Over the last several months, we have continued to see the agility and resiliency shown by businesses across the globe in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the holiday trading period, we saw businesses adapt to new customer needs across digital channels, along with enhancing and streamlining in-person buying experiences. As vaccines become available, many retail businesses are looking at the future shopping needs of their customers and what the return to in-store buying will mean for customer experiences. Along with this, business-to-business (B2B) buying has also been transitioning from in-person to more digital and self-service buying options for accounts and partners.

Building atop the great features released in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce 2020 release wave 2, we are bringing additional capabilities to Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1, grounded in intelligence to help businesses meet the needs of their customers across consumer-facing and business-to-business segments. We are delivering innovation across the following key investment areas:

1. New digital commerce capabilities to further enhance customer experience and business outcomes: We continue to build upon the foundation e-commerce capabilities including announcing the general availability of B2B e-commerce capabilities on a single connected platform.
2. Enhancements through ingrained intelligence to drive growth and efficiencies: Utilize enhancements with AI and machine learning to further improve insights into business operations and deliver differentiation.
3. Expand on omnichannel capabilities to improve business performance: We continue to invest in core capabilities that support unified commerce capabilities along with enhancements with broader Microsoft and Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the new capabilities and highlights we are bringing to our customers within the Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1.

Build rich, relevant, and intuitive digital commerce experiences for every customer

With the acceleration of digital commerce channels amidst COVID-19, we continue to invest in building the best e-commerce platform available on the market. With the addition of business-to-business e-commerce capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce, we are bringing intelligent and user-friendly features available in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce to business partners.

B2B e-commerce capabilities now available: B2B e-commerce capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce enables organizations in varied industry segments to digitize their B2B transactions with personalized, user friendly, and self-serve driven B2C e-commerce-like experiences while still providing the unique capabilities needed for a B2B user to be productive in their job function.

As e-business teams look for solutions in the market, not only are they benchmarking their future-state online buying experience against B2B peers, but also against B2C leaders. They need solutions with a best-in-class foundation of B2C features, such as robust marketing and merchandising and experience management tools. With this release, we are bringing a range of B2B e-commerce capabilities to market including partner onboarding, order templates, quick order entry, account statement and invoicing management, and more. In addition, we are delivering native integration to Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service for unified customer engagement across touchpoints. Unique B2B capabilities such as contract pricing, quotes pricing lists, e-procurement, product configuration and customization, guided selling, bulk order entry, and account, contract, and budget management can also be layered on top of our rich e-commerce capabilities to deliver a great buying experience for every partner.

Enhanced search engine results: Improve SEO rankings for product landing and display pages to enable quicker page discovery through native support for schema.org/product metadata. Product pages can utilize existing Dynamics 365 Commerce headquarters product data to simplify and streamline merchandising workflows.

Enhancements through ingrained intelligence to drive growth and efficiencies

Unlock immersive AI-powered intelligent shopping features that enable more personal and relevant shopping experiences for every customer.

Shop similar looks: Bring fresh and appealing choices to the forefront of the shopping experience using the power of AI and machine learning. The effect can be transformative and can create additional selling power as shoppers find more of the things they want in an easy-to-use visual experience.

Shop by similar description: This recommendations service enables customers to easily and quickly find the products they need and want (relevant), find more than they had originally intended (cross-sell, upsell), all the while having an experience that serves them well (satisfaction). For retailers, this functionality helps drive conversion opportunities across all customers and products, resulting in more all-up sales revenue and customer satisfaction.

System monitoring and diagnostics across in-store and e-commerce: Access to system diagnostic logs allows better visibility for IT administrators and enables improved time to detection, time to mitigation, and time to resolution of live-site incidents. IT administrators are able to determine key contributing factors of incidents, which allows for targeted engagement with Microsoft support teams, or with implementation partners, ISVs, or other stakeholders.

Cloud-powered customer search (preview): Customer data is the lifeblood for businesses, and yet almost all businesses run into the problem of duplicate customer records because of inefficient customer search algorithms. If cashiers are not able to easily find a customer, they end up creating new customers. With this enhancement, businesses will be able to easily switch their current customer search experience from SQL-based search to cloud-powered search to gain performant, relevant, and scalable search capabilities.

Expand on omnichannel capabilities to improve business performance

We continue to see the rapid evolution of technologies supporting business, employee, and customer shopping experiences. With this, comes the need to deliver tools that span across channels to streamline purchasing experiences and empowers staff to perform at their best. In this release, we are continuing to invest in making Dynamics 365 Commerce the best solution for omnichannel shopping and bringing new capabilities to customers and frontline workers alike.

Better together with Microsoft Teams: Administrators now can provision Microsoft Teams from Dynamics 365 Commerce and create teams for stores, add members from a store’s worker book, and more in Microsoft Teams, and synchronize the changes in the future. They can also notify frontline workers on mobile devices and synergize task management between Dynamics 365 Commerce and Microsoft Teams to improve productivity.

