Revolutionizing Business Processes with
Next-Gen AI: Introducing
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot: A Game-Changer in CRM

The world of customer relationship management (CRM) is always evolving. As businesses compete for customer loyalty and attention, they seek new ways to engage, delight, and retain customers. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool for improving customer experiences and driving growth. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot is the latest and most advanced solution in this space, providing from sales to customer service professionals with personalized recommendations, streamlined workflows, and valuable insights into customer interactions and behaviors.

What is Dynamics 365 Copilot?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot is a groundbreaking AI-powered solution that offers a wide range of features to streamline and automate various business processes.

Microsoft’s CVP of Business Apps and Platform, Charles Lamanna, recently revealed the release of Dynamics 365 Copilot on March 6, 2023. This revolutionary AI-powered solution is designed to optimize and automate an array of business processes, ranging from financial management and supply chain operations to customer service and sales.

In this article, we’ll delve into the essential features of Dynamics 365 Copilot, uncover the advantages it offers to businesses of all sizes

Let’s take a closer look at some of its key features:

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Dynamics 365 Copilot has the unique ability to understand and respond to natural language queries, making it easier for users to interact with the system using everyday language. This feature eliminates the need for complex commands or programming, allowing users to perform tasks efficiently. For instance, users can simply ask Copilot to create a new invoice for a customer, and the system will automatically generate the relevant document based on data in the chosen ERP system.

Predictive Analytics

Another standout feature of Dynamics 365 Copilot is its advanced analytics capabilities. The solution employs machine learning algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data from multiple sources, including transactional data, customer feedback, and social media. With this, Copilot can provide insights and recommendations to help improve decision-making and drive better business outcomes. For instance, Copilot can identify customer complaints’ trends about a particular product, prompting companies to investigate and resolve the issue before it escalates.

Customizable Workflows

Dynamics 365 Copilot also allows users to create and customize workflows that align with their specific business processes and requirements. This means that companies can tailor their CRM/ERP systems to their unique needs instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all solution. For example, a manufacturing company could create a workflow that automates the process of scheduling production runs based on demand forecasts and inventory levels. This would help to minimize waste and optimize production efficiency.

When it comes to business success, few things are as important as efficiency, customer experience, data insights, and flexibility. That’s where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot comes in. This AI-powered solution promises to streamline and automate a variety of business processes, making it a powerful tool for companies of all sizes.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of Dynamics 365 Copilot for your business:

Overall, Dynamics 365 Copilot empowers businesses with the latest advancements in AI technology, making it possible to automate tedious tasks and unlock the full potential of the workforce. The solution promises to accelerate innovation, improve business outcomes, and transform the way organizations operate in every line of business.

Connect with Solution Sales Professionals at The CRM Team to understand how you can utilize the power of Dynamics 365 Copilot like many organizations that are taking advantage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

2023 Release Wave 1 Plans for
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2023 Release Wave 1.

Microsoft published its 2023 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform on January 25. They comprise a compilation of enhanced capabilities planned to be released between April 2023 and September 2023. The first release wave of this year includes hundreds of updates and enhancements, which demonstrate Microsoft’s continued commitment to empowering digital transformation.

By bridging data, insights, and people silos, this release wave adds value to every role. By enabling AI-guided insights and suggested actions, automating tasks and processes, integrating collaboration into workflows seamlessly, and building low-code solutions, new capabilities empower informed decisions.

A review of Dynamics 365 updates

2022 release wave 2 in action: Bringing innovation into focus across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Wave 2 of Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2022 was released in October. There are hundreds of enhancements, capabilities, and features included in this second release wave of the year.

This release wave is a big one, and it comes at a critical time for many organizations. In spite of challenges or headwinds, we’re committed to continuously innovating and helping you grow your business. With Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, you can enhance your technology ecosystem by providing insight into every area of your business, empowering your employees to focus on what they do best, and enabling your teams to deliver world-class experiences to your customers.

Do more with less to empower growth and agility

With a single, cohesive business cloud, 2022 release wave 2 unlocks durable growth.

Sales | How Teleperformance boosts its sellers’ effectiveness with Viva Sales

Recently, Microsoft announced Microsoft Viva Sales, a seller experience that integrates with Microsoft 365 applications and Microsoft Teams. Your sales team can now collect, access, and register customer data in any customer relationship management system, such as Salesforce and Dynamics 365. Discover how Teleperformance, a global business process outsourcing and customer experience service provider, eliminated manual data entry. In this way, sellers could spend more time selling.

