Manufacturers often have manufacturing execution systems (MES) to control their manufacturing, machine equipment, and personnel, however it can be a challenge to reconcile such systems with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

There can be a number of reasons for setting up a custom MES tailored to the specific requirements of a manufacturer, or to the vertical industry that they are a part of. Conversely, many manufacturers have found it difficult to merge such systems with their ERP systems.

In this post, we’re going to look at the most common challenges of integrating the two systems and learn how integrating them can give you visibility into the production floor.

Common integration challenges

Integrating an MES with an ERP system, such as Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, can present a number of challenges.

• Cost: The integration effort usually takes a long time, meaning a lot of development expense. This cost might be more than the client was expecting.
• Debugging and traceability: When two different systems are connected, it is usually cumbersome to debug and troubleshoot any issues. There might be unclear error messages when specific data is not synced or if any validation fails.
• Persona-targeted notifications: In case of any integration issues, it can be difficult to notify the appropriate person or team. Even though a single person might have overall responsibility for the integration, there could be a delay before the correct party is identified for a specific issue.
• Archive and replay signals: When there is a failure in incoming or outgoing data, you usually need to replay a signal. This can be difficult to do if it is not implemented in the integration.
• Out-of-order deliveries or multiple deliveries: Each system has its own set of deliveries and releases. Delivery updates can come at different times, and updates in one system should not affect the other. Such synchronization can be a challenge for an integration.
• Spikes: It is the nature of work on the production floor for there to be spikes in signals, such as many reports being finished within a short time frame. It is essential for the integration to be able to handle such spikes.
• Limited reusability: Once the integration is completed, it is usually specific to the two systems. When another production site is involved, a whole new integration implementation might be needed.
• Data silos: Data is likely to exist in both systems, but the data might not be in sync. This consistency is needed to give an accurate view of production orders and their state on the shop floor.

Keep data current in an integrated solution

In an integrated solution, data exchange is fully automated and near real time, which keeps data current in both systems and eliminates the need for manual data entry.

For example, when material consumption is registered in the MES, the integration ensures that the same consumption is also registered in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. This means up-to-date inventory records are available to other processes, such as planning and sales.

To help customers with these integration challenges by building a true connection, we’re releasing a fundamental tool for building this integration. To learn more, see the Supply Chain Management documentation, Integrate with third-party manufacturing execution systems. The following screenshot shows a monitoring dashboard for messages in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

These integration components are generic and can be used with any MES provider. Currently, both Aegis Factorylogix and Oqton provide integrations to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Let’s hear from them on the advantage for manufacturers to having both systems integrated.

Jason Spera, CEO and co-founder of Aegis Software states:

With Dynamics 365 supporting modern Smart manufacturing from the ERP perspective, Aegis’ FactoryLogix, as a fully complementary MES solution, provides the real-time, surgical precision required for visibility and execution of manufacturing, synchronized through Microsoft’s API-based Smart supply-chain interface.

Aegis’ IIoT-based MES platform orchestrates execution of ERP work-orders in real-time, across highly complex and technical assembly, test and inspection stations, with exact material, product and process traceability that satisfies the most stringent quality assurance requirements. The feedback of live operational data enhances ERP by providing detailed, accurate and timely information related to completions, material consumption and much more.

Oqton supports manufacturers with the optimization of their end-to-end workflows and continues to demonstrate that it can meet the challenges of any production processes, including additive manufacturing and post processing. The Oqton platform has been successfully deployed in demanding vertical sectors such as dentistry, healthcare, biotech, aerospace, and automotive. Agnostic in terms of hardware and software, the Oqton platform works across the entire ecosystem, while being modular in nature and interoperable with other systems. This is why it integrates so well with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to offer a comprehensive solution for users.

According to Oqton CEO, Ben Schrauwen:

The integration of Oqton and Dynamics 365 offers a high level of production management, efficiency and productivity for manufacturers. The automation capabilities enabled and optimized by Oqton for the production workflow complements Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to ensure manufacturers are in complete control, which is more important now than ever before.

Gain visibility into your manufacturing

When you are able to integrate your MES and ERP systems, you can enhance the visibility into your manufacturing floor The new manufacturing execution systems integration from Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps you to address the challenges of such an integration and break down your data silos.

Next steps

If you are planning on building an integration between Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and your MES, or you want to improve your existing one, learn more in the documentation.