Additional features and improvements to Curbside Pickup

In today’s world, it is important that organizations can offer safe and flexible fulfillment options to meet their customers’ ever-changing needs. Building on Dynamics 365 Commerce’s existing capabilities that enables buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), Dynamics 365 Commerce now offers additional features to optimize convenient and COVID safe curbside pickup. These capabilities will make it easier for businesses to deploy mobile POS devices and allow their store associates to efficiently manage orders that need to be fulfilled and picked up. With this release, we have added the following features and improvements to Dynamics 365 Commerce:

• Ability for shoppers to set their preferred pick-up location on E-Commerce channel.
• Ability for businesses to offer multiple pickups and delivery options for shoppers to choose from.
• Flexible configuration of pickup time slots per day by location and allowing shoppers to choose a pickup time slot on E-Commerce channel.
• Improved email receipts and notifications with the ability for businesses to customize email receipts, configure by deliver mode, etc.
• Enhanced order fulfillment visibility for store associates with live tile and notifications to monitor and address orders that need to be fulfilled.
• Streamline order pick-up flows, including support for QR codes.

Enhancements to inventory visibility, movement, and adjustments

Inventory management and visibility is key to business success in order to give customers clear insights into where stock is located, reduce out-of-stock situations, and empower our sellers, managers, and merchandisers to make better decisions. With this update, we have made a range of improvements touching inventory and stock management including enhancements to e-commerce inventory availability lookup API, inventory aware product discovery for e-commerce customers, improvements to inventory lookup operations via in-store point of sale, along with comprehensive in-store inventory management capabilities.

Chat in Dynamics 365 Commerce with Power Virtual Agents and Dynamics 365 Customer Service (Preview)

Customer service functionality will be added to Dynamics 365 Commerce by leveraging the capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. Site administrators will be able to configure the chat widget on the e-commerce site with proactive notification capability based on different criteria.

This will be supported via native integrations with Dynamics 365 Customer Service chat or virtual agents into Dynamics 365 Commerce. With this, contact center agents will be able to look up customer information using Dynamics 365 Commerce Call Center and act on customer’s details and orders as required.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce

Please share your thoughts with us about the 2021 release wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 Commerce. We will continue to bring new capabilities and enhancements to Dynamics 365 Commerce and look forward to sharing more in the future.

The post Continued innovation in Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Truly engaged, always connected

At this year’s NRF, many retailers are taking the time to reflect on the learnings from 2020 and the road ahead for 2021. It’s hard to believe that only 12 months have passed since we disclosed the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, which was the evolution of our proven Microsoft Dynamics 365 Retail offering, that expanded our capabilities beyond physical stores and call centers to digital commerce that enables retailers and consumer-facing businesses to meet customer demands on their terms. A recent study by Forrester commissioned by Microsoft revealed that 83 percent of retail and CPG decision makers agree that delivering a connected and unified experience to customers is vital to business success and that the key to creating those experiences lies with digital commerce.

To further enable organizations to expand their digital commerce experiences, this year we are announcing the preview of B2B e-commerce capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce. By bringing together B2C and B2B e-commerce capabilities onto a single unified retail and commerce platform, companies can enable feature rich and user-friendly experiences for both consumer and business customers. Built natively on an intelligent and connected platform, organizations can save time and money through streamlining the buyer’s journey and enabling curated and relevant purchasing experiences for both consumers and business partners alike.

Looking back on 2020

We could never have imagined that only months after announcing our release of Dynamics 365 Commerce in 2020, retailers would be faced with one of the largest business challenges in recent history with the onset of the pandemic. As retail businesses pivoted to meet the new reality of global lockdown and contactless shopping, Dynamics 365 Commerce was there to help enable new forms of product fulfillment and ensure businesses could deliver on safe and secure purchasing experiences for their customers and store agents.

Companies like Michael Hill have utilized Dynamics 365 Commerce to expand on their existing capabilities even amidst the pandemic to continue to deliver exceptional services and new loyalty and fulfilment options for their clientele.

“We are now moving to fortnightly release cycles with our cloud ERP, including changes deployed to all Retail Stores. Pre-Christmas we turned on curbside pickup and we are now expanding our Ship From Store model on the platform. Our agility is continuously pushed by our strategy & innovation team as Retail is a completely different world now compared with pre-pandemic”—Matt Keays, Chief Information Officer, Michael Hill

Columbia Sportswear is another great example of a business utilizing technology to quickly pivot their in-store purchasing experiences to deliver contactless and safe shopping environments for their customers to deliver contactless and safe shopping environments for their customers.

In addition to this we saw a dramatic surge of activity in digital commerce to help meet growing digital customer demand. We worked with several retailers like Ste Michelle Wine Estates to transition traditional in-person sales to online experiences through curated digital customer engagements. Città Design also worked with Microsoft amidst lockdowns to build a new e-commerce site for their customers with Dynamics 365 Commerce, thereby enabling the company to create richer digital customer experiences and respond faster to changing market conditions amidst the pandemic. 

“With Dynamics 365, we can create a rich storytelling experience for customers that reflects the quality and value of our products. As we launch our brand globally, we want to be seen as a designer of quality goods that people want to keep for life, and we use Dynamics 365 to help tell that story.”—Emmett Vallender, Chief Operating Officer, Città 

The changing nature of B2B commerce

With more millennials entering buyer positions in companies, expectations are also shifting away from traditional methods of B2B sales and more towards self-service options and personalized digital engagements. Tech savvy buyers are gravitating more toward digital platforms for easy access of relevant information along with quick purchasing options and they expect their B2B purchasing experiences to reflect that of B2C e-commerce. In addition, many businesses are realizing the value of enabling B2B buyers to access purchasing options directly from the web, thereby saving time and money with a reduced dependency of in-person sales and the ability to scale to a wider range of business partners. Customers like Kent Watersports are working with Microsoft to deploy B2B capabilities for Dynamics 365 in their business for just these reasons.

