In today’s modern sales environment a trend is surfacing among B2B sellers and buyers: the desire for more authentic, personalized relationships. But despite the desire for personalized relationships, purchasing involves more people than ever, and successful sales require sellers to navigate an increasingly large group of stakeholders.

While increasingly large groups of stakeholders may create complexity in relationship building, it also opens the door to uncovering additional customer needs. If your organization is equipped with the tools needed to successfully implement a customer-centric perspective, you can turn complexity into opportunity, and not only build trusted relationships with your customers but also uncover the insights needed to turn relationships into revenue.

C.H. Robinson improves visibility into customer needs with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Global logistics company C.H. Robison is no stranger to solving complex problems for their more than 119,000 customers. When they needed a better way to capture customer needs and catalog them centrally, they turned to Microsoft.

C.H. Robinson empowered their organization to dive deeper into uncovering what their customers need and better articulate all that they can do for their customers by deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Power Apps, and Microsoft Power BI. C.H. Robison realized the benefits at a rapid pace, and achieved full ROI in 11 months, a full six months ahead of the projected schedule.

With Dynamics 365, C.H. Robinson implemented a digital transformation that resulted in 5 key takeaways:

1. Increased focus on the customer and potential opportunities: C.H. Robinson utilized Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Apps to create a canvas app that could streamline the capture of detailed customer data. Salespeople can use Dynamics 365 Sales to fluidly input and access detailed customer data at any point while talking to customers, which helps salespeople maintain focus on the customer and opportunity.
2. Immediate visibility into unmet customer needs: Just as important as solving surfaced problems is not missing the chance to solve for additional unmet needs. Using a Power BI dashboard embedded in Dynamics 365, C.H. Robinson’s salespeople and account managers can more efficiently identify opportunities and plan out the next actions to take to meet customer needs.
3. Full deployment in six months, training included: Over the course of three “go lives” beginning in June 2019, Dynamics 365 Sales was deployed to 3,000 people at C.H. Robinson, 90 percent of whom use it at least once a month. PowerObjects, an HCL Technologies company and a Microsoft Partner Network member with Gold competencies, facilitated the rollout with a series of “leadership change workshops” and training sessions, ensuring everyone understood the “why” in addition to the “what” and “how.”
4. A foundation for further business transformation: As just the first phase of all-up digital transformation, C.H. Robinson now has insights into Microsoft features, functionality, and technology that can expand their innovation and outcomes. James Santy, Vice President of Sales Operations at C.H. Robinson, notes that, “Throughout our journey, Microsoft has been by our side every step of the way. Based on our tremendous success to date, we’re eager to consider other business applications from Microsoft.”
5. A centralized, 360-degree view of each customer: The deployment of Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform has resulted in C.H. Robinson creating and capturing 14,000 individuals sales opportunities in the first six months, and an increase in the quality of data by 89 percent. They owe it all to the centralized repository of accurate and trusted data within Dynamics 365 Sales that can be used to identify, prioritize, and close opportunities.

In addition to opportunities, ROI, and data quality, C.H. Robinson is seeing another key metric increase: customer happiness.

“We embarked on our digital transformation because our customers were giving us feedback that they needed us to help them in new ways … we still have work to do, but today, with Dynamics 365, we now have the foundation we need to get there.”James Santy, Vice President of Sales Operations, C.H. Robinson

Learn more

Read the full story to learn how C.H. Robinson gained actionable insights into their customers’ needs.

Watch a demo or take a guided tour to see how Dynamics 365 Sales can empower your sellers with actionable insights.

The post 5 takeaways how a company turned needs into opportunities appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Even before the pandemic, organizations across industries, from manufacturing to retailers, felt the squeeze to modernize supply chain operations. The historic supply chain shock of 2020 has accelerated the need to both respond to immediate disruptions while building resilience into every layer of the supply chain.

In the past, rapidly overhauling a supply chain operation has been no easy feat. Today, cloud solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management are dramatically shortening the time and effort to get up and running on a modern, intelligent cloud-based solutionreducing a once-massive months long effort to just weeks.

Let’s look at three organizations that transformed supply chain operations in a remarkably short time, while building in a level of resilience that provides the agility to weather any future disruption.

Wahl Clipper Corporation

In 1911, Leo J. Wahl invented the first practical electric hair clipper. One hundred years later, the Wahl family is carrying forward the tradition of innovation and superior service with 3,000 associates and a partner network that distributes product in virtually every country worldwide.

