Boost visibility, streamline role management, and enhance compliance  

In today’s digital landscape, managing security, roles, and licensing within ERP systems is increasingly complex. As organizations scale, the need for robust governance, efficient user management, and cost-effective licensing strategies becomes paramount. To address these challenges, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is introducing a set of new capabilities in our ERP portfolio. These new capabilities enhance security and governance, offering significant benefits to IT professionals and business leaders alike. 

A critical aspect of the upcoming security features is how they will help prepare for compliance certifications, including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). With regulatory standards becoming more stringent, achieving compliance is essential. More than ever, companies need to mitigate risks associated with fraud, reporting errors, and security breaches. As new AI technologies are adopted, security becomes even more top of mind. Robust governance frameworks safeguard sensitive data and ensure ethical AI deployment. The enhanced governance features will ensure that you can maintain rigorous control over financial processes, role management, and security protocols. These features provide visibility and a transparent audit trail, significantly easing the certification process. Additionally, they reduce the likelihood of non-compliance, protecting your organization from financial and reputational risks. 

“Bringing additional transparency and simplicity to our ERP customers for managing security, licensing and roles is a critical step in helping organizations meet their compliance and governance goals while saving costs.” – Georg Glantsching, VP, Microsoft Dynamics

Bringing new features to customers faster

Microsoft is delivering advanced security and role management features which will empower organizations to apply precise role management, advanced audit capabilities, and comprehensive license optimization tools, while maintaining a seamless user experience in Microsoft Dynamics 365. This ensures that you can access these critical features faster, enhancing security and operational efficiency. 

Simplify role management while reducing costs

We’ve listened to our customers and are introducing advanced features to the Dynamics 365 ERP portfolio, focusing on security management and licensing. This capability will simplify role management, providing you with tools to create, manage, and optimize roles within the ERP environment. The precise role and duty management feature, powered by tailored automations, allows organizations to define duties based on specific processes or tasks. This ensures role access aligns accurately with each team’s operational needs, leading to more accurate control over access permissions. Cost savings are driven by ensuring that licenses are scoped to each user’s specific needs. By refining role management in this way, these advanced features ensure organizations can scale with confidence while optimizing both governance and cost efficiency. 

Ensure compliance with role-based access control

Another critical feature is the segregation of duties (SoD) validation. This control mechanism ensures no single system user controls all aspects of any critical business process, reducing fraud and error risks. System administrators will be able to easily define incompatible tasks, ensuring that critical operations are not compromised. This feature is essential for leaders aiming to meet stringent regulatory requirements and maintain high levels of internal security. With integrated SoD validation, your business can minimize exposure to risk and better prepare for audits or regulatory reviews. 

Gain greater control with advanced security features

The new features coming to Dynamics 365 will include several advanced security controls giving system administrators greater visibility and control over their environments. The role audit trail will provide a non-removable history of permission changes, making it easier to track and audit role modifications over time. Security versioning and snapshot capabilities will allow security snapshots at specific points, enabling easy comparison or restoration if needed. The temporary role assignment feature will be invaluable for managing employee absences, allowing roles to be reassigned while maintaining strict control over access. These capabilities will provide peace of mind for business leaders that require agile, yet secure, role management. 

Control elevated privileges and secure sensitive data

A critical addition to the upcoming security features is the Elevated privilege management. (This is often referred to as super user privilege management (SPM) or ‘FireFighter’ in ERP world.) It provides the ability to manage and monitor elevated privileges for super users or administrators requiring temporary critical system access. Significantly reduce the risk of misuse or security breaches by restricting elevated access to specific, time-limited periods and tracking all super-user activities. This advanced control ensures only authorized personnel have access to sensitive systems, when necessary, further enhancing compliance and internal governance. 

Optimize costs with detailed licensing insights

The upcoming license report based on the new licensing model allows organizations to see exactly what license levels are applied to each user, calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO), and validate license accuracy. This report, alongside others like role components with license indicators and duty components with license indicators, provides a comprehensive view of license usage, helping optimize license costs effectively. These tools empower better licensing management, ensuring customers only pay for what they need and maximizing the value of their ERP investments. 

Looking ahead: the future of ERP security

As Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP portfolio evolves, these new features mark a significant step forward in ERP security and governance. For system administrators, these tools will provide enhanced control, reduced risk, and greater efficiency in managing complex ERP environments. Integrating these features into daily operations ensures ERP systems are secure and aligned with latest industry standards and best practices. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate, enhancing the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP portfolio. We look forward to delivering tools that empower you to excel in today’s dynamic business landscape. 

The post Optimizing ERP Security Configuration and Licensing within Microsoft Dynamics 365 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.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service

Transform your service operations, deliver exceptional service, and improve customer experiences.

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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.

Successful sales is and always will be about human interactions, and the building of familiarity, comfort, and trust. But getting to those moments—all the searching and compiling and preparation—can take a lot of drudgery. Ensuring that an entire team of sellers has the time and capacity to strengthen those human relationships can be an enormous feat.

Sales also is and always will be competitive. Catching a change in the tone of a customer’s voice, sensing some enthusiasm for a feature your product offers that others don’t, anticipating a pain point and solving it before it comes up—these are all small advantages that can create big wins. Your competitors know this, too.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Take advantage of Dynamics 365 to deepen customer relationships with next-generation AI.