“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

What we are bringing to B2B e-commerce

Traditional companies in the market tend to separate out B2B and B2C commerce solutions. This has led to businesses having replicated data, digital assets, and relevant messaging if they operate across both B2B and B2C. This has also resulted in a lack of innovation in the B2B e-commerce space driven by traditional perceptions around the B2B buyer journey. With younger and tech savvy buyers now commonplace in the market, we must look beyond what has traditionally been available for B2B e-commerce and enable smarter and more intuitive buying experiences for users. This is what we set out to do with Dynamics 365 Commerce. By bringing the innovative and intelligent features of B2C to B2B e-commerce, companies can deliver curated and relevant content to their buyers and build richer B2B account relations. This includes activating capabilities like a responsive and modular UX, intelligent and AI-powered recommendations, context aware and immersive product search, shared ratings and reviews, cross channel asset management, distributed order management, and merchandising capabilities into the buyers digital purchasing experience.

We are also enabling B2B relevant capabilities for modern businesses, including flexible partner management and onboarding tools to reach partners directly online. Dynamics 365 Commerce allows for quick and easy management of account access along with user rights for spending limits and administration permissions. Streamlining the order process is made simpler with order templates allowing for curated and simplified self-service ordering options. Business partner accounts can see relevant discounts and spot promotions, or runout offers where relevant. Grid-based order entry allows for quick and efficient order placement with clear visibility of stock and order thresholds, supported with account-based payment options for quick order approval.

We are extending self-service beyond order placement, with a range of administrative tools for business partners to quickly access account details including order history, account statements, invoice documentation, and more. Combined with native integration to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a robust set of tools to empower your sales and service agents to get deeper engagement with customers and allows them to capitalize on every sales opportunity. Ensure rapid response to customer service enquiries with commerce chat through Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. Utilize the customer data platform to gain a wholistic view of your customers with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights along with delivering rich visualization of your business operations and sales reporting with Microsoft Power BI. Finally, empower your employees to reinvent traditionally manual processes with no-code or low-code capabilities of Microsoft Power Apps. All seamlessly integrated and supported in Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Learn more

Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a comprehensive, yet composable, set of capabilities for both consumer and business-facing organizations seeking to expand beyond traditional digital commerce limitations and improve customer engagement, build brand awareness, streamline purchasing, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce:

• Visit our website and request a preview of B2B e-commerce today.
• Learn how Dynamics 365 enables the future of retail.
• Read additional details in our recent blog post from Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, WW Retail and Consumer Goods Industry, “Introducing Microsoft Cloud for Retail.”
• Read additional details in our recent blog post from Alysa Taylor, Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Industry, “NRF 2021: enabling retailers to reimagine the road ahead with Microsoft Business Applications.”
• If you are at NRF please visit our booth for more information and to engage with our knowledgeable staff.

The post Enable a new level of B2B digital sales excellence with Dynamics 365 Commerce appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

With many countries still facing the ongoing impact of COVID-19, retailers and consumer-facing businesses are shifting their focus on adapting to emerging customer needs and shopping behaviors. Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been working with many of our customers to enable them to deliver omnichannel shopping capabilities including an increased focus on digital commerce and contactless shopping options like in-store or curbside collection. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce customers have been able to rapidly transition their shopper engagement and fulfillment processes to quickly meet customer demand while also delivering a safe working environment for their employees.

In our 2020 release wave 2 update, Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to invest in further empowering retailers to be highly productive in their tasks by helping them to know and better serve their customers along with efficiently running their operations across the value chain. With this updates, we are focused on driving innovation, infusing intelligence, and enabling agility within retailers across both physical and digital shopping channels. This includes delivering new tools for digital commerce, intelligent processes to streamline and personalize shopping experiences, and enhancing omnichannel capabilities to enable more businesses to transition to a unified commerce platform.

Enhance customer experiences with digital commerce

Improvements in digital commerce capabilities further enhance customer experience and business outcomes. With these investments, we are building upon the foundational e-commerce capabilities we launched with Dynamics 365 Commerce to improve ease of use and content creation.

• Intelligent content experimentation: Dynamics 365 Commerce will provide the ability to perform controlled experiments such as A/B testing on e-commerce websites including native integration with Optimizely. This will allow merchants to make data-driven updates to their e-commerce website experiences and encourage customers to engage more frequently, driving increased adoption and conversion rates.
• Visual page builder: We are introducing modern and responsive what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content authoring interface, including drag and drop support, which will improve a marketers’ ability to create visually rich and enticing marketing and merchandising pages for their website.
• New e-commerce modules: The Dynamics 365 Commerce module library provides a comprehensive set of modules that can be used by customers to build an e-commerce site without the need for additional customization.

Drive growth with intelligence, insights, and analytics

Enhance solution through ingrained intelligence to drive growth and efficiencies. Utilize enhancements with AI and CS to further improve insights into business operations and deliver differentiated customer experiences.

