Over the past few months, the world has been captivated by generative AI and applications like the new chat experience in Bing, which can generate original text responses from a simple prompt written in natural language. With the introduction of generative AI across Microsoft business applications—including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, and Power Platform—interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature. With Copilot, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform introduce a new way to generate ideas and content drafts, and methods to access and organize information across the business.

Before your business starts using Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, you may have questions about how it works, how it keeps your business data secure, and other important considerations. The answers to common questions below should help your organization get started.

What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Copilot?

ChatGPT is a general-purpose large language model (LLM) trained by OpenAI on a massive dataset of text, designed to engage in human-like conversations and answer a wide range of questions on various topics. Copilot also uses an LLM; however, the enterprise-ready AI technology is prompted and optimized for your business processes, your business data, and your security and privacy requirements. For Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform users, Copilot suggests optional actions and content recommendations in context with the task at hand. A few ways Copilot for natural language generation is unique:

• The AI-generated responses are uniquely contextual and relevant to the task at hand informed by your business data—whether responding to an email from within Dynamics 365, deploying a low-code application that automates a specific manual process, or creating a targeted list of customer segments from your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
• Copilot uses both an LLM, like GPT, and your organization’s business data to produce more accurate, relevant, and personalized results. In short, your business data stays within your tenancy and is used to improve context only for your scenario, and the LLM itself does not learn from your usage. More on how the system works is below.
• Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot is designed from the ground up on a foundation of enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy.

Read on for more details about these topics. 

How does Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform work?

With Copilot, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform harness the power of foundation models coupled with proprietary Microsoft technologies applied to your business data:

• Search (using Bing and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search): Brings domain-specific context to a Copilot prompt, enabling a response to integrate information from content like manuals, documents, or other data within the organization’s tenant. Currently, Microsoft Power Virtual Agent and Dynamics 365 Customer Service use this retrieval-augmented generation approach as pre-processing to calling an LLM.
• Microsoft applications like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, and Microsoft Power Platform and the business data stored in Microsoft Dataverse.
• Microsoft Graph: Microsoft Graph API brings additional context from customer signals into the prompt, such as information from emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more.

Copilot requests an input prompt from a business user in an app, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft Power Apps. Copilot then preprocesses the prompt through an approach called grounding, which improves the specificity of the prompt, so you get answers that are relevant and actionable to your specific task. It does this, in part, by making a call to Microsoft Graph and Dataverse and accessing the enterprise data that you consent and grant permissions to use for the retrieval of your business content and context. We also scope the grounding to documents and data which are visible to the authenticated user through role-based access controls. For instance, an intranet question about benefits would only return an answer based on documents relevant to the employee’s role.

This retrieval of information is referred to as retrieval-augmented generation and allows Copilot to provide exactly the right type of information as input to an LLM, combining this user data with other inputs such as information retrieved from knowledge base articles to improve the prompt. Copilot takes the response from the LLM and post-processes it. This post-processing includes additional grounding calls to Microsoft Graph, responsible AI checks, security, compliance and privacy reviews, and command generation.

Finally, Copilot returns a recommended response to the user, and commands back to the apps where a human-in-the-loop can review and assess. Copilot iteratively processes and orchestrates these sophisticated services to produce results that are relevant to your business, accurate, and secure.

How does Copilot use your proprietary business data? Is it used to train AI models?

Copilot unlocks business value by connecting LLMs to your business data—in a secure, compliant, privacy-preserving way.

Copilot has real-time access to both your content and context in Microsoft Graph and Dataverse. This means it generates answers anchored in your business content—your documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, contacts, and other business data—and combines them with your working context—the meeting you’re in now, the email exchanges you’ve had on a topic, the chat conversations you had last week—to deliver accurate, relevant, contextual responses.

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

Are Copilot responses always factual?

Responses produced with generative AI are not guaranteed to be 100 percent factual. While we continue to improve responses to fact-based inquiries, people should still use their judgement when reviewing outputs. Our copilots leave you in the driver’s seat, while providing useful drafts and summaries to help you achieve more.

Our teams are working to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles.

We also provide guidance within the user experience to reinforce the responsible use of AI-generated content and actions. To help guide users on how to use Copilot, as well as properly use suggested actions and content, we provide:  

Instructive guidance and prompts. When using Copilot, informational elements instruct users how to responsibly use suggested content and actions, including prompts, to review and edit responses as needed prior to usage, as well as to manually check facts, data, and text for accuracy.

Cited sources. Copilot cites public sources when applicable so you’re able to see links to the web content it references.

How does Copilot protect sensitive business information and data?

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise-ready AI. Powered by Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot features built-in responsible AI and enterprise-grade Azure security.

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft services like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, and automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections, and more make Copilot the AI solution you can trust.

Architected to protect tenant, group, and individual data. We know data leakage is a concern for customers. LLMs are not further trained on, or learn from, your tenant data or your prompts. Within your tenant, our time-tested permissions model provides safeguards and enterprise-grade security as seen in our Azure offerings. And on an individual level, Copilot presents only data you can access using the same technology that we’ve been using for years to secure customer data.

