Engaging with customers in today’s world is multifaceted, spanning everything from generating that initial spark of interest, to closing a sale and nurturing the relationship, to delivering exceptional ongoing service and support. Today, those experiences are often disconnected, and customer relationships are fragmented. On top of that, our expectations as customers have risen dramatically.

We expect that brands know enough about our preferences to provide high-quality interactions with us. We also prefer our experiences with a brand to be personalized and consistent across every touchpoint. However, this expectation is met with our own wariness about sharing personal information and fear that our data will be misused, or that we will be inundated with a barrage of advertisements, emails, and intrusive outreach. Yet, it is a balance, and most of us are receptive to content that is relevant to us at the right moment.

As we’ve worked with large enterprise customers around the world, their marketing leaders consistently stress that to meet today’s customer expectations and deliver privacy-aware, consent-enabled personalization, they need insights from multiple, diverse data sources—something they struggle with because data about their customers is often locked in silos.

This is why we are introducing the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, a customer engagement solution that gives you control of your customer data to deliver connected experiences. With full ownership of your data, you can connect directly to your customers—on your own terms. Rich out-of-the-box AI and insights enable you to better predict customer intent, accelerate your time to market, and deliver the right content on the right channel at the right moment. And, with AI-orchestrated journeys, you can engage your customers in powerful new ways, delivering connected experiences across every customer touchpoint.

Own your customer relationships

As the industry faces the imminent deprecation of third-party cookies and the continued fragmentation of digital identities, having a strong customer data platform is essential. Marketers need to build holistic customer profiles and protect them with robust privacy and security controls—all in real time. With Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, you can power customer data unification and understanding, enrich customer data with privacy-friendly insights from multiple sources, and ensure compliance, all while honoring your customer’s consent.

Data privacy and security, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, is top of mind for companies and customers alike. This is the reason Alpha XR and Boots Alliance, Inc. chose Microsoft to gain a unified, 360-degree view of their customers and deliver a world-class digital experience. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Alpha XR and Boots Alliance, Inc. is now able to deliver more engaging and tailored healthcare and shopping experiences, while protecting the privacy choices of patients and customers.

Create raving fans

Driving down customer acquisition costs and increasing lifetime value is a top priority for every business. And today’s marketers need granular data, scalable technology, and sophisticated analytics to achieve these goals. AI makes it easier to identify trends and insights to reveal new opportunities, but the average campaign led by data sciences can take months to execute, with a large portion of this time spent collecting data, cleaning it up, and running predictive models.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform helps you understand the intent, journeys, and behavior of customers on your web and mobile properties to optimize funnels and trigger personal experiences. With Microsoft, marketers have access to powerful out-of-the-box AI and pre-built models to predict key customer attributes like lifetime value, churn, lookalike, and interests, all designed to accelerate your time to market and deliver results.

Chipotle serves millions of customers a year and wanted to gain a deeper understanding of individual customer preferences and how they change over time. They needed to put multiple sources of customer data to work for them, including a loyalty program with more than 17 million members, point-of-sale data, a customer care center, and digital platforms. To accomplish this, Chipotle needed a comprehensive customer data platform to drive business insights and improve their return on marketing efforts. Today, Chipotle can gather and analyze longitudinal data in a more effective way to track key performance indicators such as repeat visitors, customer lifetime value, and customer sentiment. With greater insight into customer behaviors and marketing analytics, Chipotle can now directly target customers with messages that appeal to them—at times when they’ll be most receptive.

Engage in new ways

Customers today want real connections with brands that go beyond simple personalization. They want high-quality experiences that improve the way they live and work. To maximize reach and ROI, marketers must think beyond a linear customer journey and connect experiences across marketing, commerce, sales, and service. This requires precise use of customer data, integration into line-of-business applications, and seamless activation across a growing number of customer touchpoints.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform provides AI-orchestrated journeys so you can acquire and retain high-value prospects based on their interactions across advertising, email, mobile, social media, custom channels, and in-person touchpoints. With the integration between Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Microsoft Advertising, you can easily activate your audience segments, expand your target lists with lookalike audiences and auto-generated remarketing. You can distribute these segments into Microsoft Advertising and other ad platforms without barriers, further extending your reach by meeting customers where they are.

Leatherman, the originator and category leader in high-quality multi-tools, pocket tools, and knives, sought a solution to meet their growing D2C (Direct to Consumer) communication needs. Leatherman leveraged customer journey orchestration to curate a more personalized customer journey and to create user experience continuity with their online store. The team was able to create a multi-touchpoint journey which allowed them to engage their customers across their commerce and marketing solutions using real-time custom events. This journey was executed every time a customer signed up or started to check out on their website. This allowed Leatherman to seamlessly activate new customers and to create opportunities for continued engagement along the way.

When decision journeys bring customers to your retail website, Microsoft PromoteIQ helps you monetize that interest. This was the goal when the world’s largest home improvement retailer, Home Depot, partnered with PromoteIQ to enrich customer engagement on its e-commerce site in the U.S. Managing and scaling these vendor-funded digital marketing efforts generated incremental revenue for Home Depot while also giving Home Depot’s vendor partners enhanced marketing controls to drive better conversion, increase visibility and learn from real-time performance insights.

Tap into a rich ecosystem of partners and digital agencies

Microsoft is excited to be working with a growing list of digital agencies to help organizations more efficiently unlock their data, predict customer intent, and deliver impactful end-to-end journeys.

“We are excited about the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform and how Microsoft continues to invest in this space. It has never been more important to have the right capabilities to unlock data to more effectively engage customers, to predict customer intent in the moment, and to deliver connected end-to-end experiences across the entire customer lifecycle.”—David Mitchell, CTO, VMLY&R.

“The advantages of digital transformation go well beyond a simple cost-benefit analysis. The announcement today of the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform gives businesses an end-to-end platform that encompasses transformation across infrastructure, data, and artificial intelligence to create real-time predictive customer experiences that create deeper understanding to deliver the right experience and brand behaviors and preferences clients want.”—Adam Good, Executive Director, Marketing Technology WPP Australia and New Zealand.

“Over the next few years, we’ll see the impact of the changes we’ve been through. We’re invested in experience because as we move to cloud, we’ll have data to make those experiences equitable, personalized, sustainable, & simple. Microsoft’s CX Platform helps pull it all together to make what’s next.”—José Reyes, PwC Partner, Chief Creative Officer and Experience Center Leader.

Learn more

Learn how to create tailored, delightful customer journeys with Microsoft Customer Experience Platform that safely leverage and protect your customer data while inspiring trust and loyalty. We help you get the most out of your data by connecting with customers on your own terms, applying rich AI capabilities to glean the best insights, and engaging in powerful ways across the customer journey.

All of this is made possible with the combined power of products like Microsoft Advertising, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Promote IQ, Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, and Microsoft Azure Purview. Find out more at Microsoft Customer Experience Platform and Microsoft Ignite breakout webinar.

