Dynamics 365 CE (CRM) and its Place in Your Whole Organization (Video)

TRANSCRIPTION

Debra: Good morning, everyone. I’m so excited this Thursday morning, October 24th, to be sharing some Dynamics 365 information with you today. My name is Debra Ward. And today, we’re gonna be reviewing a topic that I’ve, kind of, changed a little bit today, but I think it fits quite well with what we talked about last time, and that’s why I wanted to be able to start, and be able to build off of. And if you haven’t seen the previous webinar, no worries, you can always go back and take a look at that on our website, or this…I think is really strong standalone information.

So, again, we wanna look at Dynamics 365, the customer engagement modules, whereas previously, might be considered a CRM, or customer relationship management applications. Or if that’s the premise in which you’re starting to do your research, this is where I would guide you, and the customer engagement modules will be able to facilitate that functionality for you. And really, about how is it gonna sit within your whole organization, it’s a pretty big topic. Just changing slides, here we go. And again, sorry…

My name is Debra Ward, I am an account executive with Encore Business Solutions, and I’m a little bit of a hybrid, or a different position with Encore, whereas I am an account executive helping new organizations look at Dynamics 365 as a whole, including Office 365, or really the entire Microsoft ecosystem, as to what applications would best suit them to achieve their goals. I also assist our existing customers to continue to leverage the functionality…the applications they have, and leveraging the new features as it’s being released within from Microsoft. And secondly, as I do help, I am a part of…a team member representing the customer engagement team for other account executives. So, if they have specific customer engagement needs or functionality that they’re seeking, I kind of jump in and be able to help. So, I get to be a part of a lot of really great conversations from all three perspectives, which is why I wanted to be able to create this webinar series for you, and be able to talk about…or share what conversations I’ve been having, and what I’ve been learning from different organizations.

And so, just to kind of recap on what we did previously. The top five reasons why people are looking at Dynamics 365 in their research journey, right? So again, they’re looking for visibility of their information, being able to… So it’s not siloed with different applications, and it’s not hidden on someone’s desk, and it’s not in someone’s mind, and that it’s given across the company. So, when information is captured, that other departments or other lines of business have access to that information. Better metrics, to be able to understand how their organization is working, what their cadence is, what their current processes are, to be able to really understand the culture of their own company and its mechanics. So, now they can be able to see where a training, or personal employee development, how can they be able to make their culture and their business stronger.

Ability of accessing your information anywhere. Again, the ability of looking at, if you want to save your information on premise, or as Microsoft, is heavily encouraging to be able to bring your information to the cloud so you can access your information anywhere on any device. So, whether being any browser, from a mobile device perspective, being a phone or a tablet.

Integrity of information. So again, once…integrity of information and ability to be proactive. Again, being able to, through your business process, capture critical information, and making sure that it’s entered in once, and that it’s valid information, and we’ll touch a little bit on that today. And then making sure that, once we’re starting to capture that information, we’re now able to run metrics, and be able see how we can be proactive in servicing our clients, rather than being reactive.

So, again, looking at the digital feedback loop with Dynamics 365. The overall goal that Microsoft is trying to provide for you, again, is capturing critical information for your organization. Once you’re starting to capture that information, you’re sharing it internally, you’re sharing information with your customers, you’re looking at, now, how can I transform my products? How can I transform my services? How can I streamline and become leaner in what I do and smarter with what I’m doing, and how to share that information? And then what are my next steps? What’s the action that I’m gonna provide, whether it’s an automated action or a manual action?

So, my next slide here is, again, just an overarching view of Dynamics 365, and that’s really where the approach is today, is looking at it as a whole and how it can sit for your organization, and how you can leverage that and become stronger. So, regardless of what application, you can leverage any of these applications independently, or… This is where I find Dynamics 365 really has its strengths, is that you would be able to lean on it as the platform, the single platform for you to capture all your information in, whether it’s within the sales cycle, maybe within your customer service, and managing your cases and your tickets, being able to look at how you’re servicing your customers.

It could be project service automation and managing your tasks and your projects, especially for professional services and how you’re billing those services. Field service, and connected field service using IoT devices, being able to look at proactivity of looking at when systems might fail, or mechanics might not work properly through IoT devices, being able to send back to field service and to become proactive. Or just managing your day-to-day transactions of individuals on the road, being able to give them the critical information that they need to do their job, and to streamline the processes, remove the paper trails that can be quite cumbersome.