Designed to learn new skills. Copilot’s foundation skills are a game changer for productivity and business processes. The capabilities allow you to create, summarize, analyze, collaborate, and automate using your specific business content and context. But it doesn’t stop there. Copilot recommends actions for the user (for example, “create a time and expense application to enable employees to submit their time and expense reports”). And Copilot is designed to learn new skills. For example, with Viva Sales, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer data—like interaction and order histories—into communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.

Will Copilot meet requirements for regulatory compliance mandates?

Copilot is offered within the Azure ecosystem and thus our compliance follows that of Azure. In addition, Copilot adheres to our commitment to responsible AI, which is described in our documented principles and summarized below. As regulation in the AI space evolves, Microsoft will continue to adapt and respond to fulfill future regulatory requirements in this space.

Next-generation AI across Microsoft business applications

With next-generation AI, interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature.

Discover more about AI

Committed to responsible AI

Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are helping our customers use our AI products responsibly, sharing our learnings, and building trust-based partnerships. For these new services, we provide our customers with information about the intended uses, capabilities, and limitations of our AI platform service, so they have the knowledge necessary to make responsible deployment choices.  

Take a look at related content

• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, that brings next-generation AI to every line of business
• Power Platform is leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development
• Copilot in Viva Sales available as thousands of customers adopt next-generation AI in Dynamics 365 Copilot and Power Platform

The post How Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform delivers enterprise-ready AI built for security and privacy appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Across Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Viva Sales, we’ve introduced, and will continue delivering, a cascade of AI capabilities to help businesses and individuals achieve more. Earlier this month, we announced Dynamics 365 Copilot, which uses OpenAI’s GPT capabilities to provide AI-powered assistance across business functions. For instance, a smart news insights capability for Microsoft Supply Chain Platform alerts warehouse and logistics professionals to external events, such as weather or geo-political activities, that might trigger a disruption—and then proactively helps them plan their mitigation with Copilot-powered content. 

GPT-4 will bring more powerful capabilities to Microsoft business applications

The Azure OpenAI service uses large-scale, generative models to unlock new reasoning and comprehension capabilities across our business applications. Our unique and strong collaboration with OpenAI creates a “better together” experience for our customers. We’ve taken OpenAI models and built features on top of them, experimenting with multiple available models, including text-davinci-002 and text-davinci-003, ChatGPT, and GPT-4, the newest and most capable model in the GPT series.

These examples provide insight into how GPT-4 will create new possibilities to bring customers additional business value and where it may be better suited to address certain scenarios. We incorporate various models from OpenAI and Microsoft depending on the product and scenario. Some more complex tasks may be suited for one model, while others could be powered just as well—and perhaps more quickly—with a different model.

Here’s an example of an experiment using Power Virtual Agents conversation booster in a fictional customer scenario to help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) answer this question from their users: What are the documentation requirements for deductions?

In contrast with text-davinci-002 and text-davinci-003, which mostly provide references, ChatGPT and GPT-4 provide more explanatory information along with links to their sources.

In Dynamics 365 Marketing, content ideas uses AI to generate marketing copy. In the following experiment, we asked for newsletter content around three key points:

• Thank you for choosing to receive email from CONTOSO
• Experience these valuable benefits: exclusive offers, sales alerts and new product launch info
• Enjoy $10 off your next online purchase, enter code SPRING2022 at checkout

Then we performed internal testing to evaluate the results from the four models.

As with the IRS example, GPT-4 provides the most detailed response, including a bullet list of benefits. It even added an encouragement not to miss the opportunity, implicitly understanding that a coupon code should have a time component.

Prompt engineering and model tuning

Through our access to OpenAI models, we had the opportunity to engineer context-specific prompts for each scenario we tested. Consider the following example, in which we supplied various levels of context as input for the question, Do you know how to deploy a model on Azure ML?.

Without context, known as “zero shot,” the response from GPT-4 is random, not knowing which scenario is intended. The response with some context is more targeted. The most comprehensive context, which included retrieval augmented generation (RAG) from the desired sources, resulted in the most targeted response.

Along with engineering more context-rich prompts, we went under the hood to tune some models with training samples from domain-specific languages. For instance, the Power Automate “describe it to design it” capability shipped in October 2022 uses a model trained with samples that better represent the cloud flow language. For details, see our blog post explaining how we build fine-tuned models.

Our experimentation, tuning of input and models, and collaboration with OpenAI enable us to quickly develop and deliver the best AI-powered capabilities to our business users. And we’re doing it in a way that helps mitigate harm and provides our customers with provenance-checked results by implementing our Responsible AI practices.

Next steps

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer?  Take a tour and get a free trial!

Learn more about the latest AI breakthroughs with Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft Power Platform.

The post How we can use GPT-4 to continually improve AI models in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management release 10.0.32 introduces warehouse-specific inventory transactions. These transactions are optimized for warehouse operations, with important benefits for system performance and efficiency.