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That’s where generative AI changes the game. For sales—and the customer relationship management (CRM) systems or platforms that drive them today—forgoing AI is not an option anymore. Implementing AI in ways that fit naturally with your business puts your sales teams at a competitive advantage. Forrester Research expects businesses that invest in enterprise AI initiatives to boost productivity and creative problem solving by 50 percent this year.¹ This expectation is predicated on the involvement, commitment, and understanding of leadership. Without leadership’s involvement in the planning and implementation of AI, organizations face difficulties realizing the technology’s potential and their own.  

While it’s true that most sellers are deep in digital debt, struggling to sip from a fire hose of data, emails, meetings, and notifications, AI should not be seen as merely a productivity tool. Rather, it’s a driver of growth, an enablement engine that transforms enterprises and primes them for innovation and future evolution. AI accelerates problem-solving by enabling data-driven decision making in real time, with far greater visibility at any moment in time. It also creates opportunities for unprecedented levels of personalization, creating the understanding among customers that you know them and their challenges.

By now you’ve probably heard about how AI can automate mundane tasks and allow employees to focus on higher level activities. In this blog post, we’ll show you specific use cases where AI can empower the innate skills of sellers to make CRM systems even more powerful and effective sales tools.

How generative AI lets sellers be more human

Prompt: “What are the pain points [Company] faces in the [industry] sector?”

In previous blog posts, we’ve pointed out how AI punches up personalization in the marketing and sales process, automating the production of tailored email templates and social media messages.

But AI personalization is not limited to content creation. It also means parsing data to ensure that a proposal is fine-tuned to address the specific customer pain points. Using information that might previously have taken hours to search, AI can test exactly which phrases and words resonate with specific sets of customers or sales segments. In essence, AI can make your customers feel heard. 

In part, that’s because you can spend more time listening. At its best, AI allows us to be more human. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, for instance, AI automatically collects and summarizes all pertinent details of sales calls and meetings in real time so sellers can be fully present during those valuable one-to-one conversations.

During a call, Copilot collects a wide range of information—pertinent pain points, customer sentiment, and action items triggered during the call—so sellers don’t have to be distracted by note-taking. Instead, they can bring to bear their situational awareness, focus on reading the moment, and react to context clues. Copilot creates the call summary and makes it available immediately, complete with action items triggered by the discussion.

But it’s not just about freeing sellers to be their best professional selves in those critical one-on-one conversations. AI can help sellers at every point it takes to get to those meetings—and well afterward, too.

Before the call: Bringing sales targets into sharper focus

Prompt: “Which of my accounts are most likely to close this quarter?”

The sales process in a nutshell involves knowing who to sell to, then knowing how to sell to each account identified. AI accelerates and enhances both processes.

Most sales leaders would agree that sellers spend too much time on non-selling activities. Research commissioned by Microsoft that included 31,000 workers across 31 markets found that sellers spend less than a third of their time actually selling. The same study indicated sellers spend more than 66 percent of their day managing email and other menial administrative tasks.² Their bosses support these findings.

Built to aggregate and refine massive amounts of data, AI can help from the very earliest stages of the sales process to investigate potential targets, providing data that sellers would take hours to collect on their own. And it’s not just time—AI creates utility by providing information sellers might fail to consider. Data that is already in a CRM system is continually augmented with relevant input from market research databases, news from the marketplace, or recent developments involving customers or their key decision makers.

This enriched information allows AI to help sellers score their prospect list based on a likelihood to convert historical engagements and other organizational data. With the right connected data source, a simple query like: “Which of my accounts are most likely to close this quarter?” generates accurate rankings that allow sellers to more effectively prioritize their efforts.

In addition to ordering target lists, AI provides valuable details about each specific account in a preparation brief, equipping sellers while slashing research time. Using natural language prompts, sellers can surface key details about new potential customers like pain points and purchasing patterns. In the case of existing customers, AI can populate account and opportunity summaries with names and titles of meeting participants, pending tasks, and highlights from recent meetings, email threads, and service or support tickets—so sellers come to each call primed with effectual information. AI can even predict the most optimal time to contact a customer and suggest the best channel for connecting. 

The presale time savings and utility of AI are significant. As per Gartner®, “By 2026, B2B sales organizations using generative-AI-embedded sales technologies will reduce the amount of time spent on prospecting and prepping for customer meetings by over 50 percent.”³

Optimal calls: Bringing persuasive information to every interaction

Prompt: “What does the [industry] say about our competitor’s products?”

AI’s ability to summarize and transform content allows AI-enabled CRM systems to process countless transactions and recommend approaches that work best. Sellers using AI can quickly accumulate compelling information, guided by best practices that help create a winning approach.

As we’ve noted, time is a limiting factor for sales teams. CRM systems enabled with AI, like Dynamics 365 Sales, can create dozens of pertinent, opportune introductory emails in seconds—a chore that used to take hours. 

But time-savings is only part of the picture. The quality of the emails produced by AI may include elements—active verbs, clear sentence structure—that not every seller excels in. For example, a seller from Company A might prompt an AI program to: “Draft a personalized email to [Company B] congratulating them on their recent product launch and suggesting a meeting to discuss how our solution can enhance their new product’s market performance.”

The resulting email can be personalized, note a recent development in the market, speak directly to an initiative that the customer is excited about, arrive at an opportune moment, and highlight features of the seller’s product tailored to address the customer’s pain points.

Furthermore, a simple query like: “What does the [industry] say about our [competitor]’s products? Once you collect that information, please provide me with five bullet points on how our [product] is differentiated”, would provide differentiating points to use at an appropriate moment in a sales call. In preparation for an important one-to-one, AI can surface key talking points, identify needs and pain points, and generate similar use cases and success stories.