And then the other applications as well tying into an ERP, being Finance and Operations built within the application, or looking at business central depending on your financial and your business management aspects of what your needs are. Of course, leveraging talent for HR marketing and marketing, of course. And of course, everything is sitting on that platform. About how to automate your processes, whether it being work processes, or being able to look at Power BI, being able to look at PowerApps and Flow. And about how those all tied back in together.

So, to keep in mind with everything that we’re gonna be talking about today, it’s really about Dynamics 365. Again, as an individual application, you can be able to leverage for a CRM using Dynamics 365 for sales, if that is your starting point. But when we start looking at the bigger picture of what an organization’s goals are, this is when we get to take a step back and look at, what is the growth pattern? What else do you wanna be able to achieve? What information are we gonna put on that platform to tie the organization in together as a whole? And that’s why we believe Dynamics 365 really has those strengths, leveraging Office 365 and all of the business applications that we’ve all grown up with, really.

And then all of the new functionality with teams, and with all of its functionality that we’ll be able to show a little bit today, whether being OneNote, or Yammer, about tying all the other information in together, having all of those applications available within Dynamics 365 as we’re capturing. And then, of course, the ability to create the next steps for you, whether it being workflows, how do you wanna be able to automate? Or how do you want those next steps to be triggered within your organization? Using PowerApps, using Microsoft Flow? And of course, how are we gonna report? Internally, we’ll be able to show how applications will tie together here within Dynamics 365, and give you that visibility for reporting, but also, now leveraging Power BI.

So, again, when we look at Dynamics 365 as a whole and how it can be able to look at for your organization, it’s about tying all of these applications together, and then again, tying your departments together, whether we’re using Office 365, Power BI, Cortana Intelligence, purpose-built apps. The entire world of third party applications through Microsoft AppSource that could be integrated into Dynamics 365 is at your disposal. So, again, Microsoft developing that platform for you, of core functionality, that you can use as a launching point, how are you gonna extend that? And then leveraging if you’re gonna build it out, or leveraging third party applications through AppSource, the common data model, of course, and of course, with Azure.

So, very quickly, just looking at the different applications residing with it, because when we’re gonna, kind of, take a little bit of a launch point from here, we’ll be able to… The beauty is being able to tie all these applications in together, but also being able to using them separately, and still being able to achieve those greater goals for your organization.

So, Dynamics 365 for Sales. I’ll be able to capture information through your organic natural business processes you have now. But then, how do we help expedite how to improve those processes?

Dynamics 365 for Customer Service. Looking at, how are you communicating with your customers? How is information coming to you when they require services from you? Whether they’re requesting information, a quote, using cues, and how to automate and redirect those queries to, say, your sales team. Or if they’re having difficulties with product, or they need services onsite, how do we be able to showcase and be able to bring that information forward? So, with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, we have an entire omni-channel to engage and route these cases. But it looks at your business processes, how do you need that to be able to work forward?

Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation. Especially for professional service organizations looking to track projects and tasks associated with those projects. And then how do I be able to allocate individuals resourcing to each of those tasks, and then be able to ensure that billable services are captured and submitted to our clients? And then of course field service, right? So, any technician, any individual that needs to go on site to be able to provide services, whether it being a health care technician, an HVAC technician, implementation services, you can be able to leverage field service to be able to help manage service agreements, to be able to schedule the correct individuals for the right territory, and be able to dispatch them out. Manage inventory. Each individual vehicle if necessary, it could be a mobile warehouse, to be able to track your inventory. Again, giving that visibility to the technician, the person on the spot, whether using the services I am today, to be able to capture the information through a browser, or through their mobile phone, through their Dynamics 365 mobile app.

So, any of these applications, looking about how we’re gonna be tying them all in together. So, I’m staying with the sales concept for the moment. But please, in your minds, be able to look at what application would be able to service you. And I believe what I’m gonna show you today will suit all of the applications, and then how we can be able to start to tie them in together through the different processes.

