Today, companies operate facilities and warehouses in multiple locations, across regions, and across time zones to meet consumer demand in the best way possible. Warehouses and manufacturing facilities are spread out to match global operations with shipping needs.

Therefore, any supply chain solution that supports warehouse and manufacturing facilities needs to provide a high level of resilience that delivers reliability, availability, and scale.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management meets these needs for your organization with cloud and edge scale units. Supply Chain Management is a tailored offering that helps businesses of all sizes build resilience.

The hybrid topology for Supply Chain Management using scale units became available for public preview in October 2020, and since then we have added numerous incremental enhancements to the platform and to the warehouse and manufacturing execution workloads for scale units. Now the scale unit platform with its first workload is generally available, and you can purchase the scale units add-in for Supply Chain Management environments in the cloud.

Warehouse execution workloads in cloud scale units generally available

The hybrid topology for Supply Chain Management includes the following elements:

• A platform for a distributed hybrid topology, which is composed of a hub environment in the cloud and subordinate cloud scale unit environments that perform dedicated workload execution and increase your supply chain resilience.
• The warehouse execution workload, which is the first distributed supply chain management workload in general availability.
• The Scale Unit Manager portal, which helps businesses to configure their distributed topology using scale units and workloads.

The first release of the warehouse execution workload provides support for inbound operations, outbound operations, and internal warehouse movement. It utilizes the concept of warehouse orders, which have been added to enable the system to transfer warehouse work to scale units. For more information about the workload capabilities now generally available with version 10.0.17 of Supply Chain Management, see Warehouse management workloads for cloud and edge scale units.

Hybrid topology enhancements available for preview

In addition to the features for scale units, there are several preview features for building hybrid topologies.

Warehouse execution workload capabilities

Version 10.0.19 of Supply Chain Management is now in early access. It provides enhancements for warehouse workloads that have been requested by our customers.

In version 10.0.19, warehouse workload capabilities reach into the shipping processes and are now able to confirm shipments, send advance shipping notices (ASNs), and generate bill of lading on the scale unit.

One of the top demands of our customers is the ability to create provisional packing slips on the scale units, which would provide full end-to-end resiliency for outbound warehouse processes. For most of the standard operations, this will allow you to ship right from the scale unit, even if there is no active connection to your cloud hub. This is great if you run an edge scale unit at a remote facility where the external network is not always available.

In future releases, we want to extend the process responsibility of the warehouse execution workload even more and include parts of the planning phase for outbound processes like shipment creation and ship consolidation.

Manufacturing execution workload

The manufacturing workload continues in preview. In version 10.0.19, now in early access, we are introducing interactive enhancements for our customers validating the capabilities in preview.

In version 10.0.19, the manufacturing workload gains access to inventory information, which means that inventory relevant to the facility workloads is now available on the scale unit. This adds support for putaway work following manufacturing work and lets workers report as finished on the scale unit.

Future iterative enhancements will move raw material picking to the scale unit and extend the use of scale units to support more types of manufacturing processes, such as when production orders are not converted into jobs.

Edge scale units

With the release of version 10.0.19 for early access, we have opened the ability to set up edge scale units on local business data (LBD) deployments. You can now set up LBD deployments on your local hardware appliance and configure the environment as a scale unit on the edge, connected to your cloud hub.

We have released a new version of the infrastructure scripts that are used in LBD deployments and support the specific requirements for edge scale units.

During the preview phase, you will use the deployment tools provided on GitHub to experience edge scale units in a deployment of one-box development environments.

Next steps

To learn more about the distributed hybrid topology for Supply Chain Management and how you can increase the resilience of your supply chain management implementation, check out the documentation.

The post Enable business resilience with cloud and edge scale units in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today marks the preview release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, a new application that enables organizations to consistently deliver on order promises by proactively overcoming disruptions. Now, your organization can intelligently orchestrate fulfillment and automate it with a rule-based system that leverages real-time inventory and AI.

In addition, you can adapt quickly to meet future order volumes and fulfillment complexities by supporting new order intake, fulfillment, and delivery partners with pre-built connectors. With support for the latest fulfillment methods, like curbside pickup and Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS), you can constantly evolve order fulfillment to meet shopper’s preferences.

Leverage out-of-the-box connectors to intelligently scale, orchestrate, and fulfill orders

Digital commerce has fueled consumer expectations for true omnichannel experiences, with greater choice, speed, and flexibility in how people buy and receive purchases.

