The Microsoft Ignite digital event was held between 2 and 4 November 2021. This event was the second to be held this year. Over 100,000 attendees from all over the world were expected to attend the November 2021 Microsoft Ignite event.

Microsoft showed up with many of its heavyweights to present the company’s newest services offerings. Here are a few new services that Microsoft either has already implemented or will implement soon.

Industry-specific cloud services.

The company also announced some industry-specific services. One of these is the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing. Some smart factories can generate 1 petabyte of data each day. This data can be precious if harnessed correctly. Still, most companies use less than 1 percent of their data to generate new services or business models.

The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing connects the intelligent, integrated cloud, and edge capabilities of the Microsoft stack to essential manufacturing processes. It connects your staff, assets, workflow, and business processes to enable you to build a more robust manufacturing business.

Another industry-specific offering announced by Microsoft is the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. The Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services incorporates Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform with unique features designed to support the financial services industry.

According to Microsoft, the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services “was also designed for even the most complex control frameworks and regulatory requirements facing the industry, with [their] multi-layered security, comprehensive compliance, and trust commitments build-in”.

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services aims to enhance customer and employee experiences, combat financial crimes, and manage security and compliance.

Microsoft also released the Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit. This tool is built for roles unique to the nonprofit sector like fundraisers, program managers, and volunteer managers. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit assists role players to better engage with supporters, manage data, and design and deliver programs.

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability assists organizations pursue and achieve their sustainability goals. The tool enables organizations to record, report, and reduce their carbon emissions.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare also received new updates that will enhance patient experiences, frontline worker collaboration, and care coordination.

New features for Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Dynamics 365 also received new features to assist businesses and their employees in navigating the new hybrid world. These features revolve around enhancing connectivity and streamlining communication and collaboration.

Collaborative apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Office 365, and Teams.

Updates to Dynamics 365 that are currently in preview will allow organizations to “operate as one business, everywhere.” Dynamics 365 and teams promote accessibility to business data. That means relevant information gets to the persons who need it most in order to make informed business decisions.

These new features give sales teams access to experts in your organization. This will allow your sales team to build informed proposals that address your customers’ needs. Sales teams can invite anyone in your company to collaborate with them via a Teams chat or channel. They could also make use of the “chat now” pop-up feature in Dynamics 365 or use the inbound/outbound digital voice feature.

The new collaborative features encourage real-time engagement. Collaborators can see who is working on a project with them. The Dynamics 365 apps also make it easy for individuals to contact those who are collaborating with them. These communication options include calls, chats, and scheduling meetings.

Microsoft Customer Experience Platform.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform allows your business to harness your customer data to create more personalized customer journeys. “With a deep understanding of customers and rich, out-of-the-box insights, organizations can now understand and predict intent to deliver the right content on the right channel and I the right moment.”

The Consent-enabled Customer Data Platform (CDP) (currently in preview) permits your chief data officer to use consent data in the consumer platform. This can help your business construct complete customer profiles while protecting their data.

The business-to-business CDP merges customer data from various sources. This includes CRM tools, email, websites, social networks, partner systems, and even point-of-sales.

In addition to this, AI content creation features automatically generate content snippers that can be used as the starting point for customer emails. This simplifies segment creation and enhances targeting to specific audiences.

Microsoft Dynamics Supply Chain Management.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can help you to “predict demand shifts, supply constraints, and equipment downtime by eliminating siloed Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to improve visibility of the production floor”.

More than that, Microsoft has added a priority-based feature (in preview) to the planning optimization engine in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain management. This helps to avoid out-of-stock situations. This feature automatically calculates which high-demand stock needs to be replenished based on outstanding orders, current stock levels, and projected inventory. This automation can streamline a company’s supply chain management processes.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service voice channel.

Customer service solutions revealed during the Microsoft Ignite event include the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service voice channel. According to Microsoft, “this addition to the existing omnichannel capabilities leverages the power of Microsoft Teams to bring traditional Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS), Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), and Customer Engagement Center (CEC) under a single, integrated customer service Software as a Service (SaaS) solution with Dynamics 365 Customer Service”.

The Microsoft Ignite event revealed a smorgasbord of exciting new features that encourage more effective and efficient collaboration and business processes, helping your business get on with its business.

At first, many business owners thought the digital age was nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan fad. Years later, almost all had accepted that it was absolutely necessary to support real-world business efforts – perhaps a website and a little social media marketing. Today, this supportive role has again faded into insignificance. To compete in the digital age, you need to be digital, not simply do digital.

Going digital: a necessary disruption

In a nutshell, digital transformation strategies are those moves a business makes that are driven by technology, with the goal of implementing new systems, onboarding new talent, and adopting new processes to improve both their operations and their interactions with customers.

