Sequences in Dynamics 365 Sales is a valuable sales engagement tool for businesses looking to drive efficiency via standardized sales processes. When sellers engage with sequences, it’s important to understand if they are supporting the process effectively. This is where sequence insights come into play.

Sequence insights provide data on the performance of sequences and their steps. Businesses can use sequence insights to review and analyze the effectiveness of their current sequences by identifying bottlenecks, and take corrective measures. Also, they can update the wait times and steps to ensure that the overall process is efficient and working as intended.

Additionally, sequence insights can help businesses identify best practices that are working well across the sales team. By analyzing data on successful sales sequences, businesses can identify common patterns and strategies that are driving success.

Reporting and insights are available at two levels:

• Sequence level analytics that provide aggregate data for the entire sequence.
• Step level analytics that provide data for the selected step.

Let’s take a quick tour to see how you can use them to optimize and improve sequences.

Gain insights with sequence reporting

First up is the “Sales Acceleration Report” (available to sales managers/operations role only). Here, a dashboard is available to review how sequences are performing all-up:

You can review all sequences together for a team-wide view or set filters to select specific sequences for performance evaluation. Not only do you get common success measures such as conversion rate and opportunity to win ratio, but you also get success rates of each sequence, along with distribution of “status” for different customer segments.

This report and the view are optimized for business level analysis and when needed, drill down to a few selected sequences.  

You can also get an all-up summary report at the sequences page that provides a list view of all sequences. There you will find the “Sequence stats” tab that shows progress of each active sequence in terms of % completion for connected records, success rates, and average duration. This is a great view for operational excellence to keep an eye on sequences whose execution or success rate is out of the ordinary.

Improve efficiency with sequence insights

You can get even more insights at a sequence and step level. For this, open the desired active sequence. You will see sequence insights and analytics right away the sequence itself is shown as a Sankey graph where each line shows how many records (leads, opportunities, etc.) were processed through the part of the sequence.

This is a quick and easy way to check overall performance of the sequence and spot points in the sequences where a larger than expected number of records is getting stuck or leaving the sequence.

Select the starting step of the sequence to get additional insights for it. Things to look for in this view:

1. Is there a particular stage in the sequence where the amount of incoming volume significantly surpasses the number of qualified records that move on to the next stage? This is a common occurrence if a step is designed to filter out unqualified prospects. However, it’s not necessarily expected in other steps. By examining the report, you can identify these drop-off points and conduct a deeper analysis. This will help you determine why most customers are not progressing past this stage, and whether the drop-off rate is in line with expectations.
2. Is the average number of days for completing this sequence within the expected range? If not, you can use step level insights to diagnose where most of the time is spent, and to identify what improvements are needed.
3. Review disconnection reasons for any abnormality (e.g., are sellers disconnecting sequences at a high rate?).

Deep dive for more analytics

Analytics is not limited to overall sequence only you can select any step in the sequence and get detailed insights to understand how sellers are executing that step. Here is an example for the sending email step:

Email insights (and insights for other communication steps) are focused on measuring engagement did the prospect receive the message, open it, and interact with its content?

All step level insights include details of their execution status. For example, how many records have completed this step, how many are in progress, or how many skipped, along with numbers and reasons for disconnection (e.g., manually disconnected, record inactivated, etc.). Finally, the “time taken” information is presented as a histogram this view is great as it quickly lets you figure out averages as well as outlier buckets.

Things to look for in a step analytics:

1. Are the average time taken for completing the sequence and the completion rate within the expected ranges?
2. Are there any steps that are outliers for disconnections or “in-progress”?
3. If steps are about communicating with customers (e.g., email, phone call), are prospects engaging as expected?

Record level information

If you need to see progress for any specific record, navigate to the “Connected ” tab (e.g., “Connected leads” if the sequence is for leads). You will see a list of all connected records and their progress in terms of steps completed, current step, days elapsed and which salesperson owns this record. This view enables you to quickly spot any outliers (e.g., records that are taking longer than others or a salesperson seems blocked on a step and requires assistance).

Final thoughts

Sequences