Warehouse transactions offer important advantages over inventory transactions for warehouse operations

We recommend using warehouse transactions for warehouse scenarios where they apply. Unlike inventory transactions,

• Warehouse transactions can operate on sets of items with different serial or batch numbers. Item sets can be reused, avoiding the need to record the same information multiple times.
• Warehouse transactions are only used in warehouse operations, which don’t have any financial impact. This significantly reduces the number of database fields, indexes, and validations.
  Note: The system still relies on inventory transactions for warehouse operations that have a financial impact.
• Warehouse transactions are archived often. This keeps the warehouse transactions table small and allows the system to implement different data models for active and completed transactions. Active transactions are optimized for inserts, critical for fast mobile device operations. Completed transactions are optimized for querying. 

What motivated this change?

Inventory transactions live in the InventTrans table, the workhorse of the inventory system. Multiple Supply Chain Management modules, including the Warehouse Management System, refer to the inventory system when working with inventory transactions. Analyzing historical data, we found that on average, 30% of Warehouse Management operation execution time occurs in the inventory system. Because other modules rely on the inventory system, we can’t optimize it for warehouse needs. Instead, we created new transactions just for the warehouse system. By separating warehouse-specific inventory transactions from other inventory transactions, we’ve reduced the dependency of the warehouse system on the inventory system.

However, separating warehouse and inventory transactions was only the first steppingstone on the way to the performance improvements we wanted. The way the system worked with items was another factor that made warehouse operations less efficient. Items have specific identifiers, or tracking dimensions, like batch and serial numbers. Our analysis showed that the execution time of warehouse operations is proportional to the number of items it works with. By introducing item sets—reusable collections of items that have specific dimensions and quantities—we’ve made warehouse operations less dependent on the number of items involved.

The following chart shows the difference in sales picking work execution time for individual items with many tracking dimensions (old stack) and item sets (new stack).

What’s changing and what has stayed the same?

From the user’s perspective, not much has changed. Warehouse Management System users will notice only that there’s a new form to view warehouse-specific transactions. In the following example, a sales order picking operation, the form shows transactions related to the sales order and transactions related to the warehouse work created for that order (warehouse-specific transactions).

The inventory transaction form that users are familiar with, as in the example below, now shows only the source transaction for the sales picking work.

How to try out warehouse transactions

The new warehouse-specific inventory transactions are available for private preview with limited support for warehouse operations in release 10.0.31 of Supply Chain Management. The public preview release 10.0.32 supports all warehouse operations.

In release 10.0.32, enable Warehouse-specific inventory transactions in the Feature management workspace. Because the warehouse-specific inventory transaction feature is in private preview in release 10.0.31, you’ll need to activate the WHSWarehouseInventoryTransactionFeature flight first.

After you enable Warehouse-specific inventory transactions in either release, go to the Warehouse Management parameters page > Warehouse inventory transaction mechanism section. Select the warehouse scenarios that should use warehouse transactions, as in the following example:

Warehouse scenarios that don’t use warehouse transactions will continue to use inventory transactions.

Learn more

Read the product documentation: Warehouse-specific inventory transactions – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Join our Yammer channel!

Not yet a Supply Chain Management customer? Take a guided tour!

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Educational institutions are looking for modern data solutions that improve their ability to accurately assess and quickly respond to students’ and educators’ needs. We designed the Microsoft Dynamics 365 education accelerator to help partners expedite the development of these solutions. The December release includes new sample applications and data model enhancements that partners can use as a blueprint for their development work with education customers.

What’s new in the December release of the education accelerator

• New sample program registration portal for students and program management app for administrators
• Enhancements to the data model to:
  • Better align with Open Education Analytics (OEA) and industry standards
  • Respond to partner feedback about previous releases

New sample program registration portal and program management app

Partners can use the education data model, Power Pages, and a model-driven application to deliver a streamlined program registration solution to their education customers. The program registration solution is completely customizable. Education customers can use it to manage registration for a variety of academic and non-academic programs, such as tutoring services, sports teams, and community service opportunities.

Education accelerator data model better aligns with OEA and industry standards

OEA is a process to get started on the data modernization and artificial intelligence journey. Developed by education systems in collaboration with Microsoft Education, the OEA framework includes modules for the Ed-Fi and Schools Interoperability Framework data standards.

The OEA framework uses Azure Synapse Analytics, an analytical data store, while the education accelerator uses Dataverse, a transactional data store. The enhanced data model brings analytical and transactional data together in one platform, enabling partners to build solutions that align with industry data standards.

More data model enhancements based on partner feedback

The December release also includes enhancements that Microsoft partners requested:

• Combined K-12 and Higher Education data models
• New Course Requirement entity and enhanced Program Requirements entity
• New Grade Scale entity and calculations for course credits attempted and earned, grade points, and grade point average (GPA)
• Enhanced entity definitions, attribute definitions, and sample data
• Deprecated free-form text fields where relationships exist or we could use a lookup

Next steps

Get started right away with version 5.0 of the education accelerator on Microsoft AppSource. The data model, solutions, sample applications and data, Power BI reports, and UX controls that come with the education accelerator are available to any Microsoft Power Platform developer.

