Today, Microsoft announced the global General Availability of Dynamics 365, a cloud-based suite of purpose-built, intelligent business applications.
A game-changer in the business apps marketplace, Dynamics 365 offers a single, scalable toolkit for businesses to address specific needs, such as sales automation, operations, field and customer service, all backed by advanced analytics and machine learning.
Simon Davies, VP Asia, Microsoft Business Services, said, “Microsoft has operated in Australia for over 31 years, and during that time we’ve seen an immense amount of innovation built on top of our platform by customers and partners alike.
“Dynamics 365 has been engineered specifically to help organisations deliver compelling and personalised experiences through every phase of their customer relationships. As diverse organisations like NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA speak to us about the measurable business results their already seeing with Dynamics, we’re excited to see how the solution will steer their digital transformation in the future.”
Australian organisations embrace Dynamics
NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA are examples of three, very different organisations driving real and measurable business results with Microsoft Dynamics technology.
Director of IT at NSWTG John Chow explained, “NSW Trustee & Guardian was looking for a single platform that could support our staff to deliver the full range of services to our clients, enhance the communication we offer, and improve transaction experiences. The platform also had to support the organisation’s new operating model that included mobile outreach teams across NSW and a focus on online interactions for our clients.”
To kick off the next stage of their Digital and Knowledge Management strategy, NSW Trustee and Guardian launched their OWLS (Online Will Lodgement System) on the 1st of August, 2016.
Two months after launch, approximately 35% of the organisation’s pre-planning instruments are now being generated in Dynamics CRM. This continues to trend upwards.
NSWTG are now working on how to personalise the customer journey further; the next step of which is to roll out client and partner portals of the OWLS interface.
Global professional services firm KPMG also has its sights set on heightening customer experience.
James Hunter, National Managing Partner, Markets & Growth, KPMG explains, “KPMG’s deployment of Microsoft Dynamics 365 will be a fantastic enabler for our business – 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. Microsoft Dynamics is seamless and the smart phone app allows all our employees to have visibility of our clients, update insights from meetings and it empowers every one of our employees nationally to focus on delivering our client strategy for all our 15,000 clients. 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, Australia and New Zealand, explains that Dynamics 365 has now become part and parcel of the organisation’s core vision.
“Our purpose is to help people to have longer, happier and healthier lives. Central to that vision is to ensure we are using the right tools and have developed the right culture to best serve our customers. We started looking at how we could transform our technology to more efficiently handle customer requests, to solve problems more quickly on their behalf and improve the overall experience they have when doing business with us.”
He continues, “We selected Microsoft 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.
Since we introduced the CRM module we have changed the way our team views customer feedback and the opportunity that presents. We are now collecting more customer insights than ever before, we can respond faster and with through the system’s reporting features we can analyse data far more effectively. Importantly 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.”
Opportunities for Partners
“Without Dynamics 365, we couldn’t have quickly built AvePoint Citizen Services, our solution for intelligent digital case management, monitoring, and predictive analysis designed for public sector agencies,” said Dux Raymond Sy, Chief Technology Officer, AvePoint Public Sector. “Dynamics 365 is at the core of our solution, facilitating digital transformation and enabling governments to not only respond quickly to citizen requests, but also anticipate issues and pre-plan repairs. We see Dynamics 365 being the crucial foundation in developing business solutions that can be made available in AppSource.”
“While every conversation with our customers is now around Dynamics 365, the conversations have shifted. 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,” said Andrew Devitt, Director, Customer and Partner Engagement, UXC Eclipse, a CSC Company.
“There’s no more comprehensive end to end business solution than what Microsoft is offering today. The Microsoft stack gives our customers a lot of choice, not just in regard to deployment options but also in the ability to simplify their processes, which can help them reduce their overall IT spend. It is this focus on innovation and driving customer satisfaction, which was the key driver for Microsoft being awarded CSC’s “Partner of the Year” award last week.”
Solutions from Microsoft’s ISV partners also use this common data model, which means partners can easily extend their Dynamics 365 capabilities with the unique industry and function specific apps found in AppSource. Since July Microsoft has added 100 new apps and made it easier for customers to discover, trial and evaluate from within Dynamics 365.
Yesterday Microsoft also announced the General Availability of PowerApps and Flow which will be included in Dynamics 365. PowerApps and Flow join Microsoft Power BI to create a power trio, allowing users to rapidly build mobile and web applications without coding, automate business processes through simple configuration, and analyse and visualise the data that drives your business. For more information, check out the blog here.
Available through Enterprise and Business Editions, to meet the needs of large and SMB organizations, Dynamics 365 will offer subscriptions per app/per user and offer industry-first plans that embrace the way organisations and employees work today. For more information, check out the product here.