So, usually, when I’m looking, and I do a discovery session with either new organizations that are looking at exploring or existing customers, I’m always being able to ask these critical questions. It’s like, what information am I trying to capture? What goals do I have? And what information do I need to be able to capture through this process? Whether it’s the technician on site that needs to be able to capture critical information, or is through a nurture program that a sales individual is nurturing a client forward for future business? How am I capturing this information? Am I doing it manually or am I writing it on a piece of paper? And then waiting ’till I get into my car, or back into the office to be able to do that? That’s not really our recommendations, nor the expectations, I think, as a whole for our culture right now.

So, how am I gonna start to expedite the process of capturing information? How can I streamline this process to ensuring, again, going back to what I had mentioned earlier, the validity of the information and the time that my associates are spending capturing information that goes into the platform, right? And then how am I communicating this information? How am I sharing this internally? It’s not just stuck on a scribbler somewhere, giving visibility to the rest of the team and the organization so they can grow and learn.

And externally, how am I sharing this information with my customers? Am I using nurture campaigns, maybe Dynamics 365 for Marketing or ClickDimensions for nurture campaigns, and being able to see what services or products that they’re looking at, and be able to capture those metrics through heat mapping, and see how I can help nurture them going forward? And then finally, what am I doing with this information? Am I using the natural views and dashboards that we can create within Dynamics 365? Do I have to capture information from maybe another application, in which I can use Power BI to be able to create dashboards and reports for myself? Once I started capturing information, am I starting to use machine learning to be able to figure out what my next steps are?

So, what information am I starting to capture? It could be pretty broad, right? So, looking at account management, how am I managing these accounts? Am I account profiling? Who are they? What do they need? What industries are they a part of? How do I be able to learn about them? What specific products do they have, or do they need, so that I can be able to start being proactive and start strategizing how to be able to help them?

What do I need to see? Am I my managing all of my tasks, my activities, my transactions with these customers? Do I need to see their financial status? What do I need to see with them? And then, again, as I mentioned just a moment ago, is there data from third party applications that I need to bring into this platform so that I can have that visibility? So, Microsoft as a whole, the primary goal is to be able to give you that 360-degree view of what your transactions are, how are you currently working with this organization, and what you need to go do next.

I’m just gonna flip over to my Chrome browser, and be able to look at an environment for Dynamics 365. In here, I have an account for Grand Coulee Dam. So, there’s this visibility. What information am I starting to capture? Right. So, here across the top, I can be able to see all of the different tabs that are currently invisible to me within this account page. I can be able to see all the critical account information, I can see who their parent information is, what their relationship type is, are they a customer? Are they a vendor? Are they an influencer? Are they a prospect? Who are they to me and how am I developing this relationship with them?

Products. So, address anything specific. In the center of the screen, looking at the timeline, what are my transactions that I had with this customer? So, here I can see phone calls, emails, a quote was closed just this summer, different correspondences. So, I can be able to see the rate in which I’m communicating with them, and I can be able to see these transactions, all of which can be created here from Dynamics 365. Or I can start capturing this information from other points of contact. Here on the left side of my screen, I have relationship assistant that I’ll speak to in a little bit. Looking at…

This is an automated series of workflows that Microsoft has provided to be able to predict how we’re moving with this customer. And when we start to, maybe, get things to fall through the cracks, or we’re not able to follow up with certain tasks, here the relationship is saying, “Hey, you have no activity with this opportunity since Monday the 14th. So, maybe you need to follow up on that, because this opportunity needs to close soon.” So, it’s giving you the action about what you wanna be able to do next. I can be able to send the email to follow up, I can look at this opportunity, or I can be able to reallocate this to someone else if I’m seeking help, if I’m not able to get to it.

As I scroll down the screen, so, again, who my primary contacts are. But here, I see an integration into an ERP, being in this situation, Dynamics 365 Business Central. So, again, now I can start to see the financial status of this account. I can be able to see what their balance is, their account number, if they have outstanding orders, if things have not been shipped. So, again, if I’m gonna go to have a conversation with this customer, I wanna be able to have a clear understanding of what my services are to them. And if anything, it might be of a topic of conversation. So, I can be able to see if there’s any service orders outstanding with their total, if anything, they’ve exceeded their credit limit overdue.