Read the documentation: Dynamics 365 education accelerator | Microsoft Learn

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90 percent of companies say their existing systems for tracking customer journeys need improvement.

In today’s customer-centric world, customer data is a critical part of a company’s ability to serve up personalized, relevant experiences. Post-sale, data plays an equally critical role in providing customer service teams with the tools they need to provide speedy service, answer customer inquiries, and resolve post-sale issues smoothly and quickly. The challenge facing a majority of companies today is the ability to collect, analyze, and act on that data across their organizations.

In partnership with Futurum, we surveyed 1,000 global business leaders, technologists, marketers, and data and customer experience professionals, and identified the challenges and opportunities that best-in-class data practices afford customer experience (CX) leaders today. The findings of the report revealed what we had surmised going in—that companies are evolving their customer relationship management (CRM) technologies to meet changing customer expectations.

Shift to digital customer journeys

Companies are changing their operational mindset regarding customer experience. Our research shows that a whopping 85 percent of companies report that their customers are significantly more digitally focused than they expected, and it’s clear that companies need to shift their strategies in order to adapt. In the last two years, we’ve seen a seismic shift in how customers live, work, play, and shop online. Customer behavior has irreversibly changed. In fact, 96 percent of organizations say they’ve accelerated their digital transformation and/or technology deployments to keep pace with changing customer requirements, and that includes serving up a better customer experience.

Complexity abounds for customer experience transformation

Complexity is the name of the game in business today. If you’re involved in delivering better customer experiences, you’re likely nodding as you read that line—and we feel your pain. Today’s proliferation of channels through which customers interact with brands provides both opportunities and challenges. We are seeing this interaction via email, text, social media, apps, websites, and in-store communications—and it can be more than a little overwhelming. The massive influx of data from these many touchpoints has added a level of complexity that we haven’t seen before. Our research shows that working with and properly managing data is easily one of the most difficult challenges companies face, and solving this challenge is of paramount concern.

But why does data add so much complexity? In order to be used effectively, data must be collected, cleaned, analyzed, and maintained in real time—something that many organizations aren’t yet capable of doing, both from a tech stack standpoint as well as an internal skill set standpoint. Adding to that, organizations are also facing new challenges with the looming elimination of third-party data that’s been relied on to track customers, along with changing privacy regulations. There’s a shift happening, and organizations aren’t ready. In fact, 90 percent of companies in our research study reported that their existing systems for tracking customer journeys need improvement. But the good news is that there are solutions for that.  

Harness data and use it more effectively, customer data platforms are the solution

Companies looking to transform their customer experience don’t just need customer data for better customer engagements, they also need real-time data to inform those engagements. That data is of great value to the organization, but in order for it to deliver value, data needs to be centralized, easily accessible, and processed in a single source of truth. That’s where a customer data platform (CDP) comes in and why it‘s truly table stakes for organizations today (and not just for marketers).

Best-in-class CDP solutions work to connect the organization as a whole to the data that is amassed so that it can be accessed and utilized by sales teams, marketing teams, customer service teams, commerce teams, and beyond. CDPs are the lifeblood of the organization, housing data, providing visibility as needed, and allowing employees throughout the organization to make data-driven decisions that serve up the very best in customer experiences across every touchpoint.

That’s where the right technology solutions can be game-changers. Real-time, actionable insights into customer experience are most likely to materialize from a CDP that centralizes user data and makes it available to everyone who engages with the customer journey. As the amount of data available has increased exponentially, the challenge becomes how to collect data in a manner that both enables actionable analysis but also protects customer trust.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Microsoft provides an enterprise-leading customer data platform.

Learn more

Ensuring customer trust and privacy to improve customer experience

Let’s talk about the roles that trust and privacy play in the overall customer experience. The collection and analysis of customer data is central to improving customer experience, but mounting privacy concerns surrounding data can threaten customers’ trust in the companies they engage with. Our research shows that while the speed of digitization and the necessity to respond with new solutions has led more than three quarters of companies to implement new technologies or programs, those technologies and programs might not be completely secure. A solid 51 percent of respondents in our study acknowledge they’ve experienced at least one customer data breach in the prior year, so unified data systems that reduce this risk are highly prized.

Changing regulations surrounding privacy and data protection also provide a consistent challenge. Our research showed that 88 percent of respondents expect to change their customer engagement strategies in order to adapt to future market and regulatory requirements. A CDP can help ensure compliance required by General Data Protection Regulation, California Privacy Rights Act, California Consumer Privacy Act, and other regulations designed to give customers more control over the personal information businesses collect about them. We expect to also see CDPs evolving to address the cookieless future that’s ahead of us and track customer consent as part of the functionality of the CDP.