Sales and marketing | Financial services provider Eika orchestrates personalized campaigns to fund sustainable businesses across Norway

One of the largest financial service providers in Norway, Eika, is an alliance of 53 independent banks supporting two Norwegian dialects. As part of its commitment to sustainability, it has launched an initiative to provide loans to businesses installing sustainable solutions.

Customer service | Baylor Scott & White brings a new level of patient experience to healthcare

Today, healthcare organizations are evaluated on how well they deliver preventative services and improve the overall health of their communities. Through personalized omnichannel services, they are tackling this challenge. As the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in Texas, Baylor Scott & White is among the largest in the country in terms of patient experience.

Using the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, Baylor Scott & White is streamlining patient communications through a combination of personalized self-service and an AI-driven contact center. Explore how the enhanced features in release wave 2 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service can support patient relations teams through enhancements and omnichannel engagement.

Innovation across Dynamics 365 Field Service, Mixed Reality, and Connected Spaces

Due to a shortage of skilled workers and the shift from a cost center to a revenue generator, field service operations are changing rapidly. Moreover, the industrial metaverse allows for new scenarios for mixed and augmented reality, as well as monitoring and optimizing space in retail stores and factory floors.

Operations | Global IT services provider Columbus Global elevates consulting experiences with AI, streamlined processes, and analytics

In reimagining their businesses, Columbus Global acts as a digital trusted advisor for organizations around the world. It offers subscription consultancy services as one of its many services.

Supply chain | Improve inventory visibility, and planning and agility of your warehouses

In recent years, supply chain disruptions have exposed supplier vulnerabilities and fragilities across industries and countries. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, organizations can exceed customer expectations, mitigate financial risks, and deliver on time.

Scale low-code across the organization to do more with less

Microsoft Power Platform features a comprehensive set of low-code development tools that will enable users to quickly build and transform solutions, enabling them to transform their businesses. Introducing Microsoft Power Pages and Managed Environments. Both are generally available now! Furthermore, you can create a flow in seconds using the new AI copilot in Microsoft Power Automate by simply describing what you want to automate.  

What’s New In Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Breakfast Seminar

Due to lockdown restrictions, it has been two and a half years since we, The CRM Team, have been able to host an in-person event with customers and prospects. So, when the President announced that hard lockdown was finally over, our team was hard at work to ensure that we get back to live in-person events again.

On the17th of August, we hosted our customers and prospects for a ‘What’s New In Dynamics 365 and Power Platform’ Breakfast Seminar at the Microsoft SA offices, in Bryanston. Microsoft is innovating at a rapid pace, and our objective with this event was to bring our customers and prospects up to date with what is new and how it can unlock possibilities within their organisations.

This seminar was well-attended by our customers and prospects from various organisations. Upon arrival, they were well received with breakfast, before going into the auditorium where the programme was held.

Wynand Roos, the Managing Director of The CRM Team, took customers and prospects through What’s New In Dynamics 365. Roos discussed many fascinating topics in relation to Dynamics Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Customer Insights, and Customer Voice.

In Dynamics Marketing, Roos explained to the attendees how they can target customers based on real-time event-triggered customer journeys, how to elevate customer experiences, Dynamics Marketing: investment areas, data, and AI (artificial intelligence), and many more.

In Dynamics Sales, Roos touched on the roadblocks to selling, investment areas in Sales, forecasting and pipeline intelligence, conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and process automation, engaging efficiently with customers, choosing the right engagement plan for customers and so much more.

Under the topic Dynamics Customer Service, Roos discussed the investment areas, visual customisation of Power BI embedded analytics, simplifying administration with the new Customer Service ​admin center application, teams integration, ​ engaging with customers in Dynamics 365 Customer Service Community​, and many more.

In Dynamics Customer Insights, Roos spoke through the investment areas, customer understanding, how to easily and quickly get insights and power your business processes, expanding semantic type support for activities and entities, and how to enable seamless data interoperability across ​Dynamics 365 applications.

The last topic Roos discussed under What’s New In Dynamics 365 was Dynamics Customer Voice, where he overviewed the investment areas on customer voice, allowing file upload option for external survey responders​, getting detailed email delivery status, and sharing and co-authoring surveys with your team in a seamless way.

After Wynand Roos’ presentation, we had Microsoft’s Technical Specialist, Michael O’Donovan who discussed What’s New in Microsoft Power Platform.

O’Donovan introduced our attendees to Power Apps, to empower everyone to create apps to solve business challenges. He touched on how to turn images and designs into apps, for example sketching a form and turning it into an app with Power Apps express design. O’Donovan went further to introduce the Creator Kit for Power Apps and Native Apps to the attendees.

