Top takeaways from April ’19 release notes for Dynamics 365 for sales and customer service

On Jan 21st, 2019, Microsoft published a detailed documented release on Dynamics 365 with updates and new features that you can expect starting this April. In this article, we have highlighted the key features that will be useful for partners and customers.

Overview of Dynamics 365 for sales

In the new release, Dynamics 365 for sales is the recipient of a lot of new features to help salespeople be more informed and more efficient. The successful partnership between Microsoft and LinkedIn has enabled sales reps to build deeper customer connections at greater scale.

Teams collaboration and sales forecasting are other features introduced in this release to improve seller productivity. Also, sales professionals now receive recommended content in addition to activities and notes through the sales playbook when working on an opportunity, helping to ensure they are using the right content for the right context.

Here are the details of the new features added in detail:

  1. Microsoft Relationship Sales brings together capabilities from Dynamics 365 for Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It gives sales reps easy access to up-to-date customer insights from LinkedIn.

Following are the new features incorporated in the release:

  • View LinkedIn profiles from Dynamics 365 without any configuration or additional subscription.
  • Get real-time alerts when a prospect/contacts in the pipeline change their job
 dynamics 365 April release 19
View of a customer profile from LinkedIn. Source: Microsoft

            

  1. Enrich your customer data using multiple third-party data-providers – Sales organizations can now select multiple third-party data providers in addition to InsideView and Versium to augment customer data.
  1. Enable effective collaboration with the integration of Microsoft Teams with Dynamics 365 – As per an article by Mckinsey – For a sales rep to close a deal, he needs to collaborate with 16 colleagues on an average. The D365 apps for Microsoft Teams enable sales rep to collaborate more effectively. The features below can help the sales team to be more productive and get the deal done more effectively.
  • Seamless document collaboration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams.
  • Access Dynamics 365 records on the go with Dynamics 365 bot for Microsoft Teams mobile app.
  • Add Dynamics 365 tab into teams channel to access all the Dynamics records
  1. Enable content recommendations via playbook – With April ‘19 release, sales professionals will be able to receive content recommendation via playbook, giving the seller additional details on what content to refer to while working on any activity.
  1. Seamless configure-price-quote integrated experience – Enable faster turn-around time to consistently and accurately configure price and quote by leveraging Dynamics 365 for Sales integration with partner configure-price-quote (CPQ) solutions.
  1. Sales forecasting for effective sales management – With the amount of data around customers and prospects on Microsoft Dynamics 365, sales forecasting can help the sales team in categorizing each opportunity and further leverage the information to create or update forecasts manually within the application. They will be able to view, adjust, and submit rollup forecasting values for individuals and their teams.
 dynamics 365 April release 19
View of sales forecasting for effective sales performance management (Source: Microsoft)

P.S: These notes have not been released yet, it will be available from April 2019.

 

Overview of Dynamics 365 for customer service

Dynamics 365 for customer service continues to surprise by providing exceptional customer service tools for business to differentiate themselves from the competition. Customers today are particular about ease and speed of doing business with you and they want it over the channel of engagement they prefer, at any time and on any device. To make this possible an intelligent omnichannel customer experience, and empowered agent experience is introduced in the April ‘19 release.

  1. Extending Omnichannel experience  Dynamics 365 for customer service will now provide a true omnichannel experience, which will preserve context and provide a continuous experience as customers seamlessly switch across self-service, peer-to-peer service, and assisted-service channels.

Some of the newly added features to support channel flexibility to the customers are:

  • Live chat for customers to seek real-time support.
    • Chat experience has emerged as one of the primary channels for customers to interact with support agents because of the simplicity and ease of use.
    • Customers can connect via the live chat channel because it allows service agents to be more productive by simultaneously engaging with multiple customers.
  • SMS support for customers to receive automatic notifications and engage with support agents at their own pace. A two-way conversational messaging using Telesign will help organizations increase their customer satisfaction, improve agent productivity and reduce support cost.
    • A seamless setup experience inside the application which allows interaction between customers and agents.
  1. Agent Experience  Dynamics 365 for customer service will now provide an agent experience which can resolve issues faster with the productivity tools. The new empowered agent can provide an application experience that is contextual to the engagement and unified across channels and LOB applications.

In the October ‘18 release, the omnichannel engagement hub was available in preview,  a customizable, high-productivity app built on Unified Service Desk (USD) for agents working on multiple channels. In this release, the feature will be generally available. Also, there is a browser-based multi-session, multi-app agent experience built on a unified interface.

  1. Knowledge Management – Key enhancements have been made to the knowledge base authoring and analytics experience.
  • KB templates can now be created for common scenarios such as FAQs, how-to articles and so on. Also, KB authors can quickly create standardized knowledge articles by using these templates.
  • Knowledge management (KM) analytics can identify usage and respond to gaps in the knowledge base.

P.S: These notes have not been released yet, the updates will be available in the coming months. For more details on the release date, check this link

Let Sysfore be your guide

It is an exciting time to use the new and improved Dynamics 365, We, Sysfore, know that business is first and foremost about meeting their customer’s needs. Today’s digital tsunami of automated marketing, spam, telemarketers, and poorly targeted advertising has left customers disinterested and confused. In order to really engage with your customers, authenticity is key.