Top 5 features in successful CDP solutions

As we’ve mentioned previously, our research showed an overwhelming number of companies feel like they don’t have the right tools in place to help them improve their customer experience. They need something better—and they know what they want.

Our study identified the top five most important features in successful customer-facing solutions. These include:

1. Integrated AI-based analytics
2. AI-based data classification
3. The ability to import data from multiple sources
4. Connection to social networks
5. Real-time actionable insights

Unfortunately, these are the same five areas in which respondents reported their existing customer data tools are lacking. 83 percent of those surveyed report they already use a CDP to provide a centralized source of record, 35 percent say they are still relying on piecemeal solutions that don’t offer real-time access to customer data. In order to effectively use technology to improve the customer experience they’re serving up, CX leaders require substantial improvement in the existing CDP solutions that they’re relying on.

CX leaders need a unified CDP that provides real-time access to customer data, and one that is easily accessible to multiple stakeholders throughout the organization. They also need a tool that ensures regulatory compliance and data privacy, putting customers at ease. This can help facilitate enhanced collaboration, actionable analysis, and the ability to put the insights gained from customer data to immediate use.

By offering a single source of truth for an organization, a unified CDP can enable enhanced collaboration across the entire organization (including sales, service, finance, and research and development) to address every part of the customer experience journey.

Learn more

In the full report, we’ve identified nine key insights that are shaping customer experience needs today, creating a clear roadmap for the future of customer data collection, storage, and analysis. The application of this knowledge stands to benefit companies and customers alike. You can download the full report here.

Looking for a CDP? Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft’s enterprise-leading customer data platform. Microsoft provides an enterprise-leading customer data platform.

End notes

Source: Nine Key Insights on Customer Data: Marketing Perspective, 2021 Futurum Research in partnership with Microsoft.

The post Microsoft and Futurum research: Discover insights to create experiences that customers love appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Expectations for executives leading their companies’ customer experience (CX) efforts seem to grow every day. From driving sustainable growth, to aligning your teams and integrating your technology, to empowering employees to do their best work, there’s more on your plate than ever. Meanwhile, customer expectations can feel like a moving target that only goes up. Buyers today are digital first, becoming more informed, more comfortable switching between channels, more likely to ignore anything that doesn’t feel authentic, and they expect businesses to follow their lead.

To stay relevant to customers, many leaders are rethinking their approach to CX at every touchpoint. Relying on customer relationship management (CRM) to drive sales simply won’t cut it anymore. You need to connect customer insights and data across your organization—sales, marketing, and service—to meet customers where they are and capitalize on every opportunity.

That’s why I’m excited to invite you to Customer Experience Reimagined, a digital event on October 26. Learn about the latest trends shaping CX today—and tomorrow—with Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. He’ll share his perspective about what CX leaders are facing, how they energize employees by simplifying fragmented and complicated systems, and what it means to be a digitally connected enterprise with unified, enriched data.

Hear insights straight from the experts

Customer Experience Reimagined will give you a window into what other CX leaders are thinking, with strategies to help your business adapt to a changing landscape. Learn about the evolution of CRM, along with critical technologies and skills from leaders who are shaping their customer experience strategy:

• Constellation Research Founder and CEO Ray Wang—author of Everybody Wants To Rule The World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants—will join Constellation Research Vice President and Principal Analyst Liz Miller to discuss the importance of AI, analytics, and automation for shifting from real time to “right time” personalized experiences.
• Accenture Senior Managing Director John Bolze will share insights from a new report by Accenture, The Human Paradox, including how 95 percent of C-suite executives say customers are changing faster than businesses are able to adapt. John will talk about why overcoming this crisis of relevancy requires shifting from a customer-centric strategy to a life-centric strategy.
• Valencia Club de Fútbol (CF) Director of Innovation in charge of Digital, Business Intelligence/Analytics, and Fan Experience Franco Segarra will discuss how to create more meaningful fan experiences, increase attendance, and improve game day experiences with a data-centric approach.
• Eika Director of Business Applications Atle Riksfjord, Northrop & Johnson Director of Technology and Intelligence Keith Perfect, and Accenture Song Global Lead Social & Emerging Channels and author of Human-Driven Experience: The Battle for Trust in the Digital Age Robert Harles will lead a roundtable discussion on how to kick-start your CX transformation and guide your company to deliver more personalized, intentional, and relevant experiences.

Learn key lessons from Microsoft’s modern marketing transformation

Get the inside story of our own CX transformation from Stephanie Ferguson, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Global Demand Center, as she shares the vision for our Commercial Customer Platform to meet the changing expectations of customers in the business-to-business (B2B) space. Stephanie will show how we help our marketers and sellers around the globe engage our customers with greater relevancy, clarity, and purpose.

You’ll also hear our technology vision from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Platform, along with Lori Lamkin, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing. They’ll talk about how we’re helping companies connect data from hundreds of business applications and deliver AI-enabled insights to sellers and service agents with automated tools that give them more time to spend with customers. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform combined with the new seller experience application Microsoft Viva Sales helps companies unify and automate, so they can scale their customer experience investments to get customers to “yes” faster.