The post Break down data silos with an integrated manufacturing solution appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Engaging with customers in today’s world is multifaceted, spanning everything from generating that initial spark of interest, to closing a sale and nurturing the relationship, to delivering exceptional ongoing service and support. Today, those experiences are often disconnected, and customer relationships are fragmented. On top of that, our expectations as customers have risen dramatically.

We expect that brands know enough about our preferences to provide high-quality interactions with us. We also prefer our experiences with a brand to be personalized and consistent across every touchpoint. However, this expectation is met with our own wariness about sharing personal information and fear that our data will be misused, or that we will be inundated with a barrage of advertisements, emails, and intrusive outreach. Yet, it is a balance, and most of us are receptive to content that is relevant to us at the right moment.

As we’ve worked with large enterprise customers around the world, their marketing leaders consistently stress that to meet today’s customer expectations and deliver privacy-aware, consent-enabled personalization, they need insights from multiple, diverse data sourcessomething they struggle with because data about their customers is often locked in silos.

This is why we are introducing the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, a customer engagement solution that gives you control of your customer data to deliver connected experiences. With full ownership of your data, you can connect directly to your customerson your own terms. Rich out-of-the-box AI and insights enable you to better predict customer intent, accelerate your time to market, and deliver the right content on the right channel at the right moment. And, with AI-orchestrated journeys, you can engage your customers in powerful new ways, delivering connected experiences across every customer touchpoint.

Own your customer relationships

As the industry faces the imminent deprecation of third-party cookies and the continued fragmentation of digital identities, having a strong customer data platform is essential. Marketers need to build holistic customer profiles and protect them with robust privacy and security controlsall in real time. With Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, you can power customer data unification and understanding, enrich customer data with privacy-friendly insights from multiple sources, and ensure compliance, all while honoring your customer’s consent.

Data privacy and security, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, is top of mind for companies and customers alike. This is the reason Walgreens and Boots Alliance, Inc. chose Microsoft to gain a unified, 360-degree view of their customers and deliver a world-class digital experience. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Walgreens and Boots Alliance, Inc. is now able to deliver more engaging and tailored healthcare and shopping experiences, while protecting the privacy choices of patients and customers.

Create raving fans

Driving down customer acquisition costs and increasing lifetime value is a top priority for every business. And today’s marketers need granular data, scalable technology, and sophisticated analytics to achieve these goals. AI makes it easier to identify trends and insights to reveal new opportunities, but the average campaign led by data sciences can take months to execute, with a large portion of this time spent collecting data, cleaning it up, and running predictive models.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform helps you understand the intent, journeys, and behavior of customers on your web and mobile properties to optimize funnels and trigger personal experiences. With Microsoft, marketers have access to powerful out-of-the-box AI and pre-built models to predict key customer attributes like lifetime value, churn, lookalike, and interests, all designed to accelerate your time to market and deliver results.

Chipotle serves millions of customers a year and wanted to gain a deeper understanding of individual customer preferences and how they change over time. They needed to put multiple sources of customer data to work for them, including a loyalty program with more than 17 million members, point-of-sale data, a customer care center, and digital platforms. To accomplish this, Chipotle needed a comprehensive customer data platform to drive business insights and improve their return on marketing efforts. Today, Chipotle can gather and analyze longitudinal data in a more effective way to track key performance indicators such as repeat visitors, customer lifetime value, and customer sentiment. With greater insight into customer behaviors and marketing analytics, Chipotle can now directly target customers with messages that appeal to themat times when they’ll be most receptive.

Engage in new ways

Customers today want real connections with brands that go beyond simple personalization. They want high-quality experiences that improve the way they live and work. To maximize reach and ROI, marketers must think beyond a linear customer journey and connect experiences across marketing, commerce, sales, and service. This requires precise use of customer data, integration into line-of-business applications, and seamless activation across a growing number of customer touchpoints.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform provides AI-orchestrated journeys so you can acquire and retain high-value prospects based on their interactions across advertising, email, mobile, social media, custom channels, and in-person touchpoints. With the integration between Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Microsoft Advertising, you can easily activate your audience segments, expand your target lists with lookalike audiences and auto-generated remarketing. You can distribute these segments into Microsoft Advertising and other ad platforms without barriers, further extending your reach by meeting customers where they are.

