Editor Denis Conway

Introduction

In the relentless pursuit of customer-centric excellence, optimizing our return process emerges as a pivotal strategy for both customer satisfaction and operational prowess. This blog exploration delves into Dynamics 365 SCM Warehouse Management’s transformative role in enhancing customer return receiving process, showcasing a strategic framework that promises elevated customer experience and operational efficiencies.

Elevating Standard Processes

In the traditional realm of return management, the issuance of a Return Material Authorization (RMA) order has been the cornerstone. This process, while effective, faces challenges in scenarios where the reason for return is not immediately apparent. Our executive journey begins with understanding the standard RMA process and its limitations.

This current sales return approach with RMA order, while effective in many respects, introduces potential delays and customer frustration due to its structured and sometimes rigid procedures. The complexity of documentation, especially in unplanned return scenarios, coupled with communication gaps and limited automation, poses challenges. Additionally, as businesses scale, the classic RMA order process may face scalability concerns, raising questions about its ability to efficiently handle increased volumes of return requests. Addressing these limitations is crucial for executives aiming to optimize return management processes, enhance customer satisfaction, and ensure operational resilience. The previous return system does not support the creation of return labels that is a must have for many industries, such as e-commerce. 

Enhanced processes in customer return receiving

In the innovative landscape of our enhanced customer return receiving process within Dynamics 365 SCM, the traditional requirement for a pre-existing Return Material Authorization (RMA) order has been reimagined. In the new way of enhanced customer return process, we can pre-generate return data, create return labels that can be shipped in a shipment and used for seamless return of items. If items need to be returned, customers now have the flexibility to initiate returns seamlessly through two distinct scenarios: the ‘Blind Return’ and ‘Return Details,’ eliminating the upfront necessity of an RMA order.

Blind Return Scenario: In the ‘Blind Return’ scenario, customers can initiate return requests without disclosing specific details initially. We will still need to have a customer number to assign (it can be a dummy customer) to the return order and the item numbers, but we do not need to have an issued return order number. This approach caters to situations where the reason for return may not be immediately apparent or where customers prefer a swift and straightforward process. By bypassing the need for upfront details, this streamlined approach accelerates the return initiation phase, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Return Details Scenario: Alternatively, the ‘Return Details’ scenario allows customers to provide comprehensive information about the return from the outset. This more structured approach is ideal for situations where a detailed explanation of the reason for return, return until date or additional information is available. It facilitates smoother and more informed return processing, using pre-generated RMA-number included on the return labels, enabling the receiving team to address customer needs with precision and efficiency.

Crucially, what sets this enhanced process apart is the automation that follows these customer-initiated returns. In the subsequent stages, the system intelligently generates the necessary RMA order automatically in the background. The post-return generation of the RMA order streamlines the process, combining customer convenience with the structured documentation needed for efficient internal processing. As we evolve in our commitment to customer-centric operations, this innovative approach sets the stage for a more agile, responsive, and efficient return management process. In the image below, we can see an illustration of the return receiving process:  

Conclusion

In the executive suite, strategic decisions are paramount. The enhanced customer return receiving process in Dynamics 365 SCM Warehouse Management is not merely a feature; it’s a strategic tool that aligns our organization with the demands of modern business. As we navigate the complexities of customer interactions and operational excellence, let us leverage this innovation to propel our brand into the forefront of customer-centric leadership.

More details

Learning article can be found at:
Sales returns – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn,
Receive unannounced sales returns – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn.

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At Microsoft, trust is the foundation of everything we do. As more organizations adopt Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, we are committed to helping everyone use AI responsibly. We do this by ensuring our AI products deliver the highest levels of security, compliance, and privacy in accordance with our Responsible AI Standard—our framework for the safe deployment of AI technologies.

Take a moment to review the latest steps we are taking to help your organization securely deploy Copilot guided by our principles of safety, security, and trust.

Copilot architecture and responsible AI principles in action

Let’s start with an overview of how Copilot works, how it keeps your business data secure and adheres to privacy requirements, and how it uses generative AI responsibly.

First, Copilot receives a prompt from a user within Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. This prompt could be in the form of a question that the user types into a chat pane, or an action, such as selecting a button labeled “Create an email.”

