Companies are increasingly turning to robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, because they need customer data to competitively enhance business operations and customer interactions. However, the successful adoption of a CRM platform hinges on quality data, including historical customer data, to tell the full story. This article will help you migrate your customer data into a new CRM using best practices. Best Practices for a Smooth and Effective Data Migration to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM 1. Thorough Data Assessment Before initiating the migration process, conduct a comprehensive assessment of your existing data. Identify the critical data fields, eliminate duplicates, and clean up irrelevant information. This not only streamlines the migration but also ensures that only relevant and accurate data is transferred to Dynamics 365. Your users will find the Dynamics 365 CRM system more useful. User adoption and engagement – key factors in success – will increase. 2. Data Mapping and Transformation Establish a clear mapping of data fields between your current system and Dynamics 365. Ensure consistency in data formats and structures. If there are discrepancies, implement necessary transformations to align the data correctly. This meticulous planning prevents data loss and maintains data integrity during the migration process. Management will get more useful reporting more quickly. 3. Data Backup Prioritize the safety of your data by creating a secure backup before migration. This precautionary step provides a safety net in case of unexpected issues during the migration process. Regular backups serve as a safeguard against data loss, allowing you to revert to the previous state if needed. 4. Engage Stakeholders Collaboration with key stakeholders is crucial for a successful data migration. Involve individuals from different departments to provide insights into specific data requirements and ensure that all relevant data is accounted for during the migration. This collaborative approach helps in creating a more comprehensive and accurate CRM database. It also boosts use engagement and adoption. 5. Data Validation and Testing Performing practice migrations with rigorous testing is paramount to identify and rectify any errors before the final migration. Validate data integrity by cross-referencing migrated data with the source system. There should be some reporting and/or analysis that can be run in both the old and new systems to verify that the numbers ‘stack up’. Conduct test migrations in a controlled environment to address any issues and refine the migration process iteratively. 6. Incremental Migration Consider adopting an incremental migration approach, especially for large datasets. Break down the migration process into manageable chunks, focusing on specific data segments or departments. This approach minimizes disruption to daily operations and allows for targeted troubleshooting if issues arise. 7. User Training and Communication Equip end users with the necessary CRM Success training to navigate and utilize Dynamics 365 effectively. Clearly communicate the migration process, timelines, and potential impacts to all relevant stakeholders. Proactive communication helps manage expectations and ensures a smoother transition. 8. Post-Migration Monitoring Monitor the system closely after migration to identify and address any post-migration issues promptly. Establish a support system to assist users with any challenges they may encounter. Continuous monitoring ensures a seamless transition and enhances user confidence in the new CRM system. Enhance the Success of Your CRM Data Migration Dominic Systems can help you migrate your CRM data using a meticulous and collaborative customized approach and our time-saving custom migration tools. Learn more about our migration services or book a free consultation to discuss your migration project.
Wildly variable supply and demand issues during the COVID-19 pandemic had an outsized impact on the North American manufacturing industry, creating significant shifts in consumer behaviour that manufacturers had to quickly adapt to. Customer service became even more important than usual. Here’s how to use a CRM system, such as Dynamics 365, to give your customer service capabilities a boost. How Does Dynamics 365 Improve Customer Service for Manufacturers? Quickly Identify Service Hotspots Specifically tailored to the manufacturing sector, Dynamics 365 streamlines the process of identifying service hotspots, enabling businesses to concentrate on quickly addressing the most important issues. Get Real-Time Status Updates A CRM for manufacturers provides real-time updates on the status of service cases, eliminating the need to constantly inquire with the ‘back office.’ Seamless Communication Between Departments Dynamics 365 facilitates seamless communication between departments, enhancing overall productivity and coordination. Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) and Field Service Technicians can instantly retrieve customer purchase details, serial numbers, service history and more (particularly if CRM is tightly integrated with ERP). Increase Customer Loyalty In today’s busy world, customers value businesses that prioritize efficiency and responsiveness. By utilizing automated processes like predictive analytics offered by Dynamics 365, companies can meet their customers’ needs promptly and increase customer retention. This kind of proactive problem-solving also helps improve the company’s reputation and foster stronger customer loyalty. Prepare for the Future of AI As leaders look to embrace AI, it becomes more critical than ever to prioritize having a data-driven business, fortified with digital and cloud capabilities. This approach will help organizations leverage generative AI as an accelerant to transformation. Why Manufacturers Need to Prepare for the Future of Customer Service Recent months have put a spotlight on advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the possibilities of its application to deliver pragmatic business outcomes. For organizations around the world, there is an incredible opportunity to enhance products and services. The pace and scale of technological innovation happening today is unprecedented and breathes optimism into what is in many other respects, very demanding economic times. From Rogers improving connectivity for Canadians through automation and AI to the Ministry of Education in the United Arab Emirates developing an AI tutor for students, the possibilities are both limitless and part of today’s realities. Companies leveraging Dynamics 365 — hosted on the most trusted, comprehensive and integrated cloud — are best positioned to take advantage of these advancements. Is Your Manufacturing Company Ready to Embrace the Next Generation of Customer Service? Schedule a consultation with Dominic Systems to learn how Schedule Consultation
Product Update: Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights are now one product under the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights name. In today’s competitive manufacturing landscape, manufacturers are no longer just producing goods, they are building relationships with customers who are increasingly discerning, seeking not only high-quality products but also personalized experiences. Manufacturers must adapt to this shift by focusing on customer-centric strategies. In this blog post, we will explore how Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a powerful new tool from Microsoft, is transforming customer engagement in the manufacturing industry. Five Ways to Use Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement in the Manufacturing Industry 1) Personalized Marketing Campaigns Create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns to target individual customers or specific segments by analyzing customer data, including purchase history and preferences. This level of personalization enhances customer engagement and increases the likelihood of conversion. 2) Seamless Multichannel Communication Interact with customers through various channels, including email, social media, and webinars, using a centralized platform to manage all these communication channels. This simplifies channel management and supports consistent messaging and marketing. 3) Marketing Automation Streamline marketing processes with automated email campaigns, lead nurturing, and customer follow-ups. Automation takes care of repetitive communications and tasks so that marketing teams can focus on strategy and creativity. 4) Lead Management and Scoring Convert prospects into customers with effective lead management and lead scoring capabilities that allow you to prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert. When sales teams focus their efforts on the most promising opportunities, they can improve conversion rates. 5) Customer Insights and Analytics Gain valuable insights into marketing performance with robust analytics and reporting tools that allow manufacturers to make data-driven decision. By tracking campaign effectiveness and customer behavior, marketers can refine their strategies for better results. Easily Integrate Dynamics 365 Customer Insights With Your CRM Dynamics 365 Customer Insights seamlessly integrates with your Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. This integration provides a unified view of customer data and interactions, enabling manufacturers to deliver a consistent and personalized customer experience across the entire customer journey. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Schedule Consultation
Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM with other systems can streamline your business processes and enhance data consistency. In this blog post, we will walk you through the essential steps to successfully integrate Dynamics 365 CRM with your chosen platforms. How to Integrate Dynamics 365 With Another Platform Step 1: Define Integration Scope Before embarking on the integration journey, clearly define the scope of integration. Identify the specific data, processes, and workflows you want to connect between Dynamics 365 CRM and other systems. A well-defined scope ensures a focused and efficient integration process. Step 2: Choose Integration Approach Based on your integration needs, decide on the most suitable integration approach. You can leverage out-of-the-box connectors provided by Microsoft, utilize middleware solutions, or opt for custom development. The chosen approach should align with your business requirements and technical capabilities. Step 3: Authenticate Securely Implement robust authentication mechanisms to ensure secure communication between Dynamics 365 CRM and the target systems. OAuth or other authentication methods can be employed to safeguard