Leatherman, the originator and category leader in high-quality multi-tools, pocket tools, and knives, sought a solution to meet their growing D2C (Direct to Consumer) communication needs. Leatherman leveraged customer journey orchestration to curate a more personalized customer journey and to create user experience continuity with their online store. The team was able to create a multi-touchpoint journey which allowed them to engage their customers across their commerce and marketing solutions using real-time custom events. This journey was executed every time a customer signed up or started to check out on their website. This allowed Leatherman to seamlessly activate new customers and to create opportunities for continued engagement along the way.

When decision journeys bring customers to your retail website, Microsoft PromoteIQ helps you monetize that interest. This was the goal when the world’s largest home improvement retailer, Home Depot, partnered with PromoteIQ to enrich customer engagement on its e-commerce site in the U.S. Managing and scaling these vendor-funded digital marketing efforts generated incremental revenue for Home Depot while also giving Home Depot’s vendor partners enhanced marketing controls to drive better conversion, increase visibility and learn from real-time performance insights.

Tap into a rich ecosystem of partners and digital agencies

Microsoft is excited to be working with a growing list of digital agencies to help organizations more efficiently unlock their data, predict customer intent, and deliver impactful end-to-end journeys.

“We are excited about the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform and how Microsoft continues to invest in this space. It has never been more important to have the right capabilities to unlock data to more effectively engage customers, to predict customer intent in the moment, and to deliver connected end-to-end experiences across the entire customer lifecycle.”David Mitchell, CTO, VMLY&R.

“The advantages of digital transformation go well beyond a simple cost-benefit analysis. The announcement today of the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform gives businesses an end-to-end platform that encompasses transformation across infrastructure, data, and artificial intelligence to create real-time predictive customer experiences that create deeper understanding to deliver the right experience and brand behaviors and preferences clients want.”Adam Good, Executive Director, Marketing Technology WPP Australia and New Zealand.

“Over the next few years, we’ll see the impact of the changes we’ve been through. We’re invested in experience because as we move to cloud, we’ll have data to make those experiences equitable, personalized, sustainable, & simple. Microsoft’s CX Platform helps pull it all together to make what’s next.”Jos Reyes, PwC Partner, Chief Creative Officer and Experience Center Leader.

Learn more

Learn how to create tailored, delightful customer journeys with Microsoft Customer Experience Platform that safely leverage and protect your customer data while inspiring trust and loyalty. We help you get the most out of your data by connecting with customers on your own terms, applying rich AI capabilities to glean the best insights, and engaging in powerful ways across the customer journey.

All of this is made possible with the combined power of products like Microsoft Advertising, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Promote IQ, Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, and Microsoft Azure Purview. Find out more at Microsoft Customer Experience Platform and Microsoft Ignite breakout webinar.

1- PWC, Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right

The post Introducing Microsoft Customer Experience Platform: A solution for connected customer experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited to announce the preview launch of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insightsto help organizations achieve a supply chain of the futureone that is resilient, sustainable, and capable of sensing, predicting, and mitigating disruptions before they occur.

Recent worldwide supply chain disruptions have resulted in economic losses and missed opportunities that stretch into the billions of dollars. Since the beginning of 2019, nearly 70 percent of supply chain leaders have been constantly responding to disruptions.¹If there’s anything the recent supply chain disruptions have taught business leaders in supply chain management, it’s the importance of having a robust, nimble and transparent system that can withstand radical changes in supply and demand, and that can anticipate and flexibly work around such changes before they play out their widescale domino effects. That’s where Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights (preview) comes in.

At Microsoft, the future of global supply chains is being reimagined. Slow digitization of the supply chain is significantly inhibiting organizations from quickly responding to changing customer demand and supply challenges. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights enables organizations to create a digital representation of their physical supply chain and enhance the end-to-end visibility of their entire value chain.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights breaks down data siloes by connecting and taking inputs from existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems across the organization. Businesses can further invite suppliers to securely share data and gain visibility into their first, second, or third-tier suppliers.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights will also be available through Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, which is also announced in preview today.

Predict risks

This data is brought into Dataverse and then harmonized using industry data models and enriched with AI-powered news curation, weather, and environmental risk signals from Bing and other third-party sources, such as reinsurers like Swiss Re. The external risk signals are available out of the box without needing to set up any connections.

