A well-orchestrated workforce is the backbone of any successful customer service endeavor. This requires a systematic and holistic approach to Workforce Management (WFM), taking into account the diverse needs of customers, the fluctuating demands of the market, and the ever-changing nature of business operations.

WFM holds together the intricate machinery of customer support, ensuring operational efficiency and exceptional customer experiences. In a dynamic environment, where seamless interactions are critical, workforce management goes beyond the simple task of staffing and extends to the strategic alignment of resources, skills, and time.

Businesses choose a workforce management solution based on their unique challenges, such as compliance with labor laws. Microsoft understands that customer scenarios vary, and hence offers an open approach to incorporating the right WFM solutions. This gives customers unparalleled flexibility and efficiency in managing their workforce when using Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

WFM adapter from TTEC Digital for Dynamics 365 Customer Service

As a first step, Microsoft has partnered with TTEC Digital to offer an enhanced adapter that connects Dynamics 365 Customer Service with four leading WFM providers: Calabrio, Verint, NICE and Alvaria. The adapter is bidirectional, enabling seamless data transfer between the systems. It offers features such as real-time adherence reporting and historical reporting. Users can forecast demand on supported channels, namely inbound voice, SMS, email, chat and digital messaging, and staff accordingly.

With the enhanced adapter, organizations can use the schedule sync feature to seamlessly import schedules created in the WFM system directly into the agent calendar in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This functionality empowers agents to conveniently review their daily schedules including breaks, training sessions, and other activities directly in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, eliminating the need to navigate to an external WFM system. This not only boosts individual performance but also contributes to overall team efficiency.

Currently, Schedule Sync is supported when using the adapter with Calabrio’s WFM system. Microsoft plans to expand support for other WFM providers.

Learn more about the WFM adapter from TTEC and watch a short video demonstration. Also, explore additional information such as pricing and buying options by checking out the TTEC WFM Adapter on Microsoft AppSource.

Connect any third-party WFM with Dynamics 365 Customer Service

The extensible nature of the Dynamics 365 platform gives organizations a publicly consumable Dataverse API. It offers maximum flexibility and customization for connecting WFM solutions with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

For a detailed understanding including design architecture, entity details, and API specifications, please refer to this guide. Sample codes are available in the GitHub repository to expedite your journey.

What’s next

Microsoft is committed to an open and flexible approach to bringing more WFM adapters to Microsoft AppSource and enhancing the existing adapter from TTEC. Microsoft expects to offer continued API enhancements to support any third-party WFM connections.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers a native forecasting capability, currently in public preview. The feature empowers customers to predict both volume and demand for contact centers. We plan to enhance and expand on this capability with additional advancements, providing customers with more powerful tools for forecasting.

Stay tuned as Dynamics 365 Customer Service continues to evolve and deliver cutting-edge capabilities in WFM that anticipate and meet the ever-changing demands of the modern business landscape. Your journey to enhanced workforce management with Dynamics 365 Customer Service has just begun.

Learn more

To learn more about agent forecasting in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, read the documentation: Forecast agent, case, and conversation volumes in Customer Service | Microsoft Learn

The post Orchestrate your WFM solution with Dynamics 365 Customer Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

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

2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader

Read the report

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

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

What is customer service modernization?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bottom line

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

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

Next steps

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

Learn more about:

• Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 AI

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

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

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

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

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

Manufacturers worldwide are investing heavily in digital transformation, overhauling almost every aspect of their operations and business models. But one key group—frontline workers —are still awaiting their digital renaissance.

Today, many organizations feel their workers are not empowered or digitally well-equipped. Manufacturers struggle with high turnover and the challenge of training and upskilling new workers. Downtime and worker productivity remain nearly universal issues.

To help address these issues, Microsoft is investing in frontline worker enablement across a broad range of technologies. This includes new solutions to help frontline workers deliver exceptional service with next-generation AI, as well as on our ongoing investment in mixed reality hardware and solutions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides cultivates collaborative environments where people put knowledge into action. Here are three ways mixed reality is addressing frontline worker training, support, and knowledge transfer across industries:

1. Resolve issues quickly with remote support and collaboration

Unplanned downtime is costly. The average manufacturer confronts over 800 hours of equipment downtime a year, or 15 hours per week. Industrial manufacturers consequently spend almost USD50 billion on downtime every year.¹ In these high-pressure situations, communication across functions can either speed resolution or create blockers to forward progress.

Historically, manufacturing environments fostered knowledge silos with valuable insights confined to individuals, groups, or departments. Mixed reality shifts this dynamic. Workers can share real-time, situational video of their environment, allowing others to experience it firsthand—regardless of location. Expert guidance, troubleshooting, or step-by-step instructions are immediate. This eliminates the need to travel, while minimizing downtime and production disruptions.

Gone are the days where access to experts, communication barriers, or information silos dictate how knowledge is shared or when assets are repaired. Working on assembly or service lines requires specialized skills and expertise. Access to individuals with the relevant, hands-on experience, however, is not always possible. With Dynamics 365 Guides, when specialized skills are required, experts are a Microsoft Teams call away. 

Together, Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist with Teams connect workers beyond their physical limits. A communication hub, Teams enables collaboration across the workforce. Its integration with Dynamics 365 Guides allows workers to extend this to the physical world on any device.

2. Accelerate training with information in context

Frontline workers are the backbone of industry operations. These roles demand technical savvy, quick decision-making, and resiliency. Traditional in-place training and onboarding processes are often ineffective or add to the cognitive burden of overwhelmed frontline workers.

Hands-on training with physical assets is expensive, time-consuming, and at times dangerous. Inconsistent quality or impersonal training is often the result. However, holographic environments can mitigate these on-ramping risks. Embracing mixed reality accelerates learning by introducing relevant, task-specific knowledge in new immersive and data rich environments.

Using 3D models and digital twins, frontline workers receive a better understanding of the machines and processes at hand. Related materials are retrieved or amended instantly, nurturing knowledge exchange, which is further enhanced by AI. Mixed reality is the eyes and ears of AI. Delving into operation nuances for personalized, in-depth learning becomes easier. When integrated, mixed reality and AI accelerate worker training, shortening steps and supplying users with the working knowledge they need for the task at hand.

With Dynamics 365 Guides frontline and service workers can start accelerating their role-based knowledge today. Workers receive purpose-built, interactive guidance on complex machinery, assembly protocols, or maintenance steps when and where they need it.

3. Ensure transfer of information, insights, and skills

As employees near retirement, their wealth of expertise needs to be captured and shared. These experts understand the assets and processes that keep production moving. Retaining and transferring that knowledge is vital. There’s just one problem: Manufacturing is experiencing a talent exodus. Globalization, unemployment, and a rapidly aging workforce together are compounding operational challenges. Organizations are rightfully concerned. One-third of manufacturing executives claim retaining and replacing high-performing employees as a strategic priority in 2023.² Mixed reality is poised to help solve this by capturing information for informed decision-making and greater productivity.

Mixed reality facilitates knowledge retention and transfer across an organization through the creation of immersive experiences and simulations, regardless of location or device. The versatility of mixed reality makes up-skilling faster and more accessible. Dynamics 365 Guides offers industrial workers the opportunity to document unique situational processes and procedures not included in asset operating manuals. Step-by-step instructions, annotations, and “on the ground” insights are placed in context and immediately accessible throughout the day.

