities through an ecosystem of specialized partners for order delivery, tax compliance, price calculations, transportation, and other logistics services. Plus, users can easily create rules and quickly configure order flows to adapt to changing market conditions or scale to support peak volume demands with an easy-to-use low-code/no-code interface.
By enabling these capabilities, manufacturers can accelerate the digital transformation of their order management process and turn order fulfillment into a competitive advantage. Users can also automate and optimize fulfillment using AI to create real-time inventory visibility and extend into a digital control tower for end-to-end network visibility.
At Microsoft, we are committed to empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. With our next-generation digital supply chain applications, manufacturers can leverage composability to drive innovation across their supply chain networks. See how they can innovate yours in the on-demand webinar: A Smart Approach to Supply Chain Resilience Using Intelligent Order Management.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Selling isn’t easy. If you were to take five minutes to ask a salesperson what makes selling so challenging, you’d quickly find that you don’t have nearly enough time to cover it all.
One thing is constant for sellerstime is in short supply. In a day, sellers are managing leads, tracking performance metrics, and collaborating with team members scattered far and wide, while at the same, delivering a blend of digital and personalized experiences to customers throughout their journey. Consequently, sellers need their data to work for them and ensure they can focus on their highest priorities.
That’s why for the Dynamics 365 Sales 2022 release wave 1, we are focused on streamlining the seller experience by elevating collaboration tools even more and expanding intelligence capabilities so that every seller can make faster use of their data, reclaim their time, and be more productive with customers.
Our approach targets three areas to improve the sales team’s experiences and empower them to achieve even more than before:
Guide sellers with intelligence
Make collaboration even easier
Thrive with more productive tools
Let’s take a closer look at what’s in store for sellers in the weeks and months ahead.
Guide sellers with intelligence
What if we told you that sellers could take some of the guesswork out of their day-to-day workflows? With this release wave, we’re rolling out updates to guide sellers to connect with the right customers, capture interactions to help sellers focus on winning deals, and provide comprehensive insights into their pipelines and improve the predictability of revenue forecasts.
Guide sellers with predictive analytics and automation. Over the coming months, features for Sales Accelerator will become available thereby enabling sellers (using sales enterprise or premium) to have a single workspace to help them close more deals. New capabilities include enhanced worklist features to prioritize your work, new AI-based models to improve data quality, streamlined sequences creation, and activity management, including sequence templates based on industry best practices. These features will help guide sellers on how to prioritize and connect with the right customer, assist them on executing consistently though out the customer journey, and give them the ability to choose the right engagement plan for their prospects and customers.
Capture every interaction with Conversation Intelligence. Get the right insight, at the right time and at the right place with Conversation Intelligence. Sellers will now be able to capture every customer interaction and get real-time business insights on the platform or channel of their choice. They will get real-time content suggestions while on calls and insights to learn how call performance affects call outcomes. These capabilities are in preview now and will be released to general availability in September 2022.
Predictive pipeline scoring. Available now in general availability, sellers can now assign scoring attributes per sales stage and see the number of days since the deal has moved, and quickly understand how the stagnation impacts the score of the deal. This helps sellers determine the right next step to take to move the deal forward.
Enhanced forecasting. Provide sales teams with predictability to their revenue forecasts, and a workspace that provides comprehensive views and insights into their sales pipeline. Now in general availability, sales teams can streamline forecasting workflows by setting the default view. Now teams can quickly access sales projections, freeing up time to focus on customers.
Make collaboration even easier
Let’s face itthese days to sell well you need a hyperconnected team. From customer relationship management (CRM) to email to messaging apps, sales teams rely on a lot of tools to get their jobs done. That’s why we focused on enhancing the connection between Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Teams to ensure teams can collaborate more easily and be more productive.
Tighter Teams experience. Sales teams will now be able to easily associate Teams meetings with Dynamics 365 Sales records allowing for even more productive meetings. Sales teams can capture notes and tasks, as well as quickly access and update records, right within the Teams interface. This feature will become generally available beginning in September.
Embedded Teams chat in Dynamics 365. Now sellers can stay within their CRM workflow while collaborating with their stakeholders with the Teams-embedded chat experience to ensure context remains front and center.
Thrive with more productive tools
Finally, sellers are now enabled to better keep their finger on the pulse of customer relationships and introduce automation into their sales processes that didn’t exist before.
Rich messaging with Dynamics data. Not all sales conversations initiate from Dynamics. Users need a way to bring business context into conversations when and where they are initiated. We now enable sellers to share and interact with Dynamics 365 Sales records directly in the Teams message.
Discover hidden accounts and contacts. With predictive relationship intelligence, sales teams can query their entire network based on interactions gleaned from Dynamics 365 Sales and Exchange to uncover hidden relationships, obtain introductions, and accelerate opportunities.
Simplify day-to-day sales activities. With the built-in Sales Hub app, sellers can get their ideal selling experience. Sales Hub is designed to simplify your day-to-day sales activities providing sellers vital information in one place, unblocking them to focus on key activities and tasks that require attention.
Learn more
These are just a few features we’re rolling out for Dynamics 365 release wave 1. To go deeper into our newest features for Dynamics 365 Sales, click on the links to these online documentation and video resources.
If you are not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
For decades, companies have relied on skilled technicians to repair equipment and engage with customers in the field. While these technicians were often the only representation that the customer would see, their skills, processes, and systems were seldom seen as critical aspects of the company’s revenue cycle. Until recently, many field technicians or field service teams were merely thought of as necessary cost centers. But like other parts of the organization, even the cost centers must learn to innovate and discover additional revenue–generating opportunities.