Dynamics 365 Sales, for instance, tailors sales pitches with industry-specific insights, then personalizes, reviews, and refines them. But the utility doesn’t end in preparation. During a sales call, the system can identify sentiment triggers and suggest next-best actions, helping to close more deals.

After a meeting, thoughtfully composed follow-up emails build trust and goodwill, and open a door for further communication. In the past, writing these emails and making them specific enough to be valuable has eaten a huge chunk of sellers’ time.

Create a greater customer impact with Dynamics 365 Sales

These examples only scratch the surface of the ways AI can allow sellers to lean into the intuitive capabilities that allow them to excel at their jobs. The more you work with generative AI as a team, the more efficiencies you can find in your processes.

Automating menial tasks returns potential to where it belongs—to the human in the loop. Seamless integration into your CRM system and tools that your teams already use enables more opportunity for innovation and sales acceleration. Your teams can grow their skills even as the process of selling becomes easier and more human—which means each interaction can create greater impact with your customers.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales.

Sources:

¹Forrester 2024 Predictions: Exploration Generates Progress, Forrester Research, Inc., October 2023.

²Microsoft Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft, Inc., May 9, 2023

³Gartner, Multidimensional CRM: How GenAI Will Revolutionize Sales Force Automation Platforms, By Adnan Zijadic., 13 July, 2023. 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 How generative AI in customer relationship management emphasizes human skills to drive sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

All in on AI is a series featuring interviews from Microsoft executives across the company about what transforming work with AI means to their teams. Through these conversations, we’ll highlight the challenges each industry faces and the lessons we learned that our customers can use in their own AI journeys. In this episode, Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 and Future of Work sits down with Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft to explore the integration of AI in customer service.

According to the 2024 Work Trend Index, a study exploring into the global trends affecting employee work and wellness, employees are struggling to keep up with the pace and volume of work. Many employees report feeling burned out and as a result, staff turnover is on the rise.

These trends have profound implications, underscoring a crucial shift: employees are now prioritizing their health and well-being over work. This is a pressing concern for all business leaders, particularly in customer service. 

At Microsoft, we recognize the vital role our customer service agents play in delivering world-class care. As the front line between our business and our customers, the quality of our customer care directly impacts customer satisfaction. 

Recently, Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 and Future of Work joined Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft to discuss how our customer service teams are using AI solutions like Microsoft Copilot to ensure our customer service employees are empowered to focus on the most meaningful parts of their jobs. Here’s what she had to say: 

Adapting to the customer service surge with the power of AI 

Since 2019, Microsoft’s customer service teams, like many in the industry, have been managing a rising surge in calls from customers with complex needs. 

As a service industry veteran and leader of our customer service organization, Mala and her team realized that just adding more call-handling capacity wouldn’t suffice. Their goal was to help teams at scale—to empower them to manage more inquiries, address more complex customer needs, and to more rapidly onboard new employees to help with the surge. They also saw an opportunity to reduce case volumes by introducing self-service options for customers. 

The team began exploring the use of generative AI to enable a more consistent and seamless experience. Already one of the world’s largest support organizations using Dynamics 365 Customer Service, harnessing new AI capabilities could help the organization to automate and augment common support scenarios. As customer zero for our products, turning to Microsoft Copilot and Dynamics 365 Customer Service would enable us to quickly adopt the transformative power of generative AI, and share those learnings with business leaders to implement and improve their own customer support experience at scale.

Transforming the employee experience with generative AI 

As Mala explains in the interview, adopting Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Copilot Studio created an opportunity to transform work across four key areas of Microsoft’s customer service landscape. 

First, the Customer Service and Success team needed to speed up how quickly new hires could start helping existing customer service agents. Second, they wanted all support teams to access accurate information quickly and spend less time working across tools and data sources to collect customer and incident details. Third, they aimed to cut down on mundane tasks like data entry and paperwork so that customer service agents could focus more on complex issues that require empathy and judgment. Lastly, they aimed to improve self-help options for customers to handle their own questions, reducing the need for support requests. 

AI has the potential to drive operational excellence, nurture customer loyalty, and grow value through the entire customer journey—making it one of the most valuable tools for enterprises to create a consistent, differentiated experience, build meaningful relationships, and deliver better customer care.

Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft

1. Supporting new hires with better onboarding

The Microsoft Customer Service team introduced Copilot’s case summarization feature to break down complex information into simple summaries, helping new hires understand customer issues more quickly. By surfacing relevant information from diverse sources such as internal documentation, knowledge bases, and websites, Copilot accelerates the learning curve, enabling agents to resolve customer queries faster and deliver superior service. 

What’s more, Copilot supports new hires with ongoing learning and skill development by providing real-time assistance and insights. By using AI capabilities integrated into platforms like Dynamics 365 Customer Service, agents can more easily access tools and diagnostics and recommend optimal solutions. This empowers agents to deliver highly personalized customer experiences across all customer support needs, at a global scale.

2. Helping employees find the right information faster

With Copilot, agents can now find important information quickly, even if it was spread across different systems. Dynamics 365 Knowledge Assist helps agents zero in on the relevant information and articles faster than traditional search. It not only can suggest relevant information but provides context about the specific relevance of content and cites the source.

Having a more comprehensive and streamlined method to seek information not only helps agents solve issues more quickly—it gives them a more complete understanding of information relevant to the issue they’re trying to solve. Agents can now use this context, with Copilot, to craft a more thorough and accurate response to customers.

3. Automating burdensome tasks

Before Copilot, creating detailed case summaries could take up to 30 to 40 minutes. Now, with Copilot, it’s done in 15 minutes or less. This not only speeds up how quickly customer service agents can handle customer requests but also lets them manage more cases without sacrificing quality. 