With Dynamics 365 Guides embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile, mixed reality is democratized for every worker. Organizations now have asset, maintenance, and service information at their fingertips. This combination in one app improves worker accuracy, productivity, and efficiency—while offering powerful guidance on the device at hand.

Realize your future manufacturing potential

Mixed reality is a key part of an emerging technology category known as the industrial metaverse. Its foundational cross-platform technologies—including AI, cloud to edge, digital twins, machine learning, and mixed reality—are shifting our relationship with data from stationary to dynamic experiences.

Mixed reality is an essential glue that visualizes the diverse elements of the industrial metaverse. Seamlessly integrating the physical and digital, mixed reality creates immersive experiences that transcend traditional industrial operations. Guides overlays information atop real-world assets and scenarios, making knowledge available in context where it is needed most.

Prepare your workforce for their smart manufacturing future with mixed reality. Learn how Dynamics 365 Guides can help realize tangible business outcomes.

Dynamics 365 Guides

Optimize operations and solve problems in real-time with holographic guidance.

Get started

¹Manufacturing Without Unplanned Downtime Could Become A Reality Sooner Than You Think, Forbes.

²2023 manufacturing industry outlook, Deloitte.

The post 3 ways mixed reality empowers frontline workers appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Microsoft recently introduced Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first AI copilot integrated into customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications in the cloud, that is designed to augment workflows, uncover insights, identify the next best actions, and reduce time spent on administrative tasks. Organizations relying on on-premises applications will struggle to compete with peers embracing these AI-powered technologies in the cloud. It is paramount for companies to migrate their critical business processes to the cloud now.

We at Microsoft want to empower every organization of any size to adopt these innovative AI-powered technologies so that no one is left behind, and that is why we are introducing AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move).

AIM offers organizations a tailored path to move critical processes to the cloud with confidence. It provides qualified customers with access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, expert assessments, investment offers, tools, and migration support.

AIM’s coverage extends to a broad range of on-premises business applications from Microsoft, including Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics SL, and Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises. It truly reflects Microsoft’s commitment to guiding on-premises business application customers into the era of AI-guided productivity.

Let’s dive deeper into the AIM offering.

Accelerate now by starting with AIM assessments

Before embarking on a cloud migration journey, businesses want to understand the business value, expected outcomes, and key steps and dependencies for moving their on-premises business applications to the cloud. We designed AIM assessments to help customers answer these foundational questions. Our partner ecosystem plays a vital role in delivering these assessments, and now with AIM, we are expanding the coverage of the partner activities program to include AIM assessments for a broad portfolio of on-premises products.

Innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition

When migrating to the cloud, accelerating time to value while minimizing risks is crucial for project success. AIM offers expert implementation guidance and services from Microsoft and its certified partners. Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployments, provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, as well as transitioning from on-premises to the cloud.

AIM provides partners with access to additional Success by Design tools and guidance, such as the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal, which offers tailored implementation guidance for successful cloud deployment. FastTrack solution architects from Microsoft are available to collaborate with eligible customers, validating solution architectures, mitigating risks, and overcoming deployment blockers. These architects work closely with the partner ecosystem to ensure seamless transitions. And as part of our Unified Support offerings, we’re launching new project quality advisory services that help support a successful cloud transformation.

Partners that want to accelerate their customers’ move to the cloud can work together with AIM Modernization Centers. These service providers bring tools, assessments, and expert migration guidance to other Microsoft partners and their customers, allowing partners to build migration expertise while focusing on delivering business outcomes for their customers. 

Move with agility and scale as your business grows.

Transforming your business through the cloud is an incremental process. AIM provides exclusive offers that help customers optimize their investments. The recently expanded Bridge to the Cloud 2 (BTTC2) promotional offer enables on-premises customers to utilize discounted subscription pricing as part of migrating to the cloud.*

In summary, AIM is a comprehensive offering that unlocks the potential of AI-powered business systems while reducing costs, providing agility for business model innovation, and operating securely with resilience. Let’s explore how some customers have benefited from moving their legacy on-premises business applications to Dynamics 365 in the cloud.

Reducing costs and driving efficiency

United Kingdom-based energy company Viridor experienced immediate cost savings and a 50 percent reduction in legacy apps after migrating to Dynamics 365, resulting in reduced IT support costs. It further experienced a 30 percent reduction in reporting effort across the organization and is saving 400 hours a month through streamlined account processes. Similarly, UK-based manufacturer Kodak Alaris projected a 25 percent cost reduction by migrating to Dynamics 365, driven by decreased customizations and ISV costs.

Driving agility and scale

Manor AG, burdened by aging applications and on-premises infrastructure, initiated a cloud migration project that improved resiliency, efficiency, and overall customer experience. With Dynamics 365, Manor AG gained greater visibility into operations, allowing for optimization of procurement, sales, pricing, and stock monitoring. Similarly, Azelis, a specialty chemicals and food ingredients service provider, improved scalability by deploying Dynamics 365 across 71 entities, leading to increased productivity and meeting carbon reduction goals.

Improving extensibility, reliability, and security

Dynamics 365 offers a 360-degree view of your business by connecting data from ERP and CRM systems. It provides actionable insights through unified data accessible via Microsoft 365 and Power BI. With more than 5,000 developer extensibility points, Dynamics 365 is flexible and can be personalized to meet industry-specific needs. Microsoft Security ensures the reliability and security of Dynamics 365 in the cloud, protecting data and applications with multiple layers of cybersecurity.

AIM for the future with Microsoft today

Microsoft is committed to empowering customers to take advantage of AI capabilities in every line of business, and with AIM, organizations can start now to move to the cloud, making it easier than ever to adopt AI-guided productivity and realize the full potential of AI-powered technologies. Get started with AIM today and unlock a brighter future for your business. Watch the on-demand Inspire 2023 session to learn more. 

AIM for the future with Microsoft

Adopt innovative AI-powered technologies

Get started

To learn about how AI copilot is breaking down data silos, turning insights into actions, and giving customers a new reason to embrace the cloud, check out this blog post: Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program.

*This offer is subject to change.

The post AIM for the future with Microsoft: Future-proof your business in the cloud appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

On July 18, 2023, we published the 2023 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a compilation of new capabilities planned to be released between October 2023 and March 2024. This second release wave of the year offers hundreds of new features, including AI capabilities and enhancements, demonstrating our continued investment to power digital transformation for our customers and partners.

This release wave builds on our commitment to create applications and experiences that add value to every role by breaking down silos between data, insights, and people. New capabilities empower new ways to make informed decisions with AI-guided insights and suggested actions, easier ways to automate tasks and processes, and collaboration seamlessly integrated into the flow of work, plus, new low-code ways for anyone to build solutions.

Discover a whole new level of convenience in reviewing release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform with the release planner. Experience unparalleled flexibility as you personalize, filter, sort, and effortlessly share plans according to your preferences. Stay organized, stay informed, and stay in control as you effortlessly navigate through multiple active waves of plans. For more information, visit releaseplans.microsoft.com.

Highlights from Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Marketing will bring enhancements to Copilot features empowering marketers to quickly create new experiences and will bring unprecedented levels of personalization to email content, images, and layouts. Additionally, business-to-business (B2B) dashboards and directly assigning leads to the right sales rep will align marketers and sellers, enabling them to act as a unified team across the buying journey.