Generate insights powered by AI

Built on Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights uses these inputs and creates a digital twin of the supply chain. Using advanced analytics powered by Azure’s AI and Machine Learning, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights performs predictions and What-if analyses to simulate the impact of potential disruptions and gauge the impact of decisions made to mitigate them at any point along the supply chain.

Get operational fast

Using these insights, companies can seamlessly collaborate with their suppliers, logistic partners, and internal stakeholders using Microsoft Teams and take optimal action. With out-of-the-box connectors from Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights can connect to other ERP and supply chain execution systems, enabling businesses to truly get operational fastwithin weeks. These insights can then be seamlessly implemented through your existing supply chain execution systems, thus initiating a powerful digital feedback loop.

Recent shocks to supply and demand have impacted just about every industry and every economy around the world, with everyday products like coffee and paper, and more technical products like semiconductor chips equally affected by an increasingly taxed supply chain. At Microsoft, we believe in empowering you with the solutions you need to mitigate supply chain risk and deliver a customer-first approach across your business.

A customer like Daimler Trucks North America can use Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights to predict supply chain issues before they happen so that they can proactively mitigate them to meet their commitments to the Dealerships and Customers. They can improve their end-to-end supply chain process to reduce downtime and part shortages.

Learn more

To experience the impact of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights, sign up for the preview. To learn more about creating a resilient supply chain, watch “Enhance supply chain visibility, predict risks and improve decision making with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights” and “Make better decisions with proactive risk mitigation to create a resilient supply chain“. You can further learn about other Microsoft innovations that were launched today at Microsoft Ignite.

¹-Gartner Supply Chain Executive Report: Shaping Supply Chain Disruption in a Volatile Risk Environment, May 2021

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The post Mitigate disruptions with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights—now in preview appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Across industries, businesses are experiencing a tectonic shift in how, when, and where people work. In today’s decentralized workplace, everyone needs simple ways to connect, share ideas, and collaborate wherever they are located. Today, at Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing Context IQ, a set of capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 that integrate collaboration into the flow of work, surfacing the right information, people and insights in the moment, in context with the task at hand.

These capabilities help you build a hyperconnected business that empowers people to collaborate as one business, everywhereso people can thrive wherever, and however, they work. Be sure to attend the Ignite session, “Accelerate cross-organization collaboration with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365” to see some of the capabilities below in action.

Collaborate in the flow of work

Upcoming capabilities will bring Microsoft Teams experiences to Dynamics 365, so people can stay productive in the flow of work.

Teams chat embedded within Dynamics 365. You can collaborate with stakeholders directly from within Dynamics 365. This allows you to use Dynamics 365 data as an organizing layer for your Teams collaboration activity and link chats to Dynamics 365 records, such as sales opportunities and service cases, for convenient access for all participants.

Additionally, Context IQ suggests colleagues relevant to Dynamics 365 records to promote people discovery for faster deal or case resolution. You can see who is available and start a Teams chat without switching apps, keeping you focused on the task at hand.

Now available in preview for Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.

A unified meetings experience for sellers. During a Teams meeting, sellers can quickly access and share key sales information from Dynamics 365, reducing the need to switch between apps during the conversation. Meeting attendees can capture notes that automatically save to the timeline of the record, and sellers can leverage Conversation Intelligence to uncover and act on meeting highlights and follow-up.

Available for preview in early 2022.

Digital voice and conversation intelligence for Dynamics 365 Sales. Sales professionals spend a lot of time engaging with customers, either on digital calls or in online meetings. Now, sellers can conduct and answer calls, join online meetings, and receive and answer emails from Dynamics 365 with one click.

Sellers can leverage an integrated Teams dialer for outbound and inbound calling for Dynamics 365 Sales, using either the integrated Teams dialer or third-party telephony vendors from a desktop, laptop, or mobile device. In addition, conversation intelligence transcribes the call and provides meaningful insights and analyzes content, sentiment, and behavioral stylesuch as competitors and keywords that the prospect mentions. AI-guided live feedback and suggestions can help sellers adjust their sales pitch, as well as provide managers with a way to track team performance and provide valuable coaching to help boost customer satisfaction.

Available in preview for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Live copresence throughout Dynamics 365 applications. See who is actively working on a Dynamics 365 record and available to chat and collaboratemaking it easier to work together on service cases, orders, or opportunities.