Automating summaries and common email and communication tasks allows agents to spend much less time on repetitive tasks, giving them more time to focus on the more meaningful and often more rewarding aspects of their job.  

4. Transforming support with self-service

Prioritizing self-service by integrating Copilot Studio into our customer-facing experiences is starting to make a big difference in how Microsoft handles customer service. Now, customers can use the power of generative AI in Copilot Studio to access self-help resources.

This change has reduced the amount of work customer service teams have to do and lets agents concentrate on more complex issues where customers require assistance. As a result, they’re getting things done more efficiently, working together better, and feeling more satisfied with their jobs. 

Harnessing the business impact of Copilot  

As Mala explains in her interview, generative AI and Copilot have played a pivotal role in transforming our customer service organization at Microsoft, enabling teams to achieve more with fewer resources. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

1. Improved collaboration: Collaboration required among customer support agents decreased by 13%, making case resolution smoother and operations more efficient.

2. Enhancing efficiency: With Copilot, average chat case handling time reduced by up to 16%, giving agents better access to knowledge and improving overall efficiency.

3. Increasing productivity: Agents using Copilot became more productive, handling up to 12% more cases, which allowed them to serve more customers effectively. 

And that’s just the start. Mala sees a future for Copilot that will revolutionize the customer services industry, making it more efficient, responsive, and customer-centric.  

These include things like automatically connecting customers with appropriate experts, helping customers solve complex problems on their own, predicting issues before they happen, and personalizing interactions based on customer information and preferences. 

Join Microsoft on our AI journey  

By automating routine tasks and helping teams find information faster, Copilot helps our employees focus on what really matters to them, allowing them to dive deeper into the parts of their jobs they love.  

The speed at which AI is transforming business today is unprecedented, reimagining the way we work. We envision a future where AI alongside human expertise reduces and eliminates the seams in the support experience. 

Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft

Today, the power of AI is revolutionizing how companies innovate and create large-scale impact in all areas. Leveraging generative AI throughout the customer journey enables businesses to foster enduring customer loyalty by improving the overall experience, adding value at each interaction. 

This interview is part of our All in on AI series that explores how Microsoft is adopting AI across different areas of our business. Next, Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft Chief People Officer, sits down with Jared Spataro to share how AI is helping human resource teams do more with less and to share the transformative best practices she used to drive some of the highest, fastest AI adoption rates Microsoft has ever seen. 

The post All in on AI: Exploring Microsoft’s AI journey through customer service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Discover how Copilot for Dynamics 365 Commerce can help you deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize product management, and streamline retail operations for store associates, managers, and back-office staff with AI.

Transformative AI in Dynamics 365 Commerce

The retail industry is facing significant challenges and opportunities in today’s digital world. AI can help you create value for your customers and stand out from your competitors. It can help you solve critical challenges such as improving customer service, refining product management, increasing store associate productivity, and simplifying finances.

Dynamics 365 Commerce now includes Copilot, which helps you improve customer satisfaction, boost sales, increase profit margins, and enhance workforce productivity with automated insights, validations, and summaries that reduce the clicks and searches needed to find information, creating a near “one-click” retail experience.

Watch this brief video to see Copilot in action.

Customer insights

Copilot simplifies the process of understanding your customers. It aggregates data on customer preferences from Dynamics 365 Commerce, giving you an in-depth and comprehensive view of your customers, such as their favorite product categories, preferred price ranges, and lifetime value based on recency, frequency, and monetary metrics. You can view their previous interactions with a quick glance, making it easier to resume conversations or give customized follow-ups for better customer relationships and more personalized and effective engagement. Learn more about Copilot customer insights.

Product insights

Whether you’re introducing new products or welcoming new store employees, keeping everyone informed and prepared is essential. Copilot provides comprehensive product insights, including clear and concise descriptions, key benefits, inventory levels, and discount details, empowering your staff to elevate product sales. Additionally, employees can access information on related items like accessories and bundles, promoting a cross-selling environment that enhances the shopping experience and boosts sales. By equipping store employees with the knowledge and confidence to engage customers effectively, Copilot turns interactions into opportunities, increasing customer satisfaction, sales, and the all-important average order value.

Report insights

Envision a scenario where synthesizing insights to assess the performance of your retail channels becomes seamless. With Copilot, it’s easy. Copilot provides instant insights, generating narrative summaries for channel reports. You’ll receive a precise and succinct overview of critical metrics such as sales, revenue, profit, margin, and overall store performance—right at your fingertips. Copilot’s real-time analysis keeps you ahead, updating summaries as new data arrives, empowering your store associates to communicate results effectively, accurately, instantly. Embrace the future of retail intelligence with Copilot and revolutionize the way you interact with your data. Learn more about Copilot report insights in Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Retail statement insights

Copilot can summarize posted and unposted retail statements, highlighting key insights such as the number of affected transactions, total sales amount, and risks like returns without receipts, expense transactions, and price overrides. These insights into retail statements allow for straightforward and efficient management of financial reports and help you detect and correct discrepancies and risks in your retail statements by providing a clear summary of anomalies in transactional activity. By using Copilot-powered insights, you can identify issues without wading through numerous forms, promptly take corrective measures, and reduce the need for support inquiries to solve problems. Learn more about Copilot retail statement insights in Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Merchandise more efficiently

Merchandising is a complex and time-consuming process that involves configuring products, categories, catalogs, and attributes for each channel. Merchandisers need to ensure that their products are displayed correctly and accurately on the online store, and that they comply with each channel’s business rules and policies. However, manual configuration is prone to human error, and it doesn’t scale for businesses that have millions of products, thousands of attributes, and hundreds of categories and catalogs across hundreds of stores.