Dynamics 365 Sales will focus on enabling sales organizations to prioritize and manage digital sales processes through enhanced sequence capabilities. We will allow users to assign and monitor lead assignment status with enhanced lead assignment capabilities by providing recommendations, summarizing data, retrieving information, and performing actions in context and within flow of work.

Viva Sales is reimagining how sellers work by delivering advanced AI capabilities like email summarization, CRM recommendations, sales email composition, meeting summarization, and real-time sales tips. Additionally, we are making further investments to collaboration spaces in Microsoft Teams and will deliver new sales Copilot experiences that accelerate deal progression and close sales faster.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through Copilot capabilities, Join me On Teams, and visual enhancements to the agent workspace, ability to see live chats and voice calls in Inbox and personalizing size of conversational control. Additionally, we are making enhancements to the voice channel, call dialer improvements, and routing calls to agents with longest idle time.

Dynamics 365 Field Service updates will include new capabilities for frontline workers, service managers, and dispatchers. We are delivering several top requests such as converting quotes to work orders, enhancing inspections, and evolving our resource scheduling capabilities.

Dynamics 365 Finance is focused on enhancing organizations’ visibility into their data, continued enhancements for accounts payable and bank statement automation, and expanding out-of-the-box country coverage in Latin America. Additionally, the team will deliver further automation of complex tax scenarios and e-invoicing requirements for new countries and provide organizations ability for business model expansion and agility.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management continues to improve and optimize business processes to deliver the agility and resilience needed for businesses to thrive in an increasingly complex business environment. The sales and procurement processes will be further enhanced, manufacturers will enjoy greater flexibility, and warehouse processes related to counting, customer returns, and product receipts will be improved.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is investing in enhancements to services procurement scenarios and project contracting and new functionalities and scenarios in pricing models will support the evolving patterns in the service-centric economy. Additionally, improvements to intelligent resource recommendations will provide suggestions based on experience, cost, and utilization across employees and subcontractors.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources will be improving recruiting experiences with functionally rich and intuitive experiences that target recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers. We will expand the human capital management ecosystem to include learning management system integration through public APIs using Microsoft Dataverse along with expanding our payroll partner network.

Dynamics 365 Guides is bringing several new capabilities and enhancements including Object Anchors, Azure Remote Rendering, and availability on Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High. Additionally, we are focusing on features allowing seamless integration with systems of record allowing customers to build mixed reality workflows that are integrated with their business data.

Dynamics 365 Commerce is using the power of AI to enable the effortless creation of engaging product content for digital commerce sites. New B2B investments allow distributors to view, accept, and reject orders from a centralized dashboard that enables B2B sellers, distributors, and buyers to all work in the same place.

Dynamics 365 Business Central will focus on core functionality to help companies manage their intercompany and consolidations across environments. We will continue to enhance our Copilot capabilities and will further improve our warehouse capabilities, create more Power Automate templates, and provide developers with more capabilities for automating testing of dependent apps.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is enhancing our Copilot features to allow you to ask questions in simple words, to quickly receive insights, and action these immediately. New capabilities in real-time data management will provide the latest view of your customers and easy access to insights within Dynamics 365 apps will allow your team to deliver seamless, personalized experiences across the customer’s lifecycle.

Microsoft Supply Chain Center is enabling resilient supply chain with enhancements in key areas such as Intelligent Order Management for purchase order orchestration, seamless collaboration with external partners via Supplier portal, and Copilot. Additionally, the team will be bringing Advanced Data Analytics to enable Insights to Action as well as new Network Inventory Optimization capabilities.

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform

Power BI is improving the creation experience for individuals by improving and aligning our experiences with Microsoft 365, bringing more parity on the web, and bringing the Power Query diagram view into Power BI Desktop. For teams, we are bringing enhancements to meetings and multitasking. For organizations, we are enabling Git and source control integration to help developers maintain and collaborate on their business intelligence solutions.

Power Apps is expanding the use of Copilot to bring AI-assisted experiences to increase developer productivity, bring natural language to all users, and give insights to admins. We will bring modern controls and rich collaborative experiences to users, as well as improved deployment and governance support to ensure low-code can be enabled organization wide.

Power Pages continues to make strides in the Copilot maker experience to enable building a site. Managed environments will include Power Pages capabilities for maker usage and onboarding. For data, you can connect easily to data where it exists today. Low-code makers can collaborate and detect co-presence.

Power Automate will continue to make it easier to get started building new flows by using natural language across cloud flows and desktop flows, and by improving process mining to jumpstart creation of automation and authoring experiences. Additionally, we’re making it easier to manage work at scale by introducing unified activity view and deeper notifications on capabilities across the product. 

Power Virtual Agents will bring general availability for capabilities including Multi-Lingual bot support, Generative Answers and Actions, Standalone interactive voice response (IVR) and IVR integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and our integration with the Conversational Language Understanding service. Additionally, we will continue to enhance our offering for customers by delivering on new Enterprise Trust capabilities.

AI Builder will allow makers to easily process structured and unstructured documents. Using the power of GPT, responses to customer requests can be pre-generated according to enterprise guidelines and will be available in a human validation station allowing makers to easily review and enhance content that is automatically generated from intelligent copilots.

2023 release wave 2 early access period

Starting July 31, 2023, customers and partners will be able to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These features include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled for users in production environments during October 2023. To take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment, and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Check out the 2023 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, or visit the early access FAQ page. 

Release planner

Personalize, filter, sort, and effortlessly share plans according to your preferences.

View the release planner

The post 2023 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform now available appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to return to Field Service Palm Springs from April 25 through April 27, 2023, at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa.

We will showcase how Connected Field Service helps leaders:

• Move beyond the costly break/fix model to a proactive, predictive model.
• Unlock the power of data and use Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and AI.
• Transform their field operations and improve customer experience.

This year, we are hosting a thought leadership luncheon with our partner Hitachi Solutions to discuss the benefits of a connected field service and how to use data to remain competitive, and continuously improve business performance and customer experiences in an increasingly challenging environment.

Field service organizations manage hundreds of technicians with varying expertise, experiences, and skills. With 80 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences, organizations have come to realize how important quality service is to remain resilient despite uncertainty.¹ Employees are working from remote or distributed locations, reducing the amount of personalized interaction. Meanwhile, remote monitoring of IoT devices continues to transform service from a cost center to a revenue generator.

Connected Field Service is the ability to add connected devices, powered by the Internet of Things (IoT), and uses cloud capabilities to augment your existing field service operations. It enables organizations to transform the way they provide service from a costly, reactive break-fix model to a proactive, and in some cases, even predictive service model through the holistic combination of IoT diagnostics, scheduling, asset maintenance, and inventory on the same platform.

IoT has brought a new level of efficiency to the field service industry, helping service professionals address issues more proactively and minimize downtime. As McKinsey researchers predict, IoT applications could generate a value of over $470 billion annually by 2025 by enhancing operations across various industries.²

By integrating IoT signals across the enterprise, a connected field service helps organizations predict and resolve customer issues before the customer is aware, thereby ensuring consistent and dependable customer operations through hassle-free and preemptive field service.

