CRM systems have come a long way since their inception in the 1990s. What began as digital rolodexes evolved over the decades to accommodate cloud hosting, mobile access, and integrations across an organization’s tech stack. But for many businesses, the core experience of using a CRM system hasn’t kept pace with the evolving expectations of modern customers, or the realities of the people managing those relationships.

Legacy CRM systems often rely heavily on manual data entry. They’re difficult to adapt as businesses grow and are frequently designed more for reporting than for allowing sellers, marketers, and service teams to succeed in real time. While this might have sufficed when field reps had hours between customer visits or when service agents had time to type up detailed call notes, those conditions no longer exist.

Today’s customers do their homework. They research independently, engage across multiple digital channels, and expect seamless, personalized experiences. Meanwhile, customer-facing teams need tools that work in the flow of their day, not ones that add friction. Companies trying to meet these demands with yesterday’s systems are feeling the strain.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365, organizations are embracing a modern, agentic approach that redefines productivity and customer engagement. Embedded Microsoft Copilot capabilities help sellers and customer service agents work smarter by generating content, surfacing insights, and summarizing customer interactions.

AI agents take this a step further, automating repetitive tasks and allowing teams to focus on what truly matters—building relationships and closing deals. In the near future, legacy CRM systems will become background systems, while AI-powered workflows will take center stage.

Together, copilots and agents can accelerate your business outcomes. For example, imagine a sales rep preparing for a big client meeting. Copilot can pull together a summary of recent customer interactions, generate a tailored pitch based on account details, and suggest case studies that may be relevant to the customer. Meanwhile, an AI agent is working in the background, logging customer inquiries, triggering follow-up tasks, and updating the sales pipeline based on real-time interactions.

Common CRM system challenges, and how an agentic CRM approach solves them

Microsoft has worked with hundreds of companies navigating CRM system modernization, and while each journey is unique, several pain points come up time and again. Here’s a look at the most common challenges, and how organizations are overcoming them with Dynamics 365.

The challenge: Disparate systems and data silos

Legacy CRM systems often sit apart from the tools employees use every day. Sales leaders have to jump between systems to get a full view of the customer, resulting in time lost, inconsistent data, and disconnected experiences for both employees and customers.

The solution: A unified platform

Dynamics 365 provides a unified platform across sales, marketing, and service. It brings together internal and external data in one place through Microsoft Dataverse and connects with the Microsoft tools people already rely on, like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Microsoft Power BI. That means relevant insights are available in the flow of work and updates happen in real time, which can reduce manual effort and improve accuracy.

The challenge: Lack of innovation

Many organizations are trying to retrofit AI into systems that weren’t built for it. As a result, they miss out on the true potential of AI to personalize engagement, suggest next steps, and automate time-consuming work.

The solution: AI integration

Dynamics 365 is built with AI at its core. With embedded Copilot capabilities, sellers can draft emails, generate proposals, and summarize meetings based on real-time customer data. AI agents go even further by handling complete workflows, like qualifying leads or following up on customer inquiries. With tools like Sales Agent, Sales Chat, and Sales Qualification Agent, sales teams can scale their impact and focus on high-value interactions.

The challenge: High total cost of ownership

Legacy CRM systems often require costly add-ons, third-party integrations, and ongoing maintenance. The systems that once seemed quick to deploy become difficult to scale or adapt and drain resources instead of delivering value.

The solution: Business value through consolidation

Dynamics 365 consolidates capabilities on a single platform, reducing redundancy and unlocking efficiencies. Since it uses tools that many companies already use—like Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, and Power BI—organizations can get more from their existing investments.

ABN AMRO, one of the largest banks in the Netherlands, embraced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and has lowered total cost of ownership for its customer engagement platform by up to 40%.

Real-world results: What an agentic CRM system looks like in action

Companies that have made the leap to Dynamics 365 are already seeing measurable impact, including shortened sales cycles, improved responsiveness, and greater customer satisfaction.

For instance, Lenovo, a global leader in technology solutions, used Dynamics 365 to build a unified global view of customer activity and power its digital sales transformation.

“We’re seeing the benefit of having one standardized system and a global view to all geographies’ activities. This is the foundation for Lenovo’s sales digital transformation—enabling better connections and an increase in sales productivity and actionable insights.”

Wei Bi, Business Strategy Senior Manager, Lenovo

Lexmark, a global innovator in cloud-supported printing and internet of things (IoT) solutions, migrated from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 to streamline and modernize its sales operations.

“We’ve been on the journey with Microsoft after moving from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales. We’re excited to be one of the first customers to use Sales Qualification Agent and look forward to the ability to scale our sales team with agents and provide an exceptional experience to our customers.”

Kyle Farmer, Vice President, Global Sales and Strategy, Lexmark

Gardens Alive replaced its legacy CRM system with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, integrating voice, chat, and email channels through third-party connectors and unified routing. The result was a more than 7% improvement in customer service delivery.

And the momentum continues. In our Fiscal Year 2025 Third Quarter Earnings, Satya Nadella stated: “When it comes to business applications, Dynamics 365 again took share as companies like Avaya, Brunswick, SoftCat, switched to (Dynamics 365) from legacy providers. Verizon, for example, chose Dynamics 365 Sales to improve the efficiency of its sellers”.

More than a CRM system, Microsoft is a strategic resource in your transformation journey

For CROs and CSOs, the decision to modernize CRM systems is about more than upgrading technology. It’s about unlocking new potential. Companies want more than just a vendor; they’re looking for a strategic partner to help them navigate change, scale intelligently, and lead with data and empathy.

With Dynamics 365, Microsoft brings not only a powerful agentic CRM and ERP platform, but also a global ecosystem of expertise in sales, engineering, and business transformation. The result? A CRM system that’s intuitive, connected, and future-ready, so companies can deliver standout customer experiences and drive sustainable growth. 

Ready to explore your own agentic CRM system journey?

Take a guided tour, see a demo, or start a free trial.

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Customer expectations continue to grow, with rising demand for seamless, connected, and personalized experiences across sales, marketing, and service. However, meeting these demands can be a complex and expensive undertaking, and legacy applications accessing siloed data cannot keep up. This is why we are seeing many organizations move from point solutions and fragmented application stacks. To further improve customer experiences and operational efficiency, organizations are also looking for ways to harness the transformative potential of generative AI.

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management, Q1 2025

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader

Read the report

​To help organizations accomplish these goals and deliver better business outcomes, Microsoft Dynamics 365 brings together a complete customer relationship management (CRM) platform driven by our latest advancements in generative AI. Today, we’re delighted to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management, Q1 2025.

A unified platform for marketing, sales, and service

The industry and our customers recognize that we’re developing an integrated and autonomous CRM platform that reduces the complexity of meeting customer expectations and uses groundbreaking generative AI to transform sales and service experiences—for customers and employees alike.

​Dynamics 365 CRM applications (consisting of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights) are underpinned by a common data layer in Microsoft Dataverse, which reduces the integration burden and serves as the foundation for Microsoft’s generative AI leadership. Data from across sales, marketing, and service engagements fuels Microsoft Copilot and AI agents, allowing them to deliver more personalized and effective self-service experiences and automate tasks to assist human reps.

Investing in next-generation AI with Copilot and agents

We’re helping organizations improve customer experience and support reps to be more productive by infusing generative AI in the places where it will have the greatest impact in sales, marketing, and service journeys.

