Great customer service is absolutely critical to any organization’s success. Today, organizations require modern solutions that can help them support customers on the channels and touchpoints of their choice, by providing customers with self-service options and arming customer support agents with access to information and experts to resolve issues quickly and efficiently. We are pleased to share the results of a March 2024 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact^TM (TEI) Study commissioned by Microsoft. Forrester calculates Dynamics 365 Customer Service delivered benefits of $14.70 million over three years to a composite organization. The total investment required was $3.54 million over three years and provided a ROI of 315% with a payback period of less than six months.

Methodology and purpose

Forrester’s TEI study is a methodology developed specifically to assist companies with the complexities of procuring technology solutions. The TEI study also aids technology vendors in objectively evaluating and communicating their solutions’ value proposition. To these ends, the TEI study discussed here provides a framework for business-decision-makers to assess the potential financial impact of implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Ultimately, the financial impact of the 2023 study is a projection for a composite organization developed by Forrester through real-world interviews with five businesses that currently use Dynamics 365 Customer Service. These businesses’ experiences and the interview results are aggregated to create a composite organization to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks. For this study, the composite organization is a $1 billion industry-agnostic organization that operates at multiple locations around the world. It has 5,000 employees total, and 500 of those are customer support agents who support a growing customer base. Each agent works an average of six hours a day and spends 75% of that time on support interactions.

Continue reading to learn what key challenges the composite organization faces and the study’s critical findings.

Key challenges

In the interviews conducted for this TEI study, the organizations shared the following common challenges:

• A disparate stack of aging customer support and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.
• Siloed customer data, which led to suboptimal support.
• Increasing support capacity requirements.
• An inconsistent and one-sized customer experience.

With these challenges top of mind, the organizations wanted to find and invest in a customer service solution that could:

• Integrate seamlessly with other Microsoft solutions, including other Microsoft Dynamics 365 modules, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Teams.
• Deliver automation and AI-driven insights to the customer support function to enable agents to deliver a better support experience while limiting the requirements for additional support agents.
• Help establish and curate a knowledgebase to help agents further support the customer experience.

Key findings

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides service organizations’ agents the tools they need to deliver faster, seamless, personalized experiences across any channel. Dynamics 365 Customer Service simplifies and automates support agent processes with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service while delivering faster support experiences to organizations’ customers, which can improve customer satisfaction and lead to additional revenue and profit.

Forrester’s study revealed four quantifiable impact areas: improved handling times leading to greater agent productivity, improvements to first-call resolution and misrouted calls, improvement to sales pipeline generation leading to revenue increases, and cost savings after retiring other customer service solutions.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these areas below to understand how Dynamics 365 Customer Service delivers value for customer support organizations.

Reduced call handling time by 40%

Interviewees noted several inefficiencies across their organizations’ previous customer service solutions that increased agents’ interaction time with customers:

• Multiple solutions for different support functions, leading to siloed customer data and relevant support information.
• Lack of visibility into customer histories and best practices for service and resolution.
• A one-size-fits-all approach to service-case routing.
• No automation for common support tasks.

Implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Service enabled their organizations to automate manual aspects of their agents’ daily responsibilities, which helped to reduce the time they spent searching for customer information and best practices. Because agents were able to have shorter, more efficient interactions with customers, the composite organization saved an average of 468 hours per agent each year.

Improved first-call resolution by 20%—and decreased misroutes by 15%

With their legacy customer support tools, agents at the study’s participant organizations had no easily accessible customer knowledge base with records of common support issues. They also had no easy way to locate specialists who could help resolve issues, so calls were frequently misrouted to the wrong specialists.

With Dynamics 365 Customer Service, they found they could automatically route support cases to the best specialists depending on the nature of the case. This helped them to both increase first-call resolution rates by 20% and shorten the overall time of interactions. They also decreased the times agents misrouted calls to the wrong specialists by 15%. Overall, the composite organization’s agents saved up to 292 hours per year.

Increased sales pipeline generation to drive additional profitability

Some interviewees shared revenue impact to their organizations’ revenue based on the implementation of Dynamics 365 Customer Service. A CRM product manager at a travel and hospitality organization explained that because Dynamics 365 Customer service automates the majority of searches performed by agents, they can spend more time on revenue-linked interactions. Another interviewee at a manufacturing organization said that customer information and leads are shared between support agents using Dynamics 365 Customer Service and salespeople using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, enabling salespeople to see customer interactions and identify opportunities for new revenue.

Saved up to $978,000 in costs on retired customer service solution(s)

By implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Service, participant organizations were able to retire their previous customer service solutions, saving costs on license fees, infrastructure, and personnel maintenance hours. Interviewees from one manufacturing organization said their company reclaimed nearly $100,000 annually by decommissioning two third-party customer service solutions made redundant by Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Other benefits

Forrester Consulting Total Impact Study

See the total economic impact of Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Read here

Study participants mentioned additional benefits to their organizations that were not quantified for this report, including:

• Integration with other Microsoft products including Microsoft Power BI for discovering and predicting common support issues and Teams for easy collaboration between support agents and specialists to help resolve issues.
• An improved customer support experience with reductions in key support metrics such as handle time, hold time, and resolution rates—and the ability to deliver faster, more personalized, and more nuanced support experiences with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Next steps

Forrester’s TEI study of Dynamics 365 Customer Service found four primary quantifiable impact areas and several soft benefits. Taken together, the study found that Dynamics 365 Customer Service delivered a total economic impact of $14.7 million in financial savings over three years. The total investment required was $3.54 million over three years and provided a ROI of 315%.

To get a closer look at the study’s results and a better understanding of how Dynamics 365 Customer Service can help your organization, download and read the full study: The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

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Most organizations find it’s no longer good enough to just measure successful service engagements solely on whether a customer issue is resolved. Instead, they aim to deliver personalized, fast service experiences at every touchpoint through all engagement channels. The best way to do this is by building long-term customer loyalty and transforming operations with modern, AI-enhanced capabilities across all service processes and interactions. That’s why we are continuously enhancing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service to empower our customers and help them differentiate their service organizations. Today, we’re happy to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave^TM: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024 attaining top scores possible in the business intelligence, process management, and collaboration criteria.

Investing in AI and a unified platform for modernizing customer service 

More and more, service agents feel increased pressure to provide smart, fast, and customized answers when presented with customer issues. But finding information and experts to quickly resolve an issue can present its own challenges. According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 62% of people spend too much time scouring for information during their workday. For service organizations, agents who must scramble to find information can mean both slower time to resolution for individual cases and a lower number of cases addressed per day overall. The agent experience is the heart of Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The key to improving satisfaction in service delivery is enabling agents to take customer requests from any channel, handle multiple sessions at a time, interact with multiple apps without losing context, and enhance their workflow with productivity tools. Our answer is to provide a solution that helps service organizations harness the power of data, AI, automation, and collaboration to help agents focus on resolving customer issues quickly. Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps service organizations unlock trusted knowledge to accelerate onboarding and case resolution, improve efficiency, and automate tasks for agents in their flow of work.  