Copilot enhances merchandiser efficiency by streamlining merchandising workflows, summarizing product settings, and automating data validation by checking for errors and inconsistencies in your product merchandising data. From the Copilot summaries, you can navigate to a list of issues and act without losing context to address problems promptly and efficiently. Your products are always correctly configured and displayed, enhancing customer satisfaction and boosting sales. Learn more about Copilot merchandising insights in Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Ensuring the ethical use of AI technology 

Microsoft is committed to the ethical deployment of AI technologies. Through our Responsible AI practices, we ensure that all AI-powered features in Dynamics 365 adhere to stringent data privacy laws and ethical AI usage standards, promoting transparency, fairness, and accountability. 

Conclusion

Copilot features for Dynamics 365 Commerce are revolutionizing the retail experience by bringing AI to store associates, store managers, channel managers in the back office, and merchandisers. They’re simplifying complex data analysis, personalizing customer service, optimizing product management, and driving business growth by improving customer loyalty, increasing sales, and enhancing profitability.

If you’re ready to take your retail business to the next level, contact us today to learn more about how Copilot can help you transform your retail business.

Copilot functionalities in Store Commerce are available starting with the following versions:

• 10.0.39, from Proactive Quality Update 4 (PQU-4) onwards (CSU: 9.49.24184.3, Store Commerce App 9.49.24193.1)
• 10.0.40, from Proactive Quality Update 1 (PQU-1) onwards (CSU: 9.50.24184.2, Store Commerce App 9.50.24189.1)

Copilot functionalities in back office (Headquarters) are available starting with the following versions:

•   10.0.38 from Proactive Quality Update 5 (PQU-5) or subsequent updates
•   10.0.39 from Proactive Quality Update 3 (PQU-3) or later versions
•   All editions of Commerce version 10.0.40 onward

Next steps

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Engage with other Dynamics 365 users in our community forums to learn from their experiences and share your own.

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The post Copilot for Dynamics 365 Commerce revolutionizes retail with AI appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms were designed to help integrate the fragmented processes that comprise the operation of a large enterprise. But the way we do business keeps fundamentally changing. New business models disrupt the way companies sell products and services, blurring industry lines and transforming customer experiences.

Business complexity continues to intensify, and the rise of data as a driver of business—plus the attendant proliferation of data streams—means reaping the full promise of comprehensive ERP platforms can still be elusive.

In fact, according to a Gartner® Research report, “by 2027, less than 30% of customers who adopted new solutions from ERP platform mega-vendors will have proven their original adoption business case.”¹

The arrival of generative AI brings hope of renewed promise. AI is elevating performance and creating advantages for those who understand how to apply it to data-centric systems like ERP platforms. By 2027, according to the same Gartner report, at least 50 percent of ERP systems with AI-enabled features will be enabled through generative AI capabilities.¹

People often think of generative AI as a tool to automate routine tasks, but its capabilities are so much broader. Improved decision-making is an area where AI becomes a valuable tool. In fact, a report from the market research firm IDC found that, by mid-2024, 30% of global organizations will take advantage of human-like interfaces in their enterprise applications to gain more insights quickly, improving decision velocity.²

While AI can inform and enhance any number of operations across an enterprise, it’s worth looking at some specific processes in detail to see how much AI can elevate ERP solutions. Learn more about current trends in ERP platform modernization in the age of generative AI in this webinar.

How AI creates a better plan-to-produce process

Most manufacturing firms implement a plan for how they will schedule production runs to meet materials capacity, deliver quality products on time, and maintain cost-effectiveness.

Sometimes, though, this plan-to-produce process becomes an accretion of good ideas at the time, a fragmented assemblage of tools and strategies trying to work together to paint the big picture of what’s happening on the production floor. This can lead to quality control issues, and manpower and equipment shortages that fail to meet production surges, or inaccurate forecasts that waste resources or leave customers high and dry—among other issues.

Generative AI integrated with a robust ERP system can aggregate data from across an enterprise—even data residing in multiple clouds—in real time, so managers have a clear picture of the state of play at any given moment, allowing them to reduce lead times necessary to plan or alter production runs.

The complicated interdependence of tasks on a manufacturing floor—for example, Part A must be installed before Part B can be attached—is a perfect puzzle for AI to help solve. The predictive analytics capacity of generative AI allows it to better forecast demand and synch production with supplies, and then optimize timing to match resource availability with manpower. AI can also forecast and build scenarios for supply chain disruption or changes in demand.

Whether a manufacturer needs to increase production volume to meet increasing demand or build whole new facilities, AI excels at building scalable networks, finding efficiencies, and reducing costly interventions.

Learn more about how Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and other applications optimize the plan-to-produce process.

Optimizing the procure-to-pay process

Another process most large organizations seek to optimize is the integration of procurement with accounts payable. When you need to spend the money, it’s good to know that you have the money. IDC reports that, by mid-2025, 70% of global businesses will use embedded financing to collect and make payments.²

More than most industries, healthcare organizations must reckon with a complex field of myriad payers, purchasers, and suppliers. Healthcare organizations face layers of challenging regulatory compliance and the need to control ever-rising costs. Many organizations in this field still rely on antiquated, paper-based invoicing and payables.

