Well, it hasn't been long since Microsoft introduced an improved way of interacting and doing business with customers by implementing data-driven enterprise solutions. The preliminary versions of Dynamics CRM including the first one that was launched way back in the year 2003, were not well adopted by the industry. It was only until MS Dynamics 4.0 was introduced in 2007 which witnessed significant reception in the market and crossed 1 million marks in July 2009. Microsoft came up with momentous changes over the years and released diverse features through the course of development. The latest version running in the market is Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 which was released on November 30th, 2015 and has over 40,000 subscribed customers.
CRM lets you manage customer relationships, track sales, and marketing activities and streamline profit-reaping processes. While all the CRM versions are based in and around this definition, Microsoft delivers another comprehensive solution called Microsoft Dynamics 365 to let you build intelligent business applications and effectively engage customers. There's a lot more than you can do with Dynamics 365 owing to its widespread efficacy under diverse domains like Sales, Operations, Marketing, Customer Insights, Field Service, Project Service Automation, and Customer Service.
We've picked up a few intriguing features for you that you can scrutinize while embarking on a journey to success with Dynamics 365.
1. Relationship Insights:
RI combines the data integrity of cloud and artificial intelligence provided by Azure to analyze your huge collection of customer interaction data. It builds up a stack of features to drive you through your routine workflow, look for important opportunities and messages that need to be attended, manage your mailbox, and suggest the most appropriate path ahead. RI integrates the functionalities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Outlook, gathers data, provides suggestions and puts forth the information which is close to or most relevant to your daily activities. The RI suite currently incorporates the features of relationship assistant, auto capture, and email engagement in its preview version. The preview edition works steadily but is still under development for further improvement.
2. Editable Grids:
ED is the latest, in-demand custom control acquired by Microsoft that enables you to edit, group, sort, and filter data within the same grid to avoid hopping between different records and views time and again. This feature provides the option of inline editing at the entity and sub-grid level on the web and mobile clients. It also allows moving and resizing columns, pagination and look-up configuration. ED supports business rules and forming scripts to build customized business logic suitable to your organization. It portrays hierarchical view and permits you to enable/disable cells based on security role.
3. Mobile App Enhancements:
Ever since Microsoft has integrated CRM technology into mobile, it tries to instill one or more features to make the mobile experience better. Today, CRM is not limited to traditional desktop systems. It has become handy, easy and simple to interact with the technology on the fly and has also increased productivity as it is accessible everywhere. With the evolution of CRM technology over these years, Microsoft has presented quite a handful enhancements in mobile that have proved invariably useful. You get to see a personalized workspace on mobile that lets you quickly get on to the priority tasks, scheduled meetings and common tasks lined up for the day. The company has infused new layouts and colors that are compact and optimized enough to give users a seamless experience working with its mobile app. Moreover, the app allows you to create in-line notes, attach multimedia content, and access your phone's camera within the app along with data synchronization running in the background.
4. Outlook Integration:
With the recent developments, you can continue to leverage the dynamic features of Microsoft Outlook and Dynamics 365 within Dynamics 365 App for Outlook which also provides server-side sync. You can find information on all your email recipients stacked up and automatically mapped to Dynamics 365 leads or contacts. The app reveals a record summary and account information of contacts and leads. Besides, you can find related records for stakeholders, opportunities, competitors, and cases. With this app, you can create new entities, track appointments and meetings, compose messages using email templates, and attach any file. The app saves considerable time and works much faster than earlier.
5. Live Assist:
It is important to connect to your customers and provide them assistance on all their queries from anywhere and as swiftly as possible. With Live Assist powered by Café X, you can effectively engage with your customers using live in-app support for Microsoft Dynamics 365. The app lets you text chat with the mobile users and website visitors, co-browse and share documents securely, retain a unified view, quickly resolve issues in real-time, and provide personalized support to the customers. As a result, it increases customer satisfaction and retention and accelerates online sales.
Roundup
We shall be seeing new and enriched features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 surfacing in the coming years that will redefine the process of customer engagement. But until then, we have enough to explore and turn around the business towards the road of success Dynamics 365.
No comments