This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Introduction
In today’s dynamic work environment, managing employee leave and absence efficiently is crucial for maintaining a productive and harmonious workplace. For this reason, we are announcing the public preview of the Human Resources app for Dynamics 365 Human Resources on Finance and Operations environments.
With the announcement of the infrastructure merge, the Human Resources app will be the go-forward solution for the former Teams app for leave and absence.
The application is designed to be used within Microsoft Teams or in a web browser and it provides an overall view of employees leave requests, leave balances, draft leave requests, and leave requests taken in the past.
The Human Resources app can be used both on Mobile and Desktop.
Benefits of the Human Resources app
Human Resources is an app that is integrated with Dynamics 365 Human Resources on Finance and Operations environments. It is designed and developed for organizations to ensure their employees can request, edit, and cancel time off and leave of absence requests seamlessly. Employees can now view their leave balances, upcoming leaves and leave history using the same application. In addition to this, managers can also efficiently view and approve or reject requests in one intuitive interface.
Next Steps
The Human Resources app is now available for public preview and we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and how the app is helping your organization. Enable the Human Resources (Preview) app for Dynamics 365 Human Resources from the AppSource.
To learn more about these exciting new capabilities and on how to use the app, refer to the Human Resources app.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In the fast-paced world of sales, sellers are now expected to be adept multitaskers. As they engage with customers, the demands of various tasks and follow-ups can quickly accumulate. Effectively managing these aspects is crucial for streamlining processes, minimizing manual intervention and significantly enhancing the overall customer experience. By staying organized and leveraging tools to keep track, sellers can meet their goals more effectively. When we released focused view in April 2023, we had precisely this goal in mind – to transform the current user experience while working on records within Dynamics 365 Sales.
Since its launch, focused view has not only achieved remarkable success but has also gained widespread user adoption. Thousands of sellers now rely on it as a swift solution to navigate records efficiently and address open tasks promptly. A closer look at our usage analysis indicated around a 50% reduction in overall task execution time compared to the current grid view for the same set of actions.
With the new enhancements, our commitment is to further elevate the overall user experience, aiming to provide a comprehensive set of capabilities within focused view. This ensures that users can accomplish all tasks seamlessly without the need to switch contexts across multiple views.
This blog delves into the introduced changes, detailing how users can leverage these updates to streamline their daily tasks.
What is focused view?
Focused view is a new work surface which allows users to view all their records as a list, while being able to work on any of them without having to switch context multiple times between the record form and the list of records. It supports easy filtering, sorting, and card customization capabilities to ensure you see the data that matters to you.
Focused view
What are the new enhancements?
Expanding the reach of focused view
As part of the current release, we are introducing focused view for Dynamics 365 entities. It’s now enabled automatically for all users, with no set up. Thus, Dynamics 365 users can leverage it for any out of the box or custom entities that they work on. Users should be able to see the focused view button or find it within the “show as” dropdown for all their entities, as the first button of the ribbon command bar.
Maintaining user preferences
We are committed to respecting our users’ preferences to ensure they always see the view they use the most first. To achieve this, our system now seamlessly retains the last-used work surface for each user every time they log into Dynamics 365 Sales. This enables users to effortlessly pick up right where they left off, regardless of any system default settings for a given entity. At our core, we prioritize our users’ individual choices, ensuring that their preferred work surface always takes the lead.
Introducing new capabilities
We are leaving no stone unturned to make focused view the ultimate work surface to cater to all our users’ needs! With the new release, we are introducing several new capabilities to ensure users can complete all their required tasks from a single place:
Multi-select records: With the enhanced focused view, users can now multi-select records and execute bulk functionalities in a seamless manner.
Support the view level ribbon command bar: Within the focused view, users no longer need to navigate to a grid experience to make updates. Instead, we have now made available an easy access point through the ribbon command bar. It now allows users to take instant action on any record(s) without any additional navigation.
Multi-select and ribbon command bar
Advanced filtering capability: We have introduced the ability for users to create their own filter query. In addition, users can save it as a custom view from within focused view. This helps them view and work on records that matter.
Advanced filter query
How can I make focused view the default landing page?
With all the new capabilities and ease of use, users will likely want to make focused view their default worksurface. To help achieve that, we are making it the default landing page for Lead entity as an out of the box option. For the other core entities, namely Account, Contact and Opportunity, we are providing an easy option for admins to make it the default option for their org from within the focused view specific settings. These can easily be adjusted for an organization’s specific needs.
Making focused view default for Lead, Opportunity, Account and Contact
For other entities, users can use the existing custom settings option within advanced settings. They simply need to choose the relevant entity and then select focused view from the list of available controls.
