This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The year-end close process is a cumbersome, multi-step task that ensures an organization can provide accurate annual reports and financial statements for its stakeholders. It’s critical to get it right, but the process can be intimidating and overwhelming. Trying to balance the workload among overstressed accounting staff can result in errors, multiple manual adjustments, and pressure on the finance department. The new Optimize year-end close feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance can help.
Year-end close moves to a dedicated service with more visibility
With the new optimization, the heavy processing moves to a dedicated service, reducing resource consumption on SQL and batch servers and allowing the process to run more efficiently. The time saved enables your finance team to react quickly to make necessary adjustments.
What’s more, users can view the status of the process for each legal entity in real time from its own page rather than having to go to the batch job history. The added visibility gives the accounting manager confidence that each step is progressing. And when the year-end process is complete, they’ll have insight into how long each step took.
We’ve also added some balance sheet financial dimensions in detail to the Year-end close template page, giving organizations more control. This also reduces the need to create many financial dimension balances, all of which require time and processing.
How to get started
Excited to try this new functionality? There are just two steps that you need to follow.
First, install the Optimize year-end close service add-in from your project in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Service.
Then, enable Optimize year-end close in Feature management.
The new functionality is available immediately in versions 10.0.29 and later of Dynamics 365 Finance.
You can go back to the current functionality by disabling the optimization in Feature management.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Your customers’ inboxes are like a firehose that never stops. How do you make sure they’ll notice your communications in the flood? With personalized content tailored just for them. Generic, boilerplate messages make customers feel like they’re just another number. Personalized experiences make your customers feel heard and understood. Over time this builds trust and increases their loyalty.
You’ve collected data and insights that can be used to personalize your marketing content. However, most marketers find it hard to turn their customer data into personalized content at scale. It’s usually complex, and often requires HTML coding or learning database concepts. Lucky for you that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing makes it so easy. Discover all the ways Dynamics 365 Marketing offers to customize your content at scale with an easy-to-use interfaceno coding required!
Personalized content increases customer engagement with tailored email marketing
Imagine you’re a marketer working for Fourth Coffee, an established coffee bean roaster that has relied primarily on its wholesale business relationships. Now you want to expand your business by going direct to consumers with a coffee club and curated digital outreach. A newsletter is a great way to keep your brand top of mind for coffee club members and other customers who have opted in to receive it.
Let’s discover how easy it is to craft a monthly newsletter that keeps your customers wanting more. We’ll create a newsletter template that uses dynamic text and content blocks to include personalized greetings. Then we’ll use conditional content to include a personalized offer that’s aligned to your customers’ interests and matches your business needs.
Create consistent templates with content blocks
Let’s start by making sure your newsletter complies with your brand requirements so customers know who it’s from with just a glance. It should always look consistent no matter who sends it out each month, too. We’ll accomplish both goals using content blocks. (Be sure to set up your brand profile to take advantage of more capabilities for maintaining brand consistency.)
Start in the email designer. Pick an existing email template or create your own layout. Include a section at the top (the “header”) with your brand logo. Include another section at the bottom (the “footer”) with contact information and any required legal text. Then insert sections with layouts that contain placeholder content. Save the entire email as a template.
You can also save the header and footer sections as individual content blocks. You can even protect them so that no one else can modify them. Anyone in your team can easily reuse these content blocks in other marketing assets. This not only saves them time; it ensures all required legal text is always included to meet regulatory requirements and provides the consistent look and feel that’s so important for your company’s brand image.
Use dynamic text to populate your customers’ information
Personalizing your newsletter to greet your customers by name and include unique details catches their attention right away. Dynamics 365 Marketing comes with commonly used dynamic text, such as “FirstName,” that you can insert in your newsletter. You can also define your own dynamic text, such as “Membership number.”
A best practice is to create a library of standard dynamic text so that anyone else on your team can use it to create personalized content.
Include personalized offers and visuals with conditional content
You don’t have to stop at personalized greetings. Use conditional content to include customized offers and visuals to pique your customers’ interest and make them more likely to click through.