See what’s shaping CX today—and tomorrow

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear strategies for elevating your customer experience and uncover new ways to sustain business growth, no matter what the future brings. Register for Customer Experience Reimagined today to join us on Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 9:00-10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7).   

Customer Experience Reimagined

Evolve your CRM to personalize and connect customer journeys

Register here

The post Evolve your CRM at Customer Experience Reimagined appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We all know one, the person whose weekend is consumed by a singular passion for their favorite sports team. Their weekdays are dedicated to deconstructing the recent drama while contemplating the narrative awaiting the Saturday or Sunday afternoon ahead. The rain-soaked terraces are home to them. The booming music of the arena is their hymn book, and the legendary names hanging from the rafters are their heroes. A peek into their closet will reveal a sea of matching colors printed on scarves and t-shirts. Their social media will be awash with images of heroes present and past, opinions of games told in terms worthy of epic conquests, and, of course, the barbed insult to anyone who dares question the validity of their narrative.

Read how Microsoft helped Valencia CF unlock the value of their customer data to create super fans.

Engage super fans through actionable insights

This is the world of the sports “super fan”—they are the backbone of the world’s greatest sports franchises. Along with their passion, the super fan is the mainstay of a team’s economy, accounting for a disproportionate number of ticket sales, merchandise, media impressions, and revenue. Teams all over the world love their super fans. In some countries and sports, they have seats in the boardroom and strong voices in ownership decisions. And while it is tempting to view the super fan as a dynastic, generational phenomenon passed on through time and culture, the truth is that today, the super fan is a function of data as much as history. Big, multidimensional data gleaned from the numerous touch points between fans and sports franchises is woven into insights that are specific and actionable at an individual level. Data is how casual fans ascend the ladder of engagement to become super fans and how super fans are rewarded and celebrated.

Row 15 seat 164 in Valencia’s vast Mestalla Stadium is a hallowed place. It is occupied by a statue honoring Señor Vicente Navarro Aparicio, a lifelong Valencia CF fan who sat in that seat for 25 years, never missing a game, even when his eyesight failed him in his later years. Señor Aparicio is the very definition of “super fan.” Valencia CF is more than 100 years old with a proud history of Spanish and international success, and a worldwide fan base of more than 50 million supporters. Although fan engagement has always been a top priority, the club didn’t always know its fans or what they needed in the intimate detail they do today. When Franco Segarra joined Valencia CF as Innovation Director, he immediately recognized the need for a new game plan to enhance fan engagement.

“Super fans aren’t like ordinary customers. They are passionate—experiencing euphoria and shedding tears or losing sleep with the inevitable ups and downs. The sport is steeped in tradition, where fans have special rituals, passed down from parents and grandparents. Therefore, each fan is unique. Fragmented data makes it impossible to understand, let alone deliver, deeply personal experiences that speak to each fan as an individual.”—Franco Segarra, Innovation Director, Valencia CF.

Innovate personalized customer experiences

As an innovative and forward-thinking organization, Valencia CF is continuously improving the global fan experience and building new connections with their fans. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365, the club gained new and actionable insights and a deeper understanding of its fans. With an integrated data architecture, Valencia can run personal campaigns with its season ticket holders. From deploying an app to speed food orders in the stadium to checking in with 1,500 season ticket holders who missed in-person games during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Valencia has used the insights from its customer data to create delightful, rewarding, and engaging fan experiences. By applying custom Al on top of the unified data, the club was able to predict which season ticket holders were most likely to attend games. For those who missed two consecutive games, Valencia CF reached out with a tailored email. And for a subsegment of the fans, football legends Ricardo Arias and Miguel Angel Bossio, who played for Valencia CF in the 80s and 90s, made personal calls.

“Imagine the older fans’ reactions when their all-time favorite idol calls to say hi and see how things are going—it’s an unforgettable experience. It also gave us the opportunity to sincerely thank our fans and hear firsthand what’s on their mind. Customer insights helped us engage at the right moment with a meaningful personal touch that deepened the relationship and strengthened loyalty.”—Franco Segarra, Innovation Director, Valencia CF.

Take a look at how Valencia CF leveraged customer data and technology to create amazing fan experiences.

Valencia CF demonstrates that transforming a casual fan into a super fan is about delighting and engaging that fan on a one-to-one basis.

Super fans are increasingly important in the world of sports brands. Building the commitment of the super fan is not just about tradition and generational influence. It’s about data, and more specifically, drawing all the diverse data sources into one platform driving innovation. But we are only at the beginning of this data journey, and Microsoft is the partner enabling sports teams all over the world to discover the exciting possibilities when the power of integrated data is unleashed.

Next steps

• Read how Microsoft helped Valencia CF unlock the value of their customer data to create super fans.
• Learn more about the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform.