Hover over a profile name to view a Live Profile Card with contact details and live presence, and easily initiate an embedded Teams chat session with an individual or group that automatically links the chat with the record, all in one click.

Now available for preview in Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.

More accessible and sharable business data

Switching apps to search for and share data, documents and records can impede the flow of work, slowing progress on activities ranging from sales deals to customer support cases. Context IQ more closely integrates Microsoft Search, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365 capabilities, accelerating access to the people and information needed to spur innovation and solve problems.

These capabilities extend the ability for anyone in an organization to view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records from within the flow of work with Teams, as announced at Microsoft Inspire earlier this year (available in preview in early 2022).

Find what you need faster. We’ve made it easier to surface results from your files, documents, customer records, and people across Microsoft Search. In fact, all of your data in Microsoft Dataverse can be searched and surfaced. For example, you can search for a Dynamics 365 customer record from Bing and the search bar in Teams, SharePoint, and Office. Dynamics 365 settings for roles and permissions ensure users only see records for which they are granted access.

In preview now for SharePoint, Bing, and Office. Preview for Microsoft Teams to follow in 2022.

Use @mention to quickly find and share a Dynamics 365 record. We’re making it simple to share and collaborate on a Dynamics 365 record in the flow of work, without switching apps. You can currently @mention specific people in an Outlook or Teams message to tag someone for feedback. Soon, you will be able to @mention a Dynamics 365 record to quickly share it inline.

Available in preview for Teams, Outlook, and other Microsoft 365 applications in 2022.

When you share a link to any Dynamics 365 record, you can choose to unfurl an information card that displays a preview of the shared Dynamics 365 record. Recipients can view and act on information in the flow of work, such as from a chat, email, or document.

For example, when a seller shares a Dynamics 365 opportunity record in a Teams or Outlook message, recipients can see and edit the details that mattersuch as the opportunity score, estimated close date and revenue, and statusright from within the message.

This new capability is called a Loop component, an element of Microsoft Loop, introduced today at Microsoft Ignite. Learn more about Microsoft Loop on the Microsoft 365 blog. We will share more about the availability of the Microsoft Loop component in the upcoming months.

Learn more about cross-organization collaboration with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365

These capabilities are just the start. Context IQ is inspiring many future updates across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365especially those that further integrate collaboration, sharing, and communication capabilities in the flow of work.

Watch today’s Ignite session, “Accelerate cross-organization collaboration with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365,” to see many of these capabilities in action and hear how Siemens Mobility is using Context IQ to empower collaboration across the organization, and visit the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams webpage to learn more.

We also invite you to explore the four essentials to collaborate as one business, everywhere and take a behind-the-scenes look at two companies reinventing how people collaborate across the organization.

The post Meet Context IQ—A new way to collaborate in a hyperconnected business appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In the world of customer service, unified routing helps you solve the classic supply-and-demand problem as you distribute customer service requests to the best team or agent, no matter the channel. Dynamics 365 Customer Service automates this process by using rules to classify, prioritize, and assign those customer “demands”. To further optimize this process, your staff needs insight into how it is functioning.

We are introducing analytics and reporting capabilities to help supervisors and administrators understand and improve their routing systems.

In the last several months, we have seen companies redefining the roles and responsibilities of their service delivery employees. Supervisors and administrators now need to have a unified view of both on-site and off-site employees. This not only adds complexity to supervision, but it also reinforces the importance of having accurate reporting and analytics capabilities. We have seen supervisors struggling daily to analyze, identify, and mitigate the misroutes that are caused due to their routing strategies. Supervisors and administrators are asking questions like:

• Why is this work item in my queue?
• One of the queues is unreasonably overloaded, while another queue nearly empty. Why is that happening?
• Agents in my queue are complaining about work items showing up that belong in another queue. What is wrong with the routing?
• Are there enough agents to handle queries or work items of a certain type?
• Are we assigning the right agents to solve specific customer queries?
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is down the past few weeks. Is it because of routing failures?

Use historical analysis to improve routing configurations

To address these kinds of questions, your staff can use analytics and reports to gauge the effectiveness of their routing configurations, to help optimize the routing strategy, and to improve the workforce efficiency.

Two types of reports are available:

• Record report: Covers routing-specific KPIs of records that were processed by the unified routing system.
• Conversations report: Covers routing-specific KPIs for customer conversations.