So, again, having that full visibility. The other tabs across the top of the screen, looking at if I have projects, my details of the customer, about who they are. And every customer that I’ve spoken with, when we start looking at profile and looking at what critical information do I need to be able to start capturing for them, this is usually what is developed, right? So, their account management aspect and their profiling perspective. So, what are their preferences? How do they wanna be communicated with? You can be very respectful to people’s needs and desires. So, if they prefer to have text messaging over bulk emails, if they don’t want phone calls, perhaps they would rather be part of a nurture campaign, this way they can make their decisions and not feel pressured, if you will.

So, again, any critical information, how am I servicing them? What their scheduling is? Here I have an integration with SharePoint showing me all of the active account files that are shared here, so it gives that visibility across the board. I can be able to see what documents, what contracts have been signed, of course, my availability into being able to using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. So, if I wanted to be able to start looking at any other information regarding this account, and looking at any of their prospects and leads that I can be able to talk to within there, I can be able to start to delve in here.

So, here I’ve just pulled up Encore Business Solutions, I can consider that a match for this conversation. If I wanted to be able to save this in Sales Navigator, or be able to look at it, I can be able to see who their connections are, see different individuals within the organization, as well as I can be able to start to see myself, right? I can view profiles and be able see who these people are. I can be able to send a connect message, and be able to do that right from my Dynamics 365 environment, I don’t need to be able to go into LinkedIn.

So, again, this is highlighting about how we link into other applications, and bringing it here into Dynamics. So, this being the primary application that a user would interact with over the course of the day, most of them having multiple applications open. They can be able to do this all from one point of contact, and it’ll help with user engagement, making sure the application is leveraged as that critical one point.

And then, of course, looking at all of my other related fields. So, I would have access, depending on my security profile as to what other entities do I need to have access to, and what I can have availability to? So, if you’re tracking, I wanna see all my activities regarding this account, my connections, seeing any other organization or people that are associated with this account. Documents, as I just showed you, there with the integration into SharePoint. If I wanna see actuals over my quotes, looking at my entitlements, I can be able to, quickly, see all opportunities that are currently open for Grand Coulee Dam, what the status is, and I start delving into that.

So, again, from a profiling, or from an account visibility point of view, Microsoft is looking at what information do you wanna be able to capture, and then giving it to you in an easy form that is editable and configurable to your organization, to suit your needs.

Just going to bounce back to my PowerPoint presentation. So then again, so now how am I capturing this information? In my last webinar, we looked at using Dynamics 365 app for Outlook and the integration into Office 365. And by capturing information through an organic sales process, looking at my lead from a lead nurturing point of view and qualifying through an opportunity, or am I looking through an auto capture integration? Maybe through a website, or through a form process to be able to extract information off of a form and auto-populate the system? Or are we leveraging new features like the business cards scan that is just released…Microsoft released as of October 1st of this year.

So, again, looking at the Dynamics 365 app that I showed in the last webinar, I’m pleased to show it again if someone would like to see it, where I’m using the Dynamics 365 app on an email. I have a customer that has come in saying that they definitely have a new project that they wanna kick off the fall of this year. So, I can use this app to be able to create the information directly from my Outlook, I don’t need to be flipping through two applications.

Or, here I have a different scenario for you. If, say, you have paper forms now that you wanna be able to make electronic, or you wanna be able to capture within Dynamics 365, whether it’s handwritten, or it is generated electronically, you can be able to start to capture this information. So, what we would do is, we would use AI form processor and PowerApps to be able to capture the fields that we’re gonna be using off of this form. So, whether it being, in this case, the employer, date of birth, email, annual income. I can be able to start to populate that information from a PDF or from the handwritten script once I’ve scanned that in.

And now, you can…I’m just gonna zoom in here… You can be able to look at each of the fields that’s identifying, for date of birth, for being able to look at annual income, all of the information from this mortgage application, it’s starting to capture here for you. There we go, I’m just gonna reset that. And now, it’s gonna build a poll into Dynamics 365 so we can start to automate those processes for you. So, it can be a manual process, as it is here, or we can be able to leverage with Microsoft Flow.

So, looking at what your business process is, and how we can be able to save effort that is not pleasing to the individual, and that will be cost-effective to the organization, right? So, we can be able to use Microsoft Flow to automate this process and be able to take it, whether from an email, or if someone has dropped it in SharePoint, or maybe you’re capturing it through a portal, and this form is coming to you. We can be able to create that automation and be able to populate the fields within Dynamic 365.