The post Data empowers Valencia CF to create personalized fan experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

At the announcement of Microsoft Viva Sales, Paul Greenberg, Founder, Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC, often called the “Godfather of CRM” and has written a book, CRM at the Speed of Light, and I were chatting about the state of customer relationship management (CRM) market and the innovations in the last 20 years. One area we both agreed that has been underserved is the seller experience. CRM vendors have all focused on the system of record—the CRM system but sellers continue to work in the system of productivity—Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams with no connection between them.

In independent research conducted by Microsoft, we surveyed over 500 salespeople who live and work in North America and who use a CRM on a regular basis. The findings revealed that the tools in use today aren’t always helping, and, in some instances, they are even hindering a salesperson’s ability to do their job.¹ They love the CRM, but they hate manual data entry. This is one area where Microsoft wants to focus on with Viva Sales. With Viva Sales, we take the manual work of CRM away from the sellers and put technology to work on behalf of the sellers so they can cut the forms, connect the data, and crush the sale.

Today I’m pleased to share that Microsoft Viva Sales is now in preview.

The Viva Sales preview includes surfacing customer contact information from your CRM directly in Microsoft Outlook and Teams, connecting to the CRM of your choice, capturing rich contact information in Outlook, capturing notes and action items using AI, providing AI driven recommendations, and more.

Improve the seller experience with Microsoft Viva Sales

The past two years have had a profound impact on work. Employee expectations concerning how, where, and when they work have significantly changed and continue to evolve. While these work trends are pervasive across the workforce, they have especially reshaped the expectations of sales professionals who have had to adapt to an increasingly digital workplace all while using outdated sales tools. In fact, 74 percent of sellers described sales intelligence tools as critical or extremely critical in closing deals.¹ Prior to 2018, digital selling was already gaining popularity but the forced adoption of remote work, brought on by COVID-19, put a spotlight on the top pain points common across sales organizations by highlighting the gaps and limitations in the sales tools.

With Viva Sales we address these gaps to mitigate these top pain points:

• Manual data entry is time-consuming and frustrating and bogs down digital sellers.  
• Inability to capture customer engagement data in productivity applications where sellers do their work. According to Futurum research, 82 percent of salespeople shared that faulty data has led to an embarrassing mistake with a customer.²
• Lack of AI-based recommendations delivered to the point of action.
• Disconnected processes and tools that slow down productivity. Sellers spend two-thirds of their time on administrative tasks that do not directly generate revenue.

Viva Sales gives sellers more time to focus on selling by eliminating the administrative burden of manual data entry to provide an improved seller experience. Combining the power of Microsoft 365 applications and Teams, this new sales experience application captures, accesses, and registers data into any CRM. With Viva Sales, sellers can cut the forms, connect the data, and crush the sale.

The power of AI combined with enriched customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 applications and Teams provides easy access to sales intelligence in the applications sellers already use every day.

In the video, The future of sales enablement, Paul states “Because Viva Sales is 100% seller focused and all the sales manager stuff is taken care of by the more traditional CRM technologies. That’s pretty awesome. You’ve managed to create it in a way that doesn’t disrupt or destroy the traditional focus but actually enhances it but at the same time makes the seller’s experience much better for that seller, which is not something that has been around much.“ 

Learn more

Read our in-depth blog about Viva Sales to learn more and find out how to try out Viva Sales today.

Sources

¹Microsoft Viva Sales: Supercharge your CRM, PDF.

²Futurum, 2022. Reimagining the Sales Process – Are You Ready?

The post Supercharge your CRM with Microsoft Viva Sales—Now in preview appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Governments are increasingly turning to data to address their most urgent issues. But many struggle to unlock the value of their business data to meet the challenges facing their communities. Housing, economic recovery, public safety, and infrastructure are more complex, requiring coordination and data-sharing among many departments and agencies. The pandemic has only reinforced this challenge to turn to digital government services and programs to meet changing expectations and new social norms.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 government accelerator acts as an information blueprint for partners and developers who are building solutions for government organizations to advance their missions in an all-digital world. An industry-specific data model and building blocks fast-track the development of government business processes and applications in the areas of public finance, public health and social services, public safety and justice, and critical infrastructure. It’s available as a standalone data model that partners can use and build on.

The first release of the government data model supports use cases centered around policy, services, programs, benefits, eligibility, licenses, permits, grants, and more. This standardized data blueprint improves interoperability by unifying and shaping the data in a consistent way for easy use across government applications, processes, and workflows in Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and the entire Microsoft technology stack. With a shared understanding of the data, partners and developers can use these data elements to accelerate their time to value and deliver mission-focused solutions for government agencies.

In addition to the data model, the government accelerator includes:

• A customizable Power Apps sample portal that residents and businesses can use to apply for government services, programs, and benefits.

• A customizable sample app for digital government services, programs, and benefits to show how Power Platform and Dynamics 365 can use the data model to manage applications and approvals, and transform government programs and services.

• Partner and developer documentation, reference guides, entity relationship diagrams, and metadata documentation on the data model, all available on GitHub.

The government data model was built in collaboration with over a dozen partners, including the following founding partners.