More recently, we’ve brought Microsoft Copilot into Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Copilot provides real-time, AI-powered assistance to help customer support agents solve issues faster by relieving them from mundane tasks—such as searching and note-taking—and freeing their time for more high-value interactions with customers. Without costly development time, organizations can simply point to their data and, in a few minutes, unlock generative AI-powered conversations across their knowledge bases and other sources. Agents can use Copilot to respond to incoming email, factoring in other relevant customer data to produce a personalized, accurate, and editable reply. Contact center managers can also use Copilot analytics to view usage and better understand how next-generation AI impacts the business. In addition, service agents are empowered with additional AI experiences and automation to help fuel collaboration and productivity for delivering world-class customer service at scale. We recently completed a study that evaluated the impact of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service on agent productivity for our own Microsoft Support agents providing customer care across the commercial business. They found that agents can quickly look up answers to high-volume requests and avoid lengthy investigations of previously documented procedures. One of our lines of business with these characteristics has realized a 22% reduction in time to close cases using Copilot.  

At Microsoft, we strive to enable our customers to empower their customers to engage on their terms, at their optimal times, and on their channels of choice. We believe we have earned our position as a Leader by developing a customer service solution that enables agents to focus on delivering more cutting-edge service experiences by harnessing available data and using the power of generative AI to deliver consistent, personalized customer experiences; maximize their productivity; and optimize service operations. And with our comprehensive service platform that includes automation, knowledge management, collaboration, and more, service organizations can streamline case management, enable more personalized service, and get a clear, 360-degree view into how their service organization is performing. As Forrester points out in its report, “Microsoft’s vision is broader than just customer service, and it’s firmly grounded in three principles: Engagement must be personalized via AI; customer service must be highly collaborative; and outcomes must drive improvements. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service actualizes this vision.” 

Building on next-generation AI that’s enterprise ready 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, so our customers can rest assured that it offers data privacy and protection. Azure OpenAI Service offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage, enabling organizations to control access to their data, and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities.  

Creating responsible AI solutions 

Most importantly, we are 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 putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society. 

The Forrester Wave™

Microsoft is a Leader in the The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024.

Read the report

Learn more about customer service 

We’re excited to be recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave and are committed to providing innovative customer service platform capabilities to help our customers continuously improve their own customer service offerings. 

Learn more about: 

• Dynamics 365 
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service 
• Microsoft Copilot for Service 

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investment, and consider trying Dynamics 365 Customer Service for free by visiting. 

The post Microsoft is a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

To thrive in today’s highly complex global business environment, organizations are increasingly relying upon the technological and strategic prowess of their financial leaders. We’re continually investing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 to enable finance leaders to monitor financial operations in real time, predict outcomes, and drive strategic decision-making that hinges on insight.

We are pleased to announce that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in three IDC MarketScape reports—IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US51405823, December 2023); IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Midmarket Finance and Accounting Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US51405023, December 2023); and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Small Business Finance and Accounting Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US48041222, December 2023).

Read the IDC excerpt

Dive deeper into the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications excerpt.

Learn more

According to the IDC MarketScape for Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications, “Consider Microsoft when you are searching for a well-established provider with the resources to innovate quickly and effectively.”

Boost productivity with Copilot for Dynamics 365

As the pace of business accelerates, the role of finance leaders has shifted. They are called to navigate a range of new challenges and responsibilities: reporting on the past, managing the present, and creating the future.

Today, financial leaders are responsible for much more than finance, as they are increasingly accountable for the strategic direction of the company. The scale and pace of decision-making has increased compared to the previous generation, which was called on to help make quarterly decisions. Now, finance leaders make critical financial decisions weekly—and in some cases, daily.

According to the IDC MarketScape for Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications, “We will see the demand for more analytics, reporting, and data visualization tools. This trend will continue to accelerate and shape buying decisions for financial leaders.”

Our answer to this is to provide simple solutions—focusing on collaboration, productivity, AI, and insights—to help finance leaders make data-driven decisions and drive business agility and growth. According to the IDC MarketScape for Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications, “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot brings together Azure OpenAI and ChatGPT. Copilot is embedded in Dynamics 365, working alongside business professionals to help them create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions. This enables users of all technical abilities to use AI to boost their productivity and focus on more important tasks.” A great example of this is HB Antwerp, a Belgian company redefining how natural diamonds are sourced, crafted, and sold.

In 2024, the company plans to up the value of diamonds tracked to USD 1 billion. In terms of continuing to use AI like Copilot, it said that 60% of emails are written with AI, suggesting the importance of AI to the future of the company. This enables users of all technical abilities to use AI to boost their productivity and focus on more important tasks.

“There’s an unprecedented level of maturity, collaboration, and relationship to new products like Copilot, which are crucial to growth.”

Shai de-Toledo: Co-founder & Managing Partner, HB Antwerp

Optimize your operational workflow within Microsoft Power Automate

The IDC MarketScape for Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications also noted, that, “These process mining capabilities simplify how work gets done by discovering workflow bottlenecks and further automation opportunities.” This is something that Microsoft customer, HB Antwerp, experienced firsthand. This Belgian diamond company set out to challenge the age-old opacity of the industry. 

HB Antwerp turned to Microsoft and its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Microsoft Power Apps, using ledger technologies to record immutable data points across the diamond’s journey, ensuring sustainability and visibility every step of the way. Now HB Antwerp can predict its profit more accurately, reduce errors, increase communication, and ensure maximum value for everyone involved. Miners and governments reap the financial benefits and consumers can see how their diamond purchases contribute to transforming Botswana’s economy and the lives of its citizens.

HB Antwerp has embraced the move from being just a diamond company to a data company.

“It’s about how do you mine data and create scalability on it that attracts different humans, companies, and institutions who want to be a part of the story, and that’s how we aim to grow.”

Shai de-Toledo: Co-founder & Managing Partner, HB Antwerp

From mining stones to mining data, Dynamics 365 embeds automation into the flow of work throughout, enabling business process optimization for business decision makers.

Learn more through the IDC excerpt

Curious to dive deeper? Read the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Enterprise Finance and Accounting Applications excerpt.

Learn more about:

• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Dynamics 365 Project Operations
• Dynamics 365 Human Resources

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the latest offers—including Dynamics 365 Finance Premium.