To help you adapt your operations to constantly deliver exceptional experiences, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management offers the flexibility to integrate with existing order infrastructures, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and external partner systems through microservice architecture and API integrations. More than 200 configurable, pre-built connectors seamlessly connect you to the solutions you need for omnichannel order intake, cross-channel order fulfillment and delivery, and rule-based order orchestration actions.

Powerful connections

Intelligent Order Management is a standalone SaaS solution with no dependencies on other Dynamics 365 applications. It has an open, modular, and interoperable architecture, so your business can leverage an expansive ecosystem of order source systems such as online e-commerce marketplaces, mobile apps, and social commerce alongside traditional ordering channels such as electronic data interchange (EDI) or brick and mortar POS.

Many retailers, distributors, and manufacturers are working to overcome the challenges of adapting legacy order systems to new ways of operating. A significant benefit of Intelligent Order Management is that it enables business users to visually configure order intake from many of the most common sources by leveraging pre-built connectors in a low-code or no-code application, making rapid implementation and integration possible.

Order source and orchestration

While Intelligent Order Management seamlessly integrates with other Dynamics 365 business applications, it also integrates with applications that you may already use or that you plan to adopt as you transform your business processes. Intelligent Order Management can easily pass through B2C order flows from third-party applications such as BigCommerce with minimal validation at order capture and B2B order flows from EDI intake applications such as Orderful using context-driven validation actions, such as requiring a credit check before passing an order on to fulfillment.

Let’s now look at some of the processes within order source and orchestration.

Automated payments

Payment integration is also possible, allowing you to take credit card payments at order intake, finalize payment later based on fulfillment status, or trigger an invoice to be sent to a business application when routing orders from on-account sales. These types of event-driven actions can be incorporated by using the built-in orchestration designer, which allows users to drag and compose order flows using an intuitive design interface.

Dynamic pricing

Regardless of the source, once the order is accepted and received by Intelligent Order Management, additional rule-based validations can be orchestrated depending on your business’s specific needs. Utilizing pre-built connectors to leading applications such as Flintfox, advanced pricing, rebate, and commissions management can be accomplished quickly and efficiently.

“Intelligent Order Management is partnering with service providers like Flintfox to provide real-time, accurate, and dynamic pricing. Utilizing the Flintfox RMx Pricing solution, all orders, regardless of source, or fulfillment, will always receive the right price, thereby reducing disputes, credits, and administration pain caused by pricing mistakes. The combination of Flintfox RMx with its advanced but easy-to-use, Pricing and Promotion Management solution, and Intelligent Order Management will further enable centralized management of pricing across omni-channels, regardless of the ultimate order source system or device.”

Tax compliance

Another critical part of order management is tax determination and compliance. Intelligent Order Management gives you the ability to connect to third-party tax engines to automate the calculation of tax rates and rules based on geolocation and product classification, file and remit tax payments to jurisdictions, automatically omit tax from exempt sales and manage exception documentation. Because you can select from several pre-built partner connectors, Intelligent Order Management provides your business with the means to quickly scale order tax compliance at a global level for sales tax, value-added tax, seller’s use tax, lodging and occupancy tax, and consumer use tax.

“Businesses today are facing intense competitive pressures to quickly evolve into omnichannel organizations, and driving efficiency in their order management processes is a key factor for maintaining smooth operations and ultimately achieving success with digital commerce,” said Sanjay Parthasarathy, Chief Product Officer at Avalara. “We’re excited to work with Microsoft in an enhanced partnership to co-develop solutions for their Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management application, providing our mutual customers with an industry-leading solution that solves for automated, friction-free order orchestration in the march to omnichannel success.”

Fulfillment and delivery

Intelligent Order Management also helps you direct orders to the correct node in your supply chain by combining orchestrated order flows with inventory and fulfillment systems. Pre-built connectors allow you to quickly add a range of logistic strategies to employ when working to satisfy your customer’s demand. For example, if you don’t want to use the real-time inventory visibility capability within Intelligent Order Management, you can create order process flows that validate delivery dates through your own in-house inventory application or using a pre-built connector to check that items are available to promise before accepting any order.

Sourcing and allocation

If the item isn’t in stock, Intelligent Order Management allows you to incorporate sourcing rules as a means of providing a flexible framework to automate decision-making on how to fulfill an order using make or buy. Similarly, if stock is limited, you may also use allocation rules to automate decision-making on which orders will be filled or to ring-fence inventory for specific channels or business goals.