1- PWC, Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right

The post Introducing Microsoft Customer Experience Platform: A solution for connected customer experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Four essentials to collaborate as one business, everywhere.

Across every industry, we’re all navigating the new world of hybrid work. Together, we’re building a blended model that enables more flexibility in when, where, and how people work, and that model is here to stay. But organizations can’t let flexibility turn into separate, disjointed work efforts—they must enable the entire organization to operate as one business, everywhere. 

With Dynamics 365 + Microsoft Teams, we’re helping organizations achieve this goal, making it easier for people in any role or department to connect, communicate, and collaborate on business functions—no matter when, where, or how they’re working.  

The essentials for cross-organizational collaboration

As business leaders shape their hybrid workplace strategy, we believe there are four “collaboration essentials” they must consider so they can work as one business, everywhere.   

1. The new flow of work must connect everyone, across every business function 

In a world of hybrid work, digital collaboration should help broaden networks, not constrict them. That’s why we’re making it easier for any Dynamics 365 user to seek out diverse perspectives, learnings, and insights from anywhere within the organization—between sales and engineering, marketing and finance, retail frontlines, and customer service.

Dynamics 365 users will soon be able to invite any Microsoft Teams user from across the organization to view and collaborate on business records right within the flow of a Teams chat or channel. This enables everyone in the organization to directly contribute to business activities in the moment, without needing to switch context across multiple apps and data sources.  

Organizations are taking full advantage of this opportunity. Insurance brokerage and advisory company Willis Towers Watson plans to put the powerful combination of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales in the hands of the whole company so that anyone from sellers to service agents can share and collaborate from within Teams or Dynamics 365 Sales without switching apps. At Rockwell Automation, a worldwide company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, sellers and sales leaders have access to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams so that they can collaborate with other sellers and groups across the company. 

2. Teams must be able to connect everywhere, anytime, on every channel  

In the pre-COVID world, collaboration was largely synchronous—with team members working on a problem at the same time, either in person or in a virtual meeting. But today, collaboration must be asynchronous as well. In addition to the ability to meet live on video, employees also need the ability to share customer records, service cases, or workflows with any expert in the organization, in the flow of their work in Dynamics 365—and enable that expert to add value from anywhere, at any time.  

For example, organizations can enable asynchronous collaboration by embedding chatbots in the flow of work. With new chatbot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Human Resources, employees can view time-off balances and submit leave requests from within Teams, without having to visit a separate HR portal. Employees simply type in a few keywords, and a chatbot can easily help them find out their leave balance or request time off. Managers can just as easily review and approve time-off requests with just a few clicks. With this self-service experience, employees and managers can work together on simple HR tasks from anywhere, at any time—all from within the flow of work with Teams.

Every organization, large and small, needs to bring collaboration into the flow of work. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, small and medium businesses can also connect people, processes, insights, and cross-functional team collaboration to make better decisions faster. Now in preview, Business Central users can paste a link to any Dynamics 365 record into a Microsoft Teams chat, and it will expand that into a compact card to share with coworkers. They can view card details, edit data, and take action without ever leaving Teams—in the office, at home, or on the go. In addition, users can look up business contacts, vendors, and customers that can be shared into chat, or used to bring up rich, actionable details in a window in Teams. 

3. Collaboration must go beyond the office  

Our research shows that remote work increased interactions with immediate teams and close networks, but dramatically diminished interactions with more distant networks. This is a worrying trend for business leaders, potentially leading to problems like groupthink or employee isolation. Dynamics 365 and Teams help organizations bring every network closer together so that those closest to the problem can access the people and information they need to spur innovation, wherever they are located.

On the retail frontlines, for example, it’s critical to have the most accurate product and inventory information on hand, as well as coordinate important tasks to keep stores running efficiently. New task management functionality now available in Dynamics 365 Commerce allows managers and workers to create task lists, manage assignment criteria, and track task statuses integrated between Dynamics 365 Commerce back office, store commerce, and Teams applications.

Mattress Firm, one of the country’s largest specialty mattress retailers, provides retail associates with Microsoft Surface Go devices that integrate Dynamics 365 Commerce and Office 365 apps. The mobile point of sale system can enable them to engage better with guests while accessing experts and sales information in Teams, all in real–time.  

Collaboration happens in the moment, between anyone—from the home office to the factory floor to oil platforms. For example, in the coming months, we’re introducing new ways for field technicians to stay connected to work orders, information, and experts in real-time, even from some of the most remote job sites—all with seamless integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and Teams.  

Saint-Gobain, a global leader in the manufacturing of sustainable, high-performance building materials, uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist with HoloLens and Teams to help its process experts virtually troubleshoot equipment in its factories around the world, as well as train technicians faster. And frontline workers based at offshore Chevron platforms use a HoloLens mixed reality headset equipped with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft Teams to connect with colleagues onshore and perform virtual safety measures. 

4. The new world of work must be personalized 

In addition to improving the way people work together across the organization, collaboration should improve how individuals and departments engage with end customers—enabling everyone to deliver more personalized experiences. In a world of hybrid work, it’s clear that virtual events will remain a key method for engaging with customers, and customer expectations for a personalized experience have risen. 

This year, marketers will be able to set up, promote, and report on events hosted on Microsoft Teams from within Dynamics 365 Marketing. In a few simple steps, they can export attendee data and view customer segments created in Dynamics 365 Marketing based on audience attendance. Customer journeys, including starter emails, are also automatically created to nurture attendees. Users can then further customize the content and experiences for attendees based on how they engage and orchestrate personalized customer journeys.  

One business, everywhere: Collaborate in the flow of work  

As the definition of workplace continues to evolve, every organization needs to bring people, insights, and business processes together in collaborative spaces. These four essential capabilities—built into Dynamics 365 and Teams—will help everyone across your business work together from anywhere in a more seamless and natural way.  

Learn more

• Website: Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Teams tech blog (Ignite 2021): What’s New in Microsoft Teams
• Dynamics 365 blog (Ignite 2021): Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams: extend collaboration across teams
• Dynamics 365 blog (Inspire 2021): Bring Dynamics 365 into the flow of work with Teams—at no additional cost
• Microsoft 365 blog (Inspire 2021): From collaborative apps in Microsoft Teams to Windows 365—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 at Inspire

The post Across your business, collaborate in the flow of work with anyone, everywhere appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today at Microsoft Inspire, partners and customers will learn how the Microsoft cloud can help them navigate their transformation journey, make the shift to hybrid work, innovate everywhere across their organization, and build it all on a foundation of trust and security.

We’ll also share how partners can capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us in the upcoming year.

One of the announcements I’m most excited about is how we’re activating the flow of work in Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Dynamics 365. With the world changing faster than ever before, none of us have time to waste when we’re trying to get work done. Searching for information, finding an expert to help your customer, or switching between apps all day long—all of these things slow down the flow of work and keep us from delivering customer experiences that matter.

