If sales were simple, then every seller and every sales organization would be successful. But there’s more to it, especially in the current landscape.

We’re seeing a fundamental shift in the way customers want to engageinstead of relying only on direct contact with sellers, customers more frequently use digital channels to get answers to questions and even to make purchasing decisions. The seller is moving from guiding every step of the sales process to being a trusted advisor. To fill this role, sellers must regroup and look for other ways to make a difference to their customers.

One way is through understanding the complete 360-degree view of the customer. The seller is not limited to just information from their sales force automation system, but can use data and insights on customers from across the organization. A 360-degree view provides a way to maximize the limited time a seller has with a customer and to engage them in a personalized, relevant conversation for a greater chance of success. But sellers today are suffering with digital overload from disparate systems that draw focus and time away from their customer engagements. How do we help sellers focus on actions that accelerate revenue?

The cutting-edge AI and collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales take the 360-degree view of the customer and give sellers the power to focus on the highest priority activity that has the best chance of moving the opportunity forward. Sellers can learn from customer history, access information from external data sources, and get next best actions to takeall within one tool, all within the sellers’ control.

And now, four AI-powered and collaborative digital selling capabilities, previously available only to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium customers, are available for all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers. You can now use these capabilities in your current environment, with your data and in real sales calls, transforming how your sellers engage with customers.

Digital selling capabilities in action:

Sell more, sell faster, sell together

The AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales are a seller’s superpower. Sellers see, and can act on, suggested actions and collaborate with colleagues all within their flow of work. AI assists in that flow of work, identifying and suggesting actions, but the seller is in control on what to do next.

AI recommendations aren’t just in the context of working on an active deal. Sellers and managers can be proactive and drive successful deal closures with prioritized AI driven recommendations on at-risk or stalled deals. Sellers can see account relationships that are at risknot just customers with active deals.

We believe sellers will be more productive and close more deals with these digital selling tools assisted by AI. That is why we are enabling them for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers. We want sellers to be able to experience this new level of productivity and customer connection.

It’s easy to activate these features on your existing Dynamics 365 Sales product, just follow the in-app ‘Get started with digital sales’ guidance, complete with step-by-step videos.

Help sellers accelerate revenue in these four ways

1. Allow real-time call insights to drive better call outcomes. Conversation intelligence uses analytics and data science to help a seller be more efficient and productive. Calls are recorded and analyzed in real time with key insight and committed actions generated in the call conversation. We even programmatically generate meeting summaries to save time in capturing the outcome of a call.

2. Enable sellers to collaborate more effectively in the moments that matter. Sales is a team sport. Sellers need to access subject matter expertise in the context of a deal, collaborate with account teams across the globe, and share artifacts with customers throughout the sales lifecycle. With Microsoft 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 leads or opportunities, for convenient access for all participants.

3. Help sellers prioritize activities that will have the highest impact. The sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers to sell smartly by building a strong and prioritized pipeline, offering context, and surfacing automated recommendations throughout a sales sequence that helps to speed the sales process.

4. Help sellers focus on the leads and opportunities that are most likely to close. Predictive lead and opportunity scoring uses machine learning models to calculate a score for open leads and opportunities. The score is designed to help a seller prioritize their day and identify records which require immediate attention. With effective prioritization sellers should be able to quickly tackle the right leads and opportunities to increase conversion and close rates.

Conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and lead and opportunity scoring are available in limited capacity each month, with enough quantity to see the daily productivity difference. Customers who hit the monthly limits, or simply want to enable broader use of these benefits, can upgrade to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium. Note that Microsoft Teams chat is not limited in capacity and is available to all Sales Enterprise and Sales Premium customers.

Digital selling is here to stay

With conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and lead and opportunity scoring, sellers get best-in-class AI capabilities to remember the actions they have committed to, summarize meetings, and help prioritize their worklist. All of this helps your sellers to be more productive and save time by removing manual effort, spending more time selling.

I’m excited to share this update and encourage you to switch to these Dynamics 365 Sales Premium capabilities to take your business to the next level with best-in-class selling solutions.

Learn more

To learn more about these digital selling capabilities, click the links to these online documentation and video resources.

• Digital selling capabilities in Dynamics 365 Enterprise documentation
• Activate Digital Sales Selling video overview
• Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams website

If you’re not already a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, to learn more about how your organization can supercharge your digital sellers, visit the Dynamics 365 Sales webpage and sign up for a free trial.