Supply chain management

Another pre-built connector to consider is Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management solution. Though Intelligent Order Management is a stand-alone solution that requires no additional Microsoft Dynamics 365 modules, there are several benefits to connecting to our Supply Chain Management Solution. The connection allows for deeper integration with both manufacturing, in the form of real-time production planning that allows for better synchronization of supply with order demand, and with distribution planning that utilizes an integrated warehouse management system.

Validation rules

Orders coming in from many different locations at scale may have inconsistent data due to limited validation in the source system. The use of condition-based rules, such as a minimum order quantity check, ensures that you accept only orders that comply with your requirements. After validation, Intelligent Order Management’s fulfillment optimization engine can evaluate the order for rules such as the least distance or least cost to find the best fulfillment node in your connected network.

Freight rating and returns

You can also use the platform’s extension capabilities to connect your existing freight rating systems into an order orchestration process. Additionally, Intelligent Order Management can handle reverse logistics so that you can incorporate decision logic into return order flows that will facilitate and automate return orders to stores, fulfillment nodes, or to a service center. And because Intelligent Order Management has no limits on the number of fulfillment nodes you can add, the application is suitable for organizations of all sizes.

Reference API

Intelligent Order Management is designed to be independent of the business applications you are using while also allowing you to easily share data with other business applications. Our reference architecture will enable you to build the needed connection points from order source and orchestrations through to fulfillment and delivery. If we do not have a pre-built partner connector to an application you want to use, we have a reference API that can be used to connect to the system you require.

Take the next step

Learn more about how you can optimize fulfillment by watching the on-demand video, “Intelligent fulfillment orchestration for optimized delivery”, from our recent Microsoft Business Applications Summit event and sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management. Join the community to engage with our experts on Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, and feel free to contact us at D365OMS@microsoft.com with questions or to learn more.

The post Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management Preview now available appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Customer service managers are constantly searching for more efficient ways to streamline management of incoming service requests, and the backbone of any customer service center operation is routing and assigning cases efficiently. Connecting customers to the agent most qualified to resolve their issue is a foundational element of improving customer satisfaction.

Organizations typically use queue-based routing, directing customers to the relevant queue to resolve their request. A work item rarely arrives in the queue with all the information required to route it to the best-suited agent, which can result in misroutes and longer response and resolution times. To address this, an organization must create custom logic to update work items or manually add classification data to incoming cases.

With traditional queue-based routing, assigning cases requires organizations to create custom workflows that periodically move work from queues to their agents. Or some organizations have dedicated staff who try to manually distribute work across their agents equally and fairly. Both approaches require continuous queue supervision. Tracking the lifecycle of a work item through the system, either in custom workflows or manual human decisions, is inefficient and error prone.

The unified routing capability in Dynamics 365 Customer Service transforms routing and assignment for your organization by leveraging rules and machine learning models to automatically find the best-suited agent for new work items, and then prioritizing and assigning the work to your agents based on skills, current workloads, the type of customer, priority, urgency, and more.

Unified routing is truly omnichannel. It can route service requests on all channels, ensuring that work items are handled consistently and giving you a unified view of workforce utilization across multiple channels. Most importantly, it lets you continue to serve your customers wherever their preferred channels happen to be.

Work classification and assignment

The unified routing capability reimagines the routing pipeline into two broad stages: classification and assignment. During the classification phase, organizations create rules and machine learning models to embellish incoming work items with details such as skills, issue severity, relevant support center location, and language. During the assignment phase, work items are prioritized and assigned to agents based on the nature of the work, stage of the customer journey, agent skills, and the current state of the agent workforce in terms of shift, availability, and workload.

For every work item that gets routed, the two stages are tracked in diagnostics, helping organizations minimize misroutes and achieve more efficient work distribution.

Six benefits of unified routing

1. Drive higher satisfaction by assigning customers to the appropriate agent.

One of the most common customer pain points is waiting for a long time to reach an agent, only to find out that the agent is unable to solve their issue, so they are transferred to a different agent. Unified routing evaluates the static characteristics of the workforce, such as skills and working hours, as well as the dynamic characteristics of real-time capacity, to assign incoming service requests from all channels to the best-suited agent. It achieves this goal by matching the aspects of incoming work (for example, answers to pre-chat questions, virtual agent interactions, customer journey context, or required skills) to the attributes of the agents (for example, their skills, proficiency, or location).

Read more about the assignment stage.

2. Achieve higher employee engagement with omnichannel work distribution.

Unified routing provides an automatic work distribution service, minimizing the need for constant queue supervision and manual work distribution. Agents today are expected to multitask (working with case records, email messages, chat, digital messages, or voice). Agents work on tasks and cases, respond to emails, engage with customers on chats and digital messages, and pick up phone calls. Unified routing provides real-time presence and enhanced capacity management for the work assigned to these “blended” agents on all channels. It ensures that the agents are not burdened with a workload beyond their capacity and working hours.