Or as I had identified earlier, Microsoft has just released this great new feature, which I think is fun. Everyone I’ve spoken to has gotten quite a smile and a chuckle off this, is finally there is that business card reader. So, using the Dynamics 365 mobile app, you can be able to scan the business card of an individual, especially if you’re in trade shows or if you’re in an event, and it can automatically create a contact, a lead for you, capture that information, and then you can set yourself a task to be able to follow up later in the next day. Or, of course, because just, innately, that new lead will be in your lead view the next morning, you’ll be able to follow up with an email.

So, I wanna be able to flip back to, how am I capturing information with that basic view? I’m just gonna slide over to my opportunities, I’m just gonna… Yeah, I’m just going to discard changes. There we go. And I’m gonna go into this new project. So, again, looking at what information am I capturing, and how am I triggering this? So, here I have a process ribbon looking at that. This is a project service opportunity, meaning that it’s not for a product, it is for service-based opportunity. And when I look at all of the qualifying factors that need to be satisfied within my qualifying status, I can be able to see what my purchase time frame is, my budget, who’s in the purchase process, is it an individual or a committee? Have I identified who those people are? And then if there’s any notes that I need to be able to capture here.

But then with each of these stages, I can be able to expedite this. If I’m going to move from qualify to propose, and be able to start capturing more information, what they wanna be able to do within this scenario, are there other people that might need to be actioned? Are there other people that need to be brought into this conversation when we move from qualified to prospect? Right? You can be able to create workflows, to be able to task other individuals, or you can be able to allocate resources to this. So, again, this process ribbon about how you’re going to be communicating internally, and how you’re gonna trigger them for next steps, it’s gonna be highly beneficial.

So, if when I start looking at how am I communicating this information, like, how am I leveraging the Dynamics 365 application itself? So, again, as I had just identified, are there other people that I need to be able to bring into this process, or just identifying the information is going to be enough. Now, here there’s a few different ways in which I can task or bring other people into the conversation. Of course, I can be able to set tasks here through the timeline within this opportunity. So, if I’m gonna be the owner, and I wanna build a set of follow-up for a quote, I wanna set my timeline for this, and it’s gonna be, say, Monday, and it’s gonna be set regarding this project, which is great.

But what if I want to be able to reallocate this to someone? Right? So, if I wanna reassign this to someone I would be able to reassign this to another member of my team. Sorry, that was a user issue. I’m just gonna go back, sorry, got a little click happy. There we go. I’m gonna reassign this to another user. Unfortunately, it’s not letting me select any other users at this time. Basically, I would be able to use that magnifying glass, and be able to go back and reallocate this to another user, in which then they would be flagged an email, or a task would be allocated to them for next steps.

So, how am I using the other applications that are available to me? Am I using Office 365? Am I leveraging Outlook and syncing my tasks to Outlook? Am I showing my tasks in my dashboard? Am I leveraging Yammer to be able to share information internally? Or am I using Microsoft Teams and Planner to be able to showcase what the next steps are?

When I look at my dashboards and about how I’m sharing this information… So, here from a typical sales dashboard, I have many out-of-the-box dashboards available to me so I can be able to look at from a marketing perspective, from a knowledge management perspective, customer service. If I change the application to PSA or Field Services, there’s lots of different dashboards that are available to you and easily configured to suit your needs. But here, of course, I can be able to look at my pipeline, I can be able to look at what my current leads are. So, again, once I use that business scanner, I can be able to populate leads, I can be able to see where my leads are and where they came from, anything that the relationship assistant might be popping up for me as tasks to be able to follow up on.

And then, of course, being able to look at my activities, being able to see what activities are available to me, what is due that’s coming up in the next few days. So here, if I had allocated, which I tried doing a moment ago, allocated that opportunity to someone else in my team, and there was a task there to follow up on a quote, it would send a…this task would be a part of their to-do list, their activities. And so, they would have got a notification that this would have been reallocated to them, and then they can see that this task would be pending.