With Dynamics 365 and Teams, we’re speeding up the flow of work, enabling anyone in an organization to view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records, from within the flow of work with Teams—at no additional cost. No other technology vendor enables organizations to activate this capability without the need to pay for multiple underlying software licenses.

Think about the incredible potential when you activate the flow of work with Dynamics 365 in Teams:

• A service engineer can enable an agent to fix a customer’s issue by adding notes with troubleshooting steps to the customer service case record.
• Finance teams can streamline order fulfillment, sharing purchase orders and payment details with their counterparts in sales.
• A field technician can notify sales teams about products nearing end-of-life, so the sales team can proactively reach out with replacement options.
• And a sales team can close deals faster, by understanding signals from the marketing department around demand generation.

Only Microsoft is enabling this kind of innovation and accessibility without adding new costs for an organization. We’re so excited to see how our customers and partners build on this innovation and unlock new capabilities for their organizations.

Make sure to read my blog post with Jared Spataro to learn more about this announcement, and how we’re building the Microsoft cloud for a new world of work.

The post Bring Dynamics 365 into the flow of work with Teams—at no additional cost appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We have seen a breakthrough year for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Across industries and around the world, we’re seeing companies leveraging Dynamics 365 to create impact faster, break down barriers, adapt to a rapidly changing environment, and innovate across their business. Dynamics 365 continues to grow quickly, with 45 percent revenue growth in Q3.

And Microsoft Power Platform is becoming the next-generation business process automation and productivity suite for domain experts in all functions. Microsoft Power Platform is being used by nearly 16 million monthly active users, up 97 percent year over year, which highlights how anyone can automate a workflow, create an app, build a virtual agent, or analyze data. Just like Office revolutionized productivity gains for knowledge workers, Microsoft Power Platform will do the same for domain experts.

We’ve seen organizations demonstrate incredible agility in the face of rapid change, and we’ve seen how they can rise above to realize their full potential. But at the end of the day, organizations don’t rise to challenges – people do. That’s why we’re investing heavily in the people who bring Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform to life for our customers.

Across our business, we’re looking for new team members who are passionate about enabling transformation for organizations in every industry and around the world. Visit our Business Applications careers site to learn how you can contribute to the transformation we’re seeing in the world today.

Rising to the challenge of a new reality

Over the past year, we have seen so many examples of agility, resilience, and innovation. At Microsoft Business Applications Summit earlier this month, we showcased a few of them along with new features and capabilities that are part of the 2021 release wave. Check out the event keynote, “Enabling innovation everywhere with Microsoft Business Applications”, for some highlights.

For example, beauty giant L’Oreal developed a new solution to install, upgrade, troubleshoot, and audit complex machinery even as global travel restrictions took effect, using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and HoloLens 2. Not only does this solution put experts in the room without physically needing them on-site, but it will help them meet their long-term goals around sustainability and reducing their carbon footprint.

In retail, Patagonia used Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams  to stay connected with customers and deliver a seamless customer experience even as they closed retail stores, and later, introduced new curbside pickup options. And consumer goods company Campari is unifying their fragmented data landscape with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, allowing them to support end-to-end customer journeys across the organization, faster and smarter than ever.

We’re also seeing Microsoft Power Platform drive incredible results, with Alpha XR Boots Alliance reducing in-store audit times by 75 percent by empowering frontline workers with Microsoft Teams and the Asset Protection mobile app, built with Power Apps. With Power Apps and the entire Microsoft Power Platform portfolio, Alpha XR says they’ve reduced time to market for a new app by 50 to 80 percent – putting useful solutions in the hands of employees quicker.

Be part of this growing business

We’re continuing to invest in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, with continual product innovation, new partner skilling and certification programs, a new Microsoft-empowered community experience, and of course, people.

The incredible momentum of this business means our team is growing, too. In markets around the world, we’re looking for people who want to make a difference and take their career to the next level by helping global organizations achieve their potential with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. If you’re interested in joining our team, we’re hiring across a wealth of disciplines, from engineering to technical sales, in markets across the globe. Visit our website to explore career opportunities in business applications.

The post Accelerating business transformation with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

It’s amazing how much change we’ve seen across the world in a year.

One year ago, all of us were adapting to a world in lockdown. At today’s Microsoft Business Applications Summit, the worldwide community comes together still dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even as challenges continue to reverberate across industries—from supply chain disruptions to recurring restrictions—most businesses are taking steps toward recovery. They’re taking stock of vulnerabilities and opportunities across their organizations, markets, and industries—and the steps needed to move forward into the future.

That’s why today’s Microsoft Business Applications Summit is so timely. As global business communities set sights on what’s next, today’s event is an opportunity for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform community to come together, assess what we’ve learned over the past year, and explore ways to proactively reimagine every layer of business.

Building the agile digital business

Everyone joining the Microsoft Business Applications Summit plays an integral part in moving business forward. Today, we are sharing stories of people and teams transforming the way they do business to be more adaptable, innovative, and impactful.

This past year demonstrated that businesses with a strong digital foundation can push the boundaries of what’s possible and achieve more, even when faced with a global crisis. Without digital capabilities, it’s next to impossible to adapt to rapid change.

At Patagonia, a leader in outdoor clothing and gear, the pandemic accelerated a journey to deliver more meaningful customer experiences—in ways no one expected. Before the crisis, the organization was preparing to move its direct-to-consumer business and selling channels onto Dynamics 365. When lockdowns shut down physical locations, from offices and retail stores to call centers and warehouses, the team turned to Microsoft Teams to coordinate the launch and rapidly adapt operations to a new retail model. With retail locations closed to customers, the team leveraged distributed order management capabilities in Dynamics 365 to turn retail locations into mini-warehouses, keeping employees working and online orders fulfilled, followed by curbside pick-up.

Equipped with the right digital capabilities, the teams at Patagonia demonstrated incredible agility in the face of change—pivoting complex operations nimbly and quickly to keep customers equipped with the outdoor gear they depend on.

New ways to connect with your community

Patagonia’s story reminds us that, together, as a team, we can accomplish great things. In a year defined by keeping one’s distance, it’s critical to help our community stay connected.

Today, more than 775 user groups bring together more than 2.85 million active community members to connect, learn, and engage one another on topics related to Microsoft technologies. The Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 communities connect you directly with Microsoft, your industry peers, and high-value content in a diverse, supportive environment.

Today we are introducing a new user group experience with tools to help you find, join, start, and run local user groups for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

We are supporting the user groups with an administrative team and connection to local Microsoft employees around the world. You can engage with experts to answer questions, learn about the latest innovations, and influence future product roadmaps.

Our goal is to enable a global network of local user groups that are Microsoft-supported and community-led. We invite you to explore the preview of the new experience and get started by creating or joining a local user group.