Read more about capacity management.

3. Boost contact center performance with skills-based routing.

Traditional queue-based routing solutions do not scale up to the needs of delivering personalized customer service for enterprises with diverse product lines and a global customer base. With skills-based routing, customer service managers can consolidate queues to minimize supervision. Work items are assigned to agents in the same queue based on their skills and proficiency. Connecting customers with agents who can solve specific issues boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty. Agents also benefit because they work on issues that they are skilled at resolving, and therefore they have higher engagement.

The efficiency of such a system depends upon how well the skills needed to fulfill the incoming service request are identified. With an intelligent skill finder, machine learning models identify the skills needed to fulfill incoming work items.

Read more about the intelligent skill finder and skills-based routing.

4. Attain higher service levels with work prioritization.

With unified routing, you can ensure that work is assigned in order of defined priorities. For example, you can author rules to prioritize service requests for premium customers.

Read more about work prioritization and how prioritization rulesets work.

5. Improve routing precision with multi-stage classification.

The customer of today interacts on multiple platforms. Service requests may originate from a social media post, a direct message, or an email. To ensure that the work is assigned to the most appropriate agent, work items must include the right details. Organizations can use unified routing to streamline the classification, such as identifying the incident category, calculating its severity and priority, identifying the best support center from the customer location, and identifying related records.

Read more about work classification rulesets.

6. Enhance operational efficiency with insights from unified routing diagnostics.

Unified routing provides detailed diagnostic traces for each work assignment. You can look at how a certain work item was classified, how it was routed to a certain queue, and how it was prioritized and assigned. You get insights into why certain work items are taking longer to assign or getting assigned incorrectly.

Read more about diagnostics for unified routing.

Next steps

With the 2021 release wave 1, take advantage of the benefits of unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Check out the system requirements and availability in your region. Also, read more in the documentation:

• Manage record routing, such as for cases, emails, or tasks, from Customer Service Hub, administration experience.
• Manage unified routing for all channels, including chat, digital messaging and records.
• If you’re already using Dynamics 365 Customer Service, use the unified routing migration application to migrate your messaging workstreams.

This post is the first in a series of deep dives that will help you implement and use unified routing at your organization. Check back frequently for updates.

The post Increase customer satisfaction and agent productivity with unified routing appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We have seen a breakthrough year for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Across industries and around the world, we’re seeing companies leveraging Dynamics 365 to create impact faster, break down barriers, adapt to a rapidly changing environment, and innovate across their business. Dynamics 365 continues to grow quickly, with 45 percent revenue growth in Q3.

And Microsoft Power Platform is becoming the next-generation business process automation and productivity suite for domain experts in all functions. Microsoft Power Platform is being used by nearly 16 million monthly active users, up 97 percent year over year, which highlights how anyone can automate a workflow, create an app, build a virtual agent, or analyze data. Just like Office revolutionized productivity gains for knowledge workers, Microsoft Power Platform will do the same for domain experts.

We’ve seen organizations demonstrate incredible agility in the face of rapid change, and we’ve seen how they can rise above to realize their full potential. But at the end of the day, organizations don’t rise to challenges people do. That’s why we’re investing heavily in the people who bring Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform to life for our customers.

Across our business, we’re looking for new team members who are passionate about enabling transformation for organizations in every industry and around the world. Visit our Business Applications careers site to learn how you can contribute to the transformation we’re seeing in the world today.

Rising to the challenge of a new reality

Over the past year, we have seen so many examples of agility, resilience, and innovation. At Microsoft Business Applications Summit earlier this month, we showcased a few of them along with new features and capabilities that are part of the 2021 release wave. Check out the event keynote, “Enabling innovation everywhere with Microsoft Business Applications”, for some highlights.

For example, beauty giant L’Oreal developed a new solution to install, upgrade, troubleshoot, and audit complex machinery even as global travel restrictions took effect, using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and HoloLens 2. Not only does this solution put experts in the room without physically needing them on-site, but it will help them meet their long-term goals around sustainability and reducing their carbon footprint.

In retail, Patagonia used Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams to stay connected with customers and deliver a seamless customer experience even as they closed retail stores, and later, introduced new curbside pickup options. And consumer goods company Campari is unifying their fragmented data landscape with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, allowing them to support end-to-end customer journeys across the organization, faster and smarter than ever.