Four Connected Field Service solutions

Connected Field Service combines four innovative Microsoft solutions that enable service leaders to digitally transform service organizations:

1. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service: Optimizes service operations and inventory management

• Reduces downtime by enabling service organizations to rapidly dispatch technicians
• Helps service teams ensure a first-time fix by selecting the right technicians and parts for each call
• Increases service efficiency by optimizing service call assignments, routes, and scheduling
• Increases customer satisfaction by ensuring technicians are aware of service preferences

2. Azure IoT Remote Monitoring: Gathers data from connected assets

• Helps technicians identify and repair malfunctioning assets before damage occurs
• Reduces the need for service calls by enabling technicians to remotely diagnose equipment issues
• Arms technicians with the diagnostic information they need to ensure a first-time fix
• Enables service organizations to analyze equipment failure patterns to improve maintenance strategies

3. Microsoft Azure IoT Predictive Maintenance: Transforms asset data into insights

• Reduces downtime by enabling technicians to anticipate and preempt equipment failures
• Limits unnecessary maintenance by aligning equipment service strategies to observed patterns
• Increases efficiency by enabling teams to service assets when the right parts and people are available
• Enables organizations to explore new business models using insights from service data

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: Identifies upsell and cross-sell opportunities

• Provides service technicians with upsell and cross-sell recommendations
• Enables team members in non-sales roles to advance deals with step-by-step guidance
• Enables sales teams and service technicians to access customer information and sales resources in non-office environments
• Drives visibility into product and parts usage across the organization

Connected Field Service becomes a reality with Microsoft. Service leaders can better manage costs, enhance service delivery, and increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) by proactively resolving customer issues before the customer is aware. Take advantage of smart, internet-ready devices that can detect and diagnose issues, integrating with field service management (FSM) software like Dynamics 365 Field Service to automatically initiate troubleshooting and, when needed, create work orders to dispatch technicians for onsite service. Learn how you can use technology to schedule preventative maintenance based on consumption rather than rely on a regimented schedule. Best of all, enjoy the flexibility of implementing the solution in stages so your team can ramp up via a natural progression. Learn more about the latest Dynamics 365 Field Service features.

Engage with Microsoft at Field Service Palm Springs 2023

We invite you to join us, along with our partners, to discover how Connected Field Service using Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT can help create a seamless service experience that enhances customer experiences, increases cost savings, and improves efficiency.

Register for Field Service Palm Springs and visit the Microsoft booth (101/103) where you can meet with Dynamics 365 Field Service experts to discuss how connected data enables better experiences across your organization.

About Field Service Palm Springs

For 20 years, Field Service Palm Springs has become the must-attend conference for service executives. From early IoT concepts to AI, Field Service is where innovative ideas spread, and future strategies are created. Today, Field Service is a global event, with major conferences in Palm Springs, Amelia Island, San Diego, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

Since 2003, the top service and support minds have gathered in Palm Springs in April for the flagship Field Service conference. With forward-looking content and unique session formats that ensure you learn and network most effectively, Field Service is designed to help you achieve service excellence and drive profitability.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service

Optimize service operations and inventory management.

Explore Field Service

Sources

¹ Forbes, 50 Stats Showing The Power of Personalization, 2020

² FieldCircle, How To Utilize IoT in The Field Service Industry?

The post Field Service Palm Springs: Modernize service operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For more than two decades, customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software have been defined by manual entry and high-touch data processes. Since then, businesses have made strides in automating many manual transactions through various means but have largely reached a plateau. Our 2023 survey on business trends found that 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce these kinds of repetitive tasks from their jobs.¹

Supply chains have been a prime area for the application of AI, due to the vast amounts of critical business data and processes involved. Supply chains have evolved over the years, with emerging technologies and innovations that enable businesses to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Yet, while statistical models have been used in processes such as inventory management, forecasting, production planning, and scheduling, there hasn’t been a significant shift in the industry beyond improving algorithms. Learning hasn’t been applied to make supply chain processes intelligent and self-regulating. The next generation of AI will transform the industry by making it more agile, efficient, and responsive to changes.

In March, Microsoft announced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, introducing the world’s first AI copilot for ERP and CRM applications. With the next generation of AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Copilot, those high-touch, laborious processes can be transformed with interactive AI-powered assistance.

With Copilot, you can further unlock the potential of ERP by bringing together data and AI to reduce time spent on unfulfilling tasks and accelerate the speed of execution and business outcomes.

We are excited about bringing next-generation AI to virtually every business function, and especially so about the opportunities AI has within the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform. In this post, we look at AI in supply chain management (SCM), both its development and current state, and we share our view of next-generation AI in SCM.

Learn more: Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, bringing next-generation AI to every line of business

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Redefine what's possible with the power of AI.

Sign up for a free trial

Industry 4.0 is AI

The Fourth Industrial Revolution opens doors that further transform how we work and what we focus on during the workday. We have come a long way from the industrial plant floor automation of the 1960s to the intelligent era of supply chain digital twins of the 2020s. We now have significant technological advances that can transform traditional supply chains into next-generation cognitive supply chains. These cognitive supply chains can proactively predict and self-correct disruptions, trigger replanning, and provide intelligent recommendations. Thus, enabling humans and AI to work together to quickly respond, in real time, to changing environments.

In the age of AI, tools like artificial neural networks and machine learning provide the means to automate personal workflows and processes. Still, low-code applications, natural language processing, and generative AI will not replace human innovation. It will, on the other hand, increase and expand our expertise and ability. This is why at Microsoft, we believe that AI is going to define new ways for humans to amplify their impact, their capability, and their unique potential.

The brief history of AI in supply chain management processes

The first application of AI in SCM is a so-called expert system known as the inventory management assistant (IMA). IMA was designed in 1986 to improve the replenishment of spare parts and reduce safety stock for the US Air Force.² From there, the 1990s saw a broad resurgence of interest in the decades-old concept of AI. As a result, AI became commercially available in SCM applications on a limited basis during this time.

In the 2000s, computing power continued to increase as hardware costs declined rapidly, making the investment in AI affordable. However, AI’s widespread adoption in SCM really took off in the 2010s with the rise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the associated acceleration in digital transformation. Together, these factors led to an explosion in the amount of data generated by supply chain processes, marking the beginning of big data in the supply chain.

Outside the supply chain, machine learning algorithms matured and refined into efficient and almost standard-like features, such as the Netflix recommendation engine. At the same time, SCM use cases were taking shape and beginning to deliver value. The first applications of machine learning came in the areas of demand forecasting using regression models to achieve high forecast accuracy, short-term demand sensing using pattern recognitions, anomaly detections in assets, and inventory optimization, to name a few.

Today, AI is used in a wide range of applications, including image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous vehicles. More recent breakthroughs, such as Dall-E2 and ChatGPT from OpenAI, are rapidly opening new doors, as evidenced by our recent launch of Dynamics 365 Copilot. However, most companies are still focused on analytics and promotion use cases, such as forecasting demand or planning production.

As such, organizations have yet to fully explore the potential of AI, which involves self-learning supply chains, more sophisticated supply chain algorithms, and recognizing patterns in big data that are beyond human perception. AI can automate many of the recurring decisions in SCM and interact with supply chain systems in human context, but this requires a platform to connect legacy and modern solutions to unify the vast, growing amounts of supply chain data.³

Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and next-generation AI

As supply chain complexity grows, companies are using next-generation AI to gain a competitive edge and remain profitable. AI is proving to be a game-changer for businesses, whether they’ve already embarked on a digital transformation journey or are considering doing so. Let’s explore some of the cutting-edge AI use cases in supply chain management that can deliver immediate value without undertaking costly transformation initiatives.