Copilot is fully integrated into Dynamics 365, allowing marketers to target the right prospects, empowering sellers to close more deals, offering customers engaging self-service interactions, and supporting service reps to accelerate issue resolution.

As part of our continuing investment in helping our customers achieve more with AI, we’ve recently augmented Copilot with AI agents. Copilot acts as the interface for AI, working as a personal AI assistant, with agents functioning like apps, automating common tasks or autonomously completing entire business processes.

Microsoft has announced 10 agents across the Dynamics 365 portfolio of business applications, including agents for sales qualification, deep research in sales, intent determination, knowledge management, and case management. These agents are designed to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and enhance decision-making by providing intelligent insights and recommendations. It’s also fast and easy for organizations to build their own agents using the generative AI and low-code tools in Microsoft Copilot Studio. With these tools, businesses can create custom agents tailored to their specific needs, allowing them to automate unique processes and improve overall efficiency.

A secure CRM platform built on responsible AI principles

Importantly, the AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 are developed with a steadfast commitment to trustworthy AI, guided by our responsible AI principles of fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.

In addition, generative AI features in Dynamics 365 utilize Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which offers the highest levels of data privacy and security. By developing AI that is responsible and secure by design, we’re furthering our mission to help every person and organization on the planet achieve more.

First West Credit Union accelerates issue resolution

One of the organizations achieving more with Dynamics 365 is First West Credit Union. As one of Canada’s largest credit unions, it aims to forge authentic connections with its members, but this mission was hampered by a patchwork of legacy CRM platform deployments across different parts of the business.

With Dynamics 365, First West Credit Union now has a single platform to help it engage members more effectively while meeting federal regulatory requirements for complaints management. Because Dynamics 365 functionality mapped so closely to the needs of users and the business, First West Credit Union saw 100% adoption within seven weeks of launching the system. What’s more, member complaints are now being resolved well within the federally required timeline, with 87% resolved in 14 days or less, compared to 49% before the implementation.

“One of the key value points of the Dynamics 365 platform is that, need for need, the capabilities are there. We were able to map the functionality to the business needs very well, right out of the box. That really helped us fast-track this initiative.”

Darrell Jaggers, CIO and Chief Transformation Officer, First West Credit Union

Lexmark boosts sales and service efficiency and productivity

Another organization that emphasizes building strong customer relationships is Lexmark, a global leader in printing and imaging products, software, solutions, and services. However, a reliance on disparate legacy solutions meant tracking customer journeys was a complex and inefficient process.

By replacing Salesforce and Siebel solutions with Dynamics 365, Lexmark now has a unified CRM platform for delivering outstanding customer service and operational efficiency. By working more efficiently in Dynamics 365, Lexmark has increased order accuracy by 43% and boosted contact center productivity by 23%.

“We’ve been on the journey with Microsoft after moving from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales. We’re excited to be one of the first customers to use Sales Qualification Agent and look forward to the ability to scale our sales team with agents and provide an exceptional experience to our customers.”

Kyle Farmer, Vice President, Global Sales and Strategy, Lexmark

Learn more about Dynamics 365 CRM platforms

We’re excited to be recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ and we will continue to invest in creating a state-of-the-art-CRM platform, allowing our customers to constantly enhance experiences for their own customers and empower their employees to achieve more. 

Learn more about: 

• Dynamics 365 
• Dynamics 365 Contact Center
• Dynamics 365 Sales
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about what you could achieve with Dynamics 365.

Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.

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This week, thousands of professionals will gather at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2025: Retail’s Big Show, for insights into the changing retail landscape. Top of mind for many attendees is how AI will impact the retail industry. What retail-specific AI innovation is on the horizon, and can those solutions solve the myriad of challenges retailers face, from improving customer experiences to meeting customer demand on time? 

To help answer these questions, Microsoft leaders and industry partners will be on hand to showcase the very latest AI innovation for retailers—including how agents can open doors to unprecedented customer experiences, help meet customer demand on time, and drive ethical sourcing and sustainability.   

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn more about the Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP solutions.

Contact us

AI and agents will transform retail in 2025 

In 2025, the retail industry will be shaped by three transformative trends that will set the pace of growth and success in the evolving retail landscape:  

• delivering hyper-personalized customer experiences across physical and digital channels.

• redefining convenience through innovative fulfillment and flexible shopping options.

• embedding sustainability and ethical sourcing at the heart of business strategies.

At the Microsoft expo booth and our featured session, NRF attendees will learn how organizations can achieve these priorities by infusing AI across every business process and workflow—within both customer-facing and backend operations. 

By integrating AI solutions like Microsoft Copilot and agents within ERP systems—the traditional foundation for managing critical business processes—retailers can scale the delivery of personalized customer experiences and flexible shopping options. 

In addition, Microsoft will demonstrate at NRF how agents in Dynamics 365 ERP system solutions autonomously manage workflows and orchestrate processes across various domains, including customer journey, procurement, service and operations. These agents make data-driven decisions, optimize operations in real-time, and enhance productivity by automating routine tasks. This allows employees to concentrate on strategic priorities, thereby improving efficiency, cost savings, and relationships with customers and suppliers.  

Delivering better customer experience

Dynamics 365 delivers AI capabilities that enable retailers to hyper-personalize customer experiences across physical and digital channels.  

Transforming the shopper’s journey

With Dynamics 365, retailers can analyze vast amounts of customer data to better understand customer preferences and behaviors. This will enable them to deliver personalized shopping experience. Based on a 2025 CIO and Technology Executive survey by Gartner®, there will be an increase of retail respondents by 67% in 2025 to invest in in-store generative AI technology for associates and an increase of 60% to invest in in-store generative AI technology for customers.¹ 

Retailers like Venchi are piloting the Personalized Shopping Agent in Dynamics 365 to enable their in-store associates to quickly surface product recommendations based on the customer’s preferences at checkout. With instant, tailored suggestions, it could not only enhance the overall shopping experience but also increase the basket value while improving brand loyalty. 

Seamless omnichannel experience

Today’s customers expect a seamless shopping experience across all channels. Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP systems integrate inventory and customer data from physical stores, online platforms, and mobile apps into a unified system. This integration ensures that customers receive consistent service and accurate information, regardless of how they choose to shop.

Lighting retailer Visual Comfort & Co. created a unified platform across 53 showrooms, a robust online store, manufacturing, and shipping with Dynamics 365 ERP system solutions; helping them to streamline operations and improve visibility across the complex supply chain. With real-time inventory visibility, their showroom associates can promise order availability and delivery accurately.

Turning fulfilment into a competitive advantage

With agents and Dynamics 365, retailers can redefine convenience through innovative fulfillment and flexible shopping options.  

Proactively mitigate supply chain disruptions

It is paramount for retailers to prevent stock out and ensure on-time delivery to their customers to improve retention and loyalty. With frequent supply chain disruptions globally, retailers need to constantly stay in touch with their suppliers or contract manufacturers to proactively identify delays. The Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 autonomously processes supplier confirmations, flags potential delays, and suggests corrective actions to help ensure that customer orders are delivered on time.  

With the agent automating these critical tasks, supply chain teams can focus on improving supplier relationships and contract negotiations resulting in reduced costs and more efficient procurement processes. 

Flexible and fast fulfilment

Retailers like Build-A-Bear use Dynamics 365 to optimize fulfillment and offer a seamless shopping experience. They use stores as mini warehouses to fulfil orders faster, and with enhanced inventory visibility they can help ensure that their products are available when and where customers need them. They are able to offer flexible shopping options like Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) and Buy Online, Ship From Store (BOSFS) to their customers for more convenience. Additionally, the implementation of Dynamics 365 has led to a 28% reduction in processing days, significantly boosting warehouse productivity and enabling faster order fulfillment. These innovations allow Build-A-Bear to meet the evolving needs of today’s consumers, providing a more efficient, reliable, and flexible shopping experience.