Helping you move business forward

It’s been a tough year. Every business has had to make difficult decisions, rethink plans, and readjust to conditions few could predict in advance. Moving forward means reshaping the business now to be prepared for future disruptions, large and small. That’s why we are dedicated to continuously providing the technology you need to build agility and resiliency into every layer of your business.

In April, we launched a six-month wave of hundreds of new capabilities, feature updates, and applications across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. This release wave continues our dedication to empower everyone to make an impact with technology that surfaces insights and guidance to the next best step, across every department. By harnessing the data generated across your business, everyone across the company can break through barriers to perform their best and focus on what’s best for the customer.

One way we are bringing this vision to life is by helping you deliver consistent, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint, from the first point of awareness of your brand through purchase and service, both from the call center and in the field. Today at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, we’ll catch you up on the latest marketing technologies that help you engage individual customers at scale.

In our keynote presentation, we will demonstrate how the Los Angeles Clippers are able to make game night more personalized by engaging fans with the experiences they prefer. They can now use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—the Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)—to connect data from a variety of sources to gain a comprehensive view of fans’ preferences and use Dynamics 365 Marketing to orchestrate customer-led journeys in real-time to deliver hyper-personalized experiences for fans on game night. With the combined power of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing, organizations can deeply understand customer behavior and intent and leverage real-time insights to personalize journeys at scale, unlocking new ways to attract, engage, and delight customers with a more human and empathetic approach.

With the new integration between Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Microsoft Advertising, advertisers can now create and export limitless set of customer segments from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into the Microsoft Advertising platform to target on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network using Customer Match targeting. These segments can be also used on third-party destinations including Google Ads, Marketo, MailChimp, dotdigital, SendGrid, and Autopilot.

Learn more by joining sessions focusing on Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, including the featured session, “Customer engagement transformed: hyper-personalize experiences to drive better business results.”

Microsoft Power Platform: Making your business more flexible

Innovation and problem solving doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Everyone in the business can play a role in moving the business forward with the right set of digital tools. Our vision for Microsoft Power Platform is to empower every creator in your company to build business solutions, increase collaboration between business and IT teams, and inject more flexibility into your business.

Humana, a U.S.-based healthcare innovation and community wellness company, is helping to bring this vision to life. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Humana used Microsoft Power Platform to rapidly build solutions catering to the needs of their millions of Medicare and specialty members and vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our keynote presentation, we will demonstrate one of the solutions—a vaccine scheduler and community tracking applications to help members book vaccination appointments with local providers.

As part of this demo, we will also spotlight goals in Power BI, launching in preview today. Goals enables teams to easily curate business metrics that matter most and aggregate them in a unified view. From there, teams can measure progress against their goals, proactively share updates with their teammates, and dive deeper into their data when something needs further analysis. Attend today’s sessions on the Power BI roadmap and new features announcement, and read this overview to learn more.

With Microsoft Power Platform, anyone can solve business challenges with low-code apps, or automate common processes—at scale, across departments, or on one’s desktop. Barriers that have blocked innovation and productivity for years are removed.

Join the conversation at Microsoft Business Applications Summit

There’s much more to explore at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit. In addition to the sessions above, we invite you to explore the full catalog of learning sessions and product roundtables. We also invite you to connect, learn, and share with peers and experts to ask questions, engage in discussions, and view content in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 communities.

For more details about what’s new for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, explore recent product updates and the 2021 release wave 1 plans.

The post Live from Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2021: Moving forward faster, together appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Truly engaged, always connected

The past year has brought complex challenges for retailers of every size, and in response many have quickly pivoted their businesses to adjust.

With store closures during lockdown, retailers leveraged Microsoft Dynamics 365 to facilitate new purchasing options for their customers, such as shipping from stores and click and collect. Once stores reopened, Dynamics 365 helped retailers realize the vitality of mobile point of sale solutions and contactless payment options to ensure safe and secure shopping experiences for both customers and sellers alike.

It’s clear that resilience and agility will be the key drivers of success for retailers moving forward, as customer demands change and new challenges emerge, and Microsoft is dedicated to empowering these organizations with the technology solutions they need.

Today at NRF 2021: Retail’s Big Show, we are introducing the private preview of Microsoft Cloud for Retail, as well as updates to Dynamics 365 that help retailers better engage both B2B and B2C customers. These new capabilities join Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform solutions that work together to help brands deliver personalized and meaningful customer experiences across physical and digital channels, uniquely connecting the end-to-end shopper journey.

We are excited to continue partnering with retailers leveraging Dynamics 365 and Power Platform solutions, including the new capabilities we’re announcing today, to drive their success in 2021. Take a look at how a few leading retailers around the world are looking to Dynamics 365 and Power Platform to build resilience, increase agility, and ultimately accelerate business outcomes.

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Unify your e-commerce capabilities

With disparate retail systems, it’s difficult for retailers to scale across both traditional e-commerce and emerging channels for a truly seamless customer experience.

At NRF 2021, we are announcing the preview of B2B e-commerce functionality for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce—one of the solution’s most requested features. This new capability makes Dynamics 365 Commerce the optimal solution for B2B and B2C e-commerce on a single, holistic retail and commerce platform. By building on our consumer capabilities and bringing together B2B and B2C e-commerce, businesses can deliver consistent, personalized, and user-friendly purchasing options for all their customers. Combine this with close integration to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, retailers can enable curated self-service buying options for business accounts, along with increasing the productivity of their sales reps and empower them to provide informed and relevant offers to their buyers.

Kent Watersports is one of the largest sellers of watersports equipment globally. With a range of brands including O’Brien, Hyperlite, Connelly, Liquid Force, and more, Kent Watersports chose to work with Microsoft to help expand their e-commerce capabilities and sales capacity amidst increased online demand in 2020 and deliver a connected and user-friendly experience for both B2C and B2B customers.

“Our business customers want to be able to connect to our site and place their orders themselves. Historically, they were sharing Excel spreadsheets or calling a sales rep. We really appreciate the ability of the buyer to place the order electronically. It saves us a lot of time, and in fact it’s a better experience for the customers, and the sales reps, to actually be using our B2B e-commerce solution.”—Rhett Thompson, Director of IT, Kent Watersports

Along with Kent Watersports, Columbia Sportswear also worked with Microsoft to rapidly adjust to market changes amid temporary store closures by the pandemic in early 2020. Columbia Sportswear leveraged Dynamics 365 Commerce to facilitate shipping from stores to meet customer demand and also started converting their store experiences to be compliant with local regulations. Once stores reopened, mobile point of sale solutions and contactless payment options became broadly adopted and ensured safe and secure shopping experience for both customers and sellers alike. Russel Anderson, Sr. Director Retail Operations, Columbia Sportswear shared how Dynamics 365 reduces time to value: “With Dynamics 365 Commerce we have realized that technology does not need to move as slowly as we previously thought it did, it can move faster.”