AI-powered risk mitigation

By unifying data sources and business applications and combining them with next-generation AI, companies can better predict and act on disruptions across channels, suppliers, and geographies. For example, the AI-powered Microsoft Supply Chain Center news module proactively flags external issues such as weather, financial, and geopolitical news that may impact key supply chain processes. Plus, predictive insights surface affected orders across materials, inventory, carriers, distribution networks, and more.

With Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities, users can quickly turn these insights into action with contextual email outreach. With a custom and contextual reply, supply chain users can save time and collaborate with impacted suppliers to quickly identify new ETAs and reroute a purchase order (PO) based on a weather disruption or fulfill a high-priority customer order via an alternate distribution center due to geopolitical tension.

Sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center today.

Optimize order fulfillment processes

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management (IOM) enables organizations to intelligently orchestrate fulfillment and automate it with a rule-based system using real-time omnichannel inventory data, AI, and machine learning. IOM can improve order fulfillment models by using AI to automate the identification and selection of optimized fulfillment decisions. Including the ability to enhance AI models when recommendations are not ideal, using the train, feedback, and improve methodology.

Elevate forecast accuracy with AI-driven collaborative demand planning 

Demand forecasting is an area that has already seen pervasive use of AI. Organizations already use machine learning-powered forecasting algorithms to improve their forecast accuracy. However, trust in the system-generated forecast is still not as high as was hoped. Recent supply chain disruptions have only exacerbated the role of the importance of manual oversight during creation and careful review. As a result, demand planners and other stakeholders continue to spend a significant portion of their time manually analyzing trends and anomalies, and fine-tuning demand plans. The next-generation of foundation models have the potential to disrupt these very use cases. Ability to get answers through AI forecast explainability and natural language querying will help demand planners breeze through their demand plan analysis, reducing the time needed for fine-tuning and adjusting demand plan from days to minutes. Furthermore, AI can help in demand review meetings by using natural language for data-driven decision making, surfacing risks and opportunities, summarizing assumptions behind a plan, providing real-time what-if analysis, and generating transcripts and summaries of the meeting along with action items. The next generation of AI in demand planning promises to make the entire process more efficient, accurate, and collaborative.

Mitigate order delivery risks with data Q&A

Procurement teams often conduct monthly supplier reviews for top vendors by volume and vendors struggling to meet delivery requirements, but which have been painful to stop trading with for some reason. A significant amount of time for two to three team members is usually dedicated to gathering and analyzing monthly performance data in preparation for these reviews. Conversational AI can unlock productivity.

With conversational AI, we can imagine a future scenario where any analyst is prompting Dynamics 365 Copilot to: “Show me all orders which were not delivered on-time and in-full (OTIF) in the last 30 days. Estimate how much of our order backlog is impacted by these late deliveries. Suggest three questions that will help the supplier dig into the root cause of the issue. Write a short recommendation requesting the supplier participate in our monthly supplier review until OTIF is above 97 percent.” This example is only the tip of the iceberg for scenarios where generative AI can be used to democratize access and retrieval of a company’s data through conversation-styled interaction with AI chatbots.

Additionally, AI could significantly accelerate the onboarding of new suppliers by bypassing or speeding up internal legal review. We can envision purchasing managers, supply chain directors, and more benefitting from AI contract review by assisting in tasks like reviewing master supplier agreements.

Autonomous self-regulated supply chains

One of the biggest challenges in managing a complex supply chain is that it is “high touch” with disparate data sources, different cross-functional units, and processes ranging from strategy to execution. Companies struggle to harmonize these disparate data and processes, leaving planners to make intuition-based decisions rather than data-driven ones. AI can address the complexities of mapping a multi-tier network model from several disconnected systems across the value chain, including external business partners. Further, with advances in AI such as reinforcement learning, the networks can be adaptive, and self-regulated with different sub-network agents operating toward a common goal of increasing resilience, profitability, and customer service. Such an adaptive network considers the historical trends, and supply chain internal and external events, along with signals. The system evaluates multiple scenarios and performs business impact analysis to determine the best course of action using techniques such as simulation, optimization, and machine learning. For example, the system may recommend a make-and-buy option, versus solely buying, and provide a balanced scorecard of supply chain metrics and costs, along with a ranking for the recommendation. This type of supply chain offers automation to eliminate manual processes, and intervenes based on exceptions, generating alerts, and providing suggested actions. It also has the ability to self-learn from user actions and automatically execute corrective measures.

Intelligent process automation

As next-generation AI innovation emerges, it will increasingly deliver on the promise of automating many of the recurring decision touchpoints in supply chain management, freeing up valuable human resources to focus on higher-level productive tasks that require creativity, judgment, and complex problem-solving skills. AI bots can carry out tasks like reading email for new procurement requests, logging into multiple systems for data entry, solving supply chain alerts, and triggering workflows. Another example is increasing planners’ productivity by using generative AI to create the artifacts (plans, performance, assumptions, risks, and mitigations) required to run key business processes such as sales and operations planning (S&OP).

Intelligent inventory visibility and optimization

Another example of AI in supply chain management is inventory intelligence where AI can balance inventory more accurately to reduce stockouts, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Consider a scenario where the global inventory position analysis shows a projected inventory depletion in the upcoming quarter, with levels falling below safety stock requirements. With AI, the supply chain analyst can gain insights into the root cause—low supply relative to demand for a particular region and time. The scheduled maintenance of a factory in that quarter would lead to no additional production, exacerbating the situation. As a result, the demand must be met from existing inventory. With the help of AI-powered insights, the analyst can now delve deeper into the impacted products and locations and take corrective measures, using AI-powered recommendations to rebalance inventory from other locations or employing a cost-effective contract manufacturer.

Intelligent inventory visibility is also revolutionizing the way businesses search and view their stocks and products, empowering users with unparalleled accessibility and efficiency. The power of AI enables users to swiftly ascertain stock levels and product availability by merely typing their inquiries in natural language, similar to chatting with a friend. Whether it’s a query about products nearing expiration or the availability of limited-edition items across various regions, the AI assistant promptly delivers the desired results. Gone are the days of navigating through cumbersome menus, remembering product IDs or location details; simply use natural language to acquire essential information within seconds. In addition, AI can streamline today’s labor-intensive data-mining and table-joining. AI technology can now streamline the entire process, and even summarize inventory status in dashboard and text reports. Consequently, businesses can liberate their analysts from mundane tasks such as data cleansing and report writing, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives that drive success.

Shorten warehouse inventory cycle times

Another area of supply chain management to which AI can be applied is to shorten cycle times in warehouse fulfillment. Today, as demand for different items ebbs and flows, it’s difficult to predict which items should consume forward picking locations in the warehouse. Warehouses typically deal with the situation in two ways: they can pay for more space than they need at the current volume (unlikely) or have workers re-slot bins to bring items from a bulk area to a pick location. The latter is an ongoing, labor-intensive, and time-consuming process that is reactive by default.

In the future, AI could be applied to analyze incoming orders (or look further upstream in the supply chain) to forecast demand better. Based on this analysis, combined with data like physical product dimensions and the storage capacity of bin locations, recommendations for re-slotting can be offered to warehouse managers––allowing plans to be proactively set in motion to ensure that on-hand inventory is available at the time of picking.