Field service is the process of organizing and managing work tasks that need to be completed at a particular location, usually a customer site. The field service process often includes many variables and can be quite complex. It encompasses dispatching, scheduling, skills matching, and route optimization, to name a few. Many people have been in a situation where they’re expected to wait all day for a technician because they’ve been given a broad arrival window time between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM. Well, that’s field servicealbeit, a rather inefficient model.
As the field service domain evolves, companies are learning their inefficiencies in the field can quickly cost them revenue as customer satisfaction is negatively impacted and the lifetime value of their customers decreases. And while companies across all industries are realizing the extended costs of inefficient field service operations, those that are innovative have begun to understand how to also leverage field service to generate more revenue. Cost reductions by becoming more efficient can be great, but reducing costs while increasing revenue is pure gold.
Here are three ways to drive revenue through your field service operations and how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service can help create efficiencies.
1. Lead generation
This may sound odd primarily because lead generation has always been a staple of marketing and sales operations. But who else gets to know your customers better than your field technicians? Here’s a quick personal story:
After a recent move, I called several internet service providers. For starters, I selected the provider that could deliver service in the least amount of time. Upon arrival, the technician asked about other services, particularly mobile phone service. Since I had a different mobile phone carrier, he said they have specials and asked if I would be interested in hearing them. Shortly after confirming my interest and completing my internet installation, a field salesperson knocked on my door and converted me over to their mobile plan. A lead generated and a sale transactedall originating from the field technician’s simple question.
Field technicians are skilled workers that often have a series of tasks needed to complete the service. By simply including a question or by noting a specific item on their task list, a Microsoft Power Automate flow can be triggered to automatically create a lead and route it to the sales team. This creates a qualified lead for the sales team and a cross-sell revenue opportunity for the company.
2. Expanding business units: Field Service-as-a-Service
To truly turn your field service operations into a revenue generator, the current operation must become efficient. Efficiency requires innovation; that is, innovation of processes, system platforms, and people. When it comes to field service operations, it’s safe to say not all organizations innovate at the same pace and some prefer not to innovate at all. This is where your innovation and efficiencies can become a revenue-generating asset.
For example, a large healthcare facilities provider began as a facilities management operation. They provided facilities management services to the vast and growing network of healthcare providers. Continuing to innovate and drive efficiencies with Dynamics 365 Field Service, the healthcare facilities provider quickly recognized the value they could bring to other healthcare provider networks and began offering their services to other hospitals. By leveraging their efficiencies, they were able to provide great value to more than 160 hospitals which allows their customers to create better patient experiences. The healthcare facilities provider is a great example of how field service efficiencies were used to create a revenue-generating business unit.
3. Connected Field Service: leverage data
Connected Field Service leverages IoT data collected from device sensors and integrates with Dynamics 365 Field Service to create a new revenue-generating service model. Connected Field Service allows organizations to graduate from the traditional break-fix service model to a proactive and predictive service model. This shift creates opportunities for organizations to market and sell new service offerings that yield greater revenue and increase margin.
A connected field service example is a Pacific Northwest mechanical contractor company. The organization specializes in developing energy-efficient buildings. However, by capturing the data from IoT sensors, their connected field service solution enables them to offer post-construction optimization services. IoT sensors capture a building’s energy levels and proactively dispatches a service technician prior to failurethus, ensuring operational efficiency within their customers’ facilities. Building on their efficiencies, they can conserve and reduce travel costs by performing remote inspections and service with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. Such efficiency creates opportunities to sell more advanced support offerings thereby increasing revenue and profitability.
Learn more about Dynamics 365 Field Service
The good news is that becoming more efficient in field service operations can be extremely valuable to your organization. The better news is that through innovation, field service operations can even be transformed into a revenue-generating machine.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
A comprehensive knowledge base that helps customer service reps and customers find answers to the most common issues quickly is key to improving agent productivity and increasing customer satisfaction. Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2022 release wave 1 introduces Dataverse search for Power Apps portals, an improved knowledge search experience in Customer Service workspace with admin configuration, and richer analytics for managers.
These improvements and new features help you make sure your agents are productive, customers are happy, and brand loyalty is improved.
Use Dataverse search for knowledge base searches in Power Pages
With Dataverse search, knowledge bases in portals can take advantage of the same search service that model-driven apps use. Deliver fast and comprehensive search results, sorted by relevance, with filters such as modified date, rating, and products, and the ability to enforce content access levels.
Improved knowledge search experience in Customer Service workspace with admin configuration
With this release, knowledge administrators have more power to configure the knowledge search control in the app side pane (formerly known as the productivity pane) in the Customer Service workspace.
Administrators can configure automatic search (using text from a selected field to provide search results automatically) and actions that agents can perform on a record:
Link and unlink the article and the record
Copy the article URL
Link the article to the record and then send the article URL in an email
Link the article to the record and then send the article content in an email
Set the default email recipient for the record when sending the article URL or content in an email
Get insights with rich article analytics
Knowledge managers and authors can get greater insights on the knowledge articles they create. Knowledge authors must keep their knowledge bases relevant, accurate, and easy to access from different channels. The built-in historical view of knowledge article usage and related metrics helps knowledge authors and managers understand the effectiveness of knowledge content and identify opportunities for improvement.
Analytics include detailed reports that provide historical trends for key metrics, such as:
Number of views
Number of visitors
Average feedback rating
Number of links to cases
Number of shares
Next steps
To learn more about knowledge management in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, read the documentation:
Recent Comments