Throughout the NRF 2021 digital event, we will also showcase how retailers are using Dynamics 365 and Power Platform solutions to understand and engage customers, reduce fraud risk, and build resilient and agile supply chains.

Know your customer like never before

Providing personalized experiences at scale requires deep insights into customer needs and buying behavior. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights brings together transactional, behavioral, and demographic data in real time to create a complete view of your customers and unlock insights to drive informed decisions, automate processes, and personalize customer engagement across channels.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to organize, analyze, and enrich its customer data to target marketing efforts so they’re as meaningful and effective as possible. With multiple sources of customer data but no comprehensive customer data platform, they couldn’t use that data to drive business insights or improve marketing efforts. Now, having chosen Microsoft to help navigate its customer data journey, Chipotle can understand customer preferences and customize relevant marketing messages, boosting revenue for the company and increasing personalization for customers.

Protect your customers and your bottom line

As more businesses turn to e-commerce, it also increases the exposure to fraud and abuse: a majority of fraud is committed during card-not-present transactions. Fraud is not only a burden for customers with stolen identities, account takeover, and more, but it represents a serious operational hazard for merchants. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is a cloud-based SaaS solution designed to help e-commerce, brick-and-mortar, and omnichannel merchants decrease fraud costs and improve profitability. We are helping merchants globally to protect their revenue and reputation with tools and capabilities to decrease fraud and abuse, reduce operational expenses, and increase acceptance rates, while safeguarding user accounts from fraud exposure.

Darden Restaurants, operating some of the most recognizable brands in full-service dining including Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, needed to move swiftly to address a growing fraud issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the shift to an online-only model, Darden started noticing some fraudulent payments and looked to Microsoft for help. Darden Restaurants deployed Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to combat purchase fraud at LongHorn Steakhouse, and together with Microsoft they had the solution quickly up and running—protecting the restaurants and customers against fraud.

Build a supply chain that can handle any challenge

Another major repercussion of the COVID-19 outbreak has been the exposure of global supply chain vulnerabilities. Merchants need real-time visibility into their inventory to drive demand for overstock products and expedite replenishment of out-of-stock items cost effectively. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps businesses build a resilient supply chain and agility to rapidly re-plan supply and distribution of products in near real-time with in-memory microservice to adapt to shifting customer demand. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enables businesses to accomplish this in a matter of minutes, instead of days. Businesses can also seamlessly scale distribution and warehouse operations with edge computing during peaks. This capability, combined with an intelligent distributed order management system, provides businesses with a single global view of their inventory, to intelligently manage, automate, and optimize order fulfillment to ensure on-time delivery in a cost-effective manner.

One of our customers, Mobilezone, simplified the solutions landscape by choosing Dynamics 365 to get a better view of their customers and omnichannel sales capabilities for operating online, company-owned, and partner stores. Mobilezone consolidated its customer information within a single platform for heightened security, greater ease of use, and vastly improved inventory management. Mobilezone uses the synergy between Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Commerce to analyze and satisfy demand. 

“By using Supply Chain Management, we can automate alerts regarding inventory in specific locations, so we avoid the risks of out-of-stocks and overstocking.”—Fritz Hauser, Director of IT and Logistics, Mobilezone 

Another customer, Monogram Foods, is excited to enhance warehouse operations and create resiliency using edge scale units for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. As Turner Foster, Senior Developer Manager, Monogram Foods explains: “Our frozen goods warehouse has a tight time constrained picking process, and it is critical for our warehouse team to have a consistent and reliably quick response throughout the entire picking operation. The architectural design of the solution ensures that these critical warehouse workloads are isolated from the rest of our operations, eliminating points of contention during these time sensitive processes.”

Retail solutions that are built to work together

Together, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection help businesses streamline omnichannel operations, providing near real-time solutions for managing inventory, reducing fraud risk, and creating new customer services. Power Platform works together with Dynamics 365 to provide an additional layer of flexibility of adaptability, delivering low-code solutions to innovate with apps, automate processes, create virtual bots to improve service, and analyze data quickly to streamline reporting and gain insights across the organization, from the frontline to the supply chain, sales to service.

Get the full story

If you are registered for NRF 2021, we invite you to join Shelley Bransten, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Consumer Goods and Retail Industries, to learn how Microsoft is empowering retailers from across the globe to build more intelligent, resilient, and sustainable retail operations. Tune in on Wednesday, January 13 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time.

Also, continue to visit the Dynamics 365 blog this week to learn more about how Dynamics 365 and Power Platform are helping retailers reimagine the road ahead with truly engaged, always connected solutions. Be sure to check out our new Business Applications retail industry webpage for more information.

The post NRF 2021: enabling retailers to reimagine the road ahead with Microsoft Business Applications appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As organizations worldwide continue to respond and react to a new business climate, we have seen more clearly than ever that the traditional approach to business applications is no longer sufficient. Organizations need a new class of business applications that provides the agility to see and respond to emerging trends, new opportunities, and potential risks so that ultimately, they can delight their customers and deliver the business outcomes that truly matter.

That’s why today we are excited to announce, together with C3.ai and Adobe, the launch of C3 AI CRM powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365. C3 AI CRM leverages Dynamics 365 as the foundation for end-to-end, intelligent customer engagement, with Adobe Experience Cloud providing real-time customer profile and customer journey management, together with C3.ai’s industry-specific enterprise AI capabilities.

With C3 AI CRM, organizations can unlock the power of AI-driven customer relationship management in a solution purpose-built for specific industries, leveraging data from any source to produce predictive business insights. We are proud to welcome C3.ai to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem, and to continue our collaboration with Adobe.

We had a chance to catch up with Amit Ahuja from Adobe and Ed Abbo from C3.ai to talk a little more about this partnership.

Why is traditional CRM insufficient for today’s enterprise requirements?

Ed: When we first created CRM back in the 1990s, it revolutionized sales, marketing, and customer service. Back then, the vast majority of customer data—contact and account information, transaction history, service history, pricing, etc.—resided in internal enterprise systems. CRM unified those internal silos and applied rules-based workflows to customer-facing processes—and three decades later, today’s CRM systems still operate in much the same way, even though the world has dramatically changed. Today’s CRM applications are backward-looking systems of record. But what businesses require are forward-looking, predictive systems of intelligence that provide real-time, data-driven insights to deliver the optimal customer experience

In today’s digital world, the vast majority of data relevant for CRM resides in external, rather than internal, sources—social network relationships, online activity, market and economic data, credit scores, financial filings, etc. All of that data must be unified and analyzed with AI using advanced machine learning methods that have been developed within the last 5 – 10 years. The data in today’s CRM systems is not sufficient for AI, and they were not built with architectures designed to aggregate, unify, and apply machine learning to petabyte-scale volumes of disparate, structured, and unstructured data. You can’t simply bolt these capabilities onto traditional CRM systems as an afterthought—it requires a modern AI-first architecture.

