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:

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.

Sources

1- eMarketer, 2022. Established brands will drive the vast majority of D2C ecommerce sales.

2- Forrester, 2021. Accelerate Sustainable Innovation With Platforms.

3- Forrester, 2021. The Digital Commerce Imperative. A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft.

The post 3 advantages of composable applications to empower supply chain network innovations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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.

• Dynamics 365 Sales Release Wave documentation
• Activate Digital Sales Selling video overview
• Digital selling capabilities in Dynamics 365 Enterprise documentation

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.

The post Dynamics 365 Sales release wave 1: Simplifying the things that matter appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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.

The post 3 ways to turn your field service operation into a revenue-generating machine appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.