Ethical sourcing and sustainability 

In 2025, retailers are increasingly committed to embedding sustainability and ethical sourcing at the heart of business strategies. Sustainability features in Dynamics 365 solutions can help retailers comply with the latest standards and best practices, as well as drive positive changes for the business and the environment.

Enable recommerce and drive sustainable practices

AI-powered Dynamics 365 ERP systems help retailers to monitor and implement sustainable practices such as circularity. This enables them to run take-back programs for reselling, reusing, or recycling products to extend their lifecycle and reduce waste. Additionally, the order orchestration engine in Dynamics 365 helps retailers like ONLY, one of BESTSELLER’s largest fashion brands, to support sustainability goals by choosing fulfillment options that minimize carbon emissions while also helping to ensure orders are delivered on time and profitably. Along with the ability to buy online and return in-store, ONLY customers have the most environmentally friendly shipping options available.  

Ethical supplier management

AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 ERP systems can help enhance ethical sourcing by managing vendor compliance, enforcing procurement policies, and supporting multisource strategies. One of our partners, Columbus, implemented Dynamics 365 ERP solutions at their customer Devold of Norway to help them deliver premium quality woolen products to their consumers. They now have a modernized cloud platform and are looking for ways to further improve traceability of their products so that their consumers know where the products come from. These solutions offer transparency and traceability for product origins and provides sustainability reporting to monitor and improve practices—ensuring your procurement aligns with ethical standards. 

Future-proof your retail operations in 2025 

AI-powered solutions for ERP and service systems are more than a technological upgrade. They are a strategic imperative for retailers aiming to deliver exceptional customer experiences, build lasting brand loyalty, and achieve sustainable profitability. In today’s business landscape, you need autonomous systems that can anticipate market changes, customer needs, or operational risks. The risk of clinging to legacy systems extends beyond inefficiency. It leads to missed opportunities, slower time-to-market, and the inability to remain competitive. Companies using AI-first processes through AI-powered solutions for ERP systems gain the foresight and agility necessary to not just react to changes but to lead through them.  

Join us at NRF ‘25 

If you are registered for NRF, we invite you to visit the Microsoft booth (#4503) and join Kathleen Mitford, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Global Industry Marketing, as well as leaders at Bath & Body Works, Venchi and Sitecore as they share their perspectives on transforming the shopper journey with AI. The session will take place on Monday, January 13, 2025 at 11AM EST.

Also, continue to visit the Dynamics 365 blog to learn more about how Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform are helping retailers reimagine the road ahead; and feel free to contact us to learn more about the Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP system solutions. 

Source

¹Gartner, 2025 CIO Agenda: Top Priorities and Technology Plans for Retail, 16 September 2024 By Kelsie Marian, Sandeep Unni. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 

The post The future of retail with Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP solutions appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Delivering amazing customer experiences and rapid issue resolution across multiple engagement channels is immensely challenging. Without advanced AI and automation—across voice and digital channels—customer journeys meet friction and service reps struggle to work efficiently, leading to spiraling costs and dwindling customer loyalty. 

However, when customers and service reps are supported with AI-powered automation and contextual guidance, the experience is smoother for everyone, whether it’s in self-service or assisted service. 

2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center 

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader.

Read the report

As we enter this new era of AI-fueled customer service, we’re proud to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant* for CRM Customer Engagement Center.

We believe this placement recognizes our comprehensive AI-powered omnichannel capabilities, our continued commitment to rapid AI innovation, and the successes our global customers are achieving with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.  

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. 

AI fuels customer service excellence 

Customer service leaders understand that resolving customer issues is not the sole measure of success. Long-term customer loyalty depends on the ability to deliver fast, personalized experiences in every engagement channel. That’s why it’s so important that Customer Service provides comprehensive, AI-enhanced capabilities across omnichannel customer journeys and throughout service processes—on a global scale.  

By delivering intelligent self-service and giving service reps the tools and insights to boost productivity, fuel collaboration, and strengthen customer relationships, we help service organizations transform operations and increase customer satisfaction. What’s more, with Microsoft Copilot in Customer Service, organizations can now take their service capabilities to new heights. 

Since Microsoft introduced Copilot into the applications millions of people use every day, its generative AI capabilities have empowered people to achieve more—and that’s especially true in customer service. 

Copilot is one of the capabilities that sets Customer Service apart. It provides an AI assistant to help service reps onboard faster, accelerate resolutions for even the most complex cases, and free up time to build stronger customer relationships. 

Service reps worldwide now rely on Copilot to handle routine tasks—such as accessing knowledge, summarizing, and drafting personalized emails—releasing them to focus on delivering high-value engagements that build customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Lenovo increases service rep productivity by 15% and reduces average handle time by 20% 

One organization that is seeing the benefits of Copilot in its customer service operations is the global technology company Lenovo. The company’s Premier Support services give customers access to thousands of advanced technicians to resolve issues and minimize downtime.  

To keep pace with growing demand, Lenovo needed automated, AI-based solutions that could streamline operations, automate repetitive tasks, and boost customer satisfaction. The company uses Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center to enhance the support experience for customers and service reps. 

When a customer reaches out for support, they interact with Copilot in an AI chat assistant to explain their issue in natural language. Copilot then offers service reps suggestions for optimal solutions, based on millions of historical customer interactions, so reps spend less time finding information and can focus on resolving the issue. Copilot also completes post-call summarization, saving reps even more time. 

The results are a 15% improvement in service rep productivity, a 20% reduction in average handling time, and record-high customer satisfaction. 

“Our Premier Support service reps are seeing a boost to their productivity and seamless service delivery…average handling time has fallen by 20% and agent productivity is up 15%.” 

Chen Lu, Director, Services IT Delivery, Lenovo 

Apollo helps customers have smoother journeys 

It’s a similar story at Apollo, a major tour operator in the Nordic region, which is using Copilot to help enhance the customer experience for more than one million travelers a year.  

The company has built a chatbot in Microsoft Copilot Studio that it expects to respond to up to half of its customer inquiries, providing tailored answers in seconds in Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch. When cases need to be escalated to a human service rep, Copilot can assist by surfacing relevant information at the right time and completing routine administrative tasks such as call summarization. 

“It is always our goal to provide our customers with the journey of a lifetime. Thanks to [Microsoft] Dynamics 365, we can offer each customer personalized experiences with the details that matter most—and we can do it quickly, which is a win for our customers and our business.” 

Glenn Bisgaard, Sales Director, Apollo 

Copilot and Agents: The next evolution of AI-fueled customer service 

Building on the capabilities of Copilot, we’re now introducing AI agents in Copilot, as well as empowering organizations and individuals to create their own agents in Copilot Studio. These agents help transform operations by executing business processes, working alongside or on behalf of a person, team, or organization. 

Copilot agents range from simple information retrieval and summarization agents to fully autonomous agents capable of working independently, planning, and orchestrating other agents. 