Alysa: We see the same trend, with the volume of data just growing exponentially. For organizations to succeed in this climate, they need to do two things. First, they need to aggregate data from across their organization and leveraging the external data Ed talks about. With that, they can access a 360-degree view of their customers and indeed, their entire operation. Second, they need a solution that applies intelligence to the entirety of that data estate, so they can quickly make decisions that generate new value for their organizations and deliver exceptional experiences for their customers.

On top of that, we have seen that the definition of CRM has broadened—it’s not just about salesforce automation anymore. Organizations need solutions that allow them to understand and optimize the broader customer engagement journey, from marketing and sales all the way to back-end service and support, taking advantage of that unified approach to data and pervasive AI.

Amit: The antiquated model of static, siloed customer profiles do not work anymore. Legacy CRM products were not designed to aggregate, unify, and apply advanced machine learning models to today’s massive, disparate data sets. For today’s digital businesses, it’s not enough to have the most data, you need the right data—behavioral, transactional, and operational—to understand your customer, and the intelligence to act on it in the moment.

Why did C3.ai partner with Microsoft and Adobe to build the world’s first AI CRM application for industries?

Ed: C3.ai, Microsoft, and Adobe bring together the perfect combination of technology, industry, and domain expertise to address the requirements for a new generation of CRM. No technology company has a greater footprint and credibility in the enterprise globally than Microsoft with its ecosystem of Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Microsoft Power Platform, powered by Microsoft Azure. And Adobe has set the standard for the customer digital experience with Adobe Experience Cloud. C3.ai brings expertise in industry-specific Enterprise AI and, of course, a management team with deep experience in CRM.

Importantly, in addition to this combination of leading technologies and expertise, we share a common vision with our partners of an AI-first, industry-specific approach to delivering a new generation of AI CRM solutions. There is an enormous opportunity to reinvent CRM for the 21^st century, leveraging technologies that did not exist when today’s CRM products were designed, to bring exciting new capabilities to customers that will enable them, in turn, to deliver better experiences for their customers and grow their business.

Alysa: We have had a longstanding partnership collaborating with C3.ai in the enterprise AI space, most recently this spring announcing how C3.ai adopted and deployed Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Teams in less than two weeks to help streamline sales operations, collaborate in real time, expand mobile capabilities to power remote selling and generate new business opportunities. We’re excited to deepen that partnership with this announcement, allowing our mutual customers to leverage the combined power of Azure, C3.ai, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and the Adobe Experience Cloud. Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a full portfolio of intelligent business applications. By integrating C3.ai’s industry-specific data and AI models and Adobe’s best-in-class customer experience engine, our customers will realize even greater value from Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Amit: Digital transformation has taken on a heightened urgency. Customer journeys are complex, and they expect consistent, personalized experiences across every touch point. To deliver those personalized experiences, brands are challenged to bring together disparate data sets. Bringing together Adobe’s customer experience leadership with C3.ai’s deep AI expertise and Microsoft’s CRM platform enables a new caliber of customer engagement by fusing behavioral data into customer profiles, orchestrating customer journeys and delivering real-time customer experiences.

How does this solution leverage the Open Data Initiative (ODI)?

Alysa: The work on ODI continues, and today’s announcement with C3.ai is another example of how, together with Adobe, we are delivering progress on the vision that drives ODI. The momentum we have gained is exciting, and our work continues to be validated by partners like C3.ai who share our desire to help organizations put their data to work quickly, removing friction, and derive value from their data—particularly when that data is siloed across multiple systems and sources. We’re excited to see how ODI will continue to help companies transform their customer experiences through real-time insights delivered from the cloud.

Amit: We’re excited about the momentum we’ve gained with ODI, and our work continues to be validated by partners such as C3.ai who share our desire to help organizations put their data to work quickly, removing friction and deriving value.

What customer outcomes will C3 AI CRM powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Cloud deliver?

Ed: Bringing an AI-first, industry-specific approach, C3 AI CRM delivers a precision system of intelligence that unlocks powerful new capabilities for customers. Consider revenue forecasting, for example. We can now unify and analyze extraprise data—SEC filings, equities prices, market data, and so on—to create far more accurate forecasts. Similarly, whatever the use case – intelligent lead prospecting, next-best-product offer, price optimization, customer churn management, etc.—we can analyze massive volumes of data, make predictions, and generate recommendations to augment human agents or trigger automated processes.

By using C3 AI CRM powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Cloud, our customers will be able to better anticipate their customers’ needs and deliver more satisfying customer experiences—more personalized, more efficient, more intelligent—while increasing revenue, profitability, and customer loyalty. This is the future of CRM.

Amit: Every organization has processes that can be improved quickly with the right kind of AI. Organizations that are finding the most value from AI have moved beyond pilots to scale AI across their entire organization and are using AI to find new ways to work smarter and drive efficiencies to increasing cost pressures. Joint customers can transform sales, marketing, and customer experiences with a new AI-native technology stack that brings together real-time customer profile, journey management, and experience delivery from Adobe, sales intelligence, and insight from Dynamics 365 CRM, as well as deep industry AI expertise from C3.ai. For example, in financial services, C3 AI can help with credit prospecting, churn management, and call center predictions. In manufacturing, use cases include dealer management and predictive maintenance and service. In the public sector, AI can be applied across case and process management, as well as citizen engagement, and can guide safety and sustainability practices within cities.

How does this partnership bring CXM value to brands?

Amit: Across every industry, whether it’s business-to-business or business-to-consumer, people aren’t just buying products. They’re buying experiences. Consumers today have more avenues than ever before to engage and interact with brands and they expect personalized experiences across every touchpoint. However, brands are struggling to deliver these experiences. Data, such as purchase history, used to craft a bespoke customer experience has many owners within an organization, creating an incomplete view of each customer, and, ultimately, an underwhelming experience. Winning brands must be able to capture, analyze, and act on everything they know about their customers in real time in order to deliver the best experience possible. Adobe brings leadership in CXM with Adobe Experience Cloud, the end-to-end solution for experience creation, marketing, advertising, analytics, and commerce. And by bringing together Adobe’s leadership with C3.ai’s deep AI expertise and Microsoft’s CRM platform, we’re delivering a new caliber of customer engagement.

How are ISVs like C3.ai partnering with Microsoft and Adobe?

Alysa: Microsoft attracts ISVs of all shapes and sizes to build on and extend the Microsoft cloud with industry-specific line-of-business applications. Unlike other business application platforms, Microsoft eliminates the traditional silos of ERP and CRM and empowers ISVs to build without limitation. With our Business Applications ISV Connect Program, ISVs like C3.ai can access go-to-market support and sales resources along with the technical foundation that allows them to build on the intelligent capabilities of the entire Microsoft cloud.