Let’s return to our Fourth Coffee example. To reward your loyal customers, you‘ve decided to make an exclusive offer to your coffee club members. You’ll use conditional content to offer members 30% off an Arabica selection, while non-members will get 10% off. You have two options.
The firstand easiestis to use two different images. Each image contains a different discount. You’ll use the customer’s coffee club membership status to display the correct image.
The second option is to use conditional content at the section level. This allows you to personalize images, columns, text, etc., in the section. In the example below, we overlayed dynamic text on the same background image. This way, the specific discount value can be inserted from any table in Microsoft Dataverse where discounts are stored. It can be updated automatically, and marketers don’t need to change anything in the email. This option is particularly useful for limited-time offers such as Black Friday discounts or a flash sale.
You can save the entire conditional section as a content block. You or your team can quickly and easily reuse this personalized offer in other emails and reduce errors.
And here’s the perfectly personalized newsletter your club members and non-members will receive:
There are countless other ways to use conditional content in your email marketing campaigns. For instance, you can include an image that reflects your customer’s interests or highlights a landmark in their city or state. You might customize your footer by including conditional social links, legal text, and unsubscribe settings based on your recipient’s country.
With just a few clicks, you can create a library of powerful and reusable content blocks that can help you personalize future messages in no time, while ensuring brand consistency.
Learn more
Learn how Dynamics 365 Marketing can help you use your customer data to create personalized content that engages your customers, strengthens your brand, and meets your business needs:
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft HoloLens 2 customers are using mixed reality to expedite the ways they ensure process compliance, improve efficiency, and learn on the job with step-by-step holographic instructions in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides. They’ve also used real-time video calls using Microsoft Teams meetings in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. Now they can do both at the same time with the latest release of Dynamics 365 Guides, which combines these two mixed reality apps into a single seamless experience. Users can intuitively switch between process and collaboration activities or do both simultaneously. Easy access to the information they need and the people they’re working with is at their fingertips, ensuring everyone can take action with confidence in the industrial metaverse.
Explore new features in Dynamics 365 Guides
Teams users share their screens as holograms
People working on desktop computers and mobile phones have enjoyed sharing their local screens with one another for years, and now HoloLens 2 users can keep up with what people in the meeting are seeing too. This inclusive definition of hybrid work helps people join a meeting on the device best suited for their environment and workflow. HoloLens 2 users see a live video stream of any shared screen as a hologram in their space. The holographic shared content can be freely moved and sized to meet the demands of spatial workflows.
Access Teams calendar and join meetings from HoloLens 2
When immersed in Dynamics 365 Guides, users can swiftly check their calendar to see what’s on the agenda for that day, looking forward to prepare for tomorrow or backward in time to recall what happened yesterday. They’re supported with real-time indicators for current and upcoming meetings on each agenda line. HoloLens 2 users can call people directly, browse and add Teams contacts to ongoing calls, or join a regularly scheduled meeting just as they would do on any other device. One meeting, any device, anywhere. These meetings can be recorded as usual, so that training or other step-by-step procedures and actions happening on HoloLens 2 are preserved for others to view later.
Streamline discussions with file sharing and text chat
When collaborating with remote participants in a one-on-one or group Teams call, HoloLens 2 users can now contribute to the conversation through text chat and access any image or PDF file shared there as holograms. These holographic windows can be opened or closed at will and resized or repositioned with ease. The HoloLens 2 user is in control of where and how they absorb the information while working in the real world.
The addition of OneDrive file access at any time brings a world of reference material to Dynamics 365 Guides users. This new feature ensures people have the information they need, whenever and wherever they go. No desk or laptop required.
Share knowledge from desktop to HoloLens 2
With the mixed reality toolbar in Teams desktop, remote participants can add 3D markup to the real world. The desktop user draws on the screen and their ink is automatically attached to the space in view for the HoloLens 2 user. This type of 2D to 3D interaction is at the heart of hybrid work in the industrial metaverse.
Best of all, these systems work out of the box. Simply sign in to Dynamics 365 Guides on HoloLens 2 with your work email address and get a familiar view of Teams and OneDrive.
Ways to use the new Dynamics 365 Guides features
Here are some common ways to use the new features in an impromptu call, one-on-one, or as part of a scheduled Teams meeting on the calendar:
Support calls: To connect with a remote participant for discussion when encountering emergent scenarios.