Notes:

* The IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market, and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a three to five-year time frame. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the icons.

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According to our Forrester Consulting study, software that helps organizations elevate field service delivery can improve financial performance in two ways: by helping increase customer retention and expansion by exceeding service expectations, and by increasing productivity. We are pleased to share the results of a December 2023 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact^TM (TEI) Study commissioned by Microsoft. Forrester calculates Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service delivered benefits of $42.65 million over three years to a composite organization. The total investment required was $9.5 million and provided a ROI of 346% with a payback period of less than six months. 

Methodology and purpose 

TEI is a methodology developed by Forrester Research to assist companies with technology-related purchase decisions by providing business decision-makers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of the technology on the entire organization. 

Forrester Consulting interviewed 11 representatives from seven organizations with experience using Dynamics 365 Field Service to conduct this TEI study. The characteristics of these businesses and the results of the interviews were then aggregated to develop a composite organization. The key findings of the study are based on the composite organization and are summarized below. 

Key challenges 

The organizations that were interviewed for the study shared the following challenges prior to adopting Dynamics 365: 

•  Lack of visibility into field service status
•  Communication issues among management, sales, and service teams
•  Technicians’ inability to complete work orders in a timely fashion

With these challenges top of mind, the interviewees sought to invest in a solution that could improve the productivity and efficiency of their field service teams, enable cost savings, and lead to customer retention and profitability.  

Key findings 

Dynamics 365 Field Service helps organizations deliver onsite service to customer locations. The application includes work order automation, scheduling algorithms, asset servicing, mobility, Microsoft 365 integration, and infusion of generative AI through Copilot to set up frontline workers for success when they are onsite providing service for customers. It is part of the larger Dynamics 365 portfolio of applications designed to work together to deliver efficiency and improve customer experience. 

Forrester’s study revealed seven quantifiable impact areas: increased first-time fix rate, increased field technician productivity, eliminated standard time-to-invoice delays, avoided travel time, improved dispatcher productivity, enhanced management productivity, and retired legacy solutions. 

We examine each of these areas below in more detail to understand how Dynamics 365 Field Service delivers value across field service organizations. 

Increased first-time fix rate 

Sending out field technicians to resolve customer issues is expensive even for the first visit, so many organizations want to do everything they can to avoid a second truck roll to resolve a problem. Deploying Dynamics 365 Field Service helped the organizations to increase their first-time fix rates by ensuring that technicians could quickly locate equipment, understand history and problems, tap into institutional knowledge about problems, and ensuring they had stocked the appropriate parts for service. Increasing the first-time fix rates also helped these organizations avoid 12% of second visits by additional technicians to complete a service call.  

Increased technician productivity 

Interviewees found that Dynamics 365 Field Service helped to remove many administrative tasks, so field technicians could spend more of their time focusing on addressing customer issues. Organizations were also able to use the solution to find the best field technician for each job, determine the most efficient route for getting to a customer site, and ensuring that technicians were carrying the right parts and tools to fix the problems. In addition, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist feature helped technicians use institutional knowledge, rather than having to spend time tracking down a peer or documentation. And both managers and technicians had greater visibility into technicians’ service calls, which helped them to plan for greater efficiency when scheduling customer work orders. All of this resulted in increasing field technician productivity by up to 14% once Dynamics 365 Field Service and Remote Assist were fully implemented. 

Decreased time to invoice customers 

An inability to integrate field service applications with key applications in finance often meant considerable time gaps between when a service order was completed and a customer was billed for service. One interviewee noted that using paper-based processes for invoicing service calls meant up to a month could go by before an invoice was sent, but after implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service, customers could be invoiced for work orders on the same day. For the composite organization, eliminating standard time-to-invoice delays resulted in $2.8 million savings in interest on accounts receivable.  

Avoided travel time 

One key challenge interviewees shared was that field technicians could lose significant time due to traffic delays or inefficient job routing, which required them to go out of their way to get to customer sites. With Dynamics 365 Field Service, dispatchers could ensure that planned routes were the most efficient and economical and that technicians’ routes were updated constantly to avoid potential slowdowns from traffic or road construction. The availability of mixed reality apps like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Guides also meant that field technicians could get assistance without subject matter experts needing to be on-site. 

By using routing algorithms and traffic updates provided by Dynamics 365 Field Service, the composite organization can create more efficient schedules for technicians and save $2.1 million over three years. 

Improved dispatcher productivity  

Service dispatchers were often relying on highly manual processes to assign field technicians to jobs. Any change in staffing or scheduling increased inefficiency, especially since schedules were shared across whiteboards, spreadsheets, and calendar apps, meaning mistakes and deletions could be made. Dynamics 365 Field Service enables service organizations to automate scheduling and rescheduling for customer service calls. It also helps service managers match the best service technician for a work order based on time or expertise. One project manager interviewed for the study stated that having everything in one place provided better visibility for schedulers that helped them understand job progress and seamlessly include everyone in the workflow. 

Overall, the composite organization saw a 40% improvement in dispatcher productivity as well as cost savings of $1.6 million. 

Enhanced management productivity 

Some interviewees had reported that field service managers spent a lot of time resolving scheduling issues, tracking missing parts inventory, and following up on incomplete jobs. With the ability to automate more processes in Dynamics 365 Field Service, those field service managers found they had more time to focus on strategic tasks that help their teams improve in other ways. Because reporting provided managers with information they didn’t have access to before, they were able to get a clearer view into technician productivity, work order status, parts inventory, and other metrics that helped them discover and address gaps so they could meet monthly targets. Service managers also had greater visibility into areas where field technicians needed more training and support, so they could improve team performance overall. 

Service managers enhanced management productivity by 100 hours per year. 

Retired legacy solutions 

In the past, participant organizations used various combinations of email, calendar and scheduling apps, spreadsheets, or third-party field service tools to manage their field service efforts. Implementing Dynamics 365 Field Service, which integrates with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook and Microsoft Teams, helped to reduce licensing, administration, and maintenance costs for maintaining separate applications to support field service teams.  

Other benefits 

Beyond the quantified benefits detailed above, the organizations participating in the TEI study also experienced other benefits, including:  

• Improved customer experience through increased efficiency and more accurate updates about service calls. 
•  Enhanced employee experience by enabling field technicians to use their mobile phones to complete most of their work tasks. 
• Improve service delivery speed and quality by using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service in their field service operations.  
• Access to mixed reality applications such as Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides to help support field technicians on service calls. 

Next steps 

As we have seen here, Forrester’s study uncovered seven quantifiable impact areas along with several other significant unquantifiable benefits. When combined, these factors resulted in benefits of $42.65 million over three years for the composite organization. The total investment required was $9.5 million, leading to a 346% ROI with a payback period of less than six months.