Conclusion
With these updates, focused view becomes the worksurface where users can view, plan and execute all their sales related tasks in a seamless and efficient manner. It helps them with greater task success rate and faster execution speed.
We are simplifying the ability for a users to get started. There’s now no setup required at either their or admin level. With these enhancements, users will find focused view readily available as the primary option on the ribbon command bar when navigating the entity grid. This streamlined accessibility ensures a hassle-free initiation, allowing users to effortlessly view and utilize focused view as their default choice.
So go ahead and start leveraging focused view as the go-to workspace for all sales related tasks and save time to concentrate building relations and closing deals!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
According to our Forrester Consulting study, software that helps organizations elevate field service delivery can improve financial performance in two ways: by helping increase customer retention and expansion by exceeding service expectations, and by increasing productivity. We are pleased to share the results of a December 2023 Forrester Consulting Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) Study commissioned by Microsoft. Forrester calculates Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service delivered benefits of $42.65 million over three years to a composite organization. The total investment required was $9.5 million and provided a ROI of 346% with a payback period of less than six months.
Methodology and purpose
TEI is a methodology developed by Forrester Research to assist companies with technology-related purchase decisions by providing business decision-makers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of the technology on the entire organization.
Forrester Consulting interviewed 11 representatives from seven organizations with experience using Dynamics 365 Field Service to conduct this TEI study. The characteristics of these businesses and the results of the interviews were then aggregated to develop a composite organization. The key findings of the study are based on the composite organization and are summarized below.
Key challenges
The organizations that were interviewed for the study shared the following challenges prior to adopting Dynamics 365:
Lack of visibility into field service status
Communication issues among management, sales, and service teams
Technicians’ inability to complete work orders in a timely fashion
With these challenges top of mind, the interviewees sought to invest in a solution that could improve the productivity and efficiency of their field service teams, enable cost savings, and lead to customer retention and profitability.
Key findings
Dynamics 365 Field Service helps organizations deliver onsite service to customer locations. The application includes work order automation, scheduling algorithms, asset servicing, mobility, Microsoft 365 integration, and infusion of generative AI through Copilot to set up frontline workers for success when they are onsite providing service for customers. It is part of the larger Dynamics 365 portfolio of applications designed to work together to deliver efficiency and improve customer experience.
Forrester’s study revealed seven quantifiable impact areas: increased first-time fix rate, increased field technician productivity, eliminated standard time-to-invoice delays, avoided travel time, improved dispatcher productivity, enhanced management productivity, and retired legacy solutions.
We examine each of these areas below in more detail to understand how Dynamics 365 Field Service delivers value across field service organizations.
Increased first-time fix rate
Sending out field technicians to resolve customer issues is expensive even for the first visit, so many organizations want to do everything they can to avoid a second truck roll to resolve a problem. Deploying Dynamics 365 Field Service helped the organizations to increase their first-time fix rates by ensuring that technicians could quickly locate equipment, understand history and problems, tap into institutional knowledge about problems, and ensuring they had stocked the appropriate parts for service. Increasing the first-time fix rates also helped these organizations avoid 12% of second visits by additional technicians to complete a service call.
Increased technician productivity
Interviewees found that Dynamics 365 Field Service helped to remove many administrative tasks, so field technicians could spend more of their time focusing on addressing customer issues. Organizations were also able to use the solution to find the best field technician for each job, determine the most efficient route for getting to a customer site, and ensuring that technicians were carrying the right parts and tools to fix the problems. In addition, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist feature helped technicians use institutional knowledge, rather than having to spend time tracking down a peer or documentation. And both managers and technicians had greater visibility into technicians’ service calls, which helped them to plan for greater efficiency when scheduling customer work orders. All of this resulted in increasing field technician productivity by up to 14% once Dynamics 365 Field Service and Remote Assist were fully implemented.
Decreased time to invoice customers
An inability to integrate field service applications with key applications in finance often meant considerable time gaps between when a service order was completed and a customer was billed for service. One interviewee noted that using paper-based processes for invoicing service calls meant up to a month could go by before an invoice was sent, but after implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service, customers could be invoiced for work orders on the same day. For the composite organization, eliminating standard time-to-invoice delays resulted in $2.8 million savings in interest on accounts receivable.
Avoided travel time
One key challenge interviewees shared was that field technicians could lose significant time due to traffic delays or inefficient job routing, which required them to go out of their way to get to customer sites. With Dynamics 365 Field Service, dispatchers could ensure that planned routes were the most efficient and economical and that technicians’ routes were updated constantly to avoid potential slowdowns from traffic or road construction. The availability of mixed reality apps like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Guides also meant that field technicians could get assistance without subject matter experts needing to be on-site.