The post 4 ways to accelerate revenue with Dynamics 365 Sales and AI appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The past year has cultivated many personal and professional changes. No person or industry has been untouched. Even field service has embraced seismic changes as a result of the ongoing global pandemic. For many field service organizations, being dispatched to the customer’s location to diagnose and resolve an issue became more complex than ever before. In response, a shift began within field service to less hands-on, more remote, and more dynamic and proactive service operations.

Yes, change is inevitable, and this transformative tidal wave of change within the field service arena has been for the betterfor the service organization, its personnel, and the customers it supports. It is with great pride I share with you our position as a Leader within the IDC MarketScape for the Worldwide Manufacturing Field Service Management Applications Vendor Assessment 2021-2022.

We believe this placement recognizes Microsoft’s continuous investment and authority across our service solution and cloud functionality.

Noted capabilities

IDC MarketScape objectively noted the strengths, challenges, and considerations of each vendor. For Microsoft, the IDC MarketScape noted one of our strengths as “The ability to deliver specific capabilities to support the market is critical to rapid adoption and ROI. Customer references also noted that Microsoft’s integration with other enterprise applications and technical capabilities of the application helped speed deployment and achieve value quickly.”

IDC MarketScape also noted “Microsoft’s primary challenge with regard to field service management is with regard to industry-specific innovations. Microsoft has established a culture of innovation around many of its products and highlights service-specific offerings, which demonstrate the future of field service collaboration and execution. However, manufacturers and some service organizations lag behind those in other industries, and companies like Microsoft will need to provide both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the risk aversion of the specific subvertical industry.” Fortunately, Microsoft caters to everyone from the intrepid to the risk-averse with both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the customer’s palatable level of risk.

The study advised “Manufacturers and service organizations should consider Microsoft when they are looking for an integrated field service product offering that can seamlessly integrate IoT data, remote collaboration, AI, and AR/mixed reality capabilities to enable more predictive and proactive service outcomes. The ability to collaborate in real time and have on-demand insights is transforming the way field service and support can be conducted. Microsoft is helping manufacturers that are on this journey around servitization and the convergence of AI, IoT, and AR in the field.”

And the transformation is occurring in real-time. Take for example, Burckhardt Compression, a global leader in manufacturing and servicing, headquartered in Switzerland. The company builds and services massive compressors weighing up to 240 tons, creating pressure three times higher than at the deepest point in the ocean. This high pressure transforms gas to a liquid state so it has less volume and is transported easier. If the compressor fails, the liquid turns back to gas and the build-up of pressure can be critical for the ship and the crew.

Because maintenance is so critical, Burckhardt Compression had to send a service engineer to wherever the compressor was locatedwhich was time-consuming, resource-intensive, and simply not scalable. To provide support at any location, Burckhardt Compression adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service for field service management and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, a mixed reality application. Now remote service engineers have access to real-time service data and can support the ship’s technicians by engaging in on-demand video chat, providing instruction augmented with a schematic overlay, and creating markups onscreen over the actual compressor. And a case is automatically created in Dynamics 365 Field Service when a call is initiated by Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and a recording of the repair work is saved.

Burckhardt Compression is serving customers faster by eliminating travel time and sharing expert knowledge across the globe in a matter of minutes increasing trust, safety, and business continuity. Now the company is looking to expand to add non-Burckhardt compressors to its service roster, thereby expanding its market presence and generating additional revenue. Burckhardt Compression is just one of many manufacturing and servicing organizations that have reaped value by deploying Dynamics 365 Field Service and harnessing its capabilities to build stronger, more collaborative, and proactive service delivery.

The bottom line

Many service organizations consist of dispatchers answering service calls, putting customers on hold, asking the same questions repeatedly, while searching for the next available technician to dispatch. This process is inefficient, costly, and unsatisfying to the customer.

The world of field service is changing. Today, service organizations are evolving into profit centers, redefining business models, and creating powerful and fulfilling customer experiencesall supported by leading edge solutions like Dynamics 365 Field Service.

We’re excited to be positioned as an IDC MarketScape Leader and are committed to bringing you the best and most featured field service application available. Depend on the multidimensional capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service to help you better personalize customer engagements, improve employee effectiveness, and optimize service operations now and tomorrow.

This is where innovation meets what’s possible.

Read the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Manufacturing Field Service Management Applications 2021-2022 Vendor Assessment excerpt.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Field Service.

The post Microsoft is named a Leader for Field Service Management appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In sales, planning is everything. Without a plan, a sales rep might give up too easily on a prospect or appear too aggressive. A potential customer might forget about a proposal or become annoyed by too-frequent contacts. Creating a step-by-step plan for how to follow up with prospects in each stage of the sales process is the basis for a sales cadence. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales tools help you create, manage, and scale customized sales cadences across your organization.