For a closer look at the results and to understand how Dynamics 365 Field Service can help your service organization, you can download and read the full study: The Total Economic Impact^TM of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service. 

Try Dynamics 365 Field Service

Unlock optimized processes and streamlined service

Learn more

Source: Forrester: “The Total Economic Impact^TM of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service”, Forrester Research, Inc., December 2023.

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Across industries and around the world, field service leaders face any number of challenges in areas including digitalization and modernization of traditionally paper-based processes, rising customer expectations, and employee training and retention. With these challenges top of mind, we have continually invested in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service as a solution to meet the growing requirements of field service management (FSM) operations. That’s why we take great pride in sharing we’re the only vendor positioned as a Leader in the following four IDC MarketScapes:

• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US49989523e December 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Service Life-Cycle Management Platforms 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US49989623, October 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Utilities 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US50036223, October 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Oil and Gas 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US50040023, November 2023)

Field service management applications

According to the 2023 report “Product Innovation and Aftermarket Service Survey,” IDC notes that “the top metric prioritized by service leaders as determining success in service was customer satisfaction (46.2%), followed by customer retention (39.0%).” This means frontline worker roles such as service agents and field technicians are absolutely critical to ensuring the best possible customer experience. That’s why we’re continuously developing Dynamics 365 Field Service so that organizations can equip those workers with modern digital tools to make them more responsive and efficient.

Microsoft was positioned as a Leader in the 2023-2024 IDC MarketScape for worldwide field service management applications based on two strengths: “innovation at scale and pace” and “infusion of AI into field service processes.” The IDC MarketScape notes that “Microsoft’s end-to-end service experience capabilities aid field service companies in a continuous transformation journey. As customer expectations evolve, frontline workforces shift, and business models get disrupted, Microsoft leverages its platform to incorporate technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality, industrial metaverse, and digital twins.” In addition, the IDC MarketScape says that in the areas of AI and generative AI, which would include Copilot in Field Service, “Microsoft is enabling service organizations to realize near-term and long-term strategies around this innovative technology.”

The IDC MarketScape suggests that organizations consider Microsoft field service solutions “if they are looking for a vendor that can incorporate end-to-end capabilities with innovative technologies for transformation and growth.”

Service life-cycle management

IDC has noted that service is no longer something that happens only after a sale is complete. More and more, organizations are aligning services and sales to help drive greater revenue through better alignment and new service offerings. This IDC MarketScape report highlights two key Microsoft strengths: an integrated platform supporting the front and back office, and innovation accelerators that enhance experiences.

From an integration standpoint, the IDC MarketScape notes that “the service team can no longer operate in a silo and requires tools that allow it to connect to other business functions, customers, and the wide network of partners. Microsoft’s integrated platform of back-office, midoffice, and front-office applications aids customers across their digital journey and not just within a single function.” The integration of Dynamics 365 Field Service with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams is key. Dynamics 365 Field Service integrates with Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft Viva Connections so that frontline workers and managers can create, view, and manage work orders within Outlook and Teams. This integration enhances collaboration between dispatchers, frontline technicians, and managers by enabling work order data to sync automatically between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. Additionally, frontline technicians can quickly start their day with access to key workday information at a glance, with work orders visible from the Viva Connections homepage in Teams. Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 empower technicians with the right information to resolve issues the first time, which is key to creating a positive customer experience.

When it comes to innovation, the IDC MarketScape explains, “Microsoft through its AI, GenAI, IoT, and mixed reality capabilities and tools allows service organizations to deliver enhanced experiences for the service team and the customer. Microsoft customers value this level of shared innovations, which has cemented partnerships for shared growth.” Dynamics 365 Field Service can be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft HoloLens 2, Android, or iOS devices to enable technicians to collaborate more efficiently by working together from different locations. This means service technicians can find and connect with technical experts working at other locations to share what they’re seeing, receive remote assistance, and quickly resolve customer issues. Dynamics 365 Field Service can also be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides to attach mixed reality guides to Field Service tasks. Overall, the integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Dynamics 365 Guides, and tools like HoloLens helps to elevate field service operations by enabling them to optimize processes and deliver unparalleled customer experiences.

The IDC Life-Cycle Management report suggests organizations “consider Microsoft when searching for capabilities that will enable continuous exploration of innovation across the service life cycle and partner networks. Microsoft has enabled a broad set of innovation capabilities, which support collaboration, co-innovation, and prescriptive service at speed and a global scale.”

Field service management for utilities

For customers in the utilities industry, the IDC MarketScape explains that a key strength for Microsoft is that “[customers] recognize Dynamics 365 Field Service as a well-engineered, flexible FSM solution, offering a solid user experience in terms of usability, configurability, ease of integration into complex landscapes, and extensibility thanks to the Microsoft portfolio.”

The IDC MarketScape also notes, “Microsoft is putting considerable resources behind the product, including significantly increasing the engineering budget this year.” It also states that “[the] ability to instantly access this innovation through a pure-play SaaS ultimately results in good value for money.” Many Field Service customers experienced this with the addition of the Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, which streamlines work order creation with relevant details pre-populated from emails and optimizes technician scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on factors such as travel time, availability, and skillset. Frontline managers can see relevant work orders and review them before creating new work orders, and they can easily reschedule or update those work orders as customers’ needs change.

Field service management for oil and gas

For customers in the oil and gas (O&G) industry, the IDC MarketScape stated, “Microsoft’s FSM solution comes in an integrated and comprehensive portfolio catering to core O&G field services and asset operations. By seamlessly integrating FSM with Mixed Reality, Microsoft 365, AI, IoT, and Azure, it provides customers the flexibility to tailor solutions, enhancing efficiency, driving innovation, and boosting productivity in a highly customizable manner.”

“Drawing on its long-established customer base, Microsoft works with major O&G players addressing a wide range of field service challenges. Typically, these collaborations focus on enabling frontline workers and optimizing planning and service workflow automation in vast scale operations spanning large assets such as refineries, petrochemical plants, LNG facilities, renewable gas plants, and the extensive network of gas stations.” For service technicians on the frontline, a primary benefit of Dynamics 365 Field Service is the Field Service mobile app which enables technicians to see their workdays at a glance so they can view and update work orders, customer assets, accounts, and more, no matter where they are working—even in areas with limited connectivity. Technicians can also easily access up-to-date inventory information, eliminating the need for cumbersome manual inventory checks and reducing delays caused by missing parts. The Field Service mobile app also incorporates safety checklists and real-time reporting, helping to ensure compliance with safety regulations and to improve the well-being of service technicians who often work under hazardous conditions.