So, how am I using my views and dashboards? So, again, at its roots, looking at pieces of information that you’re capturing within Dynamics 365, their records, right? So, going back to Dynamics 365, and I’m gonna go back to the account record here for a moment. So, this is a view. So, it’s just a listing of any records that we have at the account level. So, we have the same view that will be brought up for contacts, for leads, for opportunities. And here out-of-the-box, I can be able to start seeing if I wanna see all active accounts for the organization, or all accounts that are active or inactive. Customers versus vendors, I can be able to see down here. Like, so, what is gonna be in my list? So, I wanna look at all my active accounts. And I’m gonna go to my friend… I’m just gonna back up there, went a little bit too fast.

So, here I can be able to see all 97 of my active accounts. So, I can be able to use the filtering to be able to look at, in any order that I wanna be able to do that. I can be able to use the alphabetic search feature here at the bottom if I was looking up someone specifically. Or, now I can be bale to start using a visual representation of this information. So, again, I can start looking at creating charts and graphs of this information, right? I can be able to see it by industry, I can see it by owner. Unfortunately, I’m the primary owner in this demo environment, so you’ll see that Spencer has all of these accounts that’s currently showing. I can see it by territory, I can see by month.

So, how do I wanna be able to break down this information? So, if I’m capturing this critical information…so, again, if I have information that I’m pulling off of a form, is being auto-populated into the system, I’m starting to capture this information, I can create a view showing me all of my customers that, hey, say, has certain mortgage applications that have been submitted. And now, I have a graphical representation of this information.

Workflow automation in Microsoft Flow, I had mentioned that a little bit earlier. So, really, now, when I [inaudible 00:33:52] satisfied, or when a step is actioned, do you want something to be automated? Where are my next steps? So, here within Dynamics 365, you can be able to see that I can create workflows right from here. So, I can manually trigger a workflow to action once it’s created, or I can create it to be automatically actioned. So, when this field is satisfied and saved, it would create next steps.

A workflow that we have right now is showing… Here we go. So, here I have a workflow that’s popping up, showing that, Spencer Low, that there’s an opportunity that’s ready to review. So, he would be able to click on the opportunity, it would take me straight to this opportunity. I can be able to see that it’s a 2-year inspection, it’s still sitting within its qualify stage. And if I can just look at all of the information that’s been captured thus far, so there’s individual purchase process, there’s probability of closing at about 80%. And they’re really interested, they’re really needing to move forward. I read the notes that have been supplied to me, and then I could be able to…I can approve, or I could disqualify this workflow, right? So, say, maybe as a manager, something isn’t satisfied, and I need a credit application filled out, or if I need some mails. I can, in turn, reject this, send it back to the user, and make sure that all of the important steps are considered and satisfied through this process.

So, again, how am I working with my system? How am I leveraging it, right? It’ll help you be able to… So, here I have just have a couple representations of different dashboards, so I can be able to start to look at, of course, my sales pipeline, and start to look at my actual revenue over month. How is it developing? What information am I starting to capture? Or maybe it’s a customer service dashboard. I wanna be able to see what the status of all my cases are, what are my cues, you know? What’s my resolve rate? What’s happening here? So, from a customer service management point of view, I can be able to start to see just a high level of where I need to be able to take action.

Relationship assistance, as I had identified. It’s a series of workflows that Microsoft actually released beginning of this year. So, again, looking at all of the workflows that have already been generated by individuals. So, now they’ve automated some of those. So, especially when there’s gonna be a deficiency that’s gonna action, these are gonna pop up for the user to be able to say, “Hey, something’s about to fall through the cracks,” or, “Something’s about to get missed. This opportunity is close to closing, you haven’t spoken to someone within so many days. Maybe there’s an email that you sent a few days ago that hasn’t been looked at, maybe you should follow up.” So, it really gives great insights as to what you can view, what those next steps are.

Maybe leveraging Microsoft Dynamics for Marketing, or depending on what your marketing platform is now. So, if you’re using Constant Contact or Mailchimp, we can integrate into Dynamics, and be able to give you insights from those applications, and having visibility here on the platform. Or are we gonna leverage Dynamics 365 for marketing to be able to action a lot of these next steps, and nurturing campaigns for you, about how you’re communicating with them? Or maybe, a third party application such as ClickDimensions, if the level of interaction is needed.

