What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
In 2011 Microsoft launched Office 365 as a subscription service that offers Microsoft Office products such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc., to people anywhere and is constantly updated. With its success and the demand from more businesses going online due to the digital revolution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 was launched in 2016, offering more business-orientated products specializing in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The service is available through the cloud anywhere around the world, making it quite easy to access any company employee.
With the digital revolution, companies collect vast amounts of data and look for tools to use this data and make business easier to manage and have better insight into their customer base. This is what Dynamics 365 is trying to provide to businesses with products that cater to different areas such as:
Intelligent sales and marketing
Personalization of the buyers’ experience, building customer relationships, and leading to more sales-ready leads.
Proactive customer service
Personalization of customer interactions, speeding resolutions with automated workflows, and empowering employees to take the right actions quickly.
Connected field service
Aims to deliver efficient field service by detecting any service issues remotely using IoT and using insights to schedule preventive maintenance before service breakdown in the supply chain.
Modern finance and operation
Aims to bring processes together and streamline different operations hence elevating your financial performance and helping employees succeed.
Connected Commerce
Aims to centralize merchandising and stock, personalizing the shopping experience, and create an omnichannel customer experience whether they shop online using their computer, mobile, or in-store.
What are CRM and ERP?
All businesses have two parts: a) their interaction with customers b) the company’s management. For any business to be a success, it needs both these aspects to work well. This is where the idea of CRM and ERP comes in.
CRM
CRM is a system for a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. The system aims to personalize the customer’s experience and keep them happy and loyal to your business/brand.
ERP
ERP is a system for a company to manage and make its business more efficient. This takes place by sharing information throughout all departments in the company creating a real-time snapshot. This allows different departments to quickly respond to an emerging problem before it becomes too big an issue.
Dynamics 365 Applications
Many applications are offered by Dynamics 365. A summary of their capabilities is supplied below.
Dynamics 365 Sales
An adaptive selling application with built-in AI to help the business become more customer-focused and shift to a digital experience when connecting virtually across channels and building relationships with the customer. The application is meant to boost seller productivity by minimizing routine tasks and cutting time spent on data entry and adapting to rapid changes in the market by supplying real-time sales performance and increased forecast accuracy using the system AI.
Dynamics 365 Marketing
Manage customer journeys by creating a personalized buyer experience using a strong buyer pipeline. Align sales and marketing to simplify collaboration and identify the target and close to customers. Make informed decisions and grow with an adaptable platform by easily integrating market data with marketing campaigns such as A/B testing.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Unify customer data for audience insights and analyze customer behavior for real-time engagement insights. The application can predict customer needs using AI, such as high-value or at-risk customers, drive meaningful actions using AI to keep them engaged. The platform offers built-in security, compliance, and privacy to keep data safe with support for both GDPR and CCPA.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Enable personalized, self-service solutions with virtual agents powered by AI. Empower customer service teams with tools for increased productivity by optimizing service with AI leading to actionable insights that get answers to questions faster. Built-in AI can also be used to deliver proactive service with IoT by integrated alerts and monitoring device health.
Dynamics 365 Field Service
Deliver proactive service by remotely detecting and resolving issues before they become a problem using AI and IoT. Optimize scheduling with AI and ensure a first-time fix by dispatching the right technician and optimizing service and resource.
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist
Share problems in real-time by sharing the real-time view with experts remotely to get the help you need. This can be done with video calls, remote control, or holons.
Dynamics 365 Finance
Enhance your financial decision making by unifying and automating your processes to accurately predict cash flow and automate supplier invoices. Reduce costs and decrease global financial complexity and risk by efficiently managing your business and quickly adapting to changing regulatory requirements using in-built systems.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Resolve product quality issues and accelerate time to market leading to lower product innovation costs. Gain planning agility to fulfill customer demand, optimize stock and logistics by using AI. Use intelligent manufacturing to automate warehouse operations and improve demand planning.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources
Transform employee experiences by self-service tools and accelerate employee development. Optimize HR programs and increase organizational agility by simplifying administration and automating processes and workflows. Gain workforce insights with Microsoft Power BI centralized through Microsoft Dataverse.
Dynamics 365 Commerce
Engage customers across channels to deliver a seamless and unified shopping experience and build loyalty. Create engaging, and intelligent digital storefronts to run digital commerce by enabling AI-driven intelligent commerce. Modernize retail stores and streamline operations to deliver a connected commerce journey for every customer. Gain business agility and scalability via a headless solution.
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection
Account protection with detection for fraudulent accounts with bot protection. Purchase protection triangulates fraudulent transactions with multiple data points. Finally, loss prevention protects from in-store data leakage and return fraud using AI that detects anomalies with automated discovery.
In all, Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers some very comprehensive tools for any business in the modern-day. Using these applications, the company can get a great insight into their customer base, help their business grow, be more efficient, productive, and protect themselves from fraud.