With different on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems across global locations, the team faced increasing challenges managing the complexities of a global supply chain. “The system we’ve been using for the last 30 years: we’ve outgrown it. It can’t keep up with the changing business needs that we have,” explained Brian Wahl, CEO. Among the culprits of inefficiencydata inconsistencies across offices. “Our data wasn’t rationalized,” according to John Payton, Director of Information Technology. “It didn’t mean the same thing in each country or in each ERP system.”

By migrating to a single cloud platform, Wahl is able to execute uniformly across global resources instead of operating as individual units tied to disparate systems.

“We can already see that Dynamics 365, along with Office, is allowing us to process information, to move information to people much more quickly in a way that they can understand, absorb and make decisions on almost immediately. So we really appreciate the integration of those products along with the balance of Microsoft’s vision around the modern workplace, of having other tools available to us like Power BI and Power Apps, and we can bring solutions to the business in hours that used to take us days or weeks previously.”Brian Wahl, CEO

Takeaway

Fractured point solutions and siloed, disparate data sources can be a major source of inefficiency as organizations scale supply chain operations in the digital age. By migrating on-premises and legacy solutions to Microsoft Dynamics 365, Wahl Clipper Corporation broke down technological barriers to deliver a universally agile, collaborative and insight-driven way of doing business across global operations. Harmonized data available across point solutions, including Microsoft Office, enables faster decision making and opportunities to collaborate and share information more freely. And access to Microsoft Power Platform drives the speed and agility to solve challenges more effectively by enabling those closest to problems to solve them.

Read additional details on how this hair clipper manufacturer migrated to the cloud to adapt to growing business needs and innovations.

The JB Hi-Fi Group

Fulfilling bulky commercial goods can be trickya logistical puzzle that requires an efficient warehousing, inventory management, and fulfillment that can keep product moving. For JB Hi-Fi, a modern warehouse management system is essential to fulfill an extensive range of consumer electronics, appliances, and home entertainment products across 300 JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys retail locations in Australia and New Zealand.

JB Hi-Fi needed a new warehouse management system to boost the efficiency of inventory flow, management of back-of-house processes such as goods storage, and route to market for big and bulky goods. The modern system needed to ensure data transparency across the organization, as well as seamlessly coordinate logistics across two retailers, each with unique point of sale systems and unique stock codes.

Thanks to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, JB Hi-Fi not only found an intelligent solution that met all the Group’s needs but was able to deploy the solution for warehouse management in Sydney in just four months.

“It’s definitely an accelerated timeframe for this type of project, but it is actually quite achievable with a modern tech stackthe fact that the core environment is cloud based, software as a service. You can integrate quickly to Azure.”Simon Page, Technology Director

In addition to a faster time to value, Dynamics 365 provided the agility to seamlessly integrate with JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys host systemssolving the logistical challenge posed by two separate systems for each retailer.

“One of the things we had to do is focus on the end process that the customer experiences. All the stages that an order flows through and a delivery flows through, right from where the sales person is having a conversation through to getting it to your door, that process needed to be harmonized for both brands. We’ve effectively managed to do that by creating this group model, which then translates back into statuses that the host systems understand without having to rewrite all the host systems.”Simon Page, Technology Director

Takeaway

With Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management in place as the warehouse management foundations, JB Hi-Fi Group can focus all its efforts to ensure bulky goods are warehoused, picked, dispatched, and delivered safely, efficiently, and fastand in the process ensure it remains at the forefront of modern retail. The move has also made the business more resilient to disruptions, including COVID-19. The Group has been able to support a shift in how people shopped during lockdown, while seamlessly delivering from warehouses and stores.

Read additional details how JB Hi-Fi accelerates efficiency and customer experiences in the transformation to cloud native warehouse management.

Invitalia

Invitalia coordinates economic development in Italy. When COVID-19 spread to Italy, the agency took on additional responsibility for coordinating the acquisition and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), medicines, medical devices, and other supplies from international suppliers. Invitalia took over the program at a critical time: international buyers were chasing a limited supply of equipment. Adding to the complexity, each hospital in Italy ordered medical supplies in a decentralized, unstructured way, causing procurement delays and frequent partial or missing orders.

In need of a logistics platform capable of simplifying the complex process of purchasing and distributing PPE and COVID-19 supplies, Invitalia rapidly deployed Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Microsoft Services and Agic Technology, a Microsoft Gold Partner, helped them set up a system for managing hundreds of international suppliers and transporting equipment to hospitals injust two weeks.

Takeaway

Invitalia was able to achieve remarkable time to value with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, providing a centralized solution that helps the agency assess medical needs across the country and then quickly provision and distribute critical medical equipment. They’ve also adopted a platform that delivers the agility to easily extend across other departments and uses.