As if the already speedy shift to online channels weren’t happening fast enough, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend as businesses struggle to remain customer-centric in their approach, even if seeing them in person is no longer an option.

Three key areas are often identified as being at the core of a successful transformation:

Technology

Are you making use of the Internet of Things? Blockchain? Artificial intelligence? Understanding how new technologies can contribute to a digitally enabled business is essential, but many businesses of all sizes are also bogged down by legacy technologies – old that doesn’t always gel with the new – that makes integrating these systems increasingly complex on an SME budget.

Data and Analytics

Data is all around us, but does your business possess the insight it needs to translate it into actionable strategies? Creating actionable insights that enable the clean and efficient collection of data, not to mention its interpretation into actionable insights, is no easy task. It requires skills that few SMEs have an appetite for, despite the investment it represents.

Processes

Digital transformation can be achieved incrementally, but it does require a mindset that encompasses the entire business. One of its chief goals is to dissolve silos between processes and departments. To be truly transformative rather than merely useful, digital thinking and long-term planning must be the goal from end to end.

The Most Important Aspect: Leadership

But digital transformation for the SME is not always as simple as it seems. Although – as the old metaphor suggests – a large ship (read: a big, established company) takes more time and energy to change direction, they do have an enormous advantage over SMEs when it comes to digital innovation: resources. With large budgets and usually entrenched partners already working on aspects of digitisation – from HR and payroll to marketing and CRM Solutions, enabling digital strategies seems to come so much easier to those who already seem to claim the lion’s share of the pie.

But access to resources and high-end services is a tiny part of the overall puzzle. The real reasons that so many SMEs struggle to reach digital maturity lies in the business operationally, and the people at the top. Digital transformation efforts require a culture shift that must be led from the top. Large businesses will have a CIO, CTO, or innovation officer leading the charge, but such specialised executive roles are more rare in SMEs. From products and services to the very business model itself at all stops in the supply chain, manufacturing to marketing to customer experience, building the omnichannel experience that customers expect needs to be led with intention and built into processes throughout the business.

The Bottom Line

Through technology, businesses are constantly making improvements to the way they compete in a difficult marketplace, but true digital transformation cannot be achieved through technology alone. A complete overhaul of processes, leadership and culture is necessary to become a truly digital organisation able to enhance their operations and revolutionise the way they work.

Many companies know the term “marketing automation”. But what, exactly, is it? 

In short, marketing automation is this: the digital tools that make marketing simpler and more effective. 

At a broader level, marketing automation refers to the software that makes every part of a marketing campaign – such as emails, social media, blog posts, web pages and more –easier, more effective and less time-consuming to produce. In other words, marketing automation software lets companies easily create strategic, creative campaigns that get real results. 

The role of customer centricity 

In business today, customer expectations are higher than ever. Buyers expect consistent, one-on-one cross-channel journeys and a connected, cohesive customer experience. One of the main purposes of marketing automation is to help companies get this right with every customer, every time. In other words, by delivering the right content, at the right time, to the right people. 

Does your company need marketing automation? 

Industry leaders in nearly every vertical use marketing automation to help drive their businesses forward, connect with their customers, and boost brand loyalty. But does every business need it? Here are some of the benefits:  

• Improved productivity. Marketing automation means your marketing team no longer needs to perform repetitive, mundane tasks. Instead, they can spend more of their time coming up with strategies to move your business forward creatively. 
• Personalisation. At the click of a button, you can create a tailored and unique experience for every customer, whether you speak to hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of people. With automatic data ingestion from every area of your business, you can enable comprehensive insights into each customer automatically, and speak clearly to their specific wants and needs. 
• Simplified multi-channel management. Marketing automation helps you keep track of every campaign and every marketing channel from one single hub. 
• A consistent experience. Marketing automation helps unify all your marketing campaigns, so you can ensure that every customer receives a consistent, on-brand experience.  
• Better ROI. By targeting customers more effectively, your marketing spend has the potential to yield greater results for every rand spent. 

Should you give marketing automation a try? 

Here’s a quick set of questions to answer about your business.  

• Can you take a list of customers and easily assess their fit and likelihood to buy? 
• Can you identify, track and engage individual buyers online? 
• Are you able to comb through sales leads based on interest and engagement? 
• Can you measure the specific revenue contribution of every marketing campaign you run?

If the answer to any of these questions is no – or you find your marketing teams spending excess time getting the answers to these questions – marketing automation could be the answer you’re looking for. 

Want to find out more? Chat to us about Dynamics 365 Marketing. Packed with tons of new features and capabilities, it’s the leading tool for driving effective, streamlined marketing campaigns in any industry. 

8 key benefits of marketing automation 

In a nutshell, marketing automation refers to all the digital tools that help marketers reach customers more efficiently, effectively and scalably. But what are the real differences between business that use marketing automation and those that don’t? We broke it down.