You access these reports on the Ominchannel historical analysis tab on the Unified routing page in Dynamics 365 Customer Service:

Scenario: Coffee cancellation requests

To illustrate the usefulness of historical analysis, consider a scenario based on Contoso Coffee, which sells different types of coffee beans, including Arabica beans and Robusta beans. To manage customer queries, the company has created separate queues in their contact center for each type of coffee bean. In addition, they have outsourced business operations to a third-party vendor to handle order cancellations.

Alex, who supervises the Arabica beans queue, is getting complaints from agents that they are getting cancellation requests even though such requests should go to the vendor queue. Since the agents need to transfer these queries to the vendor-managed queue, they are wasting a lot of time. To investigate, Alex views the unified routing report.

This report shows that the overall transfer rate is more than 25%. Alex then selects the Arabica Beans (Record) queue, and it lists an even higher transfer rate that is way above the target of 10%. The bar chart in this report indicates that most transfers are going to the Cancellation/Refund queue.

Alex now moves to routing diagnostics to check on the details of a few work items in the queue that were transferred out. Alex verifies that many transferred work items were actually cancellation requests regarding Arabica beans. Since the routing configuration does not include rules to differentiate such cancellation queries from other Arabica queries, all these work items are coming to the Arabica queue (example highlighted below).

Alex raises this issue with the administrator, Alicia, and also provides the analysis. Alicia uses these details to quickly identify and mitigate the issue by introducing an additional rule.

Historical analytics for unified routing is helpful not just to gauge the health of an organization’s routing system, but it can also guide businesses on how to improve their routing strategies.

Next steps

To understand more about analytics and reporting for unified routing, and how to enable them for your organization, read more in the documentation:

• Historical analytics for unified routing in Customer Service
• Historical analytics for unified routing in Omnichannel for Customer Service

This blog post is part of a series of deep dives that will help you deploy and use unified routing at your organization. See other posts in the series to learn more.

The post Use analytics and reporting to improve routing of customer service requests appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

It’s one of the toughest challenges for organizations today: how to foster collaboration in a workplace that is more decentralized than ever, with people scattered across offices and locations.

Working together to move business forward is nothing new, but the way we collaborate is changing dramaticallyno longer confined to face-to-face time in a conference room or even a virtual web conference. The future of collaboration for all of us is about seamlessly switching between individual work and collaborative activities in the momentin context with the business application on the screen. That’s how information, ideas, and knowledge are shared in a natural way without breaking the flow of work. Everyone can collaborate as one business, everywhere.

In this blog series, we’ll explore blueprints to build a culture of collaboration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, with examples of how one organization has woven cross-team collaboration into its DNA.

Before we get started, we encourage you to register for our upcoming session at Microsoft Ignite, “Accelerate cross-organization collaboration with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365,” where we’ll announce and demonstrate new integrations between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. We’re unveiling a lot of new features in the 30-minute session, so be sure to tune in.

More than meetings: collaboration redefined

Before unrolling the blueprints, we need to set the stage with an updated look at how people collaborate in the workplace.

Collaboration needs no introduction. Many of us spend the day collaborating synchronouslylive, in real-timein-person or in online meetings, one-on-one or in groupswhere we plan, review, share, co-create content, brainstorm. All the familiar activities that have traditionally defined collaboration.

Real-time collaboration is just one way we work together. We also collaborate asynchronously, with ideas and interactions contributed over email or in response to a chat message as schedules permit, rather than in real-time.

Whether working together synchronously or asynchronously, collaboration should feel natural and seamless, without breaking your focus. That’s why the business applications you use need to integrate collaborative experiences nativelyso that any person or information you need is immediately available in the moment.

At Microsoft, we are prioritizing collaboration across the applications your organization uses every day, such as Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams. Collaborative apps ensure people engage and interact with each other naturally and spontaneously, in context with the task at hand. That’s the key to ensuring everyone achieves more together.

Introducing the blueprints for collaboration

Let’s take a closer look at one day in a typical organization with people scattered across headquarters, home offices, retail stores, and beyond.

A manufacturer of electric bicycles produces a growing line of brands sold online, in several flagship retail stores, and through dozens of retailers across North America. Many departments across the company rely on Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365including Microsoft Teams and Office applicationsto keep up with demand for the company’s product line. Together, these seamlessly integrated applications keep the business moving in high gear by breaking down all the silos in the business, between data sources, people, processes, and insights.