• Shop similar looks (preview): Shop similar looks can bring fresh and appealing choices to the forefront of the shopping experience using the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The effect can be transformative and can create additional selling power as shoppers find more of the things they want in an easy-to-use visual experience.
• Microsoft Bing for Commerce powered search (preview): Microsoft Bing for Commerce will be seamlessly integrated into Dynamics 365 Commerce to provide consistent product discovery and search experiences across all commerce channels. Product discovery functionality is a quick and easy way for a retail customer to find products by browsing through categories and using search and filtering.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, loss prevention integration: We continue to invest in standing up native support for intelligent business solutions like Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. In addition to payment protection integration we are also delivering loss prevention support to enhance business insights and decision making for improved business operation.

Streamline business performance with omnichannel excellence

Expand on omnichannel capabilities to improve business performance and agility to transition to new business practices. We continue to invest in core capabilities that support unified commerce capabilities including third-party integration and extensibility.

• Curbside pickup and contactless shopping: This feature will bring additional capabilities to facilitate curbside pickup or other unique pickup types to the order capture and processing flows. Organizations can configure multiple pickup modes of delivery that shoppers can choose from when placing an order.
• Enhanced support for modern payment methods: By providing digital wallet support across a range of payment providers, Microsoft can ensure that critical payment needs are met and fully enabled for omnichannel purchasing scenarios.

Learn more about new 2020 release wave 2 capabilities

These are just some of the innovations we are landing in our 2020 release wave 2 plans. You can find more information and details in our release notes for Dynamics 365 Commerce. We have many more announcements on the horizon so be sure to look out for more news and articles coming in the future.

For those interested in experiencing the capabilities within Dynamics 365 Commerce, contact us to organize a demo or to be put in contact with a partner that can help deliver a Commerce in a Day workshop. We also have a number of partner offers available on AppSource that can help take you live on Dynamics 365 Commerce in as little as two weeks.

Learn more about the great features we are bringing to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform in our 2020 release wave 2 plans or watch our Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on demand.

The post Updates to enhance omnichannel shopping with Dynamics 365 Commerce appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we’re announcing the official release of Dynamics 365 Commerce, an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail that is generally available today across the globe. Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a complete omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, and call center experiences, as well as introduces new e-commerce functionality to support seamless customer shopping experiences across physical and digital channels.

Dynamics 365 Commerce enables all facets of intelligent retail:

• Digital commerce: Built-in web authoring and development tools enable you to create engaging and intelligent e-commerce storefronts.
• Modern store: Mobile point of sale (POS), cross-channel inventory tracking, simplified omnichannel service, and personalized engagements with customers.
• Empowering employees: User friendly dashboards, digitized in-store tasks and collaboration, and training tools to support adoption and onboarding.
• Engaging customers: Clienteling and loyalty programs and upselling through personalized AI driven recommendations enable consistent engagement across channels.
• Streamline Operations: Advanced merchandising, inventory, supply chain, pricing, and promotions management, financials and robust analytics tools to gain a single source of truth for your business.
• Global operations, compliance, and scalability: Built on Azure global infrastructure, flexible deployment options infused with intelligence deliver a secure, compliant, and scalable commerce solution.
• Unified data and intelligent insights: Infused with AI and machine learning to enhance customer engagement and business outcomes including integration to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.
• Future growth: Utilize strong application programming interface (API) driven headless commerce engine, and native integration of Microsoft Power Platform, allowing for commerce in any channel with rich extensibility to customize the solution to meet evolving business.
• Proven solution: Built on technology that has been used by thousands of business customers throughout the years including Microsoft storefronts, Dynamics 365 Commerce helps deliver best-in-class buying experiences for customers around the globe.

With retail moving beyond a transactional model, customers are looking for retail experiences that meet or exceed their growing expectations. Retailers are tasked with better understanding customer needs and preferences in order to create personalized and friction-free shopping experiences. This is only possible by removing the barriers between traditionally isolated channels, like e-commerce and physical stores, to gain a comprehensive view of the customer and provide a unique and differentiated experience.

Deliver personalized, appealing web experiences with content-driven commerce strategies

Dynamics 365 Commerce brings together traditional and emerging channels to deliver a unified experience for modern shoppers. Retailers can create engaging digital storefronts through built-in web authoring and easy-to-use development tools in e-commerce. With ingrained intelligence, retailers are also able to customize the user experience using intelligent recommendations driven by customer preference and buying history across online and physical stores. Retailers can also utilize supported ratings and reviews to increase conversations and accelerate customer decision making.

E-commerce for Dynamics 365 Commerce also provides a single view of content, assets, promotions, inventory, and pricing to simplify and streamline management across channels. Delivering seamless shopping experiences becomes easy when customers can choose from a range of fulfilment options. Dynamics 365 Commerce comes prebuilt with intelligent distributed order management to ensure goods get to their final destination quickly and efficiently, whether delivered to a customer’s address or purchased online and picked up in store.

Empower your employees to better serve customers and build brand loyalty

With the growth of e-commerce, physical retail storefronts must also evolve to reflect increasing personalization of shopping and enhance customer experiences to build brand affinity. Dynamics 365 Commerce connects customer interactions across all channels to deliver a 360-degree view of the customer. With advanced clienteling natively integrated to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, store agents can gain deeper insights into shopper preferences and behavior to deliver personalized recommendations, quickly see customer lifetime value, and understand the next best action to maximize basket size and reduce customer churn.