sensitive data during integration. Step 4: Data Mapping Map the fields between Dynamics 365 CRM and the other systems to ensure consistency and accuracy of data. Proper data mapping guarantees that information flows seamlessly between the systems without any loss or discrepancies. Step 5: Data Transformation If the data formats between systems differ, perform necessary data transformations. This step ensures that data is correctly formatted to match the requirements of the target system, facilitating smooth integration. Step 6: Configure Integration Workflows Utilize tools like Microsoft Power Automate or Azure Logic Apps to create integration workflows. These workflows automate the process of data synchronization and ensure that relevant information is exchanged between systems in a timely manner. Step 7: Thorough Testing Before deploying the integration to production, conduct comprehensive testing using sample data. Test various scenarios and edge cases to validate that the integration functions as expected and handles different data scenarios accurately. Step 8: Error Handling Implement effective error handling mechanisms to address integration failures. Define procedures to handle errors, log relevant information, and notify stakeholders, enabling prompt resolution of any issues that may arise. Step 9: Monitoring and Logging Set up monitoring and logging mechanisms to track integration activities and diagnose potential problems. Regularly review logs and monitoring data to proactively address any performance or reliability issues. Step 10: Deployment and Maintenance Once thoroughly tested, deploy the integration to the production environment. Continuously monitor the integration’s performance and maintain it by applying updates, addressing issues, and accommodating changes as your business evolves. Optimize Business Operations With Dynamics 365 Integrations Integrating Dynamics 365 CRM with other systems is a strategic move that can optimize your business operations and enhance data-driven decision making. By following these step-by-step guidelines, you can navigate the integration process successfully and unlock the full potential of your technology stack. Remember, each integration is unique, so adapt these steps to your specific business requirements and technological landscape. For support with your Dynamics 365 integrations, set up a free consultation with one of our integration experts. Schedule a free consultation Click here for E-Book
How to Use Maplytics Within Dynamics 365 CRM to Catch the Wave of Location Intelligence A plethora of well-organized data is an established asset for any business, including location intelligence which can now be organized within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM using Maplytics. Maplytics, a classic geo-mapping app integrated with Bing Maps, empowers the user with the ability to geo-code and geo-tag the organized data, territorial networking, targeting, market assessment, personalization, integration, and more. This location intelligence can handsomely aid in rebuilding business strategies and elevating productivity. At Dominic, we have partnered with Maplytics by Inogic to harness the power of location intelligence! Why We’re Excited About Maplytics for Location Intelligence Maplytics is an all-inclusive, preferred, 5-star-rated geo-analytical mapping app on the Microsoft AppSource for Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Dataverse (PowerApps). It empowers users across verticals with Geographical Data Visualization, Optimized Routing, Automated Appointment Planning, Radius Search, Territory Management, and so on by enhancing their sales, sales territory mapping, and other business processes. Its seamless integration with Bing Maps and availability in 11 different global languages, viz, English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, and Russian within Microsoft Dynamics 365 strengthens the Business data with geo-coded intelligence. While using Maplytics, users can also configure zoom levels, current location, origin, destination, etc. as per their preference and save the same for future use. Users can also create customized views with multiple dashboards based on requirements like appointments, records by Annual revenue, etc. to get a glimpse of the huge data. This way, they can personalize to get the required data and use Maplytics efficiently. Let’s walk through some of the amazing and unique benefits of Maplytics Data Visualization: Dynamics 365 CRM records can be plotted over the Map with respect to their locations, regions, territories, shapes drawn, etc. The client records can be visualized over the map in the form of customized, colored pushpins. Plotted records can be used for better visualization and analysis of the data presented geographically and hence help in making better business decisions for elevated business productivity. The plotted data can be categorized based on contacts, revenue, industry, and so on. Radius/ Proximity Search: If the current location of an on-field rep is provided this feature helps in finding the records that are near i.e., within a specific radius around him. The rep could provide the desired radii and the vicinity of the existing/potential clients within that circle could be visualized over the map within the Dynamics 365 CRM. The clients can also be plotted based on the number of minutes/ hours the rep is ready to travel in order