Revolutionizing the supply chain industry

The above are just a few examples of how we imagine this next wave of AI innovation can improve supply chain processes and the overall employee experience. And it’s certainly just the starting point. AI has the potential to revolutionize supply chains, offering new possibilities for improved efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction. To fully harness the benefits of AI, businesses must invest in the right technology and infrastructure to unify their supply chain processes and data—while considering critical aspects like security, accessibility, and company values. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver AI in supply chain, by integrating built-in capabilities across our solutions and delivering a secure, composable, extendable, and interoperable platform. With low-code/no-code automation, collaborative actions, process orchestration, and rich supply chain functional capabilities in a single experience, customers can compose a tailored ecosystem and confidently apply AI to deliver new value.

Next steps for AI in supply chain management

Dynamics 365 Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center is already unlocking a new world of opportunity and redefining what’s possible when teams harness the power of AI. By embracing AI, organizations can gain a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the curve in an ever-changing business landscape. And as we explored through the possible supply chain scenarios covered in the last section, we are just getting started. Sign up for a free trial to get started.

End notes

¹ Four Ways Leaders Can Empower People for How Work Gets Done

² International Journal of Logistic Research and Applications, 2009. Artificial intelligence in supply chain management: theory and applications.

³ Boston Consulting Group , 2022. Why AI-Managed Supply Chains Have Fallen Short and How to Fix Them.

The post Applying next-generation AI to the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Update on 7/18/2023: Viva Sales is now Microsoft Sales Copilot.

The role of the seller is evolving. Buyers expect a blend of digital and personalized experiences throughout their journey. To achieve this, sellers must be efficient and effective—prioritizing who to engage, identifying how and when to connect, and spending more time becoming trusted advisors to their customers. Sellers can’t be overwhelmed trying to make sense of too much data and information; rather, they need the data to work for them by providing value in every customer interaction.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can improve their sales by prioritizing their best bets, collaborating with their sales team in the moment with Microsoft Teams built-in, knowing when they should engage with prospective customers, and then seeing how it went after ending the call. Sellers are given the gift of time, plus intelligence, so they can close more deals faster than before.

For years, customer relationship management (CRM) systems have asked sellers to enter data so sales managers could forecast revenue and assess seller performance. With Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Viva Sales, we have put the applications to work for you—using AI to simplify data capture and recommend in-the-moment interactions whether selling from Dynamics 365 Sales or in Microsoft 365 productivity tools. Starting today, we will begin to roll out new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales that use the power of AI to help sellers:

1. Prioritize your work to land more deals faster.
2. Stay productive and collaborate in the flow of work with Viva Sales.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s in store for sellers in the weeks and months ahead.

2023 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales

Learn about the new sales capabilities helping sellers with the power of AI.

Read the release plan

Prioritize your work to land more deals faster

The sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers to sell with intent by building a prioritized worklist and surfacing automated activity recommendations to speed the sales process. Sequences enable sales organizations to automate these processes, tailoring them to their unique sales approach and best practices. Sequences are powered by our common customer journey orchestration engine shared across Dynamics 365 applications. We are enhancing the sequence capabilities to support account-centric selling with multiple sequences to a record, improve effectiveness with actionable AI-powered suggestions, and analyze performance using sequence insights.

Time with customers is precious, so every sales interaction matters. Conversation intelligence helps sellers make the most of their sales calls by transcribing the dialog and using AI to detect sentiment, questions, and actions to ensure no follow-up is missed. In this release, we have enabled text message as an additional channel for sellers to engage with customers and added additional AI capabilities to redact sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) data from phone calls and provide in-the-moment suggestions to guide sales conversations.

Sellers are routinely managing many deals at the same time. As sales engagements progress and sellers learn more about their customers, they need to regularly adjust and review this data while, at the same time, keeping an eye on how they are performing. Sellers can easily maintain the various stakeholders for an account with the new org chart capability, identify and analyze the activity of key decision makers, and ensure they stay on top of their performance and update their pipeline with the new opportunity management experience. The new opportunity experience eliminates many processes that sellers would normally need to do and streamlines everything into a single workspace.

Stay productive and collaborate in the flow of work

Not all sellers spend all their time in a CRM system. Many spend much of their time in productivity tools, emailing, calling, and collaborating with colleagues and customers. In October 2022, we launched Microsoft Viva Sales. We are empowering salespeople with AI-driven insights and data automation right in the flow of work—in the productivity and collaboration tools millions are already using every day: Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Selling is a team sport. ​Enabling sales team members to collaborate with each other effectively with the right tools is key to their success. Collaboration spaces bring together the right users, contextual insights, and productivity apps to boost seller collaboration in Teams. Collaboration spaces makes internal and external collaboration take center stage. Sellers can use sales templates to create a collaboration space. Sales templates speed up structured team/channel creation with predefined channels, pre-pinned apps, and integrated access to CRM data.

For sales teams, the adage “time is money” is more relevant than ever before. Sellers are busy people who find it challenging to balance the time and effort required to respond to customer emails with their other responsibilities. Pain points include: ​

• Pulling data from a CRM system is time-consuming with complicated navigation and menus​.
• Keeping track of customer opportunities and the history is difficult and increases for sellers managing many accounts​.
• Responding to a high volume of emails can be overwhelming and might cause the seller to miss important details​.

With the help of Copilot in Viva Sales, alongside the context of the email or meeting and CRM data, we will now generate suggested email content for a variety of scenarios—such as replying to an inquiry, creating a proposal, or summarizing the action items from meetings. Viva Sales brings together Microsoft 365 data and CRM data to help sellers quickly generate responses using the power of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.

Organizations have taken pride in the customization of their CRM systems, considering it to be critical to their business success. These customized experiences allow sellers to engage and capture customer data effectively within their CRM system. In October, we introduced Viva Sales, which lets sellers use Microsoft 365 and Teams to automatically capture data into any CRM system, eliminating manual data entry and giving more time to focus on selling.

In February, we released the ability for CRM administrators to customize CRM forms, fields, and behavior in Viva Sales for accounts, contacts, and opportunities. With this release, we will add the ability to configure additional out-of-the-box entities as well as custom entities using queries defined in the CRM system. CRM administrators will be able to add or remove relevant custom and out-of-the-box entities to Viva Sales forms and control filtering and sorting behavior of lists using CRM-defined queries. Sellers will be able to see custom and out-of-the-box entities in the Outlook side pane in Viva Sales, share custom entities with colleagues in Teams, search for custom entities in the Teams messaging extension, and connect Outlook email and meeting activities to custom or out-of-the-box entities.

Learn more about 2023 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales

These are just a few of the new capabilities that we are rolling out for sellers in 2023 release wave 1. To learn more about these new capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales, click on the links below.

• Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales release wave documentation on Learn.
• Watch the Copilot in Viva Sales demo.
• Watch the Connected Sales and Marketing Guided Tour.

If you are not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.

The post Spend more time selling—new sales capabilities in 2023 release wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Generative AI has left its mark on computing, and it’s only the beginning. The world of business applications will never be the same. For several years now, we have been iterating on and shipping copilot features in Microsoft Dynamics 365, and I’m pleased to announce our next wave of value.

And it’s coming out just in time. Today’s customers demand tailored experiences that cater to their individual needs. They expect businesses to be responsive on all communication channels and to treat each individual with knowledge of their overall relationship and journey. For example, recent research from LinkedIn found that over two-thirds of customers say they’re less likely to engage with sellers whose initial outreach isn’t tailored to them and their role.¹

On the heels of our Business Applications Launch Event (BALE), I’m thrilled to introduce some of the latest features being released over the next few months for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Customer Insights.