Fragmented processes and siloed data make regulatory issues more fraught, while also increasing attack surfaces to create security risks. AI can remove complexities by integrating processes in one ERP platform, helping to reduce vulnerabilities. By mapping operations to standards, AI supports compliance efforts, efficiently creating the audit trails and tedious reports that often take staff hours to produce.

AI streamlines procurement, reducing the potential for human error present when ordering supplies and equipment from a diverse range of providers. It tracks expenses to help control costs, providing easily accessible price information about competing products and services so the organization can continually find cost efficiencies.

An ERP solution enhanced with AI allows planners to automate the maintenance of inventory with both real-time and predictive information, reducing the risk of stockouts or overstock situations and more effectively communicating with suppliers.

Quicker quote-to-cash with personalization and automation

AI integrates and improves the sales, finance, and supply elements of an ERP platform by increasing automation in negotiations, contract lifecycles, production, order management, billing, and delivery. For businesses with retail components, making the quote-to-cash cycle faster and more accurate creates efficiencies—which can help keep customers happier.

Automating price and quote information speeds up the resolution of even highly complex deals. The same is true once a quote is accepted—an accurate, automatically generated proposal follows immediately. AI-generated purchase orders and invoices free sellers to spend more time interacting with customers and accounting teams to focus on tasks that increase the organization’s productivity.

AI’s predictive analytics ensure on-time delivery of products but also allow firms to quickly identify current and future trends and make data-driven decisions about ordering and pricing. Automating invoicing tracks payments accurately and creates a real-time picture of cash flow. AI can continually improve cash flow forecasts by comparing projections with results and adjusting from the outcomes over time. And analytics enabled by AI offer suggestions for improving sales performance and strategic decisions.

Learn more about how Copilot for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance optimizes the quote-to-cash and other retail business processes.

Get more from your business data with AI-enabled ERP processes

Across the organization, optimizing finance and supply chains can create a connected enterprise that allows enterprises to infuse AI, automation, and analytics into ERP processes. Today, companies can confidently move to the cloud with AI-powered ERP solutions, modernize business processes, and unlock the agility needed to lead the way in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. 

A recent Forrester Research study interviewed IT leaders and professionals who had experience using Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP software.³ Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that has 5,000 employees and generates USD1 billion in annual revenue. Forrester found that, over a three-year period, the value added to the composite included:

• USD1.2 million in increased profitability from real-time visibility and enhanced decision-making.
• USD8.9 million in increased productivity from unified data access, streamlined processes, automated workflows, and other gained efficiencies.
• USD3.9 million in reduced infrastructure and IT operations spend from cloud migration.
• USD8.9 million in productivity improvements in finance/accounting, supply chain/logistics, and other personnel.

The study estimated a net present value of USD8.1 million and an ROI of 106%, as well as additional benefits like an improved cybersecurity posture and enhanced employee experiences. The composite organization would pay back its investment in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP software in 17 months.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP software

Learn more about the total economic impact of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP software

Read the report

AI-enabled ERP platforms allow you to protect, connect, and get more from your business data while gaining security. With the right ERP solution, you can scale globally to drive business expansion and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) while ensuring regulatory compliance, supercharging productivity, and realizing the business impacts of generative AI even faster.

Sources

¹ Predicts 2024: ERP Evolves Planning With Automation and AI, Denis Torii, Gartner Research, April 5, 2024

² IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Intelligent ERP 2024 Predictions, doc #US51300923, October 2023

³ The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP, Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Dynamics 365 ERP, a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study commissioned By Microsoft, April 2024

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 Transforming ERP, and the speed of business, with generative AI 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.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

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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.

How CFOs and finance leaders can make data-driven decisions and optimize business performance.

Why being data driven is key for CFOs

Amid the growing demand on CFOs to catalyze growth, maintaining a holistic view of business performance can be crucial. Data-driven finance leaders not only ensure this is possible within their team, but also empower the entire organization with access to the analysis and insights needed to make informed decisions within the flow of their work, securely.

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The data-driven CFO can use Business Central to optimize business performance.

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According to a recent white paper for CFOs (9 Emerging Trends for the Futurist CFO), more than 50% of the identified trends that will affect their departments and businesses over the next few years are about data and reporting.

And if you ask Microsoft Copilot: What are the top three challenges that CFOs in small and medium-sized businesses face in 2024 that can be improved with internal reporting?

You might get an answer such as: In 2024, CFOs in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face several key challenges that can be significantly improved with effective internal reporting. Here are the top three:

1. Economic uncertainty: With ongoing fluctuations in the global economy, CFOs need to make informed decisions quickly. Detailed financial reports can provide insights into market trends, helping CFOs to forecast and plan more accurately.
2. Cost management: Identifying and controlling costs is crucial for maintaining profitability. Internal reports can highlight areas of inefficiency and suggest where cost-saving measures can be implemented without compromising quality.
3. Performance measurement: Tracking the performance of various departments and projects is essential for strategic planning. Internal reports provide valuable data on key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling CFOs to assess progress and make data-driven decisions.

How can you as a CFO or financial leader turn this advice into something more practical, allowing you to help people become more data driven in their day-to-day work? Read on to understand how the business intelligence (BI) triangle model breaks analytics scenarios down into tangible tasks with suggestions of which tools are appropriate for each of them.

The BI triangle: Mapping analytics scenarios to tools

One of the challenges that you face is how to access, analyze, and present data in a way that suits your needs and preferences. Different scenarios and roles in the office of the CFO may require different tools and formats to deliver the best insights and outcomes. That’s why Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a comprehensive and flexible set of analytics tools and capabilities that can address the diverse needs and preferences of finance leaders.

