Businesses require robust software solutions to manage customer services, sales and marketing, and project management. However, they may also need to manage complex financial operations, fraud, human resources, and supply chain logistics too. This can often result in a confusing array of implemented software solutions.
With a glut of finicky software and systems within a single company, data is harder to share. Furthermore, accessing real-time information during sales calls or customer contact information across software implementations can be time-consuming and cause endless frustration.
For many UK SMEs, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an elegant ERP/CRM solution for a complex business environment. In this article, we’ll take a deeper dive into what it is exactly and how it can help your business.
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivers comprehensive customer relationship management, marketing, HR, supply chain, operational obligations, and business analytical tools in a cloud-based solution. As a SaaS, technology-led workplace environment, it’s the modern workplace personified.
While being only one platform, each department is given its own app which is accessed through a web browser interface. Employees can open tabs for different apps, such as HR, sales, or customer services, depending on their role or current task. As a result, training can be streamlined to specifically what each employee needs to know.
Microsoft Dynamics relies on the enterprise-level Microsoft Azure cloud storage solution. It also works perfectly with Microsoft 365, the renamed Office ecosystem, along with the popular Teams communication tool too.
Enhance customer service capabilities
One of the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is clearly in its superior customer relationship management features.
The challenge for any customer service rep is to seamlessly manage customer relationships through interactions across multiple sources. Customers may call in, send an email, or initiate a live chat from the website. Reps need to see all recent conversations and relevant customer data, so they can provide excellent assistance and support.
Intuitive Interface for Customer Service Reps
The Dynamics 365 Customer Service workspace pulls everything together in a single organised environment. Real-time conversations or email replies can offer solutions or confirm what action has been taken on their behalf. Also, automatically generated artificial intelligence transcripts of past phone communications allow reps to quickly grasp the important points that were covered to make informed decisions.
Better Insights in Real-time
The Sales Insights add-in to the Dynamics 365 Customer Service app provides intelligent Azure machine learning AI capabilities. This includes searching current and past conversations for information gathering purposes to then locate relevant knowledgebase articles to recommend.
To deepen the understanding of each customer’s needs, AI analysis of customer communications can include both written and audio sources. Assessments of customer sentiment and their shared opinions further inform the customer service representative on how to respond appropriately.
Further down the line, other team members get access to suggestions that were found to effectively resolve the customer’s difficulty. This improves their ability to elevate satisfaction levels across all relevant groups.
Reporting & Insight
Dynamics 365 comprehensive suite of core apps for customer service, sales, and other areas provide access to centralised customers’ accounts and contact information. Which of course helps to expedite communication.
As a result, whether a customer service rep is fielding a new query, or the sales agent is discussing a new purchase, they both have access to the same account information. Contact details will no longer be separated when using disparate apps across the organisation.
This makes it easier to gain useful predictive insights and generate powerful reporting. The Dynamics 365 Customer Insights platform allows for unified data access, plus the potential integration of third-party app information for more advanced business intelligence.
Managers get a clearer view of how satisfied customers are. They can also respond quickly by taking steps to resolve any common customer pain points.
Additionally, the Power Platform is typically included with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales app offering detailed analytical capabilities for the sales team. We discuss this further in our section on customisations later in the article.
Microsoft Platform
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on a robust platform. Dynamics relies on the enterprise-level Microsoft SQL Server relational database system for robust data storage and search capabilities. This alleviates the need to run a complicated system in-house, instead, Microsoft Dynamics and the Azure cloud service do this for you.
In our experience, this allows system administrators to concentrate on managing the apps, rather than dealing with server or software complications.
The latest Dynamics interface is designed to be customisable, yet still, be as quick to learn and use. Ultimately, it looks and feels like other Microsoft products.
Fully integrates with Microsoft products
Whilst Dynamics will integrate cooperatively with third-party apps, it also works effortlessly with Microsoft apps too. Therefore, Teams users will find it straightforward to get up to speed and make the best use of both Dynamics and Teams.
The Microsoft 365 suite of Office productivity apps also is accessible to users of Dynamics for a streamlined in-house workflow. Speaking of workflows, there’s also the Power Automate app under the Power Platform that includes numerous automation features to improve productivity too. Here at Microbyte, we specialise in connecting these systems as part of our MSP Services.
Customisation tools available
Dynamics 365 can be customised in various ways. This applies within different Dynamics apps, such as Customer Service, Sales, Finance, Human Resources, or Supply Chain Management.
Interface modifications are process driven by emphasising the most used features or app interface views leading to higher staff productivity. These can be further fine-tuned to reflect revised processes in the future or to allow for personalised solutions.
Power Apps, under the Power platform, also allows for app creation for subsequent desktop, tablet, and mobile environments. This brings customisation to a new level for businesses with specific needs beyond the broad range of standard options already available within Dynamics.
Microbyte can set up and apply the necessary customisations to allow clients to benefit enormously from their adoption of Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Easy to use and manage
Whether using the Dynamics 365 Virtual agent app or Fraud protection to catch irregular financial transactions, the entire ecosystem is designed for easy mastery. Whether a staff member has used a CRM tool before or not, it won’t be a problem.
For managers, this also remains true. The Business Central and app administrative areas allow them to access all relevant control systems, security implementations, and more.
Scalable platform
The scalability of the Dynamics 365 platform is not in question.
The infrastructure stands on the reliability of Microsoft Azure, its cloud service, to permit all apps within Dynamics 365 to work impeccably. Azure is currently one of the top 3 largest cloud providers globally.
As a result, it is highly scalable to manage the fluctuating demands of a global client base.
Final Thoughts
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is relatively simple to use. Yet, implementing it successfully and applying the most appropriate customisations for high productivity and greater efficiency requires an experienced hand. Our team at Microbyte possesses broad capabilities to get the most from a Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation.
Get in touch to see how we can help your business.
