Dynamics 365 For Business
What is Dynamics 365?
Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management system that was launched in 2016 by Microsoft. Its purpose to provide businesses a way to integrate their day to day operations to make better decisions, build customer relationships and operate more efficiently.
Now let’s backtrack to a CRM system
A Customer Relationship System or CRM for short is a central hub for your companies’ relationships with customers, service users, colleagues or suppliers. The most common use of CRM is that of managing interactions with customers and potential customers, by improving relationships, streamlining sales processes through automation and quickly identifying areas that aren’t working.
Need more context?…Visualise your business being able to benefit from:
A Sales team can use CRM to understand their sales pipeline better.
The Marketing teams can use CRM to make forecasting simpler and more accurate.
Customer service teams can effectively track conversations across channels.
Even if you are the person that wears all these hats (been there, done that and got the t-shirt), CRM will help your business reduce costs, increase productivity and deliver on growth.
Overview of CRM Benefits
Obviously every business uses CRM differently, I would advise speak to a consultant about how your business can benefit from a CRM system;
Enhanced contact management
Cross-team collaboration
Heightened productivity
Empowered sales management
Accurate sales forecasting
Reliable reporting
Improved sales metrics
Increased customer satisfaction and retention
Boosted marketing ROI
Enriched products and services
When is the right time to adopt a CRM?
Most companies that start off small normally adopt an email tool or Excel Spreadsheet approach. In most cases this works absolutely fine until your business starts to grow and your business then becomes… a little chaotic.
The amount of data you have increases and being able to manage all this information is manic. Valuable information you may not even know you have becomes lost or hard to interpret.
Jumping from one tool to another which innately slows down productivity, when you could have a central location where all your tools integrate and create your custom automated reports.
The worst example of all… a member of your team leaves and takes all the data with them, leaving you with a big informational black hole. Switching between going through old emails, word documents and sieving through the filing cabinet.
Most Common Misconceptions Of Dynamics 365
“My Business is too small..”
Small businesses with as little as 2 employees can benefit from Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Microsoft’s cloud pricing structure means that licenses are spread across affordable monthly fees.
As your business grows, you can increase the licenses you need. Or if a member of your team leaves you can decrease your allocation. Dynamics 365 is Flexible.
Dynamics 365 is an immense tool but it’s also built with the user in mind so it is easy to use.
How Dynamics 365 blows the other CRM Providers out the water.
When compared to other CRM tools, Dynamics 365 exhibit an amazing competitive advantage with the following:
1) Integrations: Dynamics 365 has the best integration functions with other Microsoft tools. Office, add-ons and partners. It offers seamless and hassles free integration. It also provides easy integration with LinkedIn and SharePoint – a collaborative solution for enterprises of all sizes. Other prominent brands including Salesforce don’t the integration feature figured out yet.
2) Cost Effective: Dynamics 365 is relatively cheaper than other CRMs. Small businesses are able to meet up with payments, also they are no hidden charges and very minimal amounts are required for updates.
3) Cloud Storage: Dynamics 365 is built on cloud infrastructure meaning as long as you have a working internet connection you will have access to your data. It’s also mobile meaning you can access it on a computer, mobile or tablet.
4) Marketing and Sales: The easy-to-use interface enables your sales team to work on the road or in the office. Automation of sales shortens sales cycles, simplifies follow up and improves the sales team’s knowledge and understanding of prospects and clients resulting in sales. Dynamics 365 improves the monitoring of marketing campaigns and effective campaign management.
Dynamics 365 for Sales
Dynamics 365 accommodates small businesses. It helps with its built-in AI and unified relationship data you find better opportunities and build customer relationship, which will, in turn, translate to sales. One of its editions, the business edition was designed for the functionality of small-sized businesses and can be expanded as your business grows
Here are a few benefits of Dynamics 365 to your business:
1) Unified way of working: In Dynamics 365, the system is unified by the integration of several key applications that makes the workload easier. It is able to bring data that spans across several departments to generate insights. Usually, this data would have taken quite some time to gather and analyse but because the system is unified it can be done in a matter of minutes.
2) Keeping tracks on Relationship: It helps to focus on high priority customer with signals from Dynamics 365 so that tabs can be kept on them. With LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics for Sales integrated, data and process are unified so sellers have the necessary insights they need to manage relationships and build trust.
3) Insights from LinkedIn: As the largest platform of professional, LinkedIn provides a network of investors and buyers, related leads on potential buyers and influencers, richer profiles and data with LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration
4) Integrates familiar tools: Thanks to the flexibility of Dynamics 365, one is able to work with familiar tools like Excel and other marketing and accountancy software. Usually, new platforms do not easily integrate with existing software. For example, Dynamics for Sale is successfully integrated with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
5) Suitable for Small Businesses: Dynamics 365 is as close as you'll get for minimum cost and work. It helps amateurs and novices to go through the sales process as it provides contextual guidance during each stage of the sales cycle saving or minimising the cost of training. It supports work on the go and it's therefore perfect for businesses with little or no space.
Dynamics for Customer Service
Dynamics 365 improves customer service by using a unified system that is efficient and cost-effective. It personalises customer services and ensures customer loyalty. Here is how it benefits businesses:
1) Ensures the best performance: Dynamics 365 ensures the overall best performance of customer services, it provides insights from data leading to informed and quality decisions by customer service managers.
2) Pro-activity: Dynamics 365 improves the overall customer experience by using the in-built intelligence and analysed data, employees are provided with accurate information on customers that will result in proactive decisions and even sales opportunities.
3) Consistent Customer Service: It helps to provide quick, efficient, and unified services nowadays. Therefore, round the clock information on customers are made available help customer agent to satisfy customers.
4) Customisable Apps: Dynamics 365 allows the flexibility of customisable apps to fit needs without extra coding and add-ons from Microsoft and other partners. All these will earn customers’ loyalty and retention for you.
Dynamics for Marketing
Dynamics 365 is also a powerful marketing tool that aims at providing all needed functions for small businesses to carry out a successful marketing campaign. It takes you steps further from basic email marketing to finding and nurturing leads that will definitely result in sales. Here is how it benefits businesses:
1) Finding and Nurturing Leads: Dynamics 365 provides a platform to access different channels and data that could lead to customers and invariably sales. These can be done by using multi-channels such as SMS, phone calls, landing pages, email messages etc to attract the right sales. Prospects from LinkedIn can be nurtured and matched with the target audience or based on interactions observed. Landing messages can be utilised to immediately catch the eyes of potential buyers.
2) Regulating Sales and Marketing: Sales and marketing efforts can be made to target accounts that are most likely to generate the largest revenue and prioritize such leads by setting up an automated lead-scoring rule.
3) Distribute information across team member: Distribute information among your team members about leads, prospects and contacts across your business, and understand how each information affects your results. Sales and marketing processes can be connected to automate and track the progress of each lead saving time and cost
4) More than emailing: With Dynamics 365 you can do more than email by creating graphical email messages, online content, digital marketing, SMS and Phone calls to support several marketing actions.
5) Leveraging other add-ons and partners: Add-ons such as PowerMailChimp, Power Web Form and partner such as LinkedIn's business prospects. LinkedIn provides the right platform to target and connects with the right audiences by following up on leads generated with LinkedIn's lead tools directly into Dynamics 365.