He then went on to elaborate on how businesses can automate business processes across Power Process, using robotic process automation hosted machine. He touched on using Power Virtual Agents, to build intelligent bots for customers and employees in minutes and Power Pages to build engaging site experiences.

To end off the wonderful event, Mark James and Selby Bopape, The CRM Team’s Specialist Technical Trainer’s, discussed Change Management and User Adoption. The duo touched on 7 reasons why tech projects fail, The CRM Team’s adoption plan for user adoption, and the three phases in user adoption.

The event was a great success and attendees left with a wealth of new knowledge. We look forward to hosting more events like these in the future!

Why migrate to Dynamics 365 cloud?

The disruption and advancement we’re currently experiencing is largely because of the technology landscape that has changed, there’s no going back. On-premise business solutions and costly infrastructure is something of the past.

All businesses were built on state-of-the-art on-premise technology, but this is now ineffective and insecure. Agility, scalability, accessibility and mobility have never been more important, especially as new trends continue to challenge businesses, solutions, and processes alike.

Moving to the cloud has to be a business priority for any modern organisation. This isn’t something that happens overnight, one needs to build a plan, strategise and take manageable steps.

Firstly, when it comes to business solutions, start by understanding the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power of the Cloud and the benefits it offers. This will certainly challenge the traditional way of thinking and misconceptions about cloud. One needs to understand that on-premise CRM or ERP solutions cannot deliver on the needs and expectations of future organisations.

What used to be good enough is no longer good enough. It is common to hear business leaders, especially in finance and operations, claim their existing systems work just fine. But unfortunately, complacency in business is often the downfall of innovation and growth.

The fact is, although on-premises solutions are good enough for now and get the job done, they are fast becoming obsolete and more importantly, the competition is using the cloud to accelerate growth.

It’s time to take advantage of Dynamics 365 data integrations, out-of-the-box functionality, plus advanced machine learning and predictive analytic capabilities. This will certainly optimise legacy processes in real-time, outpace, out-manoeuvre and out-earn any on-premises competitor.

Customisation

Most old school business owners have a misconception that their business needs are unique and this is a barrier to migration. It is common among on-premise businesses that have developed customised solutions over many years. Their business needs are not as unique as they think.

Migration to the cloud can help businesses eliminate cumbersome customisation and at the same time, massive expenses, infrastructure and processes. Often what they consider to be unique, is less about the specialised requirements of a given IT environment and more about what is perceived to be proprietary. They often have a limited understanding of what is possible in the cloud.

Dynamics 365 migration program

Moving on-premises Dynamics CRM solutions to Dynamics 365 Cloud can help businesses create efficiencies, control costs and improve productivity with a migration assessment.

Improve security, privacy and reliability

Business leaders can have peace of mind knowing their sensitive business data is stored in highly secure, state-of-the-art data centres owned and managed by Microsoft. Their data will be there when they need it, thanks to a 99.9 percent uptime service-level agreement (SLA).

Bring all your data together

Typically, CRM and ERP data has been maintained separately. Dynamics 365 allows one to connect this data for a 360-degree view of the business and access it from familiar solutions like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Power BI.

Enable scalability and flexibility

Support business growth without costly changes to your IT infrastructure, including the ability to quickly activate and deploy new users.

Free up IT resources

Improve IT productivity by reducing the complexity associated with managing hardware and software and providing support. Eliminate the hassle of software maintenance tasks – such as backups, upgrades, and patches -and free up IT staff to focus on strategic planning and other high-priority work items.

Adapt to your business needs

Enhance the Dynamics 365 experience with prebuilt business applications, developed by Microsoft and select partners and available through the Microsoft AppSource marketplace. If a business has a unique need, build apps using Microsoft Power Platform and then customise and extend them.

Increase collaboration and productivity

Enhance teamwork and boost productivity by accessing information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Enable remote employees to share information in real time, allowing for easier and more efficient collaboration.

Empower the business to do more

Dynamics 365 provides the tools and information businesses need to compete, succeed and excel by providing access to innovations like AI and predictive analytics.

Why Microsoft Dynamics 365?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an end-to-end software-as-a-service business platform that comprises of interconnected workloads and services designed to both transform and enable an organisation’s core customers, employees and business activities.

It combines all the workloads that a business needs to run including finance, sales, supply chain, retail and customer service. It also includes AI and machine learning to enhance core offerings and provide industry-leading solutions to common problems like AI-enhanced cash flow forecasting, and the optimisation and automation of order fulfilment.

Finally, Dynamics 365 is built on Microsoft Azure, which offers a trusted platform and a broad ecosystem of services, and it is integrated with Microsoft 365’s productivity apps such as Outlook, Office and Microsoft Teams.