to reach the new clients. This helps in searching for clients that are within the shortest/most convenient distance or time and hence helps to add more meetings to the existing schedule of the day for the rep. This eventually enhances productivity. Optimized Routing: If a field rep has been allotted a few clients, to pay a visit to, this feature helps in plotting an optimized travel route within Dynamics 365 CRM that will be shortest in terms of the distance he’ll have to travel or the time he’d take to cover that distance. These optimized routes can be chosen to be potentially traffic-free, and toll-free, and avoid highways with stagnant movement. In case of cancelation or postponement of a meeting, the routes can be modified and updated as per the new/additional destinations the rep has to travel to for any ad hoc or newly added appointments. Auto Scheduling: Appointments and related travel plans for the reps can be auto-scheduled days and/or weeks in advance for multiple reps using Maplytics within Dynamics 365 CRM. The duration and their start and end times, the duration of the breaks, buffer times in-between meetings, and working days of the reps can all be entered to be considered while creating the schedule along with the availability of the reps. This provides optimized routes as well for the respective appointments created for the rep team. This also considers the availability of the reps by considering if there are any existing meetings. This way both the reps and the managers are well organized in advance to meet clients and complete sales targets effectively and on time. Being punctual and well-planned also leaves a lasting impression on the clients, thus aiding in maintaining good client relationships. Since multiple reps can be scheduled efficiently together, it also aids in easing out the manager’s tasks. Real-Time Tracking: The resources/ field reps can be tracked when on the field in real-time as well as for their trips in the past. This allows the managers to keep a track of where the reps/engineers are traveling on the field and the route they were assigned for travel. Comparing both they will be able to understand if their reps/technicians had deviated from the route assigned to them. They can use this info in real time to guide the rep/engineer on field as well. In the case of ad hoc requirements, the rep that is nearest to the location of the new request can be viewed over the map and redirected to this ad hoc location. Territory Management: Territory Management, a popular and most in demand feature is used to create, align, and manage territories. The ease of the feature aids the managers to create and manage multiple territories within in Dynamics 365 CRM based on region options like zip codes, cities etc. shapes drawn using shape tools, or even shape/excel files. Auto creation of territories is one of the upgraded benefits. Managers can also use the feature of auto territory creation to create territories automatically based on the count of users. One can create, draft, align and edit territories as per one’s business needs also considering the hierarchies within Dynamics 365 CRM. How to Activate a 15-Day Trial of Maplytics Within Dynamics 365 Unlock the power of geo-analytics using Maplytics within your Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. Contact us to set up a 15-day trial of Maplytics within your Dynamics 365 account. For more information or to get a free demo on any of these apps, connect with Dominic Systems. See what others are saying about Maplytics Check the 5-star Maplytics reviews and Preferred Solution badge on the Microsoft AppSource Schedule Free Consultation
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, organizations using Microsoft customer relationship management (CRM) products to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and drive business growth may wonder what’s next? In this blog post, we will delve into the exciting release plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Cloud for Industry, highlighting the key updates and features that organizations can look forward to. What’s Next for Dynamics 365: Powering Intelligent Business Processes Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s flagship CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, designed to unify data, processes, and business applications. Let’s explore some of the release plans for Dynamics 365: Enhanced Customer Insights: Microsoft is investing heavily in AI and machine learning capabilities to enrich the customer insights provided by Dynamics 365. Expect advanced analytics, predictive modeling, and customer segmentation to enable organizations to deliver personalized experiences and build stronger customer relationships. Industry-Specific Solutions: Recognizing the diverse needs of different industries, Microsoft is developing industry-specific solutions within Dynamics 365. Whether you’re in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, or any other sector, these tailored offerings will provide pre-built functionality and best practices to accelerate implementation and address industry-specific challenges. Deeper Integration with Power Platform: Dynamics 365 will be tightly integrated with the Power Platform, which includes Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents. This integration will empower users to build custom applications, automate processes, analyze data, and