Over the next few months, we’ll be releasing several autonomous agents specifically for enhancing customer service: 

• The Customer Intent Agent continuously discovers new intents from customer conversations and keeps self-service tools and service reps updated with new customer issues and how to resolve them. 
• The Customer Knowledge Management Agent uncovers insights from human-assisted case notes, transcripts, summaries, and more to update existing knowledge articles or draft new ones, keeping self-service tools evergreen and empowering service reps with up-to-date knowledge and guidance. 
• The Case Management Agent reduces reps’ administrative burden and shortens handle times by automating key tasks, including case creation, updates, wrap-up, summary, follow-up communications, and closure. 

We’re thrilled to be recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and we’re equally excited about what the future holds as we continue to advance the capabilities of Customer Service. But most importantly, we look forward to seeing the results as we work alongside our pioneering customers to help them deliver even more efficient and effective customer service. 

Next steps 

Read the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center report. 

Learn more about: 

• Customer Service 
• Microsoft 365 Copilot for Service 

¹Gartner, Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center, Pri Rathnayake, Drew Kraus, Wynn White, 11 December 2024.

*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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As organizations globally grapple with the accelerated development and adoption of AI, business leaders are keen to use the potential of generative AI in transforming revenue-generating functions like sales. Investing in cutting-edge AI capabilities will set up sales teams to bolster customer experience, being able to understand the customer needs and delivering a highly personalized buying experience at a much faster pace.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Increase seller efficiency.

Learn more

Today, many sales teams are bogged down with legacy customer relationship management (CRM) systems designed decades ago, manually entering data and dealing with interfaces built for a slower pace, all of which leaves little time for what truly matters: connecting with customers. Sales leaders are now looking for AI-powered technology that helps them build a stronger pipeline, convert opportunities quicker, and build strong relationships with customers. By using technology that reduces the amount of time spent on manual tasks, sellers gain valuable hours each day to work on opportunities that are already in motion. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, B2B sales organizations using generative-AI-embedded sales technologies will reduce the amount of time spent on prospecting and customer-meeting prep by more than 50%.¹ 

With this context, today, we’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation for the fourteenth consecutive year.

Figure 1: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms** (25 August 2024)  

How Microsoft is making selling easier 

Close more deals and spend less time on tasks 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to close more deals and increase personal productivity with a feature-rich CRM system that includes next-generation AI features out-of-box. Sellers can confidently develop and prioritize their pipeline with lead and opportunity qualification. Sales helps sellers deliver high-quality engagements with prospective customers by helping them prepare with relationship insights, next-step recommendations, and suggestions for improving their interactions. Sales managers can build high-performance sales teams with the ability to identify sellers who need coaching, monitor business health with intelligent forecasting, and scale best practices with automated sales sequences. 

Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales works as a companion for sales representatives by providing generative AI-powered features designed to reduce manual and time-consuming work for sellers. For instance, sellers can quickly get up to speed with accounts, opportunities, contacts, and leads with record summarization and recent changes in the prospective customer organizations. They can also get news updates on accounts along with answers and content recommendations for that account using access to sales documents in SharePoint. Sellers can get help summarizing long email threads and responding to threads with Copilot drafting emails with infused CRM context. Right before taking meetings with customers, sellers can ask Copilot for meeting preparation assistance as well. 

Access sales insights everywhere, no matter where you choose to work 

At Microsoft, we know first-hand that sellers often spend their time outside of their CRM in productivity apps like Outlook and Microsoft Teams. That’s why Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales seamlessly brings CRM insights right into the seller’s flow of work. Copilot for Sales brings together Microsoft 365 Copilot with a role-based agent that connects with your CRM platform to bring sales insights and generative AI into the flow of work. Sellers can simplify their daily tasks by using Copilot to draft e-mails, set up meetings, or summarize previous meetings and e-mail threads. They can save time with Copilot by generating pitch decks, meeting preparation briefs, and data visualizations in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. When it’s time for a sales call, sellers can use Copilot to get insights right within Teams, with AI-generated sales tips, related information, and answers to customer’s questions. After the call, Copilot provides a rich meeting recap that allows the seller to stay focused on next steps.  

Integration with an expanded ecosystem 

Organizations can unlock the full potential of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with seamless integration at every step. The Sales integration with Teams fosters open communication and collaboration across marketing, sales, and service departments. With automatic data synchronization between Microsoft 365 apps and Sales or other CRM platforms, sellers can access customer and opportunity information directly within Teams and Outlook. Additionally, sales operation leads and managers can utilize Microsoft Power BI to analyze trends and generate reports. Microsoft Power Platform further enables sellers to automate workflows, develop apps, and analyze data, enhancing agility and driving innovation. 

Our customers’ success 

First West Credit Union is headquartered in Langley, British Columbia, and operates through four locally-known brands to serve members across the province. After a comprehensive request for proposal (RFP) process involving multiple vendors, First West decided to replace its earlier CRM solutions with Sales. The implementation was completed in record time.

“In my experience, these are typically 24-month journeys. The initial deployment of our Sales system was completed in just 11 months. This expedited rollout enabled us to seamlessly transition from and decommission our outdated legacy CRM systems, marking a significant achievement in our digital transformation journey.”

Darrell Jaggers, CIO & Chief Transformation Officer, First West Credit Union

The sales advisors at First West Credit Union are already realizing value. The manual reporting process used to take 20 minutes, but member discovery now takes only a few minutes with Sales, driving productivity gains of more than 75%. Within the first month of launching Sales, First West’s advisors had completed more than 2,600 member discoveries, marking a 54% surge in adoption compared to the previous approach. 

Alkemy, a specialty chemical systems company, transformed its sales operations by adopting Sales in 2019. Partnering with Intelibis, they automated customer segmentation, digitized sales processes, and integrated with Power Automate and SharePoint. This shift reduced their operational burden by 90%, generated over 2,900 reports, and significantly improved customer service. Alkemy now aims to become fully digital, using predictive controls to expand in the marketplace. 

As organizations continue to adopt AI at an unprecedented pace, at Microsoft we are focused on delivering the most cutting-edge experiences built on trust and security in leading products like Sales.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 and sales 

• Read the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms report 
• Microsoft Dynamics 365  
• Dynamics 365 Sales  
• Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales 

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the best way you can get started with Sales and Copilot for Sales. 

Sources:

1. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Varun Agarwal, Steve Rietberg, 24 August 2024.  

*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 named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Sales Force Automation Platforms   appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As the business landscape rapidly evolves, integrating AI solutions into field service operations isn’t just a trend—it’s a necessity. Previously, we shared “5 steps for helping you become AI-ready in field service”. Today, we want to talk about how you can transform your field service organizations by using AI capabilities to drive efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately boost the bottom line.

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The power of predictive maintenance

One of the most significant benefits of AI in field service is predictive maintenance. By using AI algorithms and machine learning models combined with Internet of Things (IoT) data, you can predict your customers’ equipment issues before they occur through continuous monitoring. But, predictive maintenance can also provide data-driven insights that can help you identify other patterns, trends, and potential areas for improvement—for example, energy expenditure—that help your customers see your field service organization as a partner.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service customers can use Connected Field Service to seamlessly connect their IoT devices to diagnose problems and identify potential issues even before customers become aware of them. Work orders are automatically generated based on IoT data and displayed in Field Service, where field service managers and dispatchers can then use the generative AI capabilities in Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365 to automate and streamline work order and resource management. This proactive approach also minimizes downtime, reduces repair costs, and can ensure uninterrupted service delivery to enhance customer experience and increase customer loyalty.