Dynamics 365Guides demonstration: To provide instruction to individuals or groups through scheduled Teams meetings.
Remote inspections: To expedite approval from a remote inspector who can now see through the eyes of anyone, anywhere.
Collaborative authoring: To collaborate with a subject matter expert to discuss creating or updating steps within a guide.
Transform your workforce, build a more agile factory, unlock innovation, and deliver new services using Dynamics 365 Guides and HoloLens 2. Ready to empower your frontline employees?
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Educational institutions are looking for modern data solutions that improve their ability to accurately assess and quickly respond to students’ and educators’ needs. We designed the Microsoft Dynamics 365 education accelerator to help partners expedite the development of these solutions. The December release includes new sample applications and data model enhancements that partners can use as a blueprint for their development work with education customers.
What’s new in the December release of the education accelerator
New sample program registration portal for students and program management app for administrators
Respond to partner feedback about previous releases
New sample program registration portal and program management app
Partners can use the education data model, Power Pages, and a model-driven application to deliver a streamlined program registration solution to their education customers. The program registration solution is completely customizable. Education customers can use it to manage registration for a variety of academic and non-academic programs, such as tutoring services, sports teams, and community service opportunities.
Education accelerator data model better aligns with OEA and industry standards
OEA is a process to get started on the data modernization and artificial intelligence journey. Developed by education systems in collaboration with Microsoft Education, the OEA framework includes modules for the Ed-Fi and Schools Interoperability Framework data standards.
The OEA framework uses Azure Synapse Analytics, an analytical data store, while the education accelerator uses Dataverse, a transactional data store. The enhanced data model brings analytical and transactional data together in one platform, enabling partners to build solutions that align with industry data standards.
More data model enhancements based on partner feedback
The December release also includes enhancements that Microsoft partners requested:
Combined K-12 and Higher Education data models
New Course Requirement entity and enhanced Program Requirements entity
New Grade Scale entity and calculations for course credits attempted and earned, grade points, and grade point average (GPA)
Enhanced entity definitions, attribute definitions, and sample data
Deprecated free-form text fields where relationships exist or we could use a lookup
Next steps
Get started right away with version 5.0 of the education accelerator on Microsoft AppSource. The data model, solutions, sample applications and data, Power BI reports, and UX controls that come with the education accelerator are available to any Microsoft Power Platform developer.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly served as a wake-up call for many businesses. Not only has it highlighted the need for better insights across the entire operational experience, but this global stressor also exposed vulnerabilities in business models and workforce strategies.
The pandemic also brought to light the importance of agility and adaptability in the face of change. In order to survive and thrive in the new normal, businesses must be able to pivot quickly and effectively to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. Enterprises are increasingly focusing on service-centric business models that provide recurring revenue streams.
To better understand these trends, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to investigate where companies are succeeding, struggling, and investing in their quest to move toward service-centric business models and project-based operations. In the study, Foster Business Model Innovation To Achieve Growth Goals, Forrester Consulting explored how this trend impacts the global business landscape and associated business teams.
Business model innovation
Learn how to achieve growth goals with business model innovation.
In March and April 2022, Forrester conducted an online survey of 509 global financial leaders who have decision-making influence within service and project teams or businesses.1 They also performed two qualitative interviews with global practice and financial leaders. The research participants were asked about project-centric business tools. Companies ranged in size from 500 to more than 20,000 employees.
Forrester Consulting’s study highlighted three areas of need that organizations are struggling with.
Societal and business trends
With more employees working from home, the line between personal and professional life has blurred. This change compelled organizations to focus more on employee well-being, inclusion, and connectivity. Organizations are pushing for greater connectivity and convergence to foster an always-on culture.
These trends have pushed more than 75 percent of respondents to invest in the cloud, infrastructure as a service, software as a service, and the Internet of Things. By investing in these areas, organizations can provide their employees with the resources they need to succeed both at work and at home.