The post Partnering with C3.ai and Adobe to re-invent CRM with AI appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

At recent virtual events, we have talked about the need to build resilience into every layer of the business—empowering people with technology to innovate and adapt to constant, often unpredictable change. This week, during a Q&A session at Interop Digital 2020, I was asked for real-world examples of resilience-building in action.

Mercedes-Benz was top of mind, an automotive leader using mixed reality to realign how technicians service vehicles in a world of social distancing and complex automobile engineering. It’s a great example of how Microsoft Dynamics 365 can accelerate time to value with intelligent digital solutions, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, that empowers people to connect, collaborate, and get the job done with incredible efficiency.

For 94 years, Mercedes-Benz has been on the forefront of precisely engineered luxury automobiles, today manufactured in 17 countries on five continents, and distributed all over the world. They have introduced many of the automotive technologies we see today, including crumple-free zones, the airbag, and over the past decade embraced digital technology to improve the driving experience.

All that technology has led to great driving experiences; however, it has also increased the complexity of maintenance. In fact, the average vehicle features more than 100 million lines of software code—more than the Space Shuttle, an F-35 fighter jet, and a pacemaker combined.

Coupled with social distancing requirements at dealer service centers, Mercedes-Benz needed to quickly help technicians master complex maintenance procedures, while eliminating travel and onsite visits to dealer service centers. The solution: Mercedes-Benz Virtual Remote Support, the first ever mixed reality automotive maintenance support system.

Mercedes-Benz Virtual Remote Support in action

Mercedes-Benz Virtual Remote Support is a paradigm shift in maintenance support for Mercedes-Benz and the entire automotive industry. Created in collaboration with Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz USA is solving both the immediate need to support a remote work environment while setting the stage for the future by increasing the productivity and efficiency of dealer technicians.

When an onsite technician needs guidance from experts, such as making decisions about a body repair or a complex diagnostic plan, he or she dons a Microsoft HoloLens 2 headset that runs Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. The onsite technician connects to a remote Mercedes-Benz specialist, who joins the mixed reality call on Microsoft Teams desktop and sees what the technician sees thanks to the headset’s camera, capable of capturing 8 megapixel stills and 1080p30 video.

While collaborating to troubleshoot a case, the remote specialist can draw attention to a specific part or area by drawing an arrow, line, or shape on the PC screen, which is overlayed on the technician’s headset and anchored in place as the technician moves around. The specialist can also share a schematic, document, or even a training video to instruct the technician. For complex issues, multiple remote specialists can also be added to the same call.

Edgar Campana, a Centralized Diagnostics Technician at Mercedes-Benz of Coral Gables, shared the collaborative and mobile mixed reality environment is a game-changer.

“Sometimes it’ll take a while to go back and forth between a case because I can’t make it to my computer or they’re busy with other cases,” explains Edgar. “I can just put it on, get immediate support. They can literally point things out to me as I’m looking at it. They can circle it, they can draw lines. It’s hands-on, it’s literally right there. I can be talking with him going through the vehicle in real time. It’s very intuitive.”

See it in action: watch how Mercedes-Benz transforms technician support with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and HoloLens 2.

From pilot program to nationwide deployment

Thanks in part to the out-of-the-box capabilities of HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Mercedes-Benz was able to accelerate the national deployment of the solution in just six months—especially beneficial in the time of COVID-19 as dealerships adjusted to social distancing restrictions. Thirteen dealerships piloted the program between January and March 2020, and Mercedes-Benz Virtual Remote Support officially launched across the Mercedes-Benz USA dealer network in August 2020. 

The takeaway

What I find so compelling about this program is the far-reaching benefits for both employees, customers, and even society. Mercedes-Benz is demonstrating what’s possible when teams are empowered with practical ways to solve challenges. Resilience, adaptability, and innovation in action.

Now, technicians can resolve issues collaboratively without stepping away from the work site—promising a boost in productivity and efficiency. That results in faster turnaround times for maintenance issues, which leads to increased customer satisfaction. By supporting a remote work environment, the system ensures employee safety in times of COVID-19, while reducing the environmental impact of service-related travel.

Read additional details about how Mercedes-Benz is transforming technician support with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and HoloLens 2. As we continue working with organizations to build resiliency and adapt to change, we’ll continue to share more stories on our blog.

The post Under the hood of the Mercedes-Benz Virtual Remote Support system appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This morning, I’m honored to welcome thousands of Microsoft partners from around the world to Microsoft Inspire. On a virtual stage, broadcast live and then available to view on-demand, I’m sharing how partners are helping organizations navigate the current crisis, and detailing new investments across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform to help partners position organizations for future agility and resilience.

This year, many customers are activating workloads that help them adapt to current market conditions—digital selling, always-on service, and optimizing supply chains and distribution. Our partner community is integral for the delivery of these strategic solutions to customers across the globe; bringing deep industry and technical expertise to Coca-Cola, Alpha XR Boots Alliance, C3.ai, and so many more around the world.

In recent months, we’ve seen that digital-first leaders across industries are in a better position to outpace disruption and rapidly adapt to change. At Inspire, we are announcing new capabilities to help our partners enable customers to rapidly transform into digital-first organizations, equipping them to respond to crisis while reimagining and retooling for what’s next.

Helping organizations return to the workplace with confidence

At Inspire, we are introducing a pre-built Power Platform solution designed to help customers safely and securely prepare for and streamline the return to physical workplace locations. Designed for easy customization and deployment at scale, the “return to the workplace” solution includes four secure and compliant components that work together: location readiness and safety tools for facility managers, self-service health and safety tools for employees, and infection tracking tools for health and safety leaders. Read more about this essential solution, and invite your customers to the Return to the Workplace digital event.

Our partners are already leveraging this technology to deliver comprehensive solutions to help businesses get back to the workplace safely, and we will showcase partner and customer stories throughout the Inspire event.

Reimagining digital selling and commerce

We’re also helping organizations reimagine the future of digital selling and commerce.

For retailers, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store will soon offer store traffic and curbside queue as features, increasing shopper safety as stores reopen in accordance to regulations. These capabilities help retailers remain below capacity limits and design stores so customers can maintain a safe distance, as well as helps to improve the curbside order experience by signaling the arrival of vehicles as they approach the store. Visit the product page to learn more and sign up for our preview experience.

Digital transaction volumes have skyrocketed during the crisis and, along with it, a surge in fraud. At Inspire, we are announcing new capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to help protect retailers, public sector entities, credit issuers, and their customers. Account Protection helps protect online revenue and reputation by counteracting fraudulent account access, fake account creation and account takeover, and safeguarding user accounts from abuse and fraud. Loss Prevention helps protect revenue by identifying potential fraud on returns and discounts arising from omnichannel purchases, enabling store managers and investigators to quickly take action to mitigate losses.

In today’s environment of remote and hybrid business engagement, it’s essential for organizations to listen to, understand, and respond to customers quickly. At Inspire, we are unveiling Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, an enterprise-grade feedback management solution to capture and incorporate real-time feedback into a unified view of customers and drive action in the moments that matter. Customer Voice brings out-of-the-box integration into everyday applications and workflows, and ready-to-use templates to enable a fast response to customers’ needs at the right time, and in the right place.