Optimizing frontline workforce management

Today’s enterprise companies can no longer rely on the old paper-based processes for scheduling and performing maintenance and repairs. While many organizations have made the switch to digital in the past several years, their processes remain in a half-digital, half-paper-based limbo that can end up making things more confusing than ever. Field service managers spend hours managing customer information—customer requirements, work orders, resources, schedules, and more. Having to switch between different applications—or between digital and paper—means mistakes are more likely to happen. The bottom line is somebody entering the wrong customer data can make insights and next steps less reliable—which can cost you money in the long run.

AI-powered workforce management tools can help you optimize scheduling and dispatching, helping to ensure that the right technician is assigned to the right job at the right time. This not only improves your operational efficiency, but also enhances customer satisfaction by reducing wait times and increasing first-time fix rates. Dynamics 365 Field Service Plugin for Microsoft Copilot in Outlook or Microsoft Teams enables your field service managers, dispatchers, and technicians to take advantage of generative AI capabilities that make them more efficient and responsive in servicing customers. With Microsoft Copilot, field service managers can simplify work order management by auto-summarizing work orders, assets, resources, bookings, and more. And more importantly, they can manage work orders inside the tool they use the most.

Maybe your field service managers spend a lot of time managing customer emails. Now, without leaving Outlook, they can use the Field Service Copilot pane to help them streamline work order creation with relevant details pre-populated from emails and provide key work order information. The scheduling suggestions in the Field Service Copilot pane also helps service managers schedule field technicians based on travel time, availability, skill set, and more. Your field service managers can also easily schedule work orders using Copilot for Field Service in Teams. As it does in Outlook, the app suggests scheduling options based on factors including availability, skill set, distance to the customer site, preferred time slots, and more. They can also use natural language search in Teams to locate information including guides and manuals, work orders, customer history, and more.

Field technicians can struggle with tightly packed schedules, especially when appointments and routes need to be updated during the day. Now, AI-powered work order updates (in preview) in Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile app enable your field technicians to update work orders on the fly by describing work performed in natural language, using either text or speech-to-text capabilities. Based on their input, Copilot recommends updates to work order fields and updates them after confirmation from the field technician. Field technicians can also view AI-generated work order recaps on the go without having to navigate through customer records to view pertinent information.

Enhancing customer experience

Using Microsoft Copilot Studio, customers can create AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to provide instant support to their end users, answering queries, and resolving issues in real-time. This 24/7 availability enhances customer experience, helping lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty. You can automate routine customer conversations with field service technicians, such as calls about regularly scheduled maintenance or warranty calls. This enables your technicians to focus on more high value conversations. A benefit of AI-powered chatbots created using Microsoft Copilot Studio is that customers can interact with them using natural language to describe their questions or issues. Any information collected from the chatbot can also be used to pre-populate work orders, helping technicians resolve issues or schedule service appointments faster. You can also use AI-powered chatbots to help keep your customers informed with automated service reminders and notifications via email and text messaging or enable them to reschedule appointments.

Driving data-driven decision making

By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can uncover patterns and insights more efficiently than human analysts, providing you with better data to help you make more informed decisions. When it comes to your field service organization, using AI to discover trends and patterns can help with strategic planning and drive continuous improvement.

Dynamics 365 Field Service provides a resource and utilization report, a work order summary report, an optimization summary, and an admin report to help you drill down into how your field service operations are performing. You can also connect to Microsoft Dataverse, the intelligent data platform that powers Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps and the Microsoft Power Platform, to access your Field Service data and other relevant customer or operational data to create custom reports. For customers using the Microsoft Power BI Premium service, Dynamics 365 offers various ways to visualize your data using Microsoft Copilot in Power BI to get the most from your data. You can use natural language to get quick and easy summaries, or you can refine or guide the summary by customizing prompts, such as “summarize this page using bullet points” or “provide a summary of work orders on this page”. You can also ask specific questions about the visualized data on a report page and receive a tailored response. This response includes references to specific visuals, aiding you in understanding the specific data sources contributing to each part of the answer or summary within a report.

G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers: Transformative AI in action

G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers has successfully implemented AI in their field service operations, leading to significant improvements. By integrating Dynamics 365 Field Service with AI capabilities, they have streamlined their work order management, reduced manual tasks, and improved scheduling efficiency. The introduction of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service has further enhanced their operations by providing technicians with real-time assistance and insight.

The future of field service

The integration of AI into field service is no longer a futuristic concept. It’s a present-day reality. Business decision makers who embrace this technology can expect to see significant improvements in efficiency, customer satisfaction, and overall business performance. Now is the time to harness the power of transformative AI and lead your field service operations into the future.

The post Harnessing transformative AI for field service excellence appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In a previous blog, we discussed how modern, AI-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help drive new, more effective ways of working for employees and more satisfying outcomes for the customers they serve in three key ways: by streamlining operations, by empowering more informed and insightful decisions, and by elevating customer and employee experiences.  

In this blog post, we’re going to focus on the third item: elevating customer and employee experiences by showing how AI-enabled CRM solutions help increase productivity and provide unprecedented levels of personalized service across three key business functions: marketing, sales, and customer service. We’ll also provide insights and best practices for how to help employees get the most from AI, including how they can be empowered to create personalized experiences for their customers.  

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Revolutionizing marketing: How AI-enabled CRM software drives personalized experiences and enhance customer engagement 

Marketing is one area where generative AI is already in active use. According to a Forrester survey of CMOs, more than half (56%) of B2C marketing or advertising decision makers have been using generative AI in three key ways:  

• To help employees minimize tedious tasks, allowing for more time to focus on strategically important work. 
• To summarize insights and enable swift action without the need to dig through data manually. 
• To boost the scale of creative output by generating starter ideas along with visuals and copy.¹

AI is particularly capable of delivering personalized experiences in marketing, where AI-enabled CRM platforms can marry customer data to messaging to create memorable moments and impact sales. One example of a company using AI-enabled CRM solutions to generate marketing content is North Carolina-based sports club NC Fusion, which used Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to help its marketers create personalized messaging tailored to its audience segments, increasing the reach of the brand. Using AI-enabled content ideas, descriptions, and summaries has provided significant time savings, and personalizing campaigns has been more effective with Copilot.²  

“For families, we are able to tailor the message they receive. This means a family will only receive messages that apply to their situation, and not a multitude of emails that have no application to their family situation. With AI-assisted content production, our customer engagement has increased from 10% to 30%.”  

Chris Barnhart, Head of IT and Data Systems at NC Fusion

Empowering sales teams: How AI-driven personalization can transform customer interactions and boost revenue 

Another area where personalization can impact an organization’s bottom line is sales, where making authentic connections with customers at the right time is paramount. Few organizations know this better than superyacht brokerage Northrop & Johnson, which has used AI to deliver highly personal sales experiences tailored to the wants and needs of its high-value clients. 

“In this market, we have high-wealth customers who are considering very high-value purchases, and we can’t afford any interactions that leave them feeling anything less than special.”

Keith Perfect, Director of Technoloy & Intelligence at Northrop & Johnson 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and Copilot provide Northrop & Johnson sales teams with comprehensive and timely data for each client, which helps them deliver personalized conversations at precisely the right time to engage. 

“Clients at this level want to know they are taken care of. And when you must make an impact in minutes, which is all you have with these busy clients, you need to be very attuned to them. Otherwise, it could cost you the sale. So, having a solution at your fingertips that connects the entire journey is huge for our sales team.” 