We call this the “BI triangle”, which consists of four types of analytics tools:

• Microsoft Power BI finance reports: Access these reports out-of-the-box including powerful semantic models and stunning and interactive visualizations. You can use the Power BI reports to get an overview of finance KPIs, dive deeper into your data, create custom dashboards and metrics, and share your insights with others. The new Power BI reports are coming in the 2024 release wave 2.
• Financial reporting: This capability set provides no-code financial reporting specialized for producing financial statements that look the way you want.
• Ad-hoc data analysis: Delivers the ability to filter, group, and pivot data directly in Business Central. Use it to get an overview of analytic scenarios not covered by standard reports, drill down into details, and export data to Excel.
• Excel finance reports: Excel reports use Microsoft’s familiar and widely used spreadsheet tool, which is loved by financial professionals for its powerful capabilities in performing calculations, analysis, and formatting. Whether you need to bring your financial data into Excel for easy manipulation, create charts and tables, apply formulas and functions, or analyze outliers with Copilot in Excel, the built-in Excel reports provide the flexibility to present your data exactly as you prefer.

With the BI triangle, you can choose the best tool for the job, depending on your scenario and audience. You can also switch between the tools seamlessly, as they are all integrated with Business Central and use the same data source.

Access more information about the BI triangle here.

Analyze your business data with new Power BI reports

One of the benefits of using Power BI reports is that you can access a rich set of new and improved reports designed specifically for Business Central and that cover various aspects of your business, such as finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, and projects.

These reports are available out of the box and can be accessed from within Business Central or from Power BI.

Another benefit of using Power BI reports is that you can access your data and insights while on the go from various devices. Whether you’re in the office, on the road, or at home, you can use the Power BI app on your phone or tablet to view and interact with your reports, get notifications and alerts, and stay on top of your business performance.

In the 2024 release wave 2, Dynamics 365 Business Central will include more than 70 reports covering analytics scenarios across finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, and projects.

Track your finance KPIs with Power BI metrics and get alerted in Microsoft Teams when they cross thresholds

With Power BI, you can create and monitor metrics, which are key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure progress toward your goals and objectives. You can easily create metrics on any number shown in your Power BI finance reports and set targets and thresholds for them. You can also view your metrics on your Power BI dashboard and see how they change over time and compare to your targets and thresholds.

You can even integrate your KPIs with Teams and get alerted when your KPI metrics cross certain thresholds, such as when your expenses exceed your budget or when your revenue falls below your forecast. This way, you can stay informed and act quickly and efficiently.

Get executive summaries on your finance data with Copilot in Power BI

Want to use AI to get more from your data? With Copilot in Power BI, you get a conversational AI assistant that can help you get answers and insights from your data using natural language. How about asking Copilot for an executive summary on your financial overview?

You can use Copilot in Power BI to ask questions about your data, such as: “What is my net income for the last quarter?” or “How does my cash flow compare to the previous year?”. Copilot in Power BI will analyze your data and provide you with relevant and concise answers in the form of charts, tables, or text. You can also use Copilot in Power BI to get executive summaries on your data, by using prompts such as: “Summarize my financial performance for the last month” or “Highlight the main drivers of my revenue growth”. Copilot will generate a summary report that highlights the key facts and insights from your data in a clear and engaging way.

Other ways that Business Central supports the data-driven CFO

Power BI is not the only way that Business Central supports the data-driven CFO. Other analytics features and capabilities can help you access, analyze, and present your data in an effective and efficient way. Here are some examples:

Create financial statements with no-code financial reporting (new templates coming in 2024 release wave 2). This feature allows you to create and customize your own financial statements, such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, using a simple and intuitive interface. You can choose from a variety of templates; add or remove accounts, columns, and rows; and format and style your statements. You can also drill down into the details of your data or export your statements to Excel or PDF to share them with others. Access more information about the new Financial Reporting templates in the 2024 release wave 2 here.

Analyze finance data your way with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central analysis assist. This feature allows you to analyze your finance data using natural language and get suggestions and recommendations from an AI assistant. You can explore your data, discover patterns and trends, and find answers and insights.

If you prefer to slice and dice the data, you can open any list in Business Central, switch on analysis mode, and group, filter, and pivot the data your way. When your analysis is ready, you can save it, or maybe share it with a coworker.

Use out-of-the-box Excel reports for finance (when you want the power and flexibility of Excel). Business Central comes with pre-built and curated Excel reports that cover various aspects of your finance data, such as Trial Balance by Period, Aged Account Receivables, and Aged Account Payables. You can use these reports to view and manipulate your data in your familiar and preferred data tool, create charts and tables, and use formulas and functions, or analyze for outliers with Copilot in Excel.

Harness the full potential of the analytical tools within Business Central

As the roles of the CFO and finance teams continue to evolve, the ability to harness data for strategic decision-making is a necessity. Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a comprehensive and flexible set of analytics tools and capabilities that can empower finance leaders to make data-driven decisions and optimize business performance. Whether you need a quick and easy way to view and explore your data, a powerful and popular tool to analyze and visualize your data, or a familiar and widely used tool to manipulate and present your data, Business Central has you covered. With Business Central, you can also take advantage of the power of AI and cloud to access your data and insights while on the go from various devices, and to get answers and summaries from natural language queries and commands. You can also integrate your data and insights with other Microsoft products, such as Teams, to collaborate and communicate more effectively with your colleagues and partners.

Learn more about using Business Central

If you want to learn more about how the data-driven CFO can use Business Central, visit the financial analytics section of our documentation, where you can find more information and resources on the various analytics scenarios and tools.