By using routing algorithms and traffic updates provided by Dynamics 365 Field Service, the composite organization can create more efficient schedules for technicians and save $2.1 million over three years.
Improved dispatcher productivity
Service dispatchers were often relying on highly manual processes to assign field technicians to jobs. Any change in staffing or scheduling increased inefficiency, especially since schedules were shared across whiteboards, spreadsheets, and calendar apps, meaning mistakes and deletions could be made. Dynamics 365 Field Service enables service organizations to automate scheduling and rescheduling for customer service calls. It also helps service managers match the best service technician for a work order based on time or expertise. One project manager interviewed for the study stated that having everything in one place provided better visibility for schedulers that helped them understand job progress and seamlessly include everyone in the workflow.
Overall, the composite organization saw a 40% improvement in dispatcher productivity as well as cost savings of $1.6 million.
Enhanced management productivity
optimize your field service management with proven solutions
Some interviewees had reported that field service managers spent a lot of time resolving scheduling issues, tracking missing parts inventory, and following up on incomplete jobs. With the ability to automate more processes in Dynamics 365 Field Service, those field service managers found they had more time to focus on strategic tasks that help their teams improve in other ways. Because reporting provided managers with information they didn’t have access to before, they were able to get a clearer view into technician productivity, work order status, parts inventory, and other metrics that helped them discover and address gaps so they could meet monthly targets. Service managers also had greater visibility into areas where field technicians needed more training and support, so they could improve team performance overall.
Service managers enhanced management productivity by 100 hours per year.
Retired legacy solutions
In the past, participant organizations used various combinations of email, calendar and scheduling apps, spreadsheets, or third-party field service tools to manage their field service efforts. Implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service, which integrates with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook and Microsoft Teams, helped to reduce licensing, administration, and maintenance costs for maintaining separate applications to support field service teams.
Other benefits
Beyond the quantified benefits detailed above, the organizations participating in the TEI study also experienced other benefits, including:
Improved customer experience through increased efficiency and more accurate updates about service calls.
Enhanced employee experience by enabling field technicians to use their mobile phones to complete most of their work tasks.
Improve service delivery speed and quality by using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service in their field service operations.
Access to mixed reality applications such as Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides to help support field technicians on service calls.
Next steps
As we have seen here, Forrester’s study uncovered seven quantifiable impact areas along with several other significant unquantifiable benefits. When combined, these factors resulted in benefits of $42.65 million over three years for the composite organization. The total investment required was $9.5 million, leading to a 346% ROI with a payback period of less than six months.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The main components of the Microsoft Intune Suite are now generally available. Read about how consolidated endpoint management adds value and functionality for security teams.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft is dedicated to helping organizations transform the way people work using secure, enterprise-grade AI capabilities, no matter which business applications teams depend on. Starting today, you can seamlessly integrate role-specific Copilot capabilities into Microsoft 365 applications and popular customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center systems for sales and customer service professionals.
Now generally available, Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service bring together the power of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions to streamline business processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock creativity. Both provide flexibility to integrate with your existing contact center and CRM systems, such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, to get more done with less effort.
Transform sales productivity with Copilot for Sales
Sellers today face more challenges than ever. A recent survey revealed that 79% of sellers are supporting more customers and accounts than the previous year.1Gartner® research recommends that to drive better sales impact, “sellers must relinquish some control over customer interactions and give AI-powered technology—generative AI, emotion AI and digital humans—more responsibility to execute core selling activities…Let salespeople focus on where they excel: engaging buyers on a human level to understand their needs, motivations and objections, and ultimately validate that a purchase is right for them.”2
At Microsoft, we have been working hard to deliver an AI solution that would address these needs. Last fall, we announced our vision for Copilot for Sales, an AI assistant designed for sales teams to maximize productivity and close more deals. We’re excited to announce that Copilot for Sales is now generally available. Copilot for Sales builds on Copilot for Microsoft 365, enhancing it with connectivity to CRM platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce Sales Cloud to bring sales-specific insights and recommendations to apps like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word.
Today, Copilot for Sales helps sellers and sales managers:
Generate sales meeting preparation briefs in Word.
Summarize emails and surface relevant buying intent and budget, authority, need, timing (BANT) analysis in Outlook.
Generate emails in Outlook with relevant product, account, relationship, and opportunity information from their CRM system and Microsoft Graph.
Add leads and update CRM records directly from Outlook.
View meeting preparation notes and real-time sales insights during calls in Teams.
View sales meeting summaries in Teams with conversation analysis, sales keywords and KPIs, and suggested tasks.