1. Lower staff costs

Marketing automation means fewer people can effectively do the work of more. How? By helping marketers to be more efficient. The reason: with marketing automation software, almost no time is spent on repetitive “busy work” such as manually creating emails or responding to certain triggers. Imagine a world in which one employee has the same output and effectiveness as a team of 25.

2. Faster, more effective targeting across multiple channels

One of the most powerful benefits that marketing automation offers marketers is the ability to reach customers in a personalised way – both online and offline – at scale.

Whether via phone, text, push notification, email and more, marketing automation makes it easy to deliver targeted messages to your customers at the right time, with zero hassle.

Without marketing automation, running targeted, multi-channel campaigns at scale is almost impossible.

3. Continual A/B campaign testing

There’s only so much time in a day. That’s why, traditionally, marketers test assets such as emails and landing pages only a handful of times before deploying them – and then leave it at that.

Marketing automation tools change everything. Suddenly, you can easily run ongoing A/B tests. That means constant feedback on performance and the ability to constantly iterate, change, and tweak, for optimal performance.

4. Accurate reporting end to end

When using fragmented tools and platforms, reporting on marketing campaigns’ effectiveness can be time consuming and error-prone.

With marketing automation software, everything is simplified – summarised in a single place, no matter the channel. Suddenly, insights are available at a snap of the fingers.

Better yet, marketing automation platforms provide a bird’s-eye view of the entire marketing process.  That helps reveal areas of drop off and complication easily, so you can fix problem spots quickly.

5. Intelligent segmentation and a 360-degree view

Do you know who your customers are? Do you fully understand their wants, needs and desires?

The best marketing automation tools use clever analytics and AI to break down your customers more granularly than would ever be possible otherwise. No matter how many customers you have, you can understand each of them individually, to provide them with the most effective, tailored messaging possible.

6. Better data management

When your business has thousands or tens of thousands of leads, keeping track of engagements can be a daunting task. Marketing automation simplifies and streamlines the process, so that no interaction data is ever wasted, lost, or unaccounted for.

7. Scalable processes and a platform for growth

As your company expands, your marketing activities need to keep pace. Manual processes are difficult to scale. But automated processes scale instantly to fit as many customers and leads as they need to.

8. Better lead nurturing

Sales take time and leads need nurturing. With marketing automation software, you can track campaigns’ effectiveness and respond to your prospective customers’ needs effectively at every stage of the buying journey.

In short, marketing automation makes marketing more effective, more reactive, more proactive, more scalable and more personalised. It frees up marketers’ time, so they can focus more on creative, ambitious ways of moving business forward. Finally, it primes companies for growth, as scaling is instant and automatic. No lags and no delays.

All this and more is possible with Dynamics 365 Marketing. Want to learn more?
Chat to us today to learn how to put these new features to work in your business. 

The CRM Team and Simple join forces!

Empowering marketing, to deliver a brilliant customer experience

London and South Africa, March 04, 2021: The CRM Team, expert implementers of world-leading customer engagement technology, and Simple MRM Ltd, enablers of result-driven marketing and customer experience, announce a favourable partnership.

The alliance is a natural fit between two Microsoft partners focused on transforming the customer experience through technology. Properly coordinated sales and marketing improves engagement and advocacy with a brand, ultimately increasing the lifetime value of the customer.

The CRM Team brings together tons of customer data with AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365, to create a single customer record, providing sales, marketing and service teams with unique insights to take action, automate repetitive processes and engage customers like never before. As experts in project and change management, the team deliver fastest time to value for customers investing in Microsoft technologies.

Simple empowers teams further as the command centre for managing marketing resources, delegating jobs at pace to build campaigns that wow customers, with content that’s brand compliant, consistent and approved by business leaders. This governed material is readily available to the wider team to strengthen all customer engagements, increase productivity and unleash more effective marketing.  

“Our partnership with Simple is designed with our customers’ marketing teams in mind. We consistently heard of specific challenges that marketing teams face, and these were only made worse during the pandemic. The solution from Simple helps us address these challenges. And the insight, expertise and engagement model provided by Nick and his team will ensure that we can instantly transform how marketing teams collaborate, innovate and adapt.”

Paul Slade, CEO- The CRM Team

Simple is your command centre for managing marketing resources, budgets, assets, campaigns and customer experiences. As a single central tool for directing marketing operations, Simple lets you focus on creating brilliant marketing and customer experiences.

“Simple is built on Microsoft to empower all things marketing, but the enterprise solution has wide-reaching benefits across all departments, giving stakeholder visibility and enabling marketing, sales and service teams alike. The CRM Team are the perfect partner to support customers in delivering their targeted business outcomes through leveraging technology, to jointly transform business operations.” 

Aden Forrest, CEO – Simple MRM Ltd