We invite you to read the following IDC MarketScape report excerpts for full details:

• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment
• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Service Life-Cycle Management Platforms 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment
• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Utilities 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment

Learn more about how Microsoft customers are optimizing service operations with Dynamics 365 Field Service:

• G&J Pepsi optimize field operations, exceed service expectations while maximizing revenue and cost savings with Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Phillips Corporations modernized its service operations and increased revenue using Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Vattenfall streamlined service operations to help employees become more efficient and improve customer service and engagement.
• XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, tapped into IoT and the cloud to optimize operations and drive growth with Azure and Dynamics 365 Field Service.

Source: IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the circles.  

The post Microsoft named as a worldwide Leader in four IDC MarketScapes for Field Service Management & Service Life-Cycle appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This post is co-authored by John Ryan, Manager Functional Architect Dynamics 365 Field Service, Avanade.

One of the most exciting things about the introduction of AI into tools people use every day to do their jobs is the way AI can help revolutionize the way people work. Especially at the frontlines of business, AI provides organizations with innovative and personalized ways to serve customers. According to IDC, 28% of organizations are investing significantly in generative AI.¹ This is what’s exciting about the introduction of Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service.

No doubt about it: modern solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service have already come a long way in helping frontline workers be more productive and efficient in helping customers. But Copilot takes things to the next level by bringing the power of next-generation AI to the frontlines, enabling faster resolution and better service.

Streamline Field Service operations with Copilot

Copilot provides a leap forward in the field service space.

Read how

Enabling next-level support with Copilot for Field Service in Outlook and Microsoft Teams

Email has long been a critical communications tool for frontline managers and technicians. New data from Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index Annual Report reveals that over 60% of frontline workers struggle with having to do repetitive or menial tasks that take time away from more meaningful work.² Now, the Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in can streamline work order creation with relevant details pre-populated from emails.

So, what does that mean, exactly? Copilot can also optimize technician scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on factors such as travel time, availability, and skillset. Frontline managers can see relevant work orders and review them before creating new work orders, and they can easily reschedule or update those work orders as customers’ needs change. In addition, organizations can customize work orders for their frontline needs by adding, renaming, or rearranging fields. Even better, Copilot can assist frontline managers with work order scheduling in Microsoft Teams, saving time and effort to find the right worker for the job.

Frontline managers can also easily open the Field Service desktop app directly from the Copilot add-in via Outlook or Teams to view work orders. There, they can see booking suggestions in the work order and book a field technician without opening the schedule board. The booking is created in Microsoft Dataverse and also gets recorded on the Field Service schedule board automatically. All this saves frontline managers valuable time because they can stay in the flow of work, reduce clicks and context-switching between apps, and create work orders quickly without copy/paste errors. In the Field Service app, they can also review work order list views and edit a work order right in the list without having to reopen it.

Getting answers faster with natural language search with Copilot in Teams

Searching work orders to find specific details about customer jobs or looking for information about parts inventory used to mean switching between apps and searching across different sources for information. Now, to search for work orders or other customer data, agents can ask Copilot through a Teams search. They simply ask what they’re looking for using natural language, and Copilot will return specific information related to their work orders in Dynamics 365 Field Service including status updates, parts needed, or instructions to help them complete the job. The more agents use Copilot, the more the AI assistant learns and can assist agents at their jobs. The future is now.

Empowering field technicians with modern user experience

Frontline managers aren’t the only team members getting a productivity boost from more modern tools. The new Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile experience, currently in preview for Windows 10 and higher, iOS, and Android devices, empowers field technicians by giving them all the relevant, most up-to-date information they need to manage work orders, tasks, services, and products and get their jobs done thoroughly and efficiently. This modern user experience supports familiar mobile navigation, gestures, and controls to streamline managing work order Tasks, Services, and Products. Technicians can save valuable time by quickly updating the status of a booking, getting driving directions to a customer site, and changing or completing work order details. They can even get detailed information about tasks with embedded Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides, which provide step-by-step instructions, pictures, and videos.

Changing the game for frontline technicians with Copilot in mobile

For field service technicians, having Copilot generate work order summaries that include concise, detailed descriptions of services as well as pricing and costs is a game changer. Work order summaries are generated by Copilot on the fly, synthesizing information from various tabs and fields to break down tasks, parts, services, and problem descriptions into a simple narrative, making it easy for technicians to understand job requirements. And because field technicians often need to work with their hands, they can use the voice-to-text feature to update work orders by describing details including exactly what they did on a job, when they started and finished, and what parts they used. When the work is completed, they can use the app to collect a digital signature from the customer or use voice-to-text to capture customer feedback.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service is a leap forward in the field service space. Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Learn more about the AI-powered experiences in Dynamics 365 Field Service, Teams, and Microsoft’s mixed reality applications for your frontline workforce announced at Microsoft Ignite 2023:

• Transforming service organizations with generative AI 
• Reimagine the frontline with next-generation AI and fast deployment 

[1] IDC Analyst Brief sponsored by Microsoft, Generative AI and Mixed Reality Power the Future of Field Service Resolution (Doc #US51300223), October 2023

[2] The Work Trend Index survey was conducted by an independent research firm, Edelman Data x Intelligence, among 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets, 6,019 of which are frontline workers, between February 1, 2023, and March 14, 2023. This survey was 20 minutes in length and conducted online, in either the English language or translated into a local language across markets. One thousand full-time workers were surveyed in each market, and global results have been aggregated across all responses to provide an average. Each market is evenly weighted within the global average. Each market was sampled to be representative of the full-time workforce across age, gender, and region; each sample included a mix of work environments (in-person, remote vs. non-remote, office settings vs. non-office settings, etc.), industries, company sizes, tenures, and job levels. Markets surveyed include: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.

The post Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service helps take field support to the next level appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The world has changed rapidly since generative AI first attracted mainstream popularity in late 2022. Standing behind our company mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, Microsoft made a once-in-a-generation strategic shift by introducing generative AI capabilities that we refer to as Copilot, designed to revolutionize every Microsoft Cloud experience. From empowering knowledge workers and transforming business processes to enabling anyone to create low-code and no-code solutions, we’re delivering Copilot capabilities that work alongside you, embedded in applications that millions of people use every day. One area we are truly excited about is how the customer service experience will be transformed by this new era of Copilot experiences.

Successful service engagements are no longer measured solely on whether a customer issue is resolved. The latest benchmark for service organizations is based on delivering personalized, fast service experiences at every touchpoint through all engagement channels. The most successful service organizations differentiate themselves by building long-term customer loyalty and transforming operations with modern, AI-enhanced capabilities across all service processes and interactions. These differentiators are what continue to propel Dynamics 365 Customer Service. 