Create collaborative deal rooms in Teams that sync with CRM data.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also included in Copilot for Sales, providing sellers with additional productivity enhancements, like:
Generate presentations in PowerPoint.
Generate plans and organize team information in OneNote.
Ask questions in natural language to catch up on customer interactions using Microsoft Copilot’s chat experience.
Late this month, Copilot for Sales will also bring CRM connectivity to the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, allowing sellers and sales managers to get quick insights on conversion and win rate, sales cycle, and pipeline. Later this year, we plan to enhance Copilot experiences in Microsoft PowerPoint and OneNote as well, tailoring them to address seller-specific needs with CRM connectivity.
Early adopter customers of Copilot for Sales are already seeing an impact in their sales organizations. Avanade employees have been previewing Copilot for Sales capabilities like updating Dynamics 365 Sales records from Outlook, summarizing email threads, generating email drafts, and summarizing meetings with conversation intelligence. These AI capabilities have helped Avanade employees show their clients that they are top of mind, while helping them work more productively.
When we interviewed Copilot for Sales users at Avanade, they reported that Copilot minimizes the need to jump between different interfaces, and the email summary feature saves them 30 to 60 minutes per week. And the impact goes beyond just time savings; Copilot for Sales is improving the quality of sellers’ interactions with their customers as well.
“When our sellers can reduce the time spent on sifting through multiple channels to find what matters with Copilot for Sales, we can be more focused so that we can deliver with clients and drive our business strategy faster.”
Often, an organization’s knowledge is distributed across disparate systems—customer records and case histories in one or multiple CRM systems, along with information scattered across knowledge base articles, public websites, offline files, and more. As a result, agents are tasked with navigating multiple apps to not only access critical insights, but also then manage their engagement with customers, collaborate with internal teams, and take action. According to Gartner, “43 percent of (customer service) reps reported they were overwhelmed by the number of systems and tools needed to complete work.”3
Copilot for Service unlocks an organization’s trusted knowledge to accelerate onboarding and case resolution, improve efficiency, and automate tasks for agents in their flow of work. Without costly development time, organizations can simply point to their data and, in a few minutes, unlock generative AI-powered conversations across their knowledge bases. And for agents, they can tap into this knowledge with a copilot embedded directly in their desktop software of choice such as Salesforce, as well as the other tools they already use every day like Outlook and Teams.
Today, Copilot for Service can help organizations:
Enable generative AI-powered conversations across all of their data with simplified point-and-click access to public websites, SharePoint, knowledge base articles, and offline files.
Access knowledge sources with pre-built integrations for Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.
Embed a copilot in agent desktops from Salesforce and other channels to support agents where they work.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also included in Copilot for Service. We will introduce additional features in Microsoft 365 apps beginning later this month that will integrate data from CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Salesforce Service Cloud including:
In Outlook, use Copilot to summarize and draft emails, access case summaries, browse and update CRM records, and schedule meetings informed by case summaries and other relevant information from CRM records.
In Teams, use Copilot to browse and update CRM records during a meeting, as well as recap meetings, suggest follow-up action items, and create tasks that can all be saved to CRM systems directly from Teams.
In the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, use Copilot to ask questions over cases and contacts, as well as summarize cases—all from CRM data.
We’re thrilled to see the initial impact that our early adopter customers and partners are having with Copilot for Service. RSM, the leading provider of assurance, tax, and consulting services for the middle market, is equipping agents with the information they need to support customers without changing applications or searching through hundreds of knowledge articles.
“Six months ago, we launched a pilot focused on leveraging Microsoft Copilot for Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio, which provides a framework to build AI-enabled business processes. We have been working to execute against use cases for our own business with a focus on practical AI, and we are thrilled to now be in a position to bring this productivity enhancing technology to help clients implement AI for their businesses.”
—Christian Hutter, RSM’s Microsoft practice leader
Copilot for Service
Modernize your contact center with Copilot designed for service.
Both Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are available now for $50 per user/month, which includes the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. If you already have Copilot for Microsoft 365, you can purchase Copilot for Sales or Copilot for Service for an additional $20 per user/month.
1. Microsoft. “Sellers’ attitudes about AI.” June 2023. An Ipsos study commissioned by Microsoft. Study included 700 participants who use professional CRM systems at organizations of at least 300 people. Industries include Financial Services, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, Technology, and Healthcare.
2. Gartner Article, Focus Your Sellers on the Critical Art of Being Human, September 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/focus-your-sellers-on-the-critical-art-of-being-human GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We want to help everyone navigate this new world of work. At Microsoft, we’re taking a learn-it-all approach with Copilot, working alongside our customers and employees to understand what the organizations getting the most value out of Copilot are doing right.
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