The partner community is helping to drive high adoption of our customer data platform (CDP), empowering organizations to gain insight from all their data sources and deliver personalized customer engagement. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is helping retailers like Alpha XR Boots Alliance deliver personalized healthcare and shopping offerings from its global pharmacy and retail businesses.

In addition, we’ve partnered with Accenture to pair our robust and extensible CDP with Accenture’s Customer Experience Engine (CXE) and managed services expertise. Together, Customer Insights and CXE empower anyone in an organization to deliver personalized one-to-one customer experiences using unique insights derived from their data. Watch my recent conversation with Emma McGuigan, global lead for the Accenture Microsoft Business Group, to learn more about this offering.

Reinventing the new digital workspace with Teams and Power Platform

With new capabilities to unify data and make it available to anyone, Teams expands from the hub for teamwork to the hub for all work. This technology empowers everyone to easily build and deploy apps and intelligent chatbots in Teams using a Teams-native Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Virtual Agents experience. Users have the power of a built-in flexible database with a range of data types at their fingertips including relational, image, and file, so users can create business apps and processes within Teams without having to deal with back-end tech logistics. Learn more about the updated Common Data Service offering from Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Citizen Application Platform, in his recent blog post.

Expanding the Microsoft Business Applications ISV Connect Program

We launched ISV Connect last year at Inspire to empower partners to grow their business by building unique, customer-centric, line-of business apps with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Since then, more than 500 ISVs have joined ISV Connect with more than 1,200 certified applications on the platform—a 30 percent year-over-year growth.

Based on partner feedback, we’re continuing to add more benefits to ISV Connect such as marketing support, sales resources, and co-sell benefits to help you connect with more customers. We’re also continuing to invest in the AppSource marketplace so customers can easily discover the partner apps and services they need.

Partnered for growth and customer success in 2020

Across everything we’re announcing and celebrating at Inspire, one common theme is clear: our partners are critical to helping customers transform.

Throughout this year’s Inspire, we will help partners understand this new opportunity to move forward with customers together—how to prioritize solutions that customers need now to build a resilient business for the future. If you missed any part of this year’s event, take some time to check out the content on-demand to learn how you can build success in the coming year.

This post was updated on July 21 to clarify the functionality of the return to workplace solution.

This post was updated on August 10. A name will be selected which we will share in the coming weeks.

The post New investments to help partners enable resilient organizations worldwide appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, we’re hosting the first-ever fully digital Microsoft Business Applications Summit. Just six weeks ago, the community expected we would be together this week in Dallas, Texas. Now, of course, we are looking forward to connecting with you virtually.

In these past weeks, every business has shifted focus to adjusting to new and unexpected challenges, and doing so at lightning speed. Our team has mobilized efforts to help organizations stay connected to customers and maintain business continuity. Big transformative initiatives that would have taken months or even years are being executed in a matter of weeks, or in some cases just a few days—especially in healthcare.

For instance, in the United States, a New York state “Tech SWAT” team, stood up a new self-screening and test scheduling solution built on Microsoft Power Apps in days. On the other side of the globe, the Australian Red Cross rolled out a new platform in less than a week to connect volunteers with people who are self-isolating—built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

This need to remain agile and rapidly adapt to change is a key focus for this year’s Summit. Across dozens of breakout sessions and networking events today, we’ll share and discuss how you can use technology to align your business to this “new normal.”

Helping you move business forward

A lot of organizations are still in crisis response mode, and that’s completely expected. During this time, we are supporting customers impacted by lockdowns, as well as organizations battling COVID-19 on the frontlines. At the same time, we’re looking ahead to how we help organizations move from crisis into rebuilding, when the time is right.

Different industries are impacted in different ways, and the challenges faced by a large multinational corporation look much different than the challenges of a small business. Responding to the current situation requires also laying the foundation for the future—thinking a few steps ahead to be ready to restart and reshape the business to move forward with confidence.

No matter what specific challenges you face, there are several ways we can help your organization respond.

First, it’s all about enabling people and teams to work from anywhere. Working from home isn’t an easy transition for a lot of people. That’s why it’s so important for your teams to have a shared, collaborative workspace to keep business moving. If your teams haven’t installed the Microsoft Dynamics 365 app for Microsoft Teams, now’s the perfect time to do so. Your sales and service teams can update and share customer records from within a Teams channel, and use bots to search for records or account details.

The next thing we’re doing to support organizations right now is helping them rapidly respond to changing business needs. Organizations need the agility to stand up crisis response solutions quickly, adapt their workflows to changing needs, save time and money with automation, and surface the insights and analytics to make critical decisions faster. The Microsoft Power Platform makes this all possible. Here in Washington, we worked with Swedish Health Services to quickly build a Power Apps solution that tracks critical inventory like masks and gloves, and an influx of patients who needed lifesaving care. The app places this lifesaving information right in the hands of the healthcare providers who need it most, supporting critical decision-making across the entire Swedish network of care facilities.

We’re also helping organizations maintain business continuity even in a volatile global environment, with solutions to sell, service, and deliver on customer expectations in a remote world. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, we’re enabling new types of workers to be remote, keeping people safe while keeping critical functions running. And with increased call volumes straining contact centers worldwide, Dynamics 365 Customer Service allows organizations to provide consistent, personalized support while working remotely. On top of that, solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce keep customers engaged with your company, even when they can’t visit you in person.

Moving forward, businesses will need the agility to reshape the buying journey to better serve the needs of customers. IKEA Sweden is one organization doing just that—by equipping sales teams with tools to more smoothly take customers through the process of building and upgrading a kitchen. They are creating a collection of apps built with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, collectively referred to as the IKEA Sales Tool, which enables the tracking of the sales process from the first meeting with the customer to the installation of the kitchen. Learn how the solution will help sales teams make the kitchen buying experience more personal.

Organizations also need to focus on ways to track customer health and improve long-term relationships. Chipotle Mexican Grill, one of the most popular chains of fast casual dining, is using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to create more meaningful customer experiences. They chose our Customer Data Platform to unlock real-time, up-to-the-moment understanding of their customers to drive relevant and intelligent engagement. They can now leverage data across channels to better understand their customers’ needs, personalize offers and repivot messaging around delivery and take-out offers, and adjust media plans in real-time to serve ads on channels that are more widely used. Watch the demo at the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event to see the solution in action.

These are just a few of the ways we’re supporting organizations around the world and in every industry. You can learn more about this work at Microsoft.com/together. We also encourage you to join us at today’s event, or access additional content on-demand after the event. When your team is ready, engage with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 community—ask questions, learn from qualified experts, and join the conversation.

We look forward to supporting you on your journey.

The post MBAS 2020: Moving forward, together appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.