Dynamics 365 Commerce also delivers endless aisle shopping experiences. Customers are no longer limited to store stock on hand; instead agents can quickly and easily offer products from across the company to be delivered to the customer’s home or the nearest store. When the customer has made their purchase decision, agents can utilize the mobile point of sales app to deliver seamless checkout experiences.

Store managers can also utilize new intelligent solutions to streamline store operations. Using task manager to assign and track jobs is easy within the modern point of sales application. Analytics and reports are also at the staff’s fingertips with in-app support for Power BI and insights from across all channels.

Streamline operations through ingrained and pervasive intelligence

Dynamics 365 Commerce enables optimized back-office operations to drive supply chain efficiencies and improve business profitability. It provides a flexible system to improve inventory and merchandising management across all sales channels. Utilize automated master data management processes and real time syncs to gain a single source of truth for your business. With native integration into Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Power Platform retailers can get an end-to-end solution that supports business needs from intelligent warehousing to advanced financial solutions.

In addition, Dynamics 365 Commerce is built to be scalable and address the needs of businesses across the globe. Choose from a range of flexible deployment options whether on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. Dynamics 365 Commerce brings cohesive security management and comprehensive compliance coverage to ensure your business is proactively safeguarded.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce brings together a holistic set of tools to personalize customer engagement, increase employee productivity, optimize operations, and deliver better business outcomes. Explore the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Commerce and contact us to request a demo.

The post Deliver smarter, connected retail experiences with Dynamics 365 Commerce appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The retail industry has been going through tremendous change and transformation over the past decade. Many have speculated that traditional brick and mortar retail is dying, and that customers are moving completely to online platforms for their shopping needs. This is, however, not the case. According to a report by the National Retail Federation, retail storefronts in the USA have continued to grow at almost 4 percent annually since 2010 along with the steady double-digit growth of online retail. Along with this, nearly all of the top 50 online retailers also have physical stores.

Even though e-commerce growth continues to outpace physical stores, the value of growth is still much higher in physical retail outlets. E-commerce in a majority of cases is also not a standalone channel but used in conjunction with traditional and emerging channels to service customer needs like buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) or Click and Collect. Location is still a major part of customer shopping habits, but with this we have also seen that customer expectations around shopping have changed. Gone are the days of store agents being the exclusive experts in product knowledge. Customers now have more access to product information, price visibility, and availability than ever before. With this comes the need for retail to look at customer engagement across all channels and ensure their business is enabled to deliver on these new heightened expectations. In the next few years, e-commerce will no longer be a major differentiator for retailers, but rather enabling unified retail commerce is required to succeed in the world of ever more demanding customer expectations.

But this is easier said than done. Many retail businesses are struggling with disparate commerce systems that create more of a disconnect with customers than opportunities to engage. Even though unified commerce is not a new concept, many retailers have found it difficult to understand where to start.

It is with this in mind that Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Commerce, an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail, that will become broadly available on February 3, 2020. This release adds e-commerce to our solution and is built from a proven content management system used by Microsoft online storefronts for years. Dynamics 365 Commerce is, however, not limited to e-commerce, but sets out to simplify the process of unifying customer shopping experiences through an end-to-end commerce platform that brings together e-commerce, in-store, back office, and call center along with enabling easier integration to emerging channels through an API driven headless commerce engine.

Microsoft and Forbes also recently undertook a joint executive and consumer research program that highlighted the changing expectation of consumers and how retail business can better cater to these evolving needs. Let’s explore how Dynamics 365 Commerce is helping retailers address these prevailing needs in their businesses.

Delivering exceptional and personalized customer experiences

Customer experience is not only one of the top growth drivers in retail but according to the recent Microsoft and Forbes study, is also considered to be the top strategic priority amongst retail executives, for 33 percent of retail executives. The challenge is defining what comprises exceptional customer experience for each individual business, as customer expectations vary by retail micro-vertical, product category, and the customers themselves. It’s up to retailers to best identify how the experience aligns to their brand promise. Once customer experience is defined, retailers need to be able to deliver on this promise by having technology that enables next generation customer engagement and doesn’t limit their ability to innovate and create differentiating experiences for customers.

According to the Microsoft and Forbes study, offering personalized shopping is becoming more and more prominent with over 49 percent of consumers aged between 18 to 24 saying they are more likely to purchase from retailers that offer personalized shopping experiences. The goal of personalization is to create a bond between the retailer and the customer by providing products and/or services based on previous engagements across all retail channels. This elevates the engagement beyond a simple transaction to an experience more akin to an interaction with a trusted partner or friend.

There is a major dependency on technology to achieve this next level of personalization. Retailers require connected and real time insights into customers and operations. Dynamics 365 Commerce natively brings together all aspects of customer interaction across e-commerce, call center, and in store as well as easy integration to emerging channels to help retailers gain a comprehensive view of customers. Couple this with out-of-the-box integration into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and retailers can not only offer AI driven recommendations based on customer purchase history, favorites, and trends, but also provide in store agents with tools to see a 360 degree view of the customer and enable rich engagement throughout the sales journey.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates is the largest premium wine distributor in the United States. They’re renowned for making some of the best wines in the world and pride themselves in delivering amazing wine tasting experiences at wineries for their 14 distinct brands. Ste. Michelle recently went live with Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver an end-to-end retail solution for their business. Being able to track customer engagement across modernized e-commerce sites to their wine clubs and call centers mean that Ste. Michelle can offer more personalized customer recommendations and experiences in their tasting rooms.