Copilot processes the prompt using an approach called grounding, which might include retrieving data from Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft Graph, or external sources. Grounding improves the relevance of the prompt, so the user gets responses that are more appropriate to their task. Interactions with Copilot are specific to each user. This means that Copilot can only access data that the current user has permissions to.

Copilot uses Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful generative AI models that understand natural language inputs and returns a response to the user in the appropriate form. For example, a response might be in the form of a chat message, an email, or a chart. Users should always review the response before taking any action.

How Copilot uses your proprietary business data

Responses are grounded in your business content and business data. Copilot has real-time access to both your content and context to generate answers that are precise, relevant, and anchored in your business data for accuracy and specificity. This real-time access goes through our Dataverse platform (which includes all Power Platform connectors), honoring the data loss prevention and other security policies put in place by your organization. We follow the pattern of Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG), which augments the capabilities of language models by adding dynamic grounding data to the prompt that we send to the model. Our system dynamically looks up the relevant data schema using our own embedding indexes and then uses the language models to help translate the user’s question into a query that we can run against the system of record.

We do not use your data to train language models. We believe that our customers’ data is their data in accordance with Microsoft’s data privacy policy.  AI-powered language models are trained on a large but limited corpus of data—but prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph and Microsoft services are not used to train Copilot for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform capabilities for use by other customers. Furthermore, the models are not improved through your usage. This means that your data is accessible only by authorized users within your organization unless you explicitly consent to other access or use.

How Copilot protects business information and data

Enterprise-grade AI, powered by Azure OpenAI Service. Copilot is powered by the trusted and compliant Azure OpenAI Service, which provides robust, enterprise-grade security features. These features include content filtering to identify and block output of harmful content and protect against prompt injections (jailbreak attacks), which are user prompts that provoke the generative AI model into behaving in ways it was trained not to. Azure AI services are designed to enhance data governance and privacy and adhere to Microsoft’s strict data protection and privacy standards. Azure OpenAI also supports enterprise features like Azure Policy and AI-based security recommendations by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, meeting compliance requirements with customer-managed data encryption keys and robust governance features.

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, privacy, and compliance. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. It automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Copilot is hosted within Microsoft Cloud Trust Boundary and adheres to comprehensive, industry-leading compliance, security, and privacy practices. Our handling of Copilot data mirrors our treatment of other customer data, giving you complete autonomy in deciding whether to retain data and determining the specific data elements you wish to keep.

Safeguarded by multiple forms of protection. Customer data is protected by several technologies and processes, including various forms of encryption. Service-side technologies encrypt organizational content at rest and in transit for robust security. Connections are safeguarded with Transport Layer Security (TLS), and data transfers between Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Azure OpenAI occur over the Microsoft backbone network, ensuring both reliability and safety.  Copilot uses industry-standard secure transport protocols when data moves over a network—between user devices and Microsoft datacenters or within the datacenters themselves.

Watch this presentation by James Oleinik for a closer look at how Copilot allows users to securely interact with business data within their context, helping to ensure data remains protected inside the Microsoft Cloud Trust Boundary. You’ll also learn about measures we take to ensure that Copilot is safe for your employees and your data, such as how Copilot isolates business data from the language model so as not to retrain the AI model. 

Architected to protect tenant, group, and individual data. We know that data leakage is a concern for customers. Microsoft AI models are not trained on and don’t learn from your tenant data or your prompts unless your tenant admin has opted in to sharing data with us. Within your environment, you can control access through permissions that you set up. Authentication and authorization mechanisms segregate requests to the shared model among tenants. Copilot utilizes data that only you can access. Your data is not available to others.

Committed to building AI responsibly

As your organization explores Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, we are committed to delivering the highest levels of security, privacy, compliance, and regulatory commitments, helping you transform into an AI-powered business with confidence.

Learn more about Copilot and Responsible AI

• Trust and responsible AI in Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Copilot in Power Platform 

• Copilot data security and privacy for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform FAQ

• Copilot availability

• Microsoft Responsible AI Standard

• How other organizations are using Copilot to improve operational efficiency and customer experiences

• Responsible AI FAQ for Microsoft Power Platform

• Responsible AI FAQ for Dynamics 365

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