2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader

Read the report

It is with great pride that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader within the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center. We believe this placement recognizes Microsoft’s continued rapid pace of innovation and our customers’ success using our service as well as our broader end-to-end CRM (customer relationship management) solutions and cloud functionality.  

Gartner defines CRM customer engagement center (CRM-CEC) as a cohesive set of software built around core case management tools used to provide customer service and support by engaging with customers, while intelligently orchestrating the processes, data, systems, and resources of an organization. CRM-CEC applications also offer workflow management capabilities and may be used as a system of record for customer interactions.

What is customer service modernization?

By harnessing the power of data, AI, automation, and collaboration, customer service modernization enables service organizations to deliver an end-to-end, flexible service platform for transforming operations, driving greater efficiency, and generating outcome-based value for customers. Service agents are empowered with AI Copilot experiences and automation to help fuel collaboration and productivity for delivering world-class customer service at scale. That way, their customers can engage in their terms, at their optimal times, and on their channels of choice.

Lufthansa Cargo manages record-breaking growth with a “360-degree view of the customer”

Take, for example, Lufthansa Cargo, one of the world’s leading companies in airfreight transportation. The company transports shipments to nearly 300 destinations in more than 100 countries with speed, efficiency, and care. Experiencing record-breaking growth and with ambitious innovation goals on the horizon, the organization needed a more advanced and centralized way to manage its customer service and sales information.  

An aging system had left Lufthansa Cargo with siloed information, duplicated data, and limited functionality. The organization embarked on a CRM migration project with a clear goal in mind: to replace their outdated system with something more streamlined, efficient, and accessible. They built a new CRM platform powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Customer Voice to pull all their information and communication channels into a single location.

With the new solution, sales and customer service teams have centralized access to all customer information and their related shipments, as well as proactive suggestions that empower them to provide standout sales and service to customers.  

Xiaomi improves its customer service and post-sales supply chain management

Another great example of customer service transformation is Xiaomi, a China-based electronics company that manufactures mobile phones, tablets, and smart home devices sold in more than 100 markets. As Xiaomi expanded into overseas markets, it used siloed service tools and channels instead of an integrated service platform. This created challenges with providing consistent customer service experience across countries.  

As Xiaomi experienced rapid growth and expansion, its self-developed, fragmented customer service system struggled to keep up with the massive demand for human resources and time. The system’s third-party apps were completely independent of one another, so users were required to communicate information via phone and instant messaging. Customer service teams received customer requests from different channels, queried information in different systems, and then returned to the corresponding channel system for feedback. 

To address these challenges, Xiaomi decided to build a unified CRM platform on Dynamics 365 Customer Service to support multi-language capabilities, compliance, and unified management levels. The new system covers 34 countries and supports 19 languages and provides a unified workbench for multiple communication channels (online, email, social media) and for financial processes, data integration, and security authentication. 

The bottom line

Microsoft is continuously evolving to meet the customers where they are with a generative AI-powered platform that leverages the conversational and transactional data generated by an all-in-one customer engagement solution. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service can help you transform your service organization with differentiated, best-in-class service experiences that offer enhanced productivity and collaboration to help agents increase their efficiency. That way, agents can focus on delivering more cutting-edge service experiences by harnessing available data and using the power of generative AI to deliver consistent, personalized customer experiences, maximize their productivity, and optimize service operations. And with our comprehensive service platform that includes automation, knowledge management, collaboration, and more, you can streamline case management, enable more personalized service, and get a clear, 360-degree view into how your service organization is performing. 

We’re excited to be positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and are committed to bringing you a comprehensive, flexible, and secure platform for providing efficient and effective customer service engagements. You can depend on the multidimensional capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Service to empower you to provide seamless, end-to-end experiences within a single solution built on the Microsoft Cloud to deliver consistent, connected support across channels. 

Next steps

Read the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center report.

Learn more about:

• Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 AI

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, Pri Rathnayake, Wynn White, Drew Kraus, 1 November 2023.

Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved 

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from this link. 

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

The post Microsoft is named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for the CRM Customer Engagement Center appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited and honored that Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in their 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.* This evaluation of Microsoft was based on specific criteria that analyzed our overall Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. This is the third year in a row that we’ve been recognized as a Leader.

Agile enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for new ways of working

The way we do business has fundamentally changed. New business models are disrupting the way companies sell products and services, blurring industry lines and transforming customer experiences. ERP systems need to evolve from mere systems of transaction to systems of reasoning, offering their users prescriptive actions that they can take in their functional areas to accelerate growth.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 has already been helping thousands of organizations optimize finance and supply chains to create a connected enterprise by infusing automation and analytics powered by AI into the various ERP processes. Now, with Dynamics 365 Copilot in our ERP portfolio included in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, we can enable every person in every organization to be more productive, collaborative, and deliver high-performance results.

For instance, with Copilot, organizations can supercharge productivity of procurement professionals and collections agents. Procurement professionals can efficiently handle purchase order changes at scale and assess the impact of changes downstream to production and distribution before making the right decision. Copilot enables quick collaboration with internal and external stakeholders that brings relevant information into Outlook and Microsoft Teams using natural language to meet customer and partner needs.  

Collections managers with quick access to credit and payment history can prioritize and personalize customer communication and increase successful collection rates while proactively keeping customers in good standing. With Copilot, project managers can rapidly create new project plans for new engagements in minutes, automate status reports, identify risks, and suggest mitigation plans on a continuous basis, saving a significant amount of time, preventing project delays and budget overruns.

At Microsoft, we are fully committed to revolutionizing the future of ERP systems by harnessing the power of intelligent, composable technologies. The ERP portfolio from Dynamics 365, powered by generative AI technology, has the ability to speed time to insight, intelligently automate processes, and foster productivity ensuring that organizations can stay ahead of their competition in an increasingly complex business landscape.

Cloud-native ERP systems on a composable platform

One of the key strengths of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance is their extensibility. The ERP portfolio is built on a composable platform, making it easy to extend the solution with Microsoft Power Platform, providing low-code tools like Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate.

Where ERP customizations were once a heavy, time-consuming task, these tools empower businesses to customize their solutions and build apps with a modern user experience so that they can adapt to their bespoke industry specific needs and end users can work the way they want. Furthermore, companies and users can leverage prebuilt customizations and industry-specialized solutions from our ISV partner network to help speed development even further.