“We found our answer in Dynamics 365 Commerce. We now have a centralized repository where our data works together to provide a seamless experience for our guests along with better insight into our operations.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

The importance of enabling omnichannel and streamlining operations

The days of customer engagement on a single channel are long in the past. Customers expect to be able to shop wherever, whenever and through whichever channel they choose. Retailers also recognize the importance of omnichannel with 47 percent of executives from the Microsoft and Forbes survey ranking this as one of their top three priorities.

Many retailers still struggle with enabling an omnichannel experience due to complexities of internal technology and disconnected or disparate systems. Dynamics 365 Commerce makes this much simpler as it was built in the cloud to deliver a native omnichannel solution for retailers.

Columbia Sportswear Company has a portfolio of brands for active lives and is a leader in the global active lifestyle apparel, footwear, accessories, and equipment industry. They chose Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver enhanced experiences for their retail customers.

A connected commerce solution is not just important in how customers engage and shop in retail, but also how a unified solution can enable better engagement from firstline workers and ensure optimal operational efficiencies across your supply chain. Dynamics 365 Commerce allows retailers to streamline their operations with infused intelligence that permeates throughout their business. Store staff can gain better insights into stock availability, cross application support for task management between Commerce and Microsoft Teams, along with commerce analytics that allows managers to track performance and insights to help them make better decisions.

An established and well-loved brand, Dr. Martens has grown over many years to become a global lifestyle footwear brand with sales to 63 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. Like many established businesses, they had a plethora of old IT systems and processes that have served them well, but could not support their ambitious growth plans. Dr Martens looked to Dynamics 365 Commerce to bring a range of isolated solutions together and deliver a single source of truth for their business to operate from.

Dynamics 365 Commerce at NRF 2020

This week saw another great showing of Microsoft retail solutions at NRF 2020. Along with a great range of 1^st party and partner innovations, we showcased the advancements and innovations present in Dynamics 365 Commerce. This included the announcement of our official release date on February 3, 2020 and the native integration of intelligent solutions from Microsoft including Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, and Microsoft Power Platform.

If you would like to learn more about our offering for Dynamics 365 Commerce, please visit our official web page or contact us for a demonstration or more information.

The post Redefining shopping excellence with a unified commerce solution appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Dynamics 365 Commerce, now in preview, delivers a complete omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, and digital experiences built on Dynamics 365 Retail capabilities.

Retail is one of those industries that everyone can relate to. Shopping is ingrained in our daily lives, with today’s consumer demanding engaging and integrated shopping experiences across storefronts–physical stores, online and mobile. As traditional commerce channels are disrupted and new ones emerge, shoppers have ever-greater control of their experience, from researching product price and quality to maximize the value of every dollar spent, to purchasing from the brand that offers the most personalized, convenient service.

With this power shift comes a great opportunity for retailers. Those that use modern tools and insights at their disposal have the opportunity to close the gap between the smart online consumer and the offline retailer, and thereby stand out in an ever-competitive marketplace. Traditional retailers are also tasked to bring together historically isolated and disconnected shopping channels to deliver seamless shopping experiences to their customers.

To meet the growing demands, retailers need a modern, flexible cloud commerce solution that will help them be nimble, compete better, and build lasting relationships with their consumers. An intelligent solution that creates rich, customer-first experiences at all touchpoints and that is seamlessly tied with backend operations is critical. Unifying data across all the siloes and leveraging a data driven approach, retailers can attract customers through personalized experiences, deliver merchandise that they desire on their terms, while providing employees with tools and information for ultra-responsive customer service.

Delivering a true connected commerce experience

Today we’re proud to announce the preview of Dynamics 365 Commerce. Built on the proven Dynamics 365 Retail capabilities, Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a comprehensive omnichannel solution across web, physical stores, and call center channels.

It provides seamless merchandising, inventory, order management, warehousing and financials that is differentiated through integrated clienteling, AI driven personalization, fraud protection, and search. In addition, Commerce supports the market leading capabilities of Power Platform to deliver analytics, business workflow orchestration as well as easy ways to extend the solution to make it your own.

Dynamics 365 Commerce introduces e-commerce functionality to the Dynamics 365 family which includes the creation of digital experiences using built-in web authoring and development tools to produce engaging and intelligent digital storefronts. An integrated content management along with headless commerce engine further enables the seamless management of content, assets, promotions, inventory, and pricing across all channels.

The e-commerce technology behind Dynamics 365 Commerce has been driving Microsoft’s own digital storefronts for many years to deliver great experiences to customers across the globe. We are bringing this proven technology to our Dynamics 365 Commerce customers to deliver a world class, scalable, compliant and secure solution for their omnichannel needs.