Daniel Ziriakus, President & Chief Operating Officer at Northrop & Johnson

Sales teams using AI-enabled CRM software also realize significant time savings as salespeople assign more tedious tasks to their AI assistants. In fact, according to new Microsoft research, 79% of Microsoft Copilot for Sales users say it reduces the amount of administrative work they have to do, 67% say it helps them spend more time with customers, and 64% say it allows them to better personalize customer engagements.³  

Transforming customer support: How AI-driven assistants enhance productivity, satisfaction, and retention 

Customer service is still another area where AI-enabled CRM platforms can make an immediate impact. According to a November 2023 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), customer service agents using a generative AI-based conversational assistant were able to increase productivity—specifically measured by the number of issues resolved per hour—by an average of 14%. The effect was even more pronounced with novice and low-skill workers, who experienced productivity increases of 34%. Researchers also found that AI assistance improves customer sentiment and increases employee retention.⁴ 

One company using an AI-enabled CRM solution in customer service is Microsoft. We operate one of the largest customer support teams in the world and process more than 145 million contacts per year. We use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service to help utilize the full expertise of the engineers on staff and provide better resolution of customer issues across the board.⁵  

“The challenge for every support engineer is to connect with the human being on the other end of the call who has a problem that needs solving. You want to connect with them, but you also need to be able to pull in a great deal of technical information. Copilot provides us the support to offer the customer understanding while also sorting out their technical problems.” 

Ric Todd, Director of Support Strategy at Microsoft

Download The AI Advantage: Driving sales performance with next-generation tools.

Bringing AI to your organization  

For leaders looking to roll out AI solutions in their organizations, we have some encouraging news: people new to AI begin recognizing its value quickly. Recent Microsoft research shows it takes a time savings of just 11 minutes per day for most people to see its usefulness (a key factor in getting new work habits to stick). ⁶  

Encouragingly, most respondents report having saved more than 11 minutes. The most efficient among them are saving up to 30 minutes per day—the equivalent of 10 hours per month—and the average person is saving 14 minutes per day for a time savings of almost five hours per month. 

What’s more, the breakthrough moment by which respondents report seeing improvements in productivity (75%), work enjoyment (57%), work-life balance (34%), and the ability to attend fewer meetings (37%) happens within one business quarter—11 weeks.⁷  

While personal productivity gains from Copilot are real and significant, building an AI-powered organization requires committing to working in a new way. Some best practices to consider include:  

• Encourage daily use. Realizing productivity gains from AI will take intentional everyday practice. Those who start building the habit early will pull ahead. And don’t forget—11 weeks is all it takes for people to recognize the effect.  

• Help people manage their new assistants. Employees taught to treat their generative AI tools as assistants, not search engines, will get the most value. Teach team members to manage their new assistant and to recognize when to delegate a task to AI and when to apply their human intelligence, judgment, and skill. 

• Find good use of reclaimed time. Help your team take advantage of time savings to focus on the higher-order and creative tasks only people can do. Salespeople can devote more time to building relationships with customers and closing deals. Marketers can carve out time to dream up new solutions. Customer service teams can focus on solving problems, and managers across the organization can spend more time coaching and caring for their teams. 

Taking the next step forward 

Take the next step in your AI adoption journey by learning more about Copilot and other AI-powered capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365. Discover how to keep your organization on the cutting-edge by realizing that a new paradigm of customer engagement through AI-enabled personalization empowers both customers and employees.  

Join us at a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Virtual Training Day to gain the skills needed to help your organization sell, service, and deliver on the customer expectations of tomorrow. Register for free, in-depth training events, where you’ll uncover new efficiencies of scale, discover smarter connections, and utilize built-in intelligence for deeper insights into your business. Register now! 

Sources

1.  Leap Now, Not Later, into a Responsible Generative AI Strategy for Marketing (July 5th, 2023) 
2. Microsoft Customer Story-NC Fusion expands youth marketing outreach, taught kids leadership and life skills with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
3. What Can Copilot’s Earliest Users Teach Us About Generative AI at Work? (microsoft.com) 
4. Working Paper 31161; Generative AI at Work; NBER 
5. Microsoft Customer Story-Microsoft empowers support engineers to shine brighter with Dynamics 365 Customer Service 
6. AI Data Drop: The 11-by-11 Tipping Point 
7. AI Data Drop: The 11-by-11 Tipping Point 

The post Elevating experiences with AI, from productivity to personalization  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

At Microsoft, we don’t see ourselves as a vendor. When it comes to our customers, we want to be seen as partners—and as trusted advocates. Today, we want to share a story about how Microsoft can help customers take the long view when it comes to transforming their businesses and adapting to the ever-changing needs of their industries and markets. In 2021, facing an uncertain post-pandemic economy, G&J Pepsi embarked on a transformation journey to maximize customer service, revenue, and cost savings by implementing solutions including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and other Microsoft technologies. Since then, it has continued to adapt and adopt solutions like Microsoft Copilot to position itself for future growth and continued success in a competitive landscape. 

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G&J Pepsi is always striving to innovate and provide better services for its customers. As the largest family-owned and operated independent U.S. Pepsi franchise bottler, it’s a respected leader in its industry. Supplying Pepsi and alliance products such as Starbucks, Gatorade, and Dr. Pepper to thousands of customers in Central and Southern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky, G&J Pepsi covers manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, trucking, digital print, and more. It produces, bottles, markets, sells, and distributes beverages consumed on-premises—restaurants, schools, entertainment complexes—as well as those purchased in retail outlets. 

Breaking down siloes for a better customer view 

In 2021, the company’s sales, field service, and other customer interactions were siloed. This meant that sales had no visibility into when a new customer might have its equipment installed, while field service technicians had no insights into a customer’s hours of operations, key contacts, or equipment needs. Customer information was stored in a mix of Excel spreadsheets, hand-written notes, and batch systems. In addition, employees across the service chain from sales to field service had no common platform for communicating and sharing information.  

G&J Pepsi adopted Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Field Service to create a customer engagement management (CEM) platform, so it could accelerate its end-to-end customer journey by unifying cross-functional support and removing barriers to customer visibility. The CEM was a game-changer, especially because it provided real-time visibility into customers that sales, field service, and leadership never had before.  

For field service operations, G&J Pepsi’s data resides in Microsoft Dataverse and is accessed through Dynamics 365 Field Service. Completing certain actions within Microsoft Dynamics 365 triggers a Microsoft Power Automate flow to kick off another process. For example, a business development representative (BDR) requesting a piece of equipment for a new customer triggers the creation of a new work order, which moves through equipment prep to scheduling a field technician for installation. Using built-in Dynamics 365 capabilities, a scheduler can assign best resources to a work order by looking across service locations instead of only selecting from a smaller subset of available technicians. Field service technicians use the Field Service mobile app’s built-in map and routing features to optimize travel time and status flags to indicate if they are on-site or traveling. Field techs can also access all the pertinent customer information in the mobile app: service tasks, customer details, product needs, and so on. And with minimal development effort using Microsoft Power Apps, G&J Pepsi extended the mobile app so that field technicians can generate service reports at the customer site and instantly email them to other departments as needed. 

Simplifying and enhancing business processes for better employee experiences 

G&J Pepsi has a digital transformation and business process team that selectively built their DevOps skills to simplify their application environment and processes using the Microsoft suite of services. In addition, they included frontline employees like service agents and field technicians through all stages of development, testing, and deployment. For example, the company’s Equipment Move Operation (EMO) process, which it performs about 10,000 times a year, had 17 manual steps—170,000 manual touchpoints annually. With Dynamics 365 and Power Automate, it automated that process, reducing a four-day event with 17 manual tasks down to a process that now takes about a minute. With these new processes, existing field technicians immediately felt more efficient and productive during customer visits, and G&J has found that it’s also attracting new talent because it provides modern tools and information flows that result in a better working environment.  