The post Experience the new generation of financial analytics and reporting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is about knowing today the best way to approach tomorrow. It’s about collecting accurate snapshots of various business functions at any point in time, so leaders can make clear, careful decisions that poise the organization to thrive in the future.    

ERP sprang from systems designed to help manufacturers track inventory and raw material procurement. As businesses have become more complex and computing more ubiquitous, ERP platforms have grown into aggregated tech stacks or suites with vertical extensions that track data from supply chain, logistics, asset management, HR, finance, and virtually every aspect of the business. But adding all those facets—and their attendant data streams—to the picture can clutter the frame, hampering the agility of an ERP platform. 

Generative AI helps restore clarity. One of the animating features of AI lies in its ability to process data that lives outside the ERP—all the data an organization can access, in fact—to output efficient, error-free information and insights. AI-enabled ERP systems increase business intelligence by aggregating comprehensive data sets, even data stored in multiple clouds, in seconds, then delivering information from them securely, wherever and whenever they may be needed.  

Today we’ll examine a few of the many ways AI elevates ERP functionality. 

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ERPs began as ways to plan material flow to ensure smooth manufacturing runs. Today’s supply chains remain as vulnerable as ever to price fluctuations, political turmoil, or natural disasters. In many firms, buyers and procurement teams must handle fluctuations and change response in large volumes of purchase orders involving quantities and delivery dates. They frequently have to examine these orders individually and assess risk to plans and downstream processes. 

Now, ERPs can use AI to quickly assess and rank high- and low-impact changes, allowing teams to rapidly take action to address risk. AI-enabled ERPs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 allow users to handle purchase order changes at scale and quickly communicate with internal and external stakeholders.  

Using natural language, an AI-assistant can bring relevant information into communications apps, keeping all parties apprised of, say, unexpected interruptions in supply due to extreme climate events or local market economics—and able to collaborate to find a rapid solution.  

Planners can proactively stress-test supply chains by simply prompting the AI Assistant with “what-if?” scenarios. Risk managers might ask, “If shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf is interrupted, what are our next fastest supply routes for [material] from [country]?” Empowered with AI’s ability to reason over large volumes of data, make connections, and then deliver recommendations in clear natural language, the right ERP system could help provide alternatives for planners to anticipate looming issues and downgrade risk. 

Learn more about Copilot for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

AI enables better project management 

Supply chain may be where ERPs were born, but we’ve come a long way. ERPs now contribute to the run of business across the organization—and AI can make each of these more powerful.  

Whether you call them project managers or not, every organization has people whose job it is to manage projects. The chief obstacles for project managers typically involve completing projects on time and on budget. An AI-enabled ERP can cut the time project managers spend compiling status reports, planning tasks, and running risk assessments.  

Take Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365 Project Operations, for instance. With Copilot, creating new project plans—a task that used to take managers hours to research and write—now takes minutes. Managers can type in a simple description of the project, details of the timeline, budget, and staff availability. Then, Copilot generates a plan. Managers can fine-tune as necessary and launch the project. Along the way, Copilot automatically produces real-time status reports in minutes, identifies risks, and suggests mitigation plans—all of which is updated and adjusted on a continuous basis as the project progresses and new data becomes available. 

Learn more about Copilot for Dynamics 365 for Project Operations.

Follow the money: AI streamlines financial processes  

Timely payments, healthy cash flow, accurate credit information, successful collections—all of these functions are important for competitive vigor. All are part of a robust ERP, and all can be optimized by AI.  

At the top of the organization, real-time, comprehensive snapshots of the company’s financial positions enable leadership agility. But at an ongoing, operational level, AI can improve financial assessments for every department as well. By accessing data streams from across the organization—supply chain, HR, sales, accounts payable, service—AI provides financial planners with the ability to make decisions about budgets, operations planning, cash flow forecasting, or workforce provisioning based on more accurate forecasts and outcomes.  

AI can help planners collaboratively align budgets with business strategy and engage predictive analytics to sharpen forecasts. Anywhere within an ERP enhanced visibility is an advantage, AI provides it—and more visibility enables greater agility. AI can, for instance, mine processes to help optimize operations and find anomalies the human eye might fail to catch.  

An AI-enabled ERP system also elevates the business by closing talent gaps across the organization.  

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP.

The future of smarter: Finding new workflows with generative AI  

These are just a few of the ways AI eases current workflows. The untapped strength of AI in an ERP lies in companies finding new workflows enabled by AI that add value—like predictive maintenance algorithms for machines on a factory floor, or recommendation engines to find new suppliers or partners, or modules that aid in new product design enhanced by customer feedback. 

The future rarely looks simpler than the past. When faced with increasing complexity, a common human adaptation is to compartmentalize, pack information into silos that we can shuffle around in our minds. In a business context, ERP platforms were conceived to integrate those silos with software, so people can manage the individual streams of information the way a conductor brings the pieces of a symphony together, each instrument at the right pitch and volume, in the right time.   

Generative AI helps us to do just that, collecting all the potential inputs and presenting them in a relationship to each other. This frees planners to focus on the big picture and how it all comes together, so we can decide which elements to adjust and where it all goes next.   

Learn more about Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365.

Using generative AI responsibly is critical to the continued acceptance of the technology and the maximizing of its potential. Microsoft has recently released its Responsible AI Transparency Report for 2024. This report details the criteria for how we build applications responsibly, decide when to release generative applications, support our customer in building responsibly, and learn, grow, and evolve our generative AI offerings.   

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