Multiple roadblocks
Macroeconomic trends, such as supply chain issues and staffing shortages, prevent organizations from adopting service-centric business models. About 42 percent of respondents reported struggling to keep up with demand due to external supply chain disruptions. Companies are also facing internal challenges, such as a lack of clarity and connectivity, which are preventing them from optimizing project delivery.
Unlocking new revenue streams
Revenue recognition is the main driver for business model transformation, with businesses looking to refine their product offerings as well as their pricing. About 40 percent of respondents are working to evolve their financial models, including how they charge customers and structure their entities.
This insight corresponds with a focus on improving strategy and planning that respondents are prioritizing. Improving team collaboration and connectivity also ranks highly with organizations investing in this area. Finally, workforce well-being is also a key concern, with organizations investing in improving the well-being of their employees.
Key takeaways to embrace service-centric business models
Let’s briefly touch on a few key takeaways you will find in the full study that can help companies address these challenges to embrace service-centric business models.
Beyond financial monetization
Forrester recommends that organizations take a comprehensive approach to business model innovation. Ideal innovation offers better insight into operational processes. It also gives employees modern workplace tools and environments, resulting in a holistic approach to critical process improvements.
Profit visibility
By investing in technologies that enable connectivity, organizations can improve communication and collaboration across their businesses. Forrester highlighted the importance of understanding how businesses can embrace service-centric business models. Companies improve profit visibility by focusing on customer outcomes through end-to-end project tracking. The right tools are necessary for organizations to fully understand their profit drivers. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance enables businesses to maximize financial visibility and profitability.
Finding the right partner
The study indicates that the right partners are essential for successful platform innovation and improved project-based operations. The right partner will have a deep understanding of the project requirements and the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with the project team. Furthermore, technology investments and performance metrics should be aligned with business objectives.
Next steps
In today’s business environment, it is critical for businesses to be able to implement service-oriented business models. To accomplish this, companies need visibility and connectivity into all aspects of their operationsincluding their projects, processes, and data. Due to siloed systems and data, many businesses lack this visibility and connectivity.
Businesses that can optimize their systems and implement service-oriented business models will be better positioned to succeed. Organizations can use tools such as Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Project Operations to support their progress toward project-based operational models.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
90 percent of companies say their existing systems for tracking customer journeys need improvement.
In today’s customer-centric world, customer data is a critical part of a company’s ability to serve up personalized, relevant experiences. Post-sale, data plays an equally critical role in providing customer service teams with the tools they need to provide speedy service, answer customer inquiries, and resolve post-sale issues smoothly and quickly. The challenge facing a majority of companies today is the ability to collect, analyze, and act on that data across their organizations.
In partnership with Futurum, we surveyed 1,000 global business leaders, technologists, marketers, and data and customer experience professionals, and identified the challenges and opportunities that best-in-class data practices afford customer experience (CX) leaders today. The findings of the report revealed what we had surmised going inthat companies are evolving their customer relationship management (CRM) technologies to meet changing customer expectations.
Shift to digital customer journeys
Companies are changing their operational mindset regarding customer experience. Our research shows that a whopping 85 percent of companies report that their customers are significantly more digitally focused than they expected, and it’s clear that companies need to shift their strategies in order to adapt. In the last two years, we’ve seen a seismic shift in how customers live, work, play, and shop online. Customer behavior has irreversibly changed. In fact, 96 percent of organizations say they’ve accelerated their digital transformation and/or technology deployments to keep pace with changing customer requirements, and that includes serving up a better customer experience.
Complexity abounds for customer experience transformation
Complexity is the name of the game in business today. If you’re involved in delivering better customer experiences, you’re likely nodding as you read that lineand we feel your pain. Today’s proliferation of channels through which customers interact with brands provides both opportunities and challenges. We are seeing this interaction via email, text, social media, apps, websites, and in-store communicationsand it can be more than a little overwhelming. The massive influx of data from these many touchpoints has added a level of complexity that we haven’t seen before. Our research shows that working with and properly managing data is easily one of the most difficult challenges companies face, and solving this challenge is of paramount concern.