Accelerating customer response times and improving first-time fix rates 

The CEM platform based on Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Sales has dramatically transformed G&J Pepsi’s operational workflow, cutting down paperwork processing from weeks to mere seconds and significantly boosting efficiency. The unified systems give salespeople, service agents, and field technicians immediate access to critical information, so they spend less time retrieving data and can focus on delivering exceptional customer service. Dynamics 365 Field Service has especially improved efficiency for onsite workers through smart scheduling and automation, and its interoperation with Pepsi’s other backend services helps it provide service agents with real-time updates and better stock management, enabling more effective customer service and streamlining operations. In addition, the interoperability of Field Service with Microsoft Teams has reduced email and simplified collaboration across the service chain, enabling service agents and field technicians to quickly locate information and subject matter experts, leading to faster resolution times. 

Adopting Field Service also helped G&J Pepsi improve mobile operations for field technicians because now they no longer need to return to the office or another physical location with dial-up to sync data with backend systems. Now, dispatchers can adjust service schedules in real time, so technicians can quickly address urgent issues, such as water leaks at major accounts. The Field Service mobile app has also enhanced efficiency by improving communication between field technicians and dispatchers and enabling them to manage tasks, like work order management and inventory control, on the fly. The Field Service mobile app also uses cellular technology to auto-update inventory as technicians use parts, avoiding manual entries and speeding up restocking processes. These changes have profoundly improved the responsiveness of field service technicians, resulting in better customer service. Overall, G&J Pepsi is experiencing better first-time fix rates, reducing the need for return visits, which in turn saves costs related to time, mileage, and fuel. It also helps G&J Pepsi achieve greater operational efficiencies and improve overall customer satisfaction by ensuring technicians have the necessary parts and information to complete jobs effectively on the very first visit. 

Benefitting from streamlined operations—and $30 million ROI over three years 

By giving salespeople, service agents, and field technicians instant access to sales history, equipment details, schedules, parts, and pricing, G&J Pepsi has streamlined operations and enhanced customer service. Before implementing its CEM platform based on Dynamics 365, the company was experiencing a $9 million yearly loss due to siloed information, outdated manual processes, and inefficient communications and collaboration. But over its three-year journey with Dynamics 365, G&J Pepsi has achieved a $30 million ROI, amounting to a total of $57 million in cost savings over the same period. In addition, simplifying processes and using technology for better data access and automation led to a 10 point increase in market share in the on-premises sector, significantly outperforming the norm of 0.5 point annual growth. And with its data residing in the Dataverse, G&J has been able to gain access to real-time insights that have transformed its operations. Overall, using Dynamics 365 and Power Automate, it has streamlined 180,000 manual steps that used to take seven to 10 days each down to 35 seconds. 

Embracing a future powered by AI through Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Azure 

Moving forward, G&J Pepsi is excited to explore the possibilities of using Microsoft Copilot to help frontline employees address real-world challenges, like optimizing scheduling and service flows based on data analysis. It plans to employ technologists and AI experts to help drive awareness and adoption of Copilot capabilities to help transform the customer experience. Microsoft tools like Copilot, Microsoft Azure AI, and Power Automate will also play a big role in helping G&J enhance its enterprise resource planning strategy and growth by creating a digital thread through its daily business operations to help succeed daily. 

“We truly see Microsoft as an organization that is tied to the entire success of G&J Pepsi, not just the entire success of the department, but as a true collaborator, where we’re getting our voice heard on some of the challenges and opportunities that we have with the products. Not just with Copilot, but with all the platforms, from Dynamics 365 to Microsoft 365 to Azure.”

Brian Balzer, Executive Vice President of Digital Technology & Business Transformation, G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers. 

Read more about G&J Pepsi’s transformation here: 

• Microsoft Customer Story-Dynamics 365 quenches G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers’ thirst for innovation, integration, and agility 

• Microsoft Customer Story-G&J Pepsi discovers untapped potential with Dynamics 365, boosts profit by $30 million 

The post G&J Pepsi profit rises by $30 million with Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Building a successful sales team starts with collaboration and insights. To boost performance across the sales journey, business development professionals must be empowered to engage across internal teams to better connect with customers and easily interact with data and insights. Like any organizational transformation, adapting teams to a new way of selling requires coordination between people, process, and technology—a challenging effort for any organization.

So, how does one of the largest professional services organizations in the world—with almost 400,000 people across 700 offices in 150 countries—transform and connect a sales organization that spans nearly every corner of the globe?

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For Ernst & Young LLP (EY), one of the largest professional services member firms worldwide, its sales transformation journey included Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. EY began its extensive rollout of Dynamics 365 Sales with the simple mission to deliver exceptional client service. By equipping more than 100,000 EY member firm professionals across the globe with an intuitive customer relationship management (CRM) system that is integrated across marketing, sales, delivery, and insights, EY can help its clients and itself maintain a competitive edge across markets.

The sales system also sets the stage for enhanced seller productivity with Microsoft 365, including the ability to access and collaborate on customer opportunities within the flow of work from Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams. And Microsoft Copilot capabilities are expected to help sellers work more efficiently and improve customer experiences with email assistance, personalized sales content creation, AI-generated insights, and recommendations for next steps.

Breaking down barriers for a globally-connected team

To help their clients solve their most complex problems, EY needed a digital sales foundation that helped enable sellers to be connected, proactive, and insightful with a deeper understanding of account and opportunity data. A collaborative sales system can empower teams to help deliver consistently exceptional client services and continuously adapt to rapid changes across each client organization, industries, and entire markets.

That’s why EY turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and the latest advancements in AI to both unify and transform sales processes with a goal to improve cross-team collaboration and deepen connections with clients.

Led by a need for a more integrated approach to client relationship building focused on client value, EY identified the people who would gain the most from a global sales transformation. For example, EY pursuit leaders, who are dedicated to leading complex client relationships, could benefit from deeper insights into client and industry issues to deliver the right set of solutions when pursuing opportunities. Client-serving teams could also benefit from a system that provided targeted, meaningful information and insights, helping them to create winning proposals in less time.

In 2022, EY and Microsoft got to work on an architecture design and implementation plan for a sales platform that bridged both existing solutions and a modern, future-proof platform for insights, automation, collaboration, productivity, and reporting. These transformative solutions build on a years-long commitment to power growth and innovation of EY on Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

A new way to power a global organization

EY client-serving teams around the world are standardizing sales processes on a single, unified customer relationship management and productivity system. On this new, flexible platform, with the ability to integrate third-party applications and adapt new technologies, teams can leverage both tools they currently depend on and leverage the latest in Dynamics 365 and AI enhancements.

For example, teams will continue to manage engagements in SAP ECC, but the integration with Dynamics 365 Sales will help ensure a more seamless handoff of crucial information to delivery. This allows EY to take advantage of Microsoft capabilities, such as Microsoft Power BI data visualizations, Outlook, and Teams for enhanced collaboration and AI and automation features to streamline processes.

“We’ve brought the opportunity management process closer to where we spend our time—in Outlook, in Teams, and on the go while on mobile.”

