A successful digital transformation requires weaving together technology, data, process, and operational change. If one of these domains fails to make the grade, your entire transformation may be in jeopardy.

These four domains have one thing in common and that is they rely on people and what they bring to the table. It’s the people that matter mostfrom formulating a vision to crafting the plan and adjusting it on the fly to calculating every detail many times over.   

When the stars align and each person on the team contributes to the best of their ability, success is exhilarating. Inter-related domains can be blended into one methodical sea of changeinvigorating not just the transformation team, but enveloping the entire organization with a sense of deep pride. The accomplishment is worn like a badge of honor as every employee is positively touched by the success of the transformation.

And there is no better example than G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers’.

G&J Pepsi is the largest family-owned and operated Pepsi franchise bottler, employing more than 1,600 people at 13 locations in Ohio and Kentucky, with production facilities in Lexington and Winchester, Kentucky, and in Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio.

The key to the success of this 10-time Pepsi corporate customer service award winner is G&J Pepsi’s continuous dedication to innovation. They set out to further elevate service delivery by focusing on account acquisition, customer service, and field service core processes. In short, G&J looked to unlock new and existing revenue opportunities by empowering workers and optimizing operations. As a result, G&J Pepsi is now converting more leads to satisfied customers, delivering even better customer service, and increasing field service technicians’ first-time fix rates.

1. Technology

G&J Pepsi needed a digital thread to connect business functions and leaned on Microsoft Dynamics 365 due to its hassle-free integration, allowing for application portfolio simplification and basically, it just played well to G&J Pepsi’s IT strengths.

One of the biggest new business opportunities for G&J Pepsi was its field service workforce to service beverage and non-beverage equipment beyond its current sales territory. Increasing first-time-fix service would allow G&J Pepsi to expand beyond their current market. Leveraging Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Sales would remove the boundaries that limited G&J Pepsi.

To realize revenue, frontline workers, including sales and field service needed to unify in the customer journey. G&J Pepsi also knew a huge opportunity existed to accelerate its end-to-end customer process. This included steps such as lead generation, new customer account creation, payment establishment, equipment preparation, installation scheduling, equipment installation, equipment servicing, equipment recovery, and every accompanying process. 

2. Data

What was key to creating a unified, optimized customer journey? Centralizing real-time data with a scalable solution. 

G&J Pepsi created a Customer Engagement Management (CEM) platform with Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Sales. The customer is central to everything the company does; however, its processes and supporting technology said otherwise.

Before CEM, a business development representative (BDR) would scan paper and digital notes, in SharePoint, Power BI, and other apps. There was no view into interactions that had taken place with the BDR, field service technician, or customer service rep. There was no single source of truth, no way to transfer knowledge, and no infrastructure for tracking leads. These inefficiencies cost G&J Pepsi $180,000 in revenue per month from lost sales.   

Data is now centralized in real-time, up-to-the-minute. Dynamics has streamlined communications and provided complete visibility and in doing so it has empowered G&J Pepsi to focus on new business. Previously, sales, field service, and leadership learned what was happening with customers in indirect, incomplete, time-lagging pathways. Now information is up-to-date and accessible by all who impact customers. 

3. Processes

Now that data is up-to-date, processes can be streamlined. The team has mapped out 150 processes and eliminated 200 problems prior to digitizing. How? By working directly with the eventual customers of the systemsales, field service, and frontline workers. One such effort eliminated 170,000 manual touchpoints annually. 

As an example, if a delivery team exchanged a piece of equipment mislabeled on a work order, the technician would have to return to the office to receive a corrected work order. Now, the equipment manager can look up the asset on the desktop, correct the mistake, and seconds later the delivery team has the correct information to complete the job.

Technicians are empowered to arrive at the right time (receive operating hours and suggested installation time from the BDR), on the right schedule (schedulers can review the technician’s other work to optimally schedule), the right way (integrated mapping functionality), and with the right equipment (obtained from the work order supplemented with account history.)