But why does data add so much complexity? In order to be used effectively, data must be collected, cleaned, analyzed, and maintained in real timesomething that many organizations aren’t yet capable of doing, both from a tech stack standpoint as well as an internal skill set standpoint. Adding to that, organizations are also facing new challenges with the looming elimination of third-party data that’s been relied on to track customers, along with changing privacy regulations. There’s a shift happening, and organizations aren’t ready. In fact, 90 percent of companies in our research study reported that their existing systems for tracking customer journeys need improvement. But the good news is that there are solutions for that.
Harness data and use it more effectively, customer data platforms are the solution
Companies looking to transform their customer experience don’t just need customer data for better customer engagements, they also need real-time data to inform those engagements. That data is of great value to the organization, but in order for it to deliver value, data needs to be centralized, easily accessible, and processed in a single source of truth. That’s where a customer data platform (CDP) comes in and why it’s truly table stakes for organizations today (and not just for marketers).
Best-in-class CDP solutions work to connect the organization as a whole to the data that is amassed so that it can be accessed and utilized by sales teams, marketing teams, customer service teams, commerce teams, and beyond. CDPs are the lifeblood of the organization, housing data, providing visibility as needed, and allowing employees throughout the organization to make data-driven decisions that serve up the very best in customer experiences across every touchpoint.
That’s where the right technology solutions can be game-changers. Real-time, actionable insights into customer experience are most likely to materialize from a CDP that centralizes user data and makes it available to everyone who engages with the customer journey. As the amount of data available has increased exponentially, the challenge becomes how to collect data in a manner that both enables actionable analysis but also protects customer trust.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Microsoft provides an enterprise-leading customer data platform.
Ensuring customer trust and privacy to improve customer experience
Let’s talk about the roles that trust and privacy play in the overall customer experience. The collection and analysis of customer data is central to improving customer experience, but mounting privacy concerns surrounding data can threaten customers’ trust in the companies they engage with. Our research shows that while the speed of digitization and the necessity to respond with new solutions has led more than three quarters of companies to implement new technologies or programs, those technologies and programs might not be completely secure. A solid 51 percent of respondents in our study acknowledge they’ve experienced at least one customer data breach in the prior year, so unified data systems that reduce this risk are highly prized.
Changing regulations surrounding privacy and data protection also provide a consistent challenge. Our research showed that 88 percent of respondents expect to change their customer engagement strategies in order to adapt to future market and regulatory requirements. A CDP can help ensure compliance required by General Data Protection Regulation, California Privacy Rights Act, California Consumer Privacy Act, and other regulations designed to give customers more control over the personal information businesses collect about them. We expect to also see CDPs evolving to address the cookieless future that’s ahead of us and track customer consent as part of the functionality of the CDP.
Top 5 features in successful CDP solutions
As we’ve mentioned previously, our research showed an overwhelming number of companies feel like they don’t have the right tools in place to help them improve their customer experience. They need something betterand they know what they want.
Our study identified the top five most important features in successful customer-facing solutions. These include:
Integrated AI-based analytics
AI-based data classification
The ability to import data from multiple sources
Connection to social networks
Real-time actionable insights
Unfortunately, these are the same five areas in which respondents reported their existing customer data tools are lacking. 83 percent of those surveyed report they already use a CDP to provide a centralized source of record, 35 percent say they are still relying on piecemeal solutions that don’t offer real-time access to customer data. In order to effectively use technology to improve the customer experience they’re serving up, CX leaders require substantial improvement in the existing CDP solutions that they’re relying on.
CX leaders need a unified CDP that provides real-time access to customer data, and one that is easily accessible to multiple stakeholders throughout the organization. They also need a tool that ensures regulatory compliance and data privacy, putting customers at ease. This can help facilitate enhanced collaboration, actionable analysis, and the ability to put the insights gained from customer data to immediate use.
By offering a single source of truth for an organization, a unified CDP can enable enhanced collaboration across the entire organization (including sales, service, finance, and research and development) to address every part of the customer experience journey.
Learn more
In the full report, we’ve identified nine key insights that are shaping customer experience needs today, creating a clear roadmap for the future of customer data collection, storage, and analysis. The application of this knowledge stands to benefit companies and customers alike. You can download the full report here.
Looking for a CDP? Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft’s enterprise-leading customer data platform. Microsoft provides an enterprise-leading customer data platform.
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