Our new technologies and tools enable you to provide engaging customer experiences, standing out from the competition and building loyalty and trust. It makes your employees more productive and your customers feel more connected. Our latest wave builds on our most recent public releases, such as natural language AI generation through Copilot, and sets up Dynamics 365 business applications to become the game-changing opportunity for you to do more with less.

Business Applications Launch Event Resources

Access resources to learn all about the 2023 release wave 1 updates.

Sign up for access today

A unified approach to Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Customer Insights

A recent survey from Microsoft found that nearly 9 in 10 business users want to apply AI solutions to more tasks, so that they can focus on the work that really matters.² Our upcoming investments deliver this across the customer experience landscape. We bring together sales, service, and marketing through Microsoft Dataverse and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, marry that with Microsoft 365 data, and apply Copilot generative AI. The result is cohesive end-to-end customer engagements that empower and connect your sellers.

Here are a few highlights coming with the 2023 wave 1 release and recently released capabilities to keep on your radar that were showcased at BALE:

• With Dynamics 365 Sales, navigating records in a database is no longer the norm, and now you can look at opportunities, accounts, and contacts and view both a list and a detailed view of the record. We call this focus mode. It’s a part of our overall vision to move from tracking tools to tools that help sellers get their job done. With focus mode, sellers can prioritize engagement and optimize their workspace, reducing overall clicks to get work done. We introduced text message embedded within Dynamics 365 so you can engage customers through text in Dynamics 365 on customers’ preferred channels. When working opportunities, the new pipeline view experience is the default experience to quickly view and manage the sales pipeline. Deals will also see an updated smart organization chart to view and manage stakeholders. Finally, release wave 1 will showcase the power of Dynamics 365 Copilot generative AI to assist sellers in meeting preparation, meeting follow-up, and proposals. See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales.
• With Microsoft Viva Sales, included at no additional cost in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium, a monthly cadence of improvements to Copilot capabilities are reimagining the way salespeople work starting with AI-generated email replies, proactive insights, summarization, and search. With the latest Outlook calendar integration generative email replies can propose meeting times. Beyond Copilot, an exciting new Microsoft Teams collaboration experience will help connect sales teams and customers in a shared Teams workspace. Salespeople can become trusted advisors to customers, and information can flow through shared files and chat, all linked back to the sales opportunity record for instant updates. Full support for out-of-the-box and custom customer relationship management (CRM) entities will enable organizations to configure the entire experience, and Teams meeting enhancements include CRM integration as well as real-time tips and suggestions. See the release plans for Microsoft Viva Sales.
• In Dynamics 365 Marketing, users can use new copilot features to create engaging emails and define segments using natural language. To generate higher quality leads, users can build modern forms using an intuitive form experience, prioritize leads with the new lead scoring builder, and engage sellers at the right time. The out-of-the-box dashboards make it easy to track pipeline developments and analyze the impact and contribution of journeys, marketing messages, and content. When a marketing campaign hits your customer’s inbox, your sellers can immediately reference a copy of the email and start connecting for more opportunities. Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Marketing.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights accelerates customer understanding to know your customers deeply and accurately. Users can understand their data quality more deeply with a data quality score, automatically see which out-of-the-box predictions apply to their data, and seamlessly connect custom models from Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, users can use natural language to have a dialog with their data to quickly get deep insights without the need for experts. Additionally, sellers can access relevant insights from within their flow of work to further personalize their conversations and close deals faster. AI-driven seller productivity gives your sellers an edge on every opportunity, all within the flow of their work, whether they’re talking to customers in Outlook or Teams or analyzing data in Dynamics 365. Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Real impact, real customers

Look at these inspiring case studies that demonstrate how our upcoming features can transform businesses:

• Greenreb AG, the exclusive Topgolf licensee for Europe aims to deliver an engaging golf and technology-infused leisure experience across Europe and in the United States. As a golfer, I certainly need to try them out! With Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing, Greenreb can use its existing game data to create personally tailored marketing campaigns for each customer. With automated lead generation and no silos between sales and marketing, no customers fall between the cracks. The benefits of the scalability of Dynamics 365 is clear according to Phillip Fu, the CTO of Greenreb who explained that “[b]ecause we synchronize all our data in a Dataverse and have it on one platform, all departments get the same access to all the data in every system. We’ve bundled many functions in one product and can integrate further modules quickly.” To hear more from Phillip, you can read the full customer story.
• Lynk & Co, an automotive company that aims to disrupt the industry by putting the customer at the center of the experience. Embracing the latest capabilities from across Dynamics 365 has enabled it to scale its customer engagement quickly to half-dozen countries across Europe with a small team. Sign up here for access to a video from BALE that highlights how the latest Dynamics 365 release can help the Lynk & Co team prepare for an upcoming event—Planet First Eco-Drive, with a simplified data-informed campaign that uses natural language to query customer data and identify the best audience for upcoming events. To hear more about Lynk & Co and their experience with our business applications, you can access the fireside chat here.
• OBOS is a Nordic leader in housing and financial services—not only in the development and sale of homes and properties, but banking and financial solutions, property management, and real estate brokerage. As a co-op, with its clients also being owners, breaking down silos to deliver a cohesive experience across projects and businesses is critical to both customer retention and employee effectiveness. You can read more about how it was able to transform its business using Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Customer Insights in the customer story.

Join the Dynamics 365 community on this journey

These innovations are just a small part of what is coming in this wave release. Our goal is to help your employees be more effective and provide your customers with amazing experiences. With generative AI capabilities through Copilot, your teams can do more with less and focus on higher-impact work. Don’t wait to get started—the world is changing now. Many AI capabilities are available now, and we’re seeing many companies shortcut standard CRM rollouts and we have more coming over the following months.

I value your feedback and look forward to hearing how these tools have improved your customers’ and employees’ lives. Connect with me on LinkedIn for more updates and insights, and be sure to share your stories of success with generative AI on our Dynamics 365 Communities platforms. Let’s create better solutions together!

Learn more about generative AI and Dynamics 365

To learn more about all the innovations coming with generative AI, or to see some of the other announcements from BALE, check out these other articles:

• Copilot in Dynamics 365 Marketing and Customer Insights
• New Sales capabilities in 2023 release wave 1
• New Marketing capabilities in 2023 release wave 1
• Release wave 1 expands agility, automation, and innovation across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
• Access all BALE event recordings here

¹LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022.

²Four Ways Leaders Can Empower People for How Work Gets Done, Microsoft WorkLab.

The post Release wave 1: Transforming customer experiences with generative AI and Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we launched 2023 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a rollout of new features and enhanced capabilities slated for release between April and September 2023.

The updates include Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Copilot for Microsoft Power Platform, bringing the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to business processes. Release wave 1 also introduces hundreds of new and updated user experiences to collaboratively solve challenges, streamline workflows, and help individuals and teams focus on what matters most.

The 2023 Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, available to view on demand, is a great way to get up to speed on the release wave and learn how organizations are already using these capabilities to transform end-to-end business processes today.

Some of the major themes that we’re excited to highlight include:

• Enhancing end-to-end customer experiences with AI and Dynamics 365 Copilot. 
• Modernizing every link across supply chain and operations.
• New ways to accelerate development with Microsoft Power Platform.