To attract customers into the buyer’s journey, you must create a customer-focused culture and service-oriented sales process. That’s where products like Microsoft Dynamics 365 is revolutionizing the customer engagement and business processes experience.

 

We have served clients across various industries and we have in-built add-ons to bring value to your teams. Whether your organization is ready to get started with Dynamics 365 or have questions on where to start, Sysfore is here to support you.

Know More about:

Dynamics 365 for Sales

Brisc 365 – The winning combination of D365 for sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Dynamics 365 for Customer service

Contact one of our experts today and to learn how you can implement Dynamics 365 in your organization and find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555 for a free consultation.

 

Achieve 17X return on your investments with Dynamics 365


Nucleus has published a new research report on the ROI from Dynamics 365 deployments, and the findings are groundbreaking. Nucleus found that for every dollar spent, companies realized an average of $16.97 in returns. According to the report summary, “this is significantly higher than the average for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), which deliver, on average, $7.23 and $8.71 respectively”. Nucleus found that companies taking advantage of Microsoft’s investments in cloud and usability, as well as integration and analytics, were able to achieve significant returns by increasing productivity and revenues and reducing costs.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivers $16.97 for every dollar spent

The report also dives into the value drivers for the cases which resulted in the impressive returns, finding that common elements to the financial success of deployments include:

  • Integration of Microsoft solutions with existing or new data sources and applications which has led to finishing the projects on-time and under-budget.
  • Real-time data and embedded analytics functionality which has maximized the value of the company with data-driven decision making.
  • Familiarity of the user interfaces across products which have helped customers to speed up onboarding and user adoption process.
  • The focus on improving user productivity by automating or standardizing repeatable manual processes
  • Innovations from cloud technology which has reduced the initial hardware and ongoing information technology (IT) support spend.

The integration of business capabilities such as ERP and CRM with Office 365, Power BI, Power Apps, and Azure offer even greater value than the industry averages for CRM and ERP. As Microsoft makes further investments in integration and innovation, customers will benefit from the additional value provided by the Dynamics 365 portfolio.

 

Let Sysfore be your Guide

Whether your organization is ready to get started with Dynamics 365 or have questions on where to start, Sysfore is here to support you.

Know More about:

Dynamics 365 for Sales

Brisc 365 – The winning combination of D365 for sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Dynamics 365 for Customer service

We, Sysfore Technologies are building Dynamics 365 to meet you where you are, at every step of your journey. Contact one of our experts today and to learn how you can implement Dynamics 365 in your organization and find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555 for a free consultation.

Enhancing Customer Engagement with Digital Transformation in Sales

Customer engagement for a sales organization is more than an influential action initiated by communication – it’s the cycle of everything that happens between personal and digital encounters. Customer engagement demands an organization-wide allegiance to building meaningful connections, establishing relationships, and nurturing those relationships to institute trust. Customer engagement drives every interaction, every process, and every decision—and it’s the key to driving sales.

 

Leaders across multiple industries ranked customer engagement the #1 driving force behind sales versus tactical drivers like automation and productivity

 

The top-performing sales organizations are leveraging digital transformation to unlatch greater revenue growth. They understand the need for technology to fully apprehend customer engagement, and they seek technologies that continually help them evolve their customer engagement capabilities.

 

Digital Transformation and Revenue Growth

To drive customer engagement, many sales organizations are embracing technology to some extent. Where they are in their digital transformation journey varies, depending on their views and behaviors regarding technology adoption.

Digital transformation in Sales

  • Skeptics: Organizations that have yet to begin a digital transformation journey are embracing technological tools that — while may seem rudimentary — are invaluable to their sales teams.

 

  • Followers: As organizations begin to evolve on their digital transformation journey, they look for technologies that will allow for deeper engagements. They start to see the benefits of moving beyond introductory tools and adopting technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) tools to increase productivity, reimagining the capabilities of their sales teams

 

  • Strivers: Organizations who reach this point in their digital transformation journey are committed to evolving their customer engagement capabilities. This is where organizations start to see a cultural shift in the way they view and approach technology, with sales leaders prioritizing digital transformation as an organization-wide initiative—garnering support from the top-down.

 

  • Drivers: Sales organizations in this stage know there is no definitive end to the digital transformation journey. Drivers constantly experiment with advanced technologies and seek every opportunity to engage customers and gain a competitive advantage. Even when technology fails them, they continue to invest and experiment.

 

Turns out that there may be a direct correlation between digital transformation and revenue growth.  You’ll see in the following graph that organizations from the May 2016 Microsoft survey identifying as technology Drivers enjoyed a 50% increase in revenue growth:

Digital transformation in sales_2

Digitally transforming your sales organization is an evergreen journey. It’s an ongoing process that needs to become part of your organization’s culture, and it requires commitment and initiation from sales leaders.

 

To see how Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, part of the next generation of business applications from Microsoft, can help your organization successfully navigate transformation, take this free readiness assessment: https://www.sysfore.com/sysfore-D365-offerings.aspx

 

Learn more about how your organization can pursue service innovation with Dynamics 365. Contact one of our experts today and to learn how you can implement Dynamics 365 in your organization and find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555