We’re also seeing Microsoft Power Platform drive incredible results, with Walgreens Boots Alliance reducing in-store audit times by 75 percent by empowering frontline workers with Microsoft Teams and the Asset Protection mobile app, built with Power Apps. With Power Apps and the entire Microsoft Power Platform portfolio, Walgreens says they’ve reduced time to market for a new app by 50 to 80 percent putting useful solutions in the hands of employees quicker.

Be part of this growing business

We’re continuing to invest in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, with continual product innovation, new partner skilling and certification programs, a new Microsoft-empowered community experience, and of course, people.

The incredible momentum of this business means our team is growing, too. In markets around the world, we’re looking for people who want to make a difference and take their career to the next level by helping global organizations achieve their potential with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. If you’re interested in joining our team, we’re hiring across a wealth of disciplines, from engineering to technical sales, in markets across the globe. Visit our website to explore career opportunities in business applications.

The post Accelerating business transformation with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Identity authentication is a crucial part of any fraud protection and access management service. That is why Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection and Microsoft Azure Active Directory work well together to provide customers a comprehensive authentication seamless access experience. In this blog of our fraud trend series, we explore how proper authentication prevents fraud and loss before it happens by blocking unauthorized or illegitimate access to the information and services provided. Check out our previous blogs in this series where we explore fraud in the food service industry, holiday fraud, and account takeover.

While most places still have some degree of lockdown in place, people must rely on online services more than ever before, from streaming and ordering takeout to mobile banking and remote connection. Today users have to manage more accounts than ever before. Each of these online services can be compromised and their identity stolen. While total combined fraud losses climbed to $56 billion in 2020, identity fraud scams accounted for $43 billion of that cost, according to Business Wire. Businesses need to have a way of protecting their users even when their identity has been compromised.

A good identity and access management (IAM) protects users, a great IAM does it without being seen. Customers today already must deal with too many MFA, 2FA, CAPTCHA, and other hurdles to prove their identity. While these are important tools to differentiate humans from bots, they can also be a pain to deal with. That is why leading IAM companies are working to stay ahead of the competition by enabling inclusive security with Azure Active Directory and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

These capabilities will help you protect your users without burdening users

• Device fingerprinting. Our first line of defense, before users attempt an account creation or login event. Using device telemetry and attributes from online actions we can identify the device that is being used to a high degree of accuracy. This information includes hardware information, browser information, geographic information, and the Internet Protocol (IP) address.
• Risk assessment. Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection uses AI models to generate risk assessment scores for account creation and account login events. Merchants can apply this score in conjunction with the rules they’ve configured to approve, challenge, reject, or review these account creation and account login attempts based on custom business needs.
• Bot detection. An advanced adaptive artificial intelligence (AI) quickly generates a score that is mapped to the probability that a bot is initiating the event. This helps detect automated attempts to use compromised credentials or brute force DDOS attacks.
• Velocities. The frequency of events from a user or entity (such as a credit card) might indicate suspicious activity and potential fraud. For example, after fraudsters try a few individual orders, they often use a single credit card to quickly place many orders from a single IP address or device. They might also use many different credit cards to quickly place many orders. Velocity checks help you identify these types of event patterns. By defining velocities, you can watch incoming events for these types of patterns and use rules to define thresholds beyond which you want to treat the patterns as suspicious.
• External calls. External calls let you ingest data from APIs outside Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. This enables you to use your own or a partner’s authentication and verification service and use that data to make informed decisions in real time. For example, third-party address and phone verification services, or your own custom scoring models, might provide critical input that helps determine the risk level for some events.
• Azure Active Directory External Identities. Your customers can use their preferred social, enterprise, or local account identities to get single sign-on access to your services. Customize your user experience with your brand so that it blends seamlessly with your web and mobile applications. Explore common use cases for External Identities.
• Risk-based Authentication. Most users have a normal behavior that can be tracked. When they fall outside of this norm, it could be risky to allow them to successfully sign in. Instead, you may want to block that user or ask them to perform a multi-factor authentication. Azure Active Directory B2C risk-based authentication will only challenge login attempts that are over your risk threshold while allowing normal logins to proceed unhampered.

Next steps

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection and other capabilities including how purchase protection helps protect your revenue by improving the acceptance rate of e-commerce transactions and how loss prevention helps protect revenue by identifying anomalies on returns and discounts. Check out our e-book “Protecting Customers, Revenue, and Reputation from Online Fraud” for a more in-depth look at Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

The post Fraud trends part 4: balancing identity authentication with user experience appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.