Marketing

The marketing team hosts monthly webinars for prospective retail partners that showcase product innovation and partner incentives. In the past, planning, hosting, and promoting the presentations was a time and resource-intensive effort for two marketing managers and a third-party production vendor.

Today, one marketing manager, Taylor, runs the entire show.

Taylor uses Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, and Dynamics 365 to produce, host, promote and engage attendees for each monthly webinar. At each step, he can pull in experts when needed right from within the application on the screen, without breaking the flow of the task at hand. The entire marketing team also has a clear view of engagements that the sales team is working on and can recommend or prioritize marketing tactics based on the sales stage for each engagement.

After the event, Taylor follows up with the event participants by sending personalized emails and orchestrating customer journeys using Dynamics 365 Marketing. For this marketing team, webinars aren’t just another marketing tacticthey are one of the best performing tactics to expand its retail footprint across North America. Dozens of qualified leads are delivered to the sales teama seamless hand-off between Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Sales that lets the sales team rapidly nurture, further qualify and convert opportunities to customers.

• Get steps to turn attendees into loyal customers with Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 Marketing
• Watcha video demonstration

Sales

The marketing webinars are a hit. Leads are flowing in; so many, in fact, that the sales team has been inundated, including opportunities ready for a proposal. It’s a good problem to have, but one that would traditionally lead to a push for quantity over quality.

With Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, the sales team doesn’t need to compromise on detailsfrom the proposed solution to pricingthat can make or break a deal. Right from within Dynamics 365, a sales manager can reach out to experts across the company and quickly get the guidance and information needed to create an unbeatable offer.

Joanna, a sales manager, gets started by browsing a prioritized list of opportunities in Dynamics 365 Sales. Since the marketing and sales teams both use Dynamics 365, they can access a single source of trutha unified record of leads and customers, at every stage of the journey, from the very first engagement to purchase, service, and renewals.

Joanna has been nurturing a warm lead, a prospective customer ready for a quote. With familiar Microsoft Teams capabilities natively integrated in Dynamics 365 Sales, it’s a breeze to find the right people and information needed to create a quote custom-fit for the prospect’s unique challenges and needs.

In our blueprint for team selling (below) Joanna can see who has been engaging with the prospect or working similar deals, as well as any subject matter experts who can offer insights into the prospect’s business or industry. People and related documents discussed on Teams chats and channels are visible right from the customer record within Dynamics 365 Sales.

As Joanna mobilizes the team, she can share the opportunity record in Dynamics 365 to anyone in the company within a Teams chat. Without leaving Teamsand without the need for Dynamics 365anyone on the organization’s Teams domain can directly view details in the shared recordfrom contact details to engagement history, purchases, account notes, and more. They can see the very latest context needed to provide Joanna with informed and relevant guidance.

With collaboration, sharing, and communication capabilities integrated into Dynamics 365, It no longer takes hours or days to hunt down the right people and information across email chains, meetings, and callscollaborative activities are brought to Joanna front and center in the application she depends on to move deals through the funnel.

Once she shares the quote with the customer, it’s just as easy to bring together her team of experts and the prospective customer on a Teams meetingagain, right from within Dynamics 365 Sales. Together, they walk the prospect through quotes and address any questions and concerns. Conversation intelligence transcribes the call and provides meaningful insights and analyzes content, sentiment, and behavioral stylesuch as competitors and keywords that the prospect mentions during the call. AI-guided live feedback and suggestions can help sellers adjust their sales pitch, as well as provide managers with a way to track team performance and provide valuable coaching to help boost customer satisfaction.

The result: an unbeatable proposal, insights to optimize future quotes and sales processes, and plenty of time in the week to convert more webinar attendees.

• Read more: Intelligence and collaboration converge in Dynamics 365 Sales
• Take a guided tour of more ways to activate digital selling with Dynamics 365

Up next: blueprints to elevate collaboration across retail and customer service

In the next installment, we’ll share blueprints to elevate collaboration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams on the customer frontlines, from retail storefronts to customer service. Until then, we invite you to explore the four essentials to collaborate as one business, everywhere and take a behind-the-scenes look at two companies reinventing how people collaborate across the organization.

The post A blueprint for cross-organization collaboration: marketing and sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.