“It will be straight forward to expand our use of Dynamics 365 into other areas of public administration. It connects easily with other Microsoft products, giving us the opportunity to create end-to-end solutions for enterprise resource planning.”Fabrizio Bellezza, Chief Information Officer

Read additional details how Invitalia streamlines procurement and distribution of vital medical supplies with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Build resiliency into your supply chain

These three stories bring to life how modern, cloud-based intelligent solutions can deliver versatility, scalability, and rapid time to value, even during a globally-disruptive events. We’ll share more stories from the supply chain frontlines in the next few weeks. Until then, learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, see what’s new and planned in the next few months, learn how to build resilience with an agile supply chain, and contact us to today to see a demo or start a free trial.

The post 3 unique success stories—building resilience into the supply chain appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s digital economy, delivering an exceptional customer experience across every touchpoint has quickly become a competitive differentiator. Most organizations realize if they hope to remain successful they must effectively leverage the vast amounts of data available to them in order to support the personalized engagement that customers expect. According to McKinsey, organizations that harness customer data for insights can achieve revenue gains of 5 to 10 percent and reduce costs by 15 to 25 percent within two or three years. Yet, with the numerous applications and systems organizations use across multiple lines of business, it can be challenging enough to unify all of this data to gain a single source of truth and insights, let alone make those insights actionable.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a customer data platform (CDP) built to help organizations do just that. Connecting seamlessly to systems of engagement across lines of business and vendors, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offers data activation on your own termsadding value and complementing your existing investments. Moreover, it allows data to flow both waysfirst ingesting and interpreting all of the data from your various systems, applying artificial intelligence (AI) to derive insights, and then activating those insights directly to the line of business applications that enable action.

Data ingestion and unification

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights reduces the time it takes to collect data from all your business applications, vendors, and engagement sources. Pre-built connectors simplify the process of pulling in data from first- and third-party data sources such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Salesforce, and SAP. The engagement insights (preview) capability in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights captures signals from websites, mobile apps, and connected products. Once the data is ingested, it’s a three-step process to map, match, and merge the data into a single, unified view of every customer.

Activation across lines of business and systems of engagement

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps your organization surface insights directly within the applications and systems your organization uses every day to enable action across all lines of business. Export the unified profiles, measures, or segments to the applications relevant to your business. Provide your marketing team with the customer segments for targeted lead generation, enable sales team with cross-sell and upsell recommendations, and empower customer service to provide pro-active omnichannel support. A rich collection of APIs allows you to connect Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to third-party solutions or your own applications, like CRMs, email automation tools, social media platforms, POS, ERP, and more.

Adapt and extend

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights connects the data within your organization, but it can also scale and support your resources on demand. Pre-built connectors to Microsoft Power Platform solutions make extending even easier, providing more ways to orchestrate and personalize your unique customer journey.

• Build custom apps with embedded customer insights by using Microsoft Power Apps
• Connect your customer data with Microsoft Power BI to customize dashboards and reports
• Trigger workflows in response to customer signals using Microsoft Power Automate

Valuable insights derived from data

Campari Group, a global spirits manufacturer, used Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to unite a technology stack that spanned multiple systems and vendors and used the insights to enhance the value that the company derives from its data. Campari Group has grown rapidly through acquisitions, each bringing with it another IT landscape to integrate including CRM systems from SAP and Salesforce; web experience and content management systems such as Adobe Creative Cloud, WordPress, and Drupal; analytics platforms and tools like SAP Analytics Cloud, Google Analytics, and Power BI; and marketing automation platforms and social media tools such as HubSpot, Sprinklr, Eventbrite, and Constant Contact.

Campari Group established API connectors to the numerous data sources that the company draws from, including social media, event marketing, and Wi-Fi connection databases. They quickly began to benefit, thanks to the out-of-the-box, AI-driven data segmentation capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

“In just two weeks, we connected all of the data points in Customer Insights and deployed our first email marketing automation campaign against those segments in the United States,” says Chad Niemuth, Vice President, Global ITMarketing and Sales at Campari Group. “We then rolled out to the United Kingdom in two weeks and Australia in two weeks. With Dynamics 365, we’re able to be very agile and continuously roll out new capabilities for our campaigns.”

Gain a holistic view of your customers

Take a guided tour to see how your organization can use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to unlock insights and drive personalized customer experiences.

Join our on-demand webinar, “Deliver connected experiences with customer data platforms” to learn the role of AI and machine learning in a customer data strategy, how to shape a customer journey that extends beyond marketing, and more.

The post Unify ecosystem-wide data with a flexible customer data platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.