engage with customers seamlessly, enhancing productivity and collaboration within organizations. What’s Next for Power Platform: Empowering Citizen Developers The Power Platform is a low-code development platform that enables individuals, often referred to as “citizen developers,” to create business applications without extensive coding knowledge. Let’s discover the exciting release plans for the Power Platform: Easier-to-Build Power Apps: Microsoft is investing in enhancing the capabilities of Power Apps, enabling citizen developers to create powerful and intuitive applications. Look forward to improved UI customization, integration with Azure services, and expanded connectors to various data sources, making it easier than ever to build tailored applications. Enhanced Processes in Power Automate: Automation is key to increasing efficiency and reducing manual efforts. Power Automate will introduce new features like advanced approvals, document processing using AI models, and deeper integration with Microsoft Teams, allowing organizations to automate complex business processes and streamline workflows. Deeper Insights in Power BI: Data-driven decision-making is crucial for organizations to stay competitive. Power BI will receive updates that focus on enhanced visualization options, improved AI capabilities for data modeling and forecasting, and tighter integration with Azure Data Services, enabling organizations to extract meaningful insights from their data and drive strategic actions. What’s Next for Cloud for Industry: Industry-Specific Cloud Offerings Microsoft’s Cloud for Industry is a suite of industry-specific cloud offerings designed to address the unique needs and challenges of various sectors. Here’s a glimpse into the release plans for Cloud for Industry: Expanded Healthcare Cloud: Microsoft is expanding its healthcare cloud capabilities, providing secure and compliant platforms that empower healthcare organizations to deliver better patient outcomes. Expect advancements in interoperability, telehealth solutions, patient engagement tools, and AI-driven insights to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Transformed Manufacturing Cloud: With the Manufacturing Cloud, Microsoft aims to transform the manufacturing sector. The release plans include digital twin capabilities, predictive maintenance solutions, supply chain optimization tools, and AI-driven quality control mechanisms to improve productivity, reduce costs, and drive innovation. Intelligent Financial Services Cloud: Microsoft is committed to helping financial institutions navigate the complex landscape of digital transformation. The Financial Services Cloud will introduce compliance enhancements, risk management tools, fraud detection capabilities, and intelligent customer engagement. Learn How to Apply These Microsoft Updates to Your CRM Business Processes Work with Dominic Systems to take advantage of the latest Microsoft updates with expert functional consulting and user coaching. Schedule a consultation
When your business manufactures complex products, your sales team must collect a lot of data and specifications in order to quote prospects correctly with the help of your schedulers, engineers and production managers. Then, when those hard-working salespeople get a ‘win,’ there is still a lot of work required to pass all that critical data from sales to fulfillment. Sales handover tasks may include: Create Bills of Material (and Operations) for the permutation quoted Create Jobs for one-off production of a specific client solution Create detailed Sales Orders with many components Feed into SYSPRO Product Configurator Create Kits to meet a particular configuration To collect all this data, your sales team might be using: Experlogix, Salesforce CPQ, Cincom, Configure One, or another third party CPQ system An industry-specific quoting tool A custom/in-house quoting system The dreaded Excel spreadsheet template! If your team is manually gathering these materials and sharing them with your fulfillment team, there is absolutely a better way: automate it! You can send all the sales-gathered data to your fulfillment team automatically via SYSPRO. Connector for SYSPRO is an integration tool that can take data from a variety of sources (not just Dynamics 365 or Salesforce) and cleverly restructure it for SYSPRO in whatever manner your business processes require. The best part is that you can completely automate the creation of the required complex entities in SYSPRO. The best part is that we can completely automate the creation of the required complex entities in SYSPRO! For example, Dominic Systems consultants have used Connector for SYSPRO to: Connect Bills of Material and Operations from Salesforce with a custom Quotation system. Take Experlogix configurations fed into Dynamics 365 and create Sales Orders with supporting Inventory Items (and BoMs). What is your permutation? Let’s streamline your sales and fulfillment handover process If you collect complex information during your sales process and find it challenging to pass that information into SYSPRO, let us know. We can discuss how that transfer might be automated and let you know if one of our Connector for SYSPRO integrations can connect those dots. Schedule Free Consultation