Emil Hickley- Head of Engineering

Emil’s aim is to create beautiful, easy-to-use products that people enjoy using. He specialises in SaaS. He is passionate about talking business, strategy, and devising pricing strategies. 

Marketing and sales strategies require some finesse in order to convert consumers into paying customers. Long gone are the days when you could cast your net wide in the hopes of catching one or two fish. Consumers are becoming more particular about how they interact with businesses and brands and how they prefer to be marketed to.

People prefer, and often expect, highly individualised marketing efforts that speak directly to them. Although it is possible to provide these kinds of experiences while manually performing your marketing and sales activities, it is no longer practical. You or your marketing team could end up spending a significant amount of time and resources on designing and implementing tailored marketing messages in the hopes of converting one or two customers. Marketing automation systems can help you market more effectively and efficiently.

Sales and marketing teams are more efficient.

Using a marketing automation system frees up your marketing team since they will no longer need to manually manage many marketing-related tasks. That means they will have more time to strategise and focus on generating even better marketing content, campaigns, and projects. The same goes for your sales team.

A marketing automation system usually centralises most, if not all, marketing tasks. This will make your marketing team’s jobs easier. It will also assist them to be more efficient since they won’t need to switch between systems or learn and use different programs.

Bringing your marketing and sales efforts into alignment.

Marketing and sales are not the same things. Marketing refers to the customer journey. These marketing efforts could include various touchpoints where customers engage with your business, brand, products, or services before they make a purchase. On the other hand, sales refer to the transaction where a consumer purchases something from your business.

Using a marketing automation program puts your marketing and sales efforts on the same page. This makes it easier to nurture leads through the marketing funnel and convert potential customers into buyers.

It makes financial sense.

It is possible to reduce your marketing costs by around 12% while increasing your sales productivity by 14.5% by implementing and using marketing automation systems.

Businesses, especially small businesses, may find it challenging to dedicate time and resources toward marketing efforts. When you say marketing automation software, one person could potentially achieve the same marketing goals as a team consisting of multiple members. This could make your marketing more effective and free you or your team members up to focus on other vital tasks.

Get more from your data.

Gathering, storing, and interpreting your marketing and sales data is vital to designing and implementing effective marketing campaigns. In most cases, marketing automation software can automatically generate reports. These reports could be as broad and general or as specific as you need them to be.

Reports generated by your marketing automation software could help you establish which campaigns are performing well. It can also help you identify potential issues and friction points in your customers’ marketing journey. This allows you to see exactly where you are losing leads and therefore losing sales. Knowing where potential customers are exiting your sales funnel can help you improve in these areas, possibly leading to a higher conversion rate.

Focusing on your customers.

When your marketing team no longer needs to manually manage certain marketing activities, they will be able to dedicate their time and resources to other areas. One of these areas is to focus on creating more personalised content and interactions with existing and potential customers.

Your marketing team will be able to create highly unique and personalised marketing messages based on the reports generated by your marketing automation system. These marketing messages could be highly targeted by using the segmentation capabilities provided by your marketing automation system.

These targeting efforts can be amplified when you use your marketing automation system to display marketing messages across multiple channels. These channels include social media, email campaigns, sponsored content, online advertisements, and search ads.

Customers could perceive these targeted marketing efforts in a highly positive light. 44% of clients would move to a competitor if your company does not respond to their inquiries fast enough. More than that, they crave a personalised experience, preferring that overpriced when making a purchasing decision. Marketing automation benefits both your company and your customers by enabling you to provide highly personalised marketing messages that are more likely to convert.

Better marketing systems and processes.

Some marketing systems and processes could become impractical as your business grows. This can make managing these systems or processes labor and time-intensive. Marketing systems and processes that don’t meet your company’s needs could mean that your company does not grow as much as it could.

Suppose a marketing system is manual or needs to be managed by a specific person in your team. In that case, it makes it difficult to scale it as your company and marketing team grows. Having a marketing automation system could make it easier for various team members to design, develop, implement, and track your marketing efforts.

Better lead nurturing.

Making your sales and marketing efforts more efficient and effective and bringing the two together while harnessing your data and focusing on your customers means that you will be better able to nurture leads. You will be able to generate personalised marketing campaigns and implement and automate these campaigns to see the best return on your marketing investments.

Using a marketing automation system means you can increase your productivity as well as your return on investment. It can allow you to harness the data that you gather in order to provide existing and potential customers with the best marketing messages. These messages could encourage more sales and greater customer loyalty.

The time and resources that you save by using a marketing automation system can be used to focus on other vital areas of your business. For your marketing team, this could mean strategising and implementing more and more successful marketing campaigns that can be automated.