Kris Kuty, Global Product Manager, Ernst & Young LLP

Early signs of success

Only months after deployment, EY reports that the new sales platform is making a real impact on the way they do business. Some of the results include:

• An enhanced CRM solution that has connected marketing, sales, and service processes for better collaboration between teams.
• Greater access to intelligence and insights, enabling client-serving teams, financial forecasters, and business planners to be more efficient and knowledgeable, equipped to make better decisions faster, and, ultimately, make deeper connections with clients.
• Standardized sales processes and unified views across accounts, using a globally consistent and streamlined system that includes a mobile Power App, Outlook, and Teams, with integrations to key EY systems for master data, risk management, and enterprise reporting. EY sales, service, and finance teams can access the information they need when they need it, right in the flow of work.
• Improved pipeline visibility, giving EY client-serving teams a clear view of client pursuits across their broad services, supported by contextual insights into each sales contact and activity.
• Tighter team collaboration, leading to more connected peer conversations and better outcomes for their clients’ most complex challenges.

Moving forward, the EY sales excellence journey will include AI and Copilot. To reinforce Dynamics 365 Sales as a key enabler for client serving individuals they expect to:

• Provide AI-based recommendations for client communications and next best topics utilizing historical interactions as well as industry insights and trends.
• Analyze seller behavior to recommend new ways of working.
• Provide AI-driven recommendations for deal scoring and lead prioritization.

“We are extremely excited about what is coming and what is possible. We’ve already kicked off with Copilot and the possibilities with AI are extremely attractive as we aim to serve our clients even better. We have our integrated platform in place, with Dynamics 365 Sales at the center. Now we can build on this and continue the transformation.”

Jeremy Hallett, Global Markets Enablement Leader, Ernst & Young LLP

Better positioned to design and deliver transformative cloud solutions to organizations worldwide

The EY transformation story showcases how Dynamics 365 Sales can help complex, regulated, multi-national organizations inspire a unified, customer-focused global sales operation—empowered to move business forward with a shared vision and digital toolkit. And, as one of Microsoft’s top systems integrators, EY is well positioned to help deliver that value to organizations everywhere.

“Putting Dynamics 365 and Copilot in the hands of more than 100,000 EY member firm professionals showcases how modern architectures and the latest advancements in AI create competitive advantage. Part of embarking down this journey was to demonstrate for our clients that it can be done for even the most complex global enterprises. The time is now to create new ways of working with AI-powered transformations.”

Jim Little, Global Microsoft Alliance Leader, Ernst & Young LLP

The EY organization can help complex organizations find their own path to differentiate with Dynamics 365 and AI and surface the right data for personalized customer experiences, critical business insights, and operational agility. Applying direct learnings from their global implementation of Dynamics 365 Sales, as well as day-to-day experiences using the technology, will bring a wealth of additional perspective, insights, and guidance to every engagement.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales, as well as the EY Microsoft Alliance. 

The post Ernst & Young reinvents sales globally with Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In a rapidly changing business landscape, organizations face numerous challenges in meeting their customers’ expectations and staying relevant. With the COVID-19 pandemic driving a sudden shift to remote work and the introduction of new technologies, many struggled to keep up with the pace of change and financial pressures.

In this blog post, we’ll showcase some of our recent success stories with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales customers in the financial services and manufacturing industries. From improving client relationships to streamlining operations and reducing overhead costs, each of these organizations uses Dynamics 365 Sales to overcome unique challenges and achieve outstanding business outcomes. So, whether you’re in financial services or manufacturing, join us as we explore real-world examples of how Dynamics 365 Sales can help you succeed in today’s market.

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Revolutionizing the finance industry: How Dynamics 365 Sales is helping financial institutions build stronger client relationships

Customers and investors of banks and insurance companies expect a personalized experience that incorporates their unique needs. Long-term clients expect these institutions to know them, and proactively approach them with services that are relevant to them. However, large financial institutions tend to spread across the globe, and different divisions must offer different services and products based not only on local markets, but also on changing regulations.

To tackle these challenges, Investec, a global financial services company, uses conversation intelligence in Dynamics 365 Sales to transcribe sales calls accurately and analyze the content. This helped build stronger client relationships, identify appropriate next steps, and ultimately save time and reduce overhead costs.

Franklin Templeton is one of the largest asset management companies in the world and prides itself on effective stewardship of its clients’ capital. After recent acquisitions, it aimed to restructure its many inherited customer relationship management (CRM) systems under one do-it-all sales platform to gather customer data efficiently. Through proof-of-concept trials, the Franklin Templeton technology team found Dynamics 365 Sales to be the best CRM solution for its pre-built integrations and user-friendly interfaces, improving its relationships with customers and streamlining its operations.

Empowering the manufacturing industry with Dynamics 365 Sales

In the manufacturing industry, companies are required to coordinate their work with multiple internal departments, partners, and customers. At the same time, buyers are looking for consistent experiences. Traditional dealer networks have been key in this industry, but now, end customers are looking for direct contact with the manufacturer. Let’s have a look at some of the successful Dynamics 365 Sales customers in this industry.

Lexmark, a global provider of printing and imaging technology, needed a sustainable path to digital transformation by overhauling its sales and reporting processes. Lack of integration between different platforms within the company and its complex product and service ecosystem made it difficult to build configurations using its old configure, price, quote (CPQ) system. Using Dynamics 365 and Experlogix CPQ, the company integrated its CRM and CPQ system, resulting in a 43% drop in quote revisions and significant reduction in time-to-quote.

Andreas Stihl AG & Co. KG, a German-based company, develops, manufactures, and distributes power tools for professional and private users in the forestry and agriculture, landscape maintenance, and construction sectors. STIHL’s customers want consistent experiences across all touchpoints—online, print, or on-site at the dealer. However, STIHL didn’t have a unified CRM system. To overcome these challenges, STIHL adopted a central solution that would bring transparency to its business processes, combining dealer and customer data. STIHL rolled out its OneCRM, basing it on Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service. This solution provides a 360-degree view of customers and specialist dealers. By implementing this solution, STIHL significantly sped up its customer support response, and improved transparency within and between its sales subsidiaries worldwide.

As a premier supplier of transportation solutions, Siemens Mobility has been for 160 years handling complex solutions that require working with many departments, customers, and partners. In spring of 2020, the company had an urgent need for a CRM solution that could keep pace with its highly collaborative selling process and intricate customer journey. In just five months, Siemens transitioned fully to the new CRM solution. Since then, Siemens Mobility has been using Dynamics 365 to personalize and streamline marketing communication and to accelerate their tender-based sales processes. Dynamics 365 is used all the way from lead acquisition to deal closure including lead generation, lead qualification, and account and opportunity management. With all these processes in the same system, Siemens can easily follow process performance across all touchpoints and continue tuning the ways of working to keep equipping the world with seamless, sustainable, and reliable transport solutions.

Looking ahead with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales

You’ve seen how Dynamics 365 Sales has helped five customers from the financial services and manufacturing industries achieve their sales goals. Each faced unique challenges, but they all shared a common vision: to deliver more value to their customers. They’re not done yet—some of them are already exploring Microsoft Copilot for Sales capabilities to gain further insights and guidance.

“At Investec, we are very excited to see how we can leverage Copilot and AI within the Microsoft stack to connect our internal teams and to enhance our understanding further of prospective and current clients to ensure we are providing a best-in-class experience.”

—Dan Speirits, CRM Product Manager at Investec

Join our customers on their continued journey, ensuring their success and their customers’ success with the use of Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Sales.

Learn more about:

• Microsoft Copilot for Sales
• Dynamics 365 Sales

The post Adapting to change with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: Customers’ success stories appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.