Or am I using a portal? Am I using your Dynamics 365 portal, the newly released PowerApps portal, or even a third party portal? How am I capturing information? Do I wanna be able to have the availability for my customers or my members to be able to log into a portal? They can be able to see knowledge-based articles, they can have a forum, they can be able to see all of the current cases that are currently active with me or in the status. I can share documents, as I had mentioned before, about having that form. To have that ability to bring in information. How am I communicating?

Now, if I’m starting to look at across the applications, so once I have, say, from a customer service point of view, someone that has say through a portal, as I’ve just shown, requested a service case, now I can have that come into customer service, and we can be able to trigger a work order to be activated. Now, I’m in the customer service module, I can be able to see the current status of my technicians as to who’s available, I have my territory of Canada and the United States open. And the user, I can start to look at the criteria that I need to satisfy a certain work order, to be able to schedule that out.

Again, we’re just talking about how am I communicating? Here I have a view of the actual work order on a mobile device from my technician…there’s something wrong with me today. So, I can start to see, again, all of the critical information, what’s my start time, my arrival time, my end time, the miles captured, that has been traveled. What’s the information? What am I doing? Where am I gonna be satisfied? Right? So, you get to be able to share all that information now with your technicians on site. And because that technician is entering information from their mobile device, now I have the ability, back in the office, to be able to see the full actuals. Where are they? What have they done? Do they need any help?

And once the job is completed, again, through how we tie systems together, once the job is completed, we can be able to bring, maybe, Business Central, or an ERP into the conversation about, either, again, manually triggering the invoice of this transaction that the technician has just completed, or automating it. Once we receive an electronic signature from the customer, maybe it’ll automatically send an emailed invoice to the customer, and be able to send that out.

So, here we just have a manual creation of the invoice, or the electronic document to be able to send to the customer. So, again, we’re just trying to tie the applications together, as to, if I’m sharing information internally, am I doing it through apps, through dashboards, through Power BI, through different applications, to be able to bring that information across through the processes? And then how am I triggering, also, my customers? Am I doing it through marketing? Am I doing it through portals?

And then, finally, I don’t wanna take up too much more of your time, and then we can have some questions, but then what am I doing with this information? Am I creating reports and dashboards? So, again, as I had shown out-of-the-box, any time that we start looking at any of these entities, looking at leads, I can be able to create a digital representation of it. So, once I start doing that, I can be able to see leads by owner, again, Spencer is the primary owner here. Lead by source, again, so you can start tracking, am I capturing a majority of my leads through trade shows? Is it through my website, and they’re going to my website and automatically capturing information there? Am I doing it through word of mouth? Who are my primary stakeholders? Who are my advocates? Right? And then how do I grow from there?

So, again, once I have this, now I can start to create dashboards for myself. Or do you require, like, an SSRS report? If it’s more detailed calculations that you require to be funneled through, is Power BI able to calculate that for you and bring those information forward? Or do you need more specific, detailed calculations? We can be able to figure out, what would be the next step to be able to create that reporting for you, out-of-the-box, that gives lots of options. There was one other thing I wanted to show you.

So, once I have the view, I’m just gonna hide this chart, I have the ability of being able to export this information. There we go, export “Debra.” So, I can export it out to a static worksheet. If I open this up, and as it’s opening on my other screen, I’m just gonna bring it over, there we go. So, you can be able to see that view that I created. Now, I can export here, I can be able to turn this into a pivot table, I can use this as a reporting type document, I can edit it, I can be able to use this. Very helpful for mass editing if I wanted to modify this report, and then import it back into Dynamics, and it’ll update all of those records.

And so, it’s beneficial. So, when we look at reporting, it can be, so what are the goals for your organization, and how can we help you achieve it? Would it, again, be through Office 365, maybe through a Word template, or through Excel? Through the natural dashboards and views that are created through Dynamics 365? Or do you need something a lot more sophisticated for you that we can be able to create, or leveraging Power BI.

Machine learning. So, machine learning is such a great tool, and whether we recognize it or not, we have been using machine learning for quite a few years now. Microsoft is constantly advancing Microsoft Machine Learning. So, here, as I click on the web browser Outlook, here I can… And when I click on this original email that I showed you on the desktop, as I open this up…. It doesn’t show it from this view, so I’m gonna close it. So, here, as I scroll down on the left-hand side of the screen, you can be able to see that it’s highlighted “Congratulations.”