Enhancing end-to-end customer experiences with AI

Release wave 1 supercharges end-to-end customer experiences while improving collaboration and information sharing across the organization. New capabilities provide more insight into audiences’ needs, and more ways to engage customers with personalized content and conversations at scale. AI takes center stage in this release wave, with new Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities that help to streamline processes—from audience research to content development.

For example, automaker Lynk & Co. is attracting new customers to its innovative, membership-based approach to car ownership by using new AI capabilities in Dynamics 365, as well as enhancements to build relationships with the right audience. Learn more in this fireside chat with Lynk & Co by visiting the bonus content during the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will enable marketers at organizations like Lynk & Co. to use natural language capabilities in Copilot to query, group, and measure their customer data, allowing them to discover hidden patterns. Marketers can quickly identify the best audience for upcoming events and create a segment directly from the results.

In addition, users can see all Customer Insights activities in the unified activity timeline in Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing. Valuable data from Customer Insights can be embedded directly within the Contact, Account, and Lead forms within Dynamics 365 Sales, giving sellers a more complete picture of their customer in the flow of work.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Dynamics 365 Marketing delivers Copilot capabilities to help marketers learn more about their customers, create targeted customer segments, and generate personalized content. We’ve enhanced the query assist feature with generative AI capabilities, enabling marketers to accurately target customers using conversational, everyday language to quickly build targeted segments. Content ideas helps to find inspiration and provide a starting point for copy when composing emails for audiences.

We’ve also made it easier to add lead capture forms to a website. With the new intuitive forms experience in real-time marketing, you can easily create modern forms with advanced capabilities without depending on developers. Also, marketers can use out-of-the-box dashboards to track pipeline development and analyze the impact and contribution of journeys, marketing messages, and content at different stages of the business process.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Dynamics 365 Sales delivers enhancements to streamline seller tasks and improve effectiveness. Rather than manually tracking next steps, Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers to automate the creation of follow-up tasks. This saves valuable time to focus on higher-priority items and avoid tasks from falling through the cracks. Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales creates email content for faster customer replies and AI-generated meeting follow-ups that compile discussed topics.  

In addition, updates include a new manager insights dashboard for conversation intelligence, as well as extended support for conversation intelligence with calls made through third-party telephony providers. This gives sellers a seamless experience irrespective of the call provider they are using.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Viva Sales.

Release wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 Customer Service include enhanced case creation, channel-based swarming with Microsoft Teams, and robust real-time analytics with customization, in addition to availability of the voice channel in more regions.

Organizations like MVP Health Care—a nationally-recognized regional not-for-profit health plan provider—will soon use Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service to provide agents with real-time AI-powered assistance, helping them to resolve issues faster, handle cases more efficiently, and automate time-consuming tasks so they can focus on delivering high-quality service to their customers.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Modernize every link across supply chain and operations

Updates to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management deliver increased agility and resilience across the supply chain. By applying appropriate valuation methods and selected currencies, you can now account inventories—inventory and work in progress (WIP)—in multiple representations, to help comply with local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), internal management accounting, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) principles.

A new Asset Management mobile app helps ensure smooth operation of production equipment. From one app, your team can create new maintenance requests, track and update work orders, and access key information. Updates to the Warehouse Management mobile app include a new version for iOS devices and features to speed the packing process, such as optimized screen layouts with more prominent product images to help workers more quickly identify items.

Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is officially included in Microsoft Supply Chain Center, helping to provide faster, more reliable delivery times. Updates include the ability to create a purchase order from a sales order and check order status updates without switching to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, as well as new purchase orders for business-to-business (B2B) capabilities. At the launch event, we demonstrate new capabilities that help organizations like Northern Tool + Equipment—a manufacturing and omnichannel retail business with 130 stores across the United States—to experience faster, more reliable delivery times, so their customers get the tools and supplies they need exactly when they expect.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Intelligent Order Management, and the Microsoft Supply Chain Center.  

Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations

In this wave of updates, we’re helping finance organizations adapt faster, work smarter, and drive business performance with features and enhancements focused on the three As of rapid finance-first innovation.

Organizations like The Robert Walters Group, a specialist recruitment agency operating in 31 countries, can now use our newly generally available Expense mobile app. The release wave 1 updates also include expense itemization and the ability to capture receipts using optical character recognition (OCR), enter per diems, and log mileage.

Enhancements for Dynamics 365 Finance include further automation of complex tax scenarios and full end-to-end automation of accounts payable and ledger settlements, helping finance professionals to expedite the close and spend more time focusing on value-added activities.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations, and Human Resources.

Accelerate development with Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform—our comprehensive and intelligent low-code platform—enables users and organizations to create innovative apps, bots, and automations seamlessly. In our launch event, we explore how customers like Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) use Microsoft Power Platform to automate and eliminate redundant and manual processes throughout their organization.

This release wave builds on our commitment to create tools and experiences that add value to every role by breaking down silos between data, insights, and people. The union of AI and low-code will revolutionize the way solutions are built and fundamentally transform the way people work, collaborate, and create.

With Power Apps, we continue to support the scaling of organizations by empowering makers and developers of all skill levels to be more productive and to build apps, and manage data and logic. We are helping organizations reduce risk with advanced governance capabilities, such as automated tests for custom pages and model-driven apps, enabling customers to further benefit from modernization of web and mobile experiences ensuring modern and fast experiences across apps.

See the release plans for Power Apps.

Power Pages supports low-code and no-code makers, as well as professional developers, with more out-of-the-box capabilities, like new solution-based application life cycle management and migration of website configurations from one environment to another. With virtual tables and cloud flow integration, Power Pages can now connect seamlessly to your external data and service and enable both low-code makers and pro developers to build amazing user experiences.

Explore what’s new for Power Pages.

Power Automate is reimagining the process of creating flows with natural language authoring capabilities that allow you to simply describe the flow you want to create. It has never been easier for new users to start creating and authoring flows. Other improvements include introducing work queues where automatable tasks can be viewed and managed together, as well as providing streamlined connectivity to a machine for desktop flows, which eliminates the need for additional installs and password management. Lastly, we’re making it easier for organizations to contextualize the impact of their technical investments with ROI performance tracking capabilities in Power Automate desktop flows, which helps organizations invest in the most valuable automation efforts.

Explore what’s new for Power Automate.

Power Virtual Agents is the Microsoft single conversational AI studio and unified authoring canvas for all bot-building needs. We’re making it easier for developers and makers to build bots with Copilot in Power Virtual Agents, greatly accelerating bot development via natural language authoring. Developers can then extend their bots to handle more complex workloads with Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services capabilities in Power Virtual Agents.

Explore what’s new for Power Virtual Agents.

Power BI infuses AI-driven insights into everywhere that people get work done. For Teams, we’re bringing enhancements to meetings and multitasking to help users work with their data wherever they may be. And, for individuals, we’re enhancing the creation experience, bringing more parity on the web, and adding the Power Query diagram view into Power BI.

Explore the release plans for Power BI.

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

We encourage you to watch the launch event on demand for more details and demos of new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. In addition, you can explore several special topic presentations covering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Physical Operations, and our AI transformation journey in business applications.

Be sure to explore the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, and keep track of what’s new and upcoming, as well as create a personalized release plan, in the release planner.

Release planner

Explore Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform features coming soon or available to try now.

View the release planner

The post Release wave 1 expands agility, automation, and innovation across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.