Digital transformation at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates leverages Dynamics 365 Commerce

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates has a long history in the Pacific Northwest and is counted as one of Washington State’s founding wineries. They have a reputation of delivering exceptional wines, supported through scores of awards, pared with amazing customer experiences. By partnering with Microsoft, they are building a comprehensive commerce platform that knits together 14 distinct brands, multiple sales channels including wholesale, online and retail.  As an early preview customer, Ste Michelle Wine Estates is starting by transforming one of their premium brands, ‘Col Solare,’ and will then expand this functionality across other brands. By implementing Dynamics 365 Commerce Ste. Michelle Wine Estates will:

• Provide their customers with elevated digital experiences
• Transform the way they do business with an end-to-end omnichannel solution across physical and digital channels
• Develop deep insights and leverage advanced decision-making capabilities the company needs to continue to modernize

Our approach to unified commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce enhances retail and customer experiences by delivering across five key priorities:

• Everything to build and run digital commerce and modern store operations
• Build loyalty and exceed customer expectations
• Enable flexible and intelligent omnichannel experiences
• Streamline operations using cloud intelligence
• Deliver a scalable, reliable, secure and compliant solution

These priorities, supported through a connected data platform, can create seamless and personalized shopping experiences, increase employee productivity, optimize operations, and deliver better business outcomes.

Everything to build and run digital commerce  and modern store operations

According to a recent study by BRP, 51 percent of consumers feel it is important to get a personalized experience across all digital channels within a brand.

Dynamics 365 Commerce makes e-commerce authoring and enriching pages easy with a robust set of tools to support new and experienced developers. With a built in content management system and digital asset management capabilities, the solution streamlines digital commerce processes and improves operational excellence. A modern web rendering platform is designed to deliver simple, yet comprehensive capabilities including the option for complete extensibility to enhance and deliver content rich and immersive web experiences for customers. Digital insights are not isolated to online. Employees are empowered in a physical stores environment to utilize digital tools on mobile devices to better serve customers by bringing assisted selling, line busting, special ordering, and endless aisles to life, while integrated store inventory processes and task management make them efficient and productive.

Build loyalty and exceed customer expectations

According to Accenture, 91 percent of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.

Personalization is no longer an optional component for retailers. Shoppers have come to expect web experiences that surface relevant information based on their preferences and purchase history. Dynamics 365 Commerce brings with it a range of clienteling tools that give retailers and sales associates the insights to respond to customer needs at every level of engagement.

AI driven recommendations, and customer insights as well as loyalty capabilities are all easily accessible and flow across physical and digital channels thereby enabling retailers to deliver consistent experiences that elevate their brand appeal.

Enable flexible and intelligent omnichannel experiences

According to PWC, consumers are willing to spend up to 16 percent more on products and services with companies that offer a better experience.

Retailers that are currently still operating with disconnected channels are not only creating frustration for customers, but are also driving inefficiencies in their business operations by isolating integral business data like inventory, pricing, and promotion information across channels. Dynamics 365 Commerce helps deliver frictionless engagement across physical and digital channels, allowing customers to purchase when, how, and where they want on any device including the following key capabilities:

• Out of the box cross channel experiences like buy online pick up in store, buy online return in store etc.
• Leverage physical store as a warehouse to deliver products faster to customers
• Consistent and immersive experiences across channels through intelligent search powered by Bing
• User generated product ratings and reviews available in all channels to drive conversion
• Customer can take advantage of wish lists, inventory visibility, gift cards, and loyalty programs to further enrich their shopping experience.

Streamline operations using cloud intelligence

According to a report by Econsultancy, 52 percent of companies face challenges connecting the dots between data stored across different parts of their organization.

Intelligence is the fuel that helps businesses transform. By infusing intelligent technology into their business operations retailers can gain insights that enable them to drive growth and maximize operational efficiencies. Insights can be derived by visualizing and analyzing comprehensive and consistent data across all aspects of their business.

Key capabilities include:

• AI driven product recommendations to upsell and cross sell while delivering personalized experiences for shoppers
• Comprehensive data across web and physical stores as well as back office operations in a consistent format that allows for omnichannel analytics and insights
• Integrated AI driven payment fraud protection capabilities to improve shopper experiences while minimizing fraud related costs and increasing revenues
• Intelligent order orchestrations delivered by distributed order management for reducing operational cost while improving speed of delivery to customers
• AI driven user content moderation to ensure accuracy and legitimacy
• AI driven validation of web content for accessibility issues
• Automated video streaming capabilities to provide rich customer experiences that elevates brand appeal
• Integrated merchandising, inventory, pricing, and promotions to innovate faster and stay ahead of competition

Deliver a scalable, reliable, secure, and compliant solution

Accoridng to a report by Zebra, 50 percent of companies are implementing planning and forecasting technologies, with an additional 32 percent increase in investments by these companies in the next year.

Undertaking a transformation that impacts the core of a retailer business is not done light heartedly. Retail companies are looking to technology partners to help them deliver solutions that are grounded in trust and understanding of their business needs. Dynamics 365 Commerce offers flexible deployment options supported by robust SLA’s, global compliance, and security standards, along with configurable and extensible developer options. Dynamics 365 Commerce also uses a unique solution to help retailers in areas where infrastructure is lacking. By using Scale Units, retailers can ensure they are not only able to transact at all times but also scale their operations globally to operate large multi-brand, multi-company, multi-national organizations.

Dynamics 365 Commerce will enable retailers to build brand loyalty through personalized customer engagements, increase revenue with improved employee productivity, optimize operations to reduce costs and drive supply chain efficiencies, ultimately delivering better business outcomes.