So, here it’s looking at sentiment analysis, looking at, is there positive or negative sentiment in the email. And it might trigger workflow as to where you’re gonna redirect this correspondence, or maybe recommend next steps for you, especially if it’s a negative sentiment. This is also useful for, maybe, customer service cases, or leveraging of cues within Dynamics 365. When the body of an email or the subject line of an email contains certain words, it can be rerouted to different cues to making sure that the right person is speaking about the right product. Or, again, if a manager maybe needs to intervene in a hostile environment, right, to be able to look at machine learning.

The other thing I wanted to show you from machine learning is being able to look at… I’m just gonna go into the advanced settings, and going into the Power platform, it’ll just take one moment for it to open up. Try that one more time. There we go. So, when I start looking at settings, and when I start looking at insights…so, looking at… This is just step one, like, how you’ll see relationship assistant as first as we bring it in here. But then we start looking at what other insights am I going to start to bring forward? Relationship analytics? Am I gonna look at lead scoring and opportunity scoring?

I’m not able to show it at this time, but so, here…because I would need to have at least 100 qualified and 1,000 disqualified leads. So, then machine learning will start to be able to give you predictive measures. So, typically, I guess, after a year, potentially, a year of operations, then Microsoft will be able to start to give you, based on your current track record, based on your current cadence with leads or opportunities, based on your current types of communications, this is what we predict will be your next steps.

So, it’s a great learning tool, to be able to see what those metrics are, as well as to be able to understand, where are we dedicating our time? If our business process is strong and we are certain of our level of communication and what we’re doing, when we can start to see that, based on their interaction, or based on their communication level, the cadence tells us that this isn’t going to be a profitable place to spend our time. So, when we start looking at machine learning and next steps, it’s gonna start to be able to tell you what those predictive measures are gonna be, and printing that out.

So, that was a lot of what I wanted to share with you today, there’s so much more that I wanna talk about. And in the next webinar, it is, “Where do we start from here? How do we start?” And so, we’re gonna talk about “Crawl, walk, run.” We can be able to look at all of the different applications, and the goals as an organization as a whole, where we want it to be able to go. But really, looking at, how do we help you start to leverage the platform, be able to set up those one application, if necessary, or multiple applications tying in together, to be able to…maybe it’s become more automated and not as paper-driven. Looking at what those goals are, and be able to help initiate where that initial phase can be for you. So, that’s gonna be our next conversation in this topic.

Miss Melissa, has anyone asked any questions along today’s conversation?

Melissa: Well, there has been one, where someone had just asked if this was going to be recorded. And yes, this is being recorded, again, we will send it out to everyone who registered, and it will also be available on the Encore blog.

Debra: Oh, great. Great. I apologize, I didn’t mention that earlier.

Melissa: Thank you.

Debra: Thanks.

Melissa: So far, no other questions have come in, but, of course, anyone can contact you later if they need.

Debra: Definitely. Definitely. I am pleased to be able to help all of you through any questions that you have regarding Dynamics 365. I realize that this is very high-level still, but looking at the processes as a whole, hopefully, this will help look at where you wanna be able to move forward with your next steps in your research, and give visibility into Microsoft and Dynamics 365 as the right fit for where you’re heading.

Melissa: Great. Thanks, Debra.

Debra: My pleasure. My pleasure. So, Melissa, our next webinar is on, if you can remind me the date.

Melissa: It is on November 20th, that’s “Crawl, walk, run.” So, the third installment in these webinars.

Debra: That is great. Yeah. So, again, we’ll be looking at where do we start, and how we can be able to leverage the applications, as well as developing other webinars to follow, about how we can start leveraging the platform. So, if you have any questions, or if you have any recommendations for webinars that you would like to hear from us, myself, or any of my team members, please feel free to also make recommendations, I’d love to hear them, and we can facilitate that for you.

Melissa: That’s great.

Debra: So, does anyone else have any other questions for today before we bring this webinar to a close?

Melissa: I’m not seeing any right now.

Debra: Okay. Well, thank you everyone for attending, it’s greatly appreciated. I hope this has been a little bit insightful for you, and please feel free to reach out.

Melissa: Thanks Debra.

Debra: My pleasure.

Melissa: Good afternoon, everyone.

Debra: Bye-bye.