From the mobile app, technicians have all their pertinent information at their fingertipsservice tasks, customer details, product needs, and more. The result? Higher first-time-fix rates, opening the door to utilize field technicians’ time and expertise to create new revenue streams.

4. Operational changes

Now G&J Pepsi has automated some routine tasks, unburdening the employee from tedious operational tasks. Completing certain actions within Dynamics 365 triggers a Power Automate flow to kick off another process. For example, a piece of equipment is requested by a BDR for a new customer. Once the BDR puts in the request for equipment for a new customer, the creation of a new work order is triggered, which moves through equipment prep to scheduling a field technician for installation.  

The little things that used to cause big delays are now gone. The scheduling team utilizes capabilities to assign best resources to a work order and can now look across service locations instead of only selecting from a smaller subset of available technicians. Field service technicians use the mobile app’s built-in map and routing features to optimize travel time and status flags to indicate if they are on-site or traveling. With minimal development effort, G&J extended the mobile app to provide technicians the ability to generate service reports while at a customer site and instantly email.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Field Service

The positive results have impacted everyone who touches the customer. Improvements are across a wide range of sales, service, and overall company key measures. G&J Pepsi attributes this success to frontline workers and the team, who have made everyone’s ability to serve the customer exponentially better.

And the commitment to innovation continues. Team members are excited to explore Dynamics 365 Remote Assist’s mixed-reality capabilities to both grow their service business as well as build knowledge across existing and newer agents. G&J Pepsi’s first-time-fix use case explores technician access to real-time virtual visual expertise and the ability to increase on-site resolution.  

Read the complete G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers’ story.

Read more about Dynamics 365 Field Service.

The post 4 key elements to a successful field service transformation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In telecommunications, avoiding downtime is Job One. Planning, scheduling, and tracking maintenance operations that can reduce or avoid outages is critical. Plant operators need to have a quick, accurate picture of maintenance while maximizing efficiency.

Version 2.0 of Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator includes an extended data model and new sample applications to help you meet customer needs and realize time-to-value more quickly.

The first release of Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator provided place management and telecommunication sales capabilities for network and mobile operators, internet service providers, and others in telecommunications:

• The ability to tie services, products, and deployed plant and network resources to specific geocoded physical locations such as buildings or a campus
• Enhanced lead management with built-in service availability, qualification checks, and lookups for network resources, network mapping, and addresses
• A telecommunications extension for the Common Data Model, with telco-specific data entities and attributes for fast application development

Partners who work with the Microsoft Power Platform can extend the data model or sample applications.

Add support for maintenance types, plans, network resources, and zones

Version 2.0 of the Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator enhances the extended data model and adds sample applications. Plant operators can define maintenance types and plans, starting with supplied sample data for warranty, contractual, and compliance.

Operators can also define types of network resources, such as optical network units, antennas, and switches. They can also define network zones and service areas, tracking where they’re deployed, the accounts they serve, and the manufacturer. It’s all fully customizable and configurable out of the box with Dynamics 365.

Schedule maintenance plans and repeatable tasks

In the latest version of telecommunications accelerator, plant operators can easily schedule repeatable maintenance tasks. This not only streamlines operations, it also helps operators respond to audit and liability questions by tracking maintenance activities.

What our partners are saying

Rhyan J. Neble, Vice President of Product Innovation at ETI Software: 

Microsoft’s telecommunications accelerator not only makes it possible for ETI to introduce new features to our customers faster, it empowers our team to innovate and extend our solution. For example, the maintenance scheduling features will enable our digital twin solution to identify customers and service areas impacted by planned and unplanned plant maintenance. This will allow proactive notifications to both the customer service teams and the subscribers. By integrating version 2.0 of the telecommunications accelerator into ETI’s Service Management Platform, we are able to immediately provide critical functionality to our customers and reduce costs at the same time.

Joe McDermott, COO of Carma: 

Carma is continually impressed with the collaborative investments Microsoft is making in the Dynamics platform and we’re enthusiastically supporting development of the telecommunications accelerator. The version 2.0 release of the telecom accelerator delivers new functionality that we’ve integrated into Carma’s Network and Digital Infrastructure Platform for our existing and future customers. Planning and documenting preventative and other recurring maintenance is a key activity for datacenter and network operators striving for 100% uptime. With telecommunications accelerator’s plant maintenance features, Carma enables them to manage these activities with ease and visibility across the whole organization.

Next steps

• Get started right away with a test drive of version 2.0 of the Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator on Microsoft AppSource. The data model, solutions, sample applications and data, Power BI reports, and UX controls that come with the telecommunications accelerator are available to any Microsoft Power Platform developer.
• For supporting documentation and configuration information, visit the telecommunications accelerator overview documentation.

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With briefcases and suitcases in tow, business-to-business (B2B) sellers have always traveled the distance to meet buyers wherever they are. Buyers are going digital in a big way, so sellers can put away their bags (at least part of the time) and step into digital or hybrid selling. This dramatic shift in B2B buyingmore digital, more self-servicehas led to a steady decrease in the amount of time buyers spend with sellers. To adapt to this new omnichannel reality, sales teams are reinventing their go-to-market strategies.

B2B selling has truly changed much faster and more dramatically than anyone could have imagined. Buyers now use routinely use up to 10 different channelsup from just five in 2016.¹ A “rule of thirds” has emerged: buyers employ a roughly even mix of remote (e.g. videoconferencing and phone conversations), self-service (e.g. e-commerce and digital portals), and traditional sales (e.g. in-person meetings, trade-shows, conferences) at each stage of the sales process.¹ The rule of thirds is universal. It describes responses from B2B decision makers across all major industries, at all company sizes, in every country.

Although digital interactions, both remote and self-serve, are here to stay, in-person selling still plays an important role. Buyers aren’t ready to give up face-to-face visits entirely. Buyers view in-person interactions as a sign of how much a supplier values a relationship and can play an especially pivotal part in establishing or re-establishing a relationship. Today’s B2B organizations require a new set of digital-first solutions to navigate the complex and unfamiliar terrain. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can help.

Omnichannel presents new challenges

Increased opportunities to engage involve increased complexity. First, data ends up scattered across many different systems like customer relationship management (CRM), partner relationship management (PRM), e-commerce, web analytics, trials and demos, online chat, mobile, email, event management, and social networking. Assembling those pieces into a complete picture of a buyer or account is a complicated task that few B2B organizations and their existing systems can handle. Second, customer experiences are becoming increasingly fragmented as organizations struggle to maintain consistency from one touchpoint to the next. This issue is particularly acute for sellers when they don’t have critical context like previous interactions conducted on other channels such as content viewed, product trials initiated, online transactions, and product issues. Giving sellers visibility to the data is a start, but that would still require sellers to digest huge amounts of data to make sense of it all, hampering swift action.

But there are new possibilities

To deliver seamless omnichannel experiences, B2B organizations need a customer data platform (CDP) like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights that’s designed to maintain a persistent and unified view of the buyer across channels. The enterprise-grade CDP creates an adaptive profile of each buyer and account, so organizations can rapidly orchestrate cohesive experiences throughout the journey. Leading B2B organizations rely on unified data as a single source of truth as well as to unlock actionable insights that increase sales alignment and conversion, including account targeting, opportunity scoring, recommended products, dynamic pricing, and churn prevention. For example, sales teams can proactively prioritize accounts based on predictive scoring that takes into account firmographics and all past transactional data as well as behavioral insights like trial usage across all contacts at the account. Or a seller knows it’s the right time to engage since a buyer has just signaled high intent through website activities like viewing multiple pieces of content. Insights like these widen the gap between omnichannel sales leaders and the rest of the field.

The profiles and resulting analytics from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can be leveraged across every function and systemsincluding sales force automation (SFA), account-based management (ABM), and e-commerce platforms, so that every person and system that the buyer engages with has the context to provide proactive and personalized experiences at precisely the right moment. This flexible design enables sales organizations to stay agile and future-proof their data foundation even when new sales tools are inevitably added to the mix.

Importantly, sales organizations can ensure that consent is core to every engagement. Privacy and compliance are crucial when it comes to customer data. In this new privacy-first world, consent funnels are as important as purchase funnels. It’s no longer only about collecting and unifying data. When companies build targeted and personalized experiences, customer consent must be infused across all workflows that use customer data. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is designed from the ground up to be consent-enabled, allowing sales organizations to automatically honor customer consent and privacy, and build trust, across the entire journey.

A next-gen customer data platform can help

The next normal for B2B sales is here, and there’s no looking back. The buyer’s move to omnichannel isn’t as simple as shifting all transactions online. Omnichannel with e-commerce, videoconference, and face-to-face are all a necessary part of the buyer’s journey. What B2B buyers want is nuanced, and so are their views about the most effective way to engage. B2B organizations must continue to adapt to meet this new omnichannel reality. To learn how a CDP can help delight your customers while helping your sales team navigate omnichannel selling to lower the cost of selling, extend reach, and improve sales effectiveness, visit Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Sources:

1- “B2B sales: Omnichannel everywhere, every time”, McKinsey & Company, December 15, 2021.

The post Achieving successful B2B selling in the digital era appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Across industries, companies are finding practical ways to bridge physical reality and digital experiences using hands-free headsets and augmented reality solutions to inform decisions and action on insights produced by smart, connected solutions.

Mixed realitya set of technologies that superimposes digital data and images in the physical worldbrings new opportunities that have become instrumental to how we tap into unique real-world, human capabilities. This technology is becoming more widely used across organizations today and has proven to be transformative to task performance, learning and retention, and collaboration. In fact, the augmented and virtual reality market is expected to reach $372.1 billion by the end of 2022, and swell to $542.8 billion by the end of 2025 according to new data from the IDC.¹

Microsoft’s comprehensive ecosystem of mixed reality solutions such as Microsoft HoloLens 2, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides are helping organizations optimize operations, reduce downtime, accelerate onboarding and upskilling, and decrease costs with more precise, efficient hands-free work.

Microsoft HoloLens 2 and mixed reality solutions are driving material ROI across industries

Based on the Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) report, Microsoft HoloLens 2 is delivering 177 percent return on investment (ROI) and a net present value (NPV) of $7.6 million over three years with a payback of 13 months.² Customers across leading industries are realizing significant value from deploying mixed reality solutions in their most common, critical work scenarios.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies deploying Microsoft HoloLens 2 and mixed reality applications to train their workforces, accelerate employee proficiency, and build more agile factories. Using Microsoft mixed reality, Manufacturers reduced training time by 75 percent, at an average savings of $30 per labor hour.²

Common scenarios in which manufacturers benefit from mixed reality on Microsoft HoloLens 2:

1. Guided assembly and training: Empower employees to learn new skills and complex assembly tasks with holographic step-by-step instructions, no instructor necessary.  
2. Remote inspection and audits: Enable remote employees to solve business problems in real time, using 3D annotations to access, share, and bring critical information into view.
3. Connected field service: Connect field technicians with remote experts to collaborate seamlessly, heads-up and hands-free with content capture abilities, interactive annotations, and contextual data overlays.

“When you describe a problem, imagine that we are speaking different languages. When you explain it, someone on the other side may not understand precisely what’s happening, but when you show it in real time with the HoloLens, people understand.”Eaton Vehicle Group. Read more about the Eaton Vehicle Group customer story.

Education

Educators are turning to Microsoft HoloLens 2 and mixed reality applications to help students embrace a new way of learning. For example, education institutions reduced 520 annual hours of instruction per expert by 15 percent.²

Common scenarios in which educators benefit from mixed reality on Microsoft HoloLens 2:

1. Augmented teaching: Captivate students and bring education to life with impressionable, high-impact 3D visualization models that enable virtual collaboration and instruction.
2. Experiential learning: Enable educators to build an experience-based lesson plan, integrating textbook concepts into physical environments to create a simple “learn by doing” approach for studentshands-on and unmediated.
3. Scaled learning and research: Develop a scalable research collaboration model that improves efficiency of research, lab work, and medical training.

“We did a trial back with our medical students. The students that had been in the HoloLens lab scored 50 percent better compared to the rest of the med school class.”Case Western. Read more about the Case Western customer story.

Healthcare

Mixed reality is empowering providers, payors, and health science experts to reimagine healthcare by accelerating diagnoses, reducing time-to-care, and enabling personalization. Using Microsoft mixed reality, healthcare providers reduced average consumables by 80%, saving $4,000 per trainee.²

Common scenarios in which healthcare providers benefit from mixed reality on Microsoft HoloLens 2:

1. Holographic patient consultation: Enable healthcare providers to project 3D holographic visualizations of patients’ internal systems that provide procedural understandingbuilding confidence in upcoming procedures and/or treatments.
2. Remote expert consultation: Support remote consultation and enable medical staff to consult colleagues with heads-up and hands-free through an interactive collaborative experience from anywhere in the world.
3. Training simulations: Train medical staff with holographic step-by-step guidance without subject matter experts being physically present.

“Using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, doctors wearing HoloLens, can hold “hands-free” and “heads-up” Teams video calls with colleagues and experts anywhere in the world. They can receive advice, interacting with the caller and the patient at the same time, while medical notes and X-rays can also be placed alongside the call in the wearer’s field of view.”Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Read more about the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust customer story.

Architecture, engineering, and construction

With Mixed Reality, architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms are empowered to overcome design, modeling, collaboration, and building site challenges to enhance project quality, decision-making, improve productivity. For example, AEC firms have reduced rework by 75 percent, saving $44 per hour.²

Common scenarios in which AEC organizations benefit from mixed reality on Microsoft HoloLens 2:

1. Clash detection: Enable onsite workers to preemptively identify issues, detect clashes, and gain buy-in of onsite workers and key stakeholders with overlay designs on physical locations. This mitigates late-stage design changes that could result in rework, budget overrun, and project delays.
2. 3D plan and model demonstrations: Empower project leaders, designers, and engineers and improve customer service and sales with 3D demonstration and immersive visualizations.
3. Self-guided learning: Equip onsite workers to view task instructions, essential data, and model visualizations while in the flow of work, increasing speed, quality, and safety.           

“We use Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens 2 to work more effectively and share expertise at critical milestones. This not only saves us money but also helps us construct datacenters for our customers more quickly.”Microsoft. Read the full customer story.

The Forrester TEI study validates how mixed reality solutions on Microsoft HoloLens 2 are empowering enterprises across industries to achieve more. We believe these technologies have offered not only innovative results, but long-term and sustainable solutions for training, remote collaboration, inspections and audits, field service, and more.

Next steps

We look forward to continuing this blog series with a deep dive spotlight on each of these leading industries. In the meantime, learn more about mixed reality applications on Microsoft HoloLens 2 and get started today:

• Learn more about more about Microsoft HoloLens 2 and mixed reality capabilities.
• Learn more about business benefits and cost savings of mixed reality solutions, read the Total Economic Impact Of Mixed Reality Using Microsoft HoloLens 2 report.
• Request a Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality demo on Microsoft HoloLens 2. Book an appointment with our Microsoft Stores team today. Select ‘Other’ under Choose topic and reference HoloLens 2 demo in “What can we help with”.

Sources:

1. Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, IDC, 2022
2. The Total Economic Impact Of Mixed Reality Using Microsoft HoloLens 2 Report, Forrester, 2022

The post Microsoft HoloLens 2 and mixed reality bridge physical reality and digital experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.