Learn more at the Business Applications Virtual Launch Event

Attend our Virtual Launch Event on Thursday, October 10^th— streaming live at 8:00 am Pacific time, then on-demand–for a look at Dynamics 365 Commerce and all the other new innovations coming to market. Be sure to register for updates and reminders leading up to the event.  Register now

The preview for Dynamics 365 Commerce is available now.  Request a preview to evaluate for yourself or contact us to speak with a Microsoft expert or Microsoft partner near you.

The post Announcing Dynamics 365 Commerce preview appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We know that applications and services can sometimes change at a fast rate, and that it can be hard for consumers to keep abreast of all the latest changes. To help you stay current, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail product team conducts a monthly webinar on the first Thursday of every month, providing information about recently released features and upcoming features that are planned in the next few months. These webinars also provide a forum for our partners, customers, and support colleagues to ask questions and provide feedback.

We understand that everyone has a different schedule and demands, and a lot of us are in different time zones. To accommodate anyone who can’t attend a live webinar, we record all the webinars and post them for on-demand viewing.

The webinar that we presented in May was attended by over a hundred participants. We started with a demo of extensibility enhancements where the new application programming interface (API) triggers that were made available in the April monthly release were used with the point of sale (POS). After that, we discussed details of the POS independent packaging feature—this was received with great excitement from the attendees. We then switched gears from extensibility to the recently released auto-charges capability and pricing and promotion enhancements. The last part of the webinar provided insights into the upcoming demo data changes, and we showcased visuals for the POS clienteling capabilities that are planned for an upcoming Retail release. Attendees posted their questions in the Teams chat window, and product group members were there to respond.

You can find recordings and presentation materials from the last webinar, and also information about the next upcoming webinar, on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite active—used by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and comments—allowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, send a request at http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

The next webinar is June 6, 2019. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!

The post Dynamics 365 for Retail webinars appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

I’m excited to be at the NRF 106th Annual Convention & EXPO—Retail’s BIG Show–here in New York City. We’ll be highlighting Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions that enable retailers and brands to thrive in today’s competitive environment by combining the best of digital and in-store to deliver personal, seamless, and differentiated customer experiences. In essence, it’s all about Empowered Retail.

Our customer Hickory Farms will also be joining us at booth #2803 to discuss why they selected Dynamics 365 for Operations as their long term growth business solution for over 500 retail stores and kiosks, call centers, customer service, e-commerce, as well as their supply chain and distribution.

I’m thrilled to share the retail and commerce capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations. The solution gives you the tools you need to better manage changing demands and deliver truly amazing experiences to customers. We’re connecting the shopping experience with the things that help consumers move between devices as well as between the online shop and in-store. We can even help with cross-channel scenarios like buying online with in-store pick-up. This state-of-the-art cloud service is architected to leverage the full power of Microsoft Azure. It’s optimized for mobile experiences, which means you can deliver seamless unified commerce across all customer touch points, including store, online, mobile and call centers. 

Dynamics 365 for Operations includes the Retail Modern Point-of-Sale app offering a rich clienteling experience that gives sales associates what they need while on the sales floor: product, inventory, customer and other information that helps them provide exceptional customer service. Modern Point-of-Sale is built as a Universal Windows Platform and cross-platform application, which means you can choose the form factor (PC, tablets or phones) and platform (Windows, iOS or Android). This unique architecture even allows the same POS to be accessible via browser (Cloud POS), which can help you minimize deployment and maintenance costs and react quickly to changing business needs.  

Our Retail Modern Point of Sale

Dynamics 365 for Operations also facilitates smooth e-commerce experiences through knowledgeable partners, some of whom are showcasing here at NRF. While taking advantage of omnichannel catalog, pricing, promotions capabilities you can offer modern, immersive experiences to consumers and deliver simple, fast and intuitive checkout experiences supported by integrated, secure payment processing.

We know that consumers use their mobile phones to learn more about the products, read reviews, and get input from friends and family through social media. Now Dynamics 365 for Operations offers the consumer mobile shopping application for iPhone and Android phones, which makes it easy for consumers to complete a purchase, check order status and more.  

Intelligent and personalized omnichannel experiences

For the call center channel, Dynamics 365 for Operations can fulfill another crucial piece of the unified commerce solution. It allows you to take orders on the phone directly from customers, allowing call center reps to answer status and fulfillment questions quickly and precisely and even make changes or cancel an order. The optimized interface makes order entry faster, provides scripted assistance, and offers assisted selling as well as cross channel fulfilment with ability to process variety of different payments. Dynamics 365 for Operations lets you differentiate prices and promotions by specific channels, product categories, catalogs and time periods. In addition, promotions can be targeted using information from profiles, including affiliations and loyalty tiers. This takes personalized and differentiated shopping experiences to a whole new level!

Omnichannel order management in Dynamics 365 for Operations ties in all the pieces and offers support for scenarios like “buy in one store and pick up in another store” as well as hybrid orders that allow line-level fulfillment flexibility. In addition, you get a complete 360-degree view of customers: addresses, preferences, purchase and order history, wish lists, affiliations and more. Retailers can initiate and offer loyalty programs that cut across various products and categories, while providing personalized recommendations powered by Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite.

Another exciting element of Dynamics 365 for Operations is its powerful analytics and insightful intelligence that allows you to provide amazing experiences for your customers and gain clear competitive edge and flourish in this digital age.

To find out more about our capabilities comes see us at Booth #2803 here at the National Retail Federation Big Show!

The post Thriving in today’s competitive retail environment with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.