Arctic IT is excited to partner with Microsoft on the development of a data model designed for the needs of government organizations. The new data model allows Arctic IT to start with a defined data structure that will enable our government clients to bring multiple departments to work together like never before. This government data model will open opportunities to generate greater citizen insights and actions to improve service delivery and help deliver mission-focused solutions.

Bryan Schmidt, Principal Solution Architect, Arctic IT

We are excited to partner with Microsoft on this project, it’s been great to collaborate with the team on a common data model for government and the public sector. This alignment not only helps build on our partnership with Microsoft, but also provides great value to our joint Government clients using Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. It will enable government organisations to increase productivity, accelerate time to value, and deepen trust.

Jacques Le Grange, Principal Consultant, The Factor

When it comes time to provide the customer with the detailed documentation needed to properly scope out an implementation, the Microsoft Public Sector data models aid in the solution design process and provide a way to respond much faster and more economically to the customer.

Adam Brun, Public Sector Industry Lead – Ellipse Solutions

Having a Public Sector unified data platform provides consistency and assists our government clients to deliver on their initiatives more effectively. IBM is partnering with Microsoft to deliver a data model that will allow us to bring our clients’ data and applications together enabling us to deliver government solutions on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

Darren Clark, Associate Partner, IBM Consulting

Using federal or state funds to deliver grants and other assistance to citizens, businesses, and other government agencies is a complicated process. The number of stakeholders involved, type of recipients, size of transactions, use of disparate systems, and lack of a common data model present challenges for which many state and local governments are not prepared.

These challenges along with the demand for speed, efficiency, and compliance must be met with feature-rich enterprise solutions that can scale to support future programs. Stralto has implemented enterprise grant management solutions on the Dynamics 365 and Power App platform, and we are excited to partner with Microsoft on a government data model that will help improve interoperability and break down the siloed information so agencies can deliver improved experiences.

Shane Lucas, President, Stralto, Inc.

Next steps

• To learn about and explore the Dynamics 365 government accelerator, get it now on AppSource or download it from GitHub.

• Read the government accelerator documentation.

• Learn more about our intelligent government solutions to see how Microsoft and our partners drive economic growth and development, enable personalized digital experiences, deliver trusted and secure services, and build a resilient, sustainable future for many government agencies around the world.

The post Dynamics 365 government accelerator helps agencies deliver mission-focused digital government services appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As part of our work to make Dataverse more relevant to our education partners, the 2022 release wave 1 of the Dynamics 365 education accelerator includes features that we developed in response to your feedback. In addition to new and enhanced data model entities, you’ll find updated sample applications that demonstrate how to use the entities in K-12 and higher education.

What’s new in the education data model

• An enhanced learner record captures students’ home language, preferred language, accommodations, achievements, program level, and mode of study.
• A new school record captures information about school hierarchy, calendar, schedule, special learning needs, and daily attendance.
• A new teacher certification management record captures certification requirements, process, and completions.

What’s new in the sample applications

The higher education and K-12 model-driven apps capture more detailed information in the contact data for each student, such as home and preferred languages.

The higher education and K-12 student portals capture achievement data.

The K-12 portal captures school calendar data.

The K-12 model-driven app captures teachers’ certification and credential information.

What our partners are saying

“As an ISV who has aligned with the Higher Education Accelerator (HEA) since V1, we see the April 22 (V4) release of HEA as a substantial step forward for partners and customers. With the inclusion of the learner record, school calendar, instructor certifications and other new features along with the ability to leverage components from K-12 for Higher Ed, this release truly enriches our greymatter Higher Education Lifecycle CRM and allows us to deliver a comprehensive learner record and true Student 360 view to empower institutions like the College of Southern Nevada to create exceptional student experiences.”

Shekar Kadaba, CEO, Frequency Foundry

“We are seeing a real positive response from the K-12 space since the recent releases of the industry accelerator. It is providing a platform that allows schools to adjust to the ever-changing demands for their industry. The flexible nature of the accelerator has meant that schools have been able to start modernizing the way they interact with their parents and students through the different channels provided with the Dynamics 365 platform. One of the many advantages we have seen for schools is how they can move away from the traditional siloed environment. This has allowed them to interact with their data in ways they have not been able to previously. It is an exciting time being a partner in the education space and leveraging the Microsoft Education Accelerator and Power Platform to improve the whole customer experience in schools.”

Brad Orders, Solution Specialist, Fusion5

“For PwC, keeping our clients’ systems evergreen is as important as upgrading and extending their usability. Private preview allows us to plan and schedule updates in our clients’ data models. We are excited about the new release, which expands the student learning profile and workforce development and directly addresses what we have learned from schools.”

Khue Trinh, Lead Solution Architect Connected School, PwC

Next steps

• Get started right away with version 4.0 of the Dynamics 365 education accelerator on Microsoft AppSource. The data model, solutions, sample applications and data, Power BI reports, and UX controls that come with the education accelerator are available to any Microsoft Power Platform developer.
• For more information, read the education accelerator documentation.

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