One of our customers, Nestlé, chose Dynamics 365 as the preferred platform for agile and speedy business system requests for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities. Nestlé needed business applications that would provide flexibility to adapt to different business models across geographies that could be reused multiple times. The company needed rich out-of-the-box features that could be extended with low-code/no-code capabilities. With Dynamics 365, Nestlé was able to create reusable strategies and blueprints for migrating business data and operations that would enable faster and more efficient acquisitions and divestitures easily with limited disruptions to customers and employees. This also helped them adhere to compliance, security, and data privacy regulations effectively. In just four short months after the project kicked off, Nestlé went live with Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Commerce. 

AIM for the future with Microsoft today

In conclusion, running a business on Dynamics 365 offers numerous benefits for organizations. From seamless integration and enhanced productivity to real-time analysis and smart decision-making capabilities, Dynamics 365 empowers businesses to thrive in today’s dynamic market. Microsoft is committed to empowering customers to take advantage of AI capabilities in every line of business.

Organizations relying on on-premises applications will struggle to compete with peers embracing these AI-powered technologies in the cloud. It is paramount for companies to migrate their critical business processes to the cloud now. That is why we introduced AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move) earlier. AIM offers organizations a tailored path to move critical processes to the cloud with confidence. It provides qualified customers with access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, expert assessments, investment offers, tools, and migration support.

Get started with AIM today.

For more information on generative AI-powered capabilities in Dynamics 365 ERP systems, you can request a demo or take a tour today.

Microsoft is named a Leader

Gartner recognizes Microsoft for cloud ERP for product-centric enterprises.

Read the report

Magic Quadrant reports are a culmination of rigorous, fact-based research in specific markets, providing a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Providers are positioned into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. The research enables you to get the most from market analysis in alignment with your unique business and technology needs. View a complimentary copy of the Magic Quadrant report to learn more.

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

Source: Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises,” Greg Leiter, Robert Anderson, Dixie John, Tomas Kienast, David Penny, September 26, 2023.

The post Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Note: As announced at Microsoft Inspire 2023, as of September 1, 2023, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights have been brought together into one offering. We are retaining the existing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights name to encompass this new offer of both applications. Customers can start with one or both applications and then further invest in the application they want to scale by buying the capacity they need.

In today’s turbulent economic times, companies are facing critical business challenges such as customer acquisition, increasing customer loyalty, and maximizing lifetime value. Often, to save time, they follow a one-size-fits-all approach—resulting in impersonal marketing strategies with low customer engagement. According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 89 percent of marketers say they struggle with having time to do their jobs.

To meet these complex challenges, it is crucial for companies to shift their approach from traditional mass communication to personalized engagement based on a deep understanding of each customer’s preferences and actions while ensuring their marketers have more time to leverage their creative and strategic skills to engage their customers. With this very goal in mind, Microsoft launched Dynamics 365 Marketing in 2018.

We are pleased and honored to share that in a short span of five years in market, Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader within the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms* for the second consecutive year. In this year’s report, Microsoft is positioned highest in Ability to Execute.

For Microsoft, this placement recognizes our commitment to help companies better connect with their customers at scale, across all departments, to make this simple and easy for any company with a broad range of skillsets to employ.

Accelerating the journey to more personalized customer engagement

We started our Dynamics 365 Marketing journey in April 2018. Since then, we’ve gathered feedback and continued to learn at a rapid pace to help our customers on their journey to drive meaningful customer engagement, ensure long-term loyalty, and accelerate business success. To be competitive in today’s market, organizations must harness the power of data to gain a deeper understanding of their customers, anticipate behaviors, and craft one-on-one personalized experiences across all touchpoints, including sales, marketing, business operations, and service functions. Generative AI makes these capabilities within reach for every company. That’s why we’ve brought together Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights as one offering named Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, an AI-led solution to revolutionize customer experience. The new Customer Insights enables our customers to be more flexible by giving them access to both a modern, AI-driven customer data platform (Customer Insights data application) and real-time marketing with customer journey orchestration (Customer Insights journeys application). Customers can start with one or both applications and invest in the areas where they most want to scale.

To drive the necessary customer experience (CX) transformation, companies cannot rely on piecemeal integration of sales, service, and marketing products. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 50 percent of replacement customer relationship management (CRM) sales technology decisions will involve solutions including non-sales software comprising other modules from a CRM or a CX suite.^[1] However, the reality is that only a few companies are currently delivering on these expectations. Customer experiences often remain fragmented across channels and departments, leading to inconsistencies. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help customers overcome these challenges, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights was built exactly for this purpose—to support customers throughout their end-to-end CX journeys.

Like all Dynamics 365 offerings, Customer Insights relies on Microsoft Dataverse to store CRM software data, which enables our customers to securely store and manage their data and harness the true power of that data by removing silos across sales, service, and marketing via a unified platform approach. Customer Insights helps marketers and customer engagement professionals gain a holistic view of their customers, anticipate their needs, and discover growth opportunities. Marketers can also deliver more relevant, contextual, customer-triggered engagements through the power of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Some of our most recent Copilot capabilities in Customer Insights enable marketers to:

• Deliver a consistent brand narrative and customer experience with emails, forms, and event registration pages that align to their organization’s branding guidelines.
• Easily orchestrate contextually relevant customer journeys across marketing, sales, and service, to respond to customers quickly, generate sales leads, and increase customer satisfaction.
• Quickly build, summarize, and simplify targeted segments using conversational, everyday language, enabling more time for building customer relationships and reducing time to build complex segments from scratch.
• Discover new customer insights by using natural language to ask questions and gather information and suggestions for forming additional, deeper questions.
• Get help developing content for emails, social posts, and other text with a tone of voice that matches their brand and campaign.

Enabling our customers to increase their reach

Zurich Insurance Group, a global insurer serving people and businesses in more than 200 countries, wanted to optimize marketing processes to help create more personalized customer experiences. Its Switzerland business unit connects to its customers through hosting online and in-person events—but to drive the highest impact, it must be sure it invites the right customers to the right events. It wanted to improve its ability to track if customers opened event invitations—or even received them, as well as the connection to registration and attendance. It also wanted a formalized way to collect feedback or easily use engagement data to continue to optimize the sales process after the event. Zurich selected Dynamics 365 Marketing to give it the flexibility to reach customers in new ways and drive more effective follow-ups to help shape their journeys. With Dynamics 365 Marketing, Zurich increased its lead quality by over 40 percent.

Over the past decade, Natuzzi, a globally hailed creator of exceptional luxury furniture that delivers a harmonious combination of design, function, aesthetics, and ethics, has seen a rapid global expansion of its heralded luxury brand. Natuzzi lacked a customer engagement platform capable of unifying data from its retail point of sale (POS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and CRM systems. The company also wanted a way to bring together its business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) related data sets to drive greater insight between audiences. Adopting Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Natuzzi implemented an extensive customer experience platform to transform how its luxury brand discovers and sustains its customers. It uses customer data and insights to nurture customers and prospects through personalized campaigns, delivering emails, SMS texts, promotions, events, sales appointment reminders, and other relationship-building messages.

