Published on the 02/11/2016 | Written by Newsdesk
Microsoft describes Dynamics 365 as ‘a cloud-based suite of purpose-built, intelligent business applications’…
We recently sat in on the preview of Dynamics 365 which has of today gone out to General Availability. Microsoft said the software is designed to address specific needs, such as sales automation, operations, field and customer service, backed by analytics and machine learning.
It has several launch clients implementing or using it already, including KPMG (which is a Microsoft partner and Dynamics Inner Circle member), NSW Trustee and Guardian, and health insurance company BUPA.
In a statement, Microsoft Business Services VP Asia Simon Davies said Dynamics 365 is engineered to help organisations deliver personalised experiences through their customer relationships. “As diverse organisations, like NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA, speak to us about the measurable business results they are already seeing with Dynamics, we’re excited to see how the solution will steer their digital transformation in the future,” he said.
In Microsoft’s press release, KPMG explained how Dynamics 365 is expected to heighten customer experience; James Hunter, the company’s managing partner for Markets & Growth, said the software will be an enabler. “It will provide capabilities we’ve wanted to offer for a number of years. Our clients are crucial to us, and this technology will enable us to enhance our client experience at every interaction and bring all parts of our firm to develop integrated solutions very quickly…the smart phone app allows all our employees to have visibility of our clients, update insights from meetings and it empowers every employee to focus on delivering our client strategy.”
Grammarians will note tense – these are anticipated benefits rather than delivered ones. Hunter added that “As an added bonus, the project is ahead of time and on budget and the feedback as recently as last week across our 450 national and global partners within the firm was outstanding.”
Godfrey Boyd, program director at Bupa, ANZ, said the company selected Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure “To improve the way we work and give us a single view of the customer. Prior to that we used an old legacy system that was slow and complex. Dynamics CRM is giving our frontline call centre staff greater ability to make quick decisions and resolve customer queries. The results have been immediate and we have already seen an improvement in customer satisfaction.”
Similar levels of enthusiasm came from UXC Eclipse (part of CSC) customer and partner engagement director Andrew Devitt. He said every conversation with customers is now around Dynamics 365, which combines CRM and ERP. “They are no longer just a feature/function conversation about ERP or CRM. Each customer engagement is now about identifying specific workload challenges and solving the business problem – the underlying technology is a given. This means we are able to drive transformation within our own business as we add new revenue lines.”
Microsoft also announced the General Availability of PowerApps and Flow, to be included in Dynamics 365. The company said PowerApps and Flow join Microsoft Power BI to ‘create a power trio’, to build mobile and web applications without coding, automate business processes, and analyse and visualise data.
Dynamics 365 is available in Enterprise and Business Editions with subscriptions per app/per user.