If you are looking to increase profitability and reduce costs with a CRM Quoting System, this story is for you! Background: Who is Samson Rope and What Do They Do? Samson Rope is a manufacturer and supplier of innovative synthetic rope solutions to customers across a multitude of industries, including mining, craning, defense, and utility. Samson Rope aims to deliver top-notch customer service by completely understanding its customers’ operations, rope needs, and challenges. Samson Rope’s Fabrication Department created a custom quoting system for calculating the complex components and costs that go into their fabricated rope products. Challenge: The Custom Quoting System Involved Manual Efforts In order to use the Custom Quoting System, teams had to perform multiple manuals, and repetitive tasks using different systems, including the sales team, the scheduling team (using SYSPRO) and the internal team (using the Custom Quoting system). This resulted in delays, additional costs, and undue stress. “It took our team 7-8 minutes to use the custom quoting system, then enter the same information into CRM and then again in SYSPRO when it was time to use those same specs for an order.” – Samson Rope (Dean Haverstraw) Solution: Integrating the Quoting System To help the sales team save time, we coordinated with the Samson Rope Fabrication Department to support the functions of the Custom Quoting System using the Quoting System. The end result is a system that flows seamlessly between CRM, the Custom Quoting system, and SYSPRO. With a single ‘click’ of a customer order, the Connector for SYSPRO creates the required Inventory Items AND their associated Bills of Material and Routings, AND then the actual Sales Order. Processing time is reduced from hours to seconds. Integrating these systems required a complex set of integration steps, each of which depended on the results of the prior steps. Results: – Eliminated a lot of manual effort such as rekeying – Significantly reduced human/rekeying errors – Reduced wasted time – Lowered costs – Fast and secure order processing The Bottom Line Once we activated the new integrations, we immediately saw a reduction in time to process orders. We are also able to track the accuracy of our quotes and flag costing exceptions or other anomalies so our quotes will become even more accurate in the future. “After integrating the Custom Quoting System with the Quoting System and SYSPRO, all this manual re-entry was eliminated. Saving 40-50% of the overall entry time. It just pulled in the information for our teams to start using immediately. We could deliver feedback, orders, and answers to inquiries with record turnarounds.” – Samson Rope (Dean Haverstraw) Interested in streamlining sales processes using a Quoting System? We are eager to help deliver the same results as this Samson Rope project. Learn more about how we can support and manage your customized integrations with our integration services. Please schedule a free consultation and take advantage of your CRM capabilities!
Did you know that ChatGPT is built into Microsoft Viva Sales and it’s already included in your Dynamics 365 Enterprise or Premium Subscription? In fact, Viva Sales is a companion integration for any Dynamics user! Now your sales team can quickly and easily respond to sales emails with AI-generated messages from ChatGPT. Make sure your teams know how to take advantage of this service—because your competitors already are. Believe it or not, this email was generated by ChatGPT using data in Dynamics365: What is Viva Sales? Viva Sales is a responsive AI service that takes data from your CRM system to create a personalized response to your clients, saving your sales team a tremendous amount of time! Instead of writing out a response that takes a lot of time and effort, Viva Sales uses ChatGPT to combine customer and product information found in Dynamics 365 with the specific email context to create a response for your sales team. It is the ultimate email crafting service that is practical and easy to use. See how Viva Sales works in this video How to Take Advantage of ChatGPT and Microsoft Viva Sales Anyone with an active Dynamics 365 subscription can take full advantage of Viva Sales. It is the perfect, simple addition for any small to medium size business. It won’t cost your company a dime to access this feature, and Dominic Systems can show you how to best leverage it with your business practices. You do not need to purchase any extra licenses; it is already available to you! Viva Sales Benefits ・Viva Sales is connected to your CRM system, so it contains all your customer and product information ・Saves a significant amount of time for your Sales team ・Reduces manual effort ・Guides email responses to efficiently deal with client’s concerns or questions ・Viva Sales will store and update new insights directly back into your CRM system ・Better data capture ・Intelligently automates customer updates ・Boosts collaboration and productivity Viva Sales Features ・Azure Open AI Automatically suggests a reply enriched with the content from your CRM system ・Can craft your own message with Viva Sales using keywords, instead of using their prebuilt reply ・Includes pre-set options to help guide user responses ・Conversational intelligence It is time for your team to hop on board with this easy-to-use and simple Dynamics 365 feature aimed to boost productivity and efficiency. Transform Your Sales Process With Microsoft Viva Sales and ChatGPT Schedule a consultation and learn how we can implement Viva Sales with your Dynamics 365 system!