Microsoft named a Leader by Gartner

Microsoft is named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms.

Read the report

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

We’re excited to have been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and are committed to helping our customers unify and enrich their customer data to deliver personalized, connected, end-to-end customer journeys across sales, marketing, and service. We truly believe that bringing together Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables us to continue investing in capabilities that will enable stronger, insights-based marketing that helps marketers and data analysts glean insights from customer data.

Read the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms report.

Learn more about:

• Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the latest Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offer.

1. Gartner Forecast Analysis: CRM Sales Software, Worldwide, Roland Johnson, Amarendra, Julian Poulter, 12 December 2022.

Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Rick LaFond, Jeffrey L. Cohen, Matt Wakeman, Jeff Goldberg, Alan Antin, 20 September 2023.

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

The post Microsoft is named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers are fundamental to any organization’s success—and despite economic headwinds, business leaders are concerned about keeping the talent they have happy and productive at their jobs. Many sellers have long relied on highly manual and disjointed processes that involve a mix of email, spreadsheets, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. But following manual processes and switching between sales tools and spreadsheets can waste valuable time that sellers need to build relationships with customers and close deals. According to the latest Microsoft WorkLab research, 78 percent of sellers would be happy to have some help from AI to make their everyday tasks—like sending follow-up emails or tracking sales—easier. That is why we’ve been busy building a vision for sales-specific AI to help increase seller productivity and success.

Today, we’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized again as a Leader within the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms* for the thirteenth consecutive year. In this year’s report, Microsoft is positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision.

Our strong vision and approach with Microsoft Sales Copilot by fusing collaboration experiences with CRM platform data and generative AI capabilities allows sellers to spend more time focused on engaging with their customers.

Empowering sellers through automation and intelligence

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to close more deals and meet customer needs with the help of next-generation AI and real-time insights. Sellers have everything they need in their app of choice to engage with customers, including historical data and access to subject matter experts. Using data, sellers can achieve more consistent sales interactions from creating a lead to closing a sale, predict how much revenue they will generate in a given timeframe, automate repeatable processes and define sales best practices, and promote products and services with targeted marketing campaigns. Additional sales enablement features include adaptive guidance for next best steps based on actionable insights, AI-guided selling features like the sales assistant and conversation intelligence to help build stronger customer relationships, and predictive scoring models to prioritize leads and opportunities for increased conversion and win rates. Sales managers can also get intelligent insights into how their sales team members are performing, so they can provide proactive coaching to improve their teams’ overall performance.

With Microsoft Sales Copilot, which is included with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium licenses, we have established a vision of CRM platform by fusing collaboration experiences with CRM platform data and generative AI capabilities to help sellers reduce mundane tasks and personalize customer relationships even further. Powered by Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Sales Copilot features built-in responsible AI and enterprise-grade Azure security. Sellers can access Copilot in the tools where they’re working, whether that’s Outlook, Microsoft Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales. Microsoft Sales Copilot also connects to Salesforce for instant data syncing. Sellers can use Copilot to automate tasks or view email or meeting summaries, helping them save time on daily tasks and spend more time with customers. AI-powered, real-time insights including customer summaries, recent notes and customer news, and highlights of any issues or concerns help sellers enter customer meetings fully prepared to focus on key items. And to help sellers follow up after those meetings, Copilot can generate AI-assisted content and recommendations, such as customer-specific emails using data from their CRM platforms and Microsoft Graph.

Providing sellers with access to customer data in one place is key to helping ensure their success. Microsoft Dynamics 365 utilizes Microsoft Dataverse to store CRM platform data, which enables customers to securely store and manage data used by business applications. By using a platform solution to simplify and unify sales processes, sellers benefit from products built to talk to each other. Dynamics 365 Sales works seamlessly with technologies including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Power BI, and LinkedIn to enhance and extend capabilities for sellers. This means that sellers can continue to use familiar tools, which helps to simplify user adoption and lower overall total cost of ownership (TCO) and IT costs—a priority for many organizations in today’s economy.

Organizations can leverage the power of the full Microsoft Cloud to help sellers succeed. Dynamics 365 Sales natively integrates with Teams to create open lines of communication for collaborating and aligning on work items across marketing, sales, and service departments. With automatic data syncing between Microsoft 365 apps and Dynamics 365 Sales or other CRM platforms, sellers can also surface customer and opportunity information directly in Teams and Outlook, which minimizes context switching and data loss. In addition, sales operation leads and managers can use Power BI to further analyze trends and build reports. And Microsoft Power Platform enables sellers to automate workflows, create apps, and analyze data to increase agility and innovation.

Helping to ensure our customers’ success

Investec, a global financial services company, set out to help its client-facing teams listen directly to customers and build more valuable relationships. This made conversation intelligence in Dynamics 365 Sales appealing because it automatically transcribes sales calls and analyzes the content, sentiment, and participants’ behavior. Conversation intelligence takes advantage of Microsoft advancements in AI and natural language processing to automatically extract meaningful insights from sales calls. With these insights, Investec can review salespeople’s conversation styles, help coach individuals on best practices, keep track of sales conversations, build stronger client relationships, and ultimately keep track of sales conversations, and build stronger client relationships. With Dynamics 365 Sales, Investec automatically incorporates conversation intelligence data across its customer engagement platform, saving time on manual entry, reducing overhead, and building a comprehensive customer view.

MAPEI, a global leader in adhesive, sealant, and chemical product manufacturing, was using 90 different customized CRM systems across 57 countries when it decided to consolidate into a single, centralized system. Migrating to Dynamics 365 Sales helped MAPEI simplify internal processes for its employees and provide more proactive service to customers. Today, MAPEI salespeople can build strong relationships with customers, make data-driven decisions, and close deals faster. The service also helps salespeople track customer accounts and contacts, track sales from prospect to purchase, and better qualify leads to assure they are spending time on the most impactful opportunities.

Microsoft named a Leader by Gartner

Microsoft is recognized again as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms for the thirteenth consecutive year.

Read the report

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales

We’re excited to have been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and are committed to providing innovative sales force automation platform capabilities to help our customers accomplish more.

Read the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms report.

Learn more about:

• Dynamics 365
• Dynamics 365 Sales
• Microsoft Sales Copilot

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the latest offers—including a limited-time 26 percent savings on subscription pricing for Dynamics 365 Sales Premium.

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Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Ilona Hansen, Steve Rietberg, Varun Agarwal, Guy Wood, 5 September 2023.

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

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