The top salespeople have a well-crafted plan to get their desired results, whether they are demonstrating a product or following up with leads. A successful plan, or sales cadence, involves knowing where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey and understanding how to reach them the right way, with the right message, at the right time to move them to the next step.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

A modern proverb

In this post, you’ll learn:

• What a sales cadence is
• What to consider when designing a sales cadence
• What an effective sales cadence looks like
• How Dynamics 365 Sales can help you build a sales cadence

What is a sales cadence?

A sales cadence is a detailed plan to connect with prospects and close deals. A sales cadence includes a prescribed sequence of activities, like reaching out on LinkedIn, sending emails, making calls, sharing case studies, arranging meetings, and sending text messages, which happen at specified intervals.

An effective sales cadence improves the efficiency of sales reps. A sales cadence guides sellers on which prospects to connect with, what communication channel to use, and what information to share at each touchpoint. This structured approach reduces guesswork and aims to grow the sales pipeline and conversion rate.

Managers create a sales cadence to guide sales reps in handling different types of prospects and sales scenarios. For example, one cadence could be used for inbound inquiry leads, and another cadence could be used for upcoming renewals.

As organizations mature, they can evolve their cadences to adapt to specific geographies, industries, companies, languages, and other parameters.

A strong sales cadence library also helps you scale your sales organization. Automated sales cadences ease the onboarding process for sellers as you grow, building in best practices and sequencing their activities.

How to design a sales cadence

When you design your sales cadences, consider these five elements:

• Prospects: It all starts with knowing your potential customers. What challenges or obstacles do they have? Why are they looking for a solution? What platforms do they use? What constraints do they contend with? What are their skills? Who is the decision maker?
• Communication channel:Reach out to prospects using the right channel, such as email, a phone call, messaging apps, or LinkedIn.
• Wait time: Consider a strategic delay between subsequent steps. You don’t want to be too soon or too late in your follow-ups.
• Attempts: Understand the optimal number of touchpoints to establish contact and build a relationship.
• Messaging:Use the right messaging, content, tone, and personalization to engage with prospects.

It’s important to note that creating an effective plan is not a one-time process. It takes time and iteration to fine-tune your sales cadences.

Example: A sales cadence for inbound inquiries

Here’s an example of a sales cadence for responding to inbound inquiries.

• Target: Leads that have reached out through your website or other channels.
• Purpose: Focus on and respond to high-priority inquiries to improve your conversion rate.
• Description: By responding immediately and through multiple channels, you are more likely to achieve a higher conversion rate. Since responding within the first hour increases your chance to close the deal by seven times, start with an automated email response, then follow up with a phone call. Connect on a social platform like LinkedIn. Finally, send an email that provides relevant information about your product or services.

Create a sales cadence with sequence designer

The sales accelerator capability in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers spend less time searching for the best next customer to reach out to. Design and build your sales cadences in the sequence designer. Sales accelerator gathers information from multiple sources to build a strong and prioritized pipeline, offers context, and surfaces recommendations throughout each step in the sequence, speeding the sales process.

To create a sequence, you go to the Sales Insights settings area and open the Sequences page. For more details, check out the documentation: Create and activate a sequence.

You can use the sequence designer to configure sequences of activities for specific prospects, leads, opportunities, contacts, and so on, applying different strategies depending on priority. For example, leads of lower priority might have more automated email steps, whereas leads from your targeted accounts might have more personalized touchpoints.

As in the example sales cadence shown earlier, sequences can include multiple activities, with wait times between activities as needed. You can branch activities based on the response, such as if an email is opened or a reply is received. Using sales accelerator’s tight integration with LinkedIn, you can even send LinkedIn InMail or create a connect request as part of your sales cadence.

Next steps

A good sales cadence is a necessary to improve seller productivity, increase conversion rates, and close more deals. As we adjust to virtual ways of working, digitizing sales becomes a priority for most organizations. To get started, use sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales to set up a sales cadence for the most common scenarios faced by the sales team.

To start building your own sequences in Dynamics 365 Sales, visit the documentation: Manage sequences. If you use a custom app, also refer to this section of the FAQ page for sales accelerator: How to add work list site map to your custom app.

Access to sales accelerator has now been made easier: new and existing customers using Dynamics 365 Sales (excluding Dynamics 365 Sales Professional) will now see sales accelerator and sequences available for quick setup. Read the documentation to learn more about setting up digital selling capabilities.

The post Improve seller productivity with a sales cadence appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Delays, constraints, and disruptions are frequent challenges for global supply chains. And they are costly. According to Gartner 70 percent of supply chain leaders report that they have been constantly responding to disruptions since 2019.¹ Supply chain professionals have long understood that the earlier potential disruptions and constraints are identified, the more successful the measures to adapt and overcome them can be. So, the question becomes, how do we identify disruptions and constraints at the earliest possible opportunity? The answer is real-time, end-to-end visibility across the supply chain, which is precisely what supply chain control towers provide.

While the benefits of supply chain control towers are easily understood, many organizations continue to struggle to make control towers a reality. The composable approach of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is changing this situation however, and providing organizations a path to rapid deployment of supply chain control towers. This article explains the composable approach and why it is an essential ingredient for success in supply chain control tower initiatives.

Learn more in our on-demand webinar: How to rapidly deploy a supply chain control tower with a composable approach.

The future leans towards composable solutions

The future of business applications is composable. We can see this in reports from analyst firms such as Gartner, who predict that “by 2023 organizations, that have adopted a composable approach will outpace their competition by 80 percent.”² But, what is a composable approach? Before we delve into the composable approach and what makes it different, let’s briefly explore the evolution of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions as this will help us understand why composability is key to achieving end-to-end visibility.

The challenge of achieving end-to-end visibility

In the past, ERP systems were sold as one massive application. This meant that they were expensive and difficult to change. As these applications matured, vendors looked for ways to give customers greater flexibility. To provide this flexibility, business functions, like sales and supply chain, were increasingly offered as modular components such as customer relationships management (CRM) systems, warehouse management systems (WMS), transportation management systems (TMS), and supply chain management (SCM) systems. While modularity did provide flexibility, the flexibility itself created other problems, as we discuss next.

The main issue is that once business functions could select the components that best suited their needs, such as CRM or WMS, replacement and implementation of these systems often took place at different times, and systems were often from different vendors. Also, due to the possible differences in maturity levels and solution architectures of these disparate systems, they required time-consuming and expensive custom development to achieve end-to-end integration across the enterprise. And after integration, end-to-end performance was often plagued by latency, synchronization, and data unification issues. This is the situation where many companies find themselves today and it is the primary reason that achieving real-time end-to-end visibility of the supply chain has been so elusive.

Microservices are composable

Technology vendors began offering business solutions assembled application experiences built on microservices architectures in the continuing drive to improve customer applications. Whereas in the past, a specific business function, like warehouse or sales, would select the right system for their needs, such as CRM or WMS, businesses can now choose solutions tailored to individual workloads. For example, a simple order management workload could be composed by bringing together order orchestration, fulfillment, and inventory.

These microservices, such as real-time inventory and fulfillment, not only provide greater flexibility, but because they easily connect to other microservice applications and utilize API-driven messaging, data and actions can be pulled and pushed between different systemsdecreasing latency, improving synchronization, and enabling real-time end-to-end visibility in the process. This is why a composable approach makes the rapid deployment of a supply chain control tower possible.

Our vision

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80 percent of companies will suffer significant value loss due to failure to merge their digital supply twin and control tower initiatives.³ We agree. And, our solutions help companies avoid this outcome by providing a composable approach that makes merging these initiatives possible.

At Microsoft, we see supply chain control towers as a shared service process that can be composed from a mix of supply chain workloads. For example, a supply chain control tower and digital twin can be built using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights^preview together with Microsoft Power Platform, and our growing digital supply chain applications ecosystem.

Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is often a great place to start when building a supply chain control tower in a retail, distribution, or direct-to-consumer (DTC) manufacturing business. This is because Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is built on a microservice architecture that includes rules-based order orchestration and fulfillment, real-time inventory, and AI. As such, it is step-forward to the composable approach that allows companies to achieve the real-time end-to-end visibility of a supply chain control tower. The composability of the solution also means that organizations can get up running quickly and maximize the benefit of existing investments through easy integration with existing legacy ERP systems.

What’s next

Supply chain control towers that include Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management positions organizations to respond faster and more intelligently to disruptions and opportunities. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management works seamlessly with any ERP and CRM system. It is also a stand-alone application that allows customers to start their control tower initiative without dependencies on other Dynamics 365 solutions. It integrates seamlessly with many market-leading API-enabled applications, using our out-of-the-box pre-built connectors to order intake sources, tax calculation, and third-party logistics partners ecosystem. Moreover, it automates and optimizes fulfillment using AI and real-time omnichannel inventory data. Supply chain and commerce professionals can proactively overcome disruptions through quickly order flows reconfigurations with drag and drop actions in a low-code/no-code interface. And by enabling them with all these capabilities, help them accelerate their order management digital transformation and turn order fulfillment into a competitive advantage.

Learn more in the on-demand webinar: How to rapidly deploy a supply chain control Tower with a Composable Approach.

Sources:

1. Gartner, Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Strategy 2021, September 14, 2021.
2. Gartner, Composable Commerce Must Be Adopted for the Future of Applications, June 18, 2020.
3. Gartner, Predicts 2022: Supply Chain Technology, November 17, 2021.

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

The post Dynamics 365 composable approach enables rapid deployment of a supply chain control tower appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

An accurate view of your inventory is key to many decisions that you make as a company, but it is more and more challenging to get timely, correct data drawn from storage locations, sales channels, and a variety of source data systems. Visibility into your inventory is the basis for replenishment decisions, your fulfillment strategy, and even the financial status of the company, yet nearly every activity related to your supply chain can affect inventory at some point.

One of the goals of inventory management is to maintain a flexible stock level and good turnover ratio, but disruptive situations in the supply chain, coupled with delayed or inaccurate data, make forecasting a nightmare.

Perhaps this is why supply chain professionals overwhelmingly plan to invest in agility and resiliency for their supply chains. A 2021 Gartner study about “responding to a disrupted world” found that 89% want to make their supply chains more agile and 87% want more resiliency.

To address these concerns, Microsoft now offers the Inventory Visibility Add-in as part of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Solution to inventory pain points

The Inventory Visibility Add-in can help you transform your supply chain by tackling your inventory pain points. Inventory Visibility is a highly scalable microservice that can be enabled as an add-in to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and integrate with data sources from Microsoft or third-party logistics providers (3PL). It enables real-time global inventory visibility without the need to do a full-fledged enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation.

High-volume retailers and manufacturers can easily handle millions of transactions per minute and accurately determine cross-channel inventory.

Inventory currency enables a faster response

For most businesses, it is essential to make decisions based on current, accurate data. Tracking inventory is especially important. Changes in inventory might suggest an understock or overstock situation that demands a fast reaction. Inventory Visibility lets you explore the immediate physical status of inventory, including a status of in-transit, on hand, ordered, or a custom status. This allows the organization to adjust production or sales plans in time.

The following shows an Inventory Visibility dashboard with on-hand inventory as well as the supply, demand, and reserved inventory statuses.

Scaling to support resiliency

One way to increase resiliency in your supply chain is to adopt multiple sales channels and storage locations. The combination of online, call center, and in-store sales channels helps companies maximize sales opportunities. Setting up more storage locations, including ones closer to local markets, can better support shipping and fulfillment, especially when disruptions occur.

But companies also find that those new sales channels and expanded storage locations can have different systems, making it difficult to consolidate data for real-time information about stock level and supply and demand. Having that information is crucial to support business operations. Inventory Visibility was designed for this scenario; it is capable of handling millions of transactions across different channels and geographies in seconds.

Another strategy that supply chain executives pursue to gain resiliency is to diversify their vendor sourcing. We have heard from more customers who would like to have a view into their vendors’ inventory. This can support the sell-through or direct sales scenarios or provide better insight about potentially accessible inventory. Such companies want to integrate with the inventory systems of their vendors, and this use case is also supported by Inventory Visibility.

One of our customers, a beverage giant, uses Inventory Visibility to calculate in real time the consumption of the bill of materials (BOM) for every unit of their beverage sold in every store. This supports better planning and accurate cost calculations. Previously, the customer used a time-consuming, manual process to consolidate data from several thousand stores and across regions. Now, all inventory changes can be reflected in less than a minute, with a batch job that pushes data to Inventory Visibility every minute. We are also helping this customer to establish a direct connection between their point-of-sales (POS) systems and Inventory Visibility, which will provide a data sync within seconds.

Next steps

If your organization is on the journey to transition from siloed systems to a unified and transparent inventory platform, consider taking the next step with Inventory Visibility.

• Existing Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers can enable Inventory Visibility as a free add-in by simply following the installation instructions. Reach out to the Inventory Visibility product team by email for any installation issues.
• Get an overview of the Inventory Visibility Add-in by reading the documentation.
• If you are a potential customer or partner and want to learn more, contact the Inventory Visibility product team directly by email.
• Interested in the bigger picture? Read this blog post about how Dynamics 365 helps build the retail supply chain of the future.

The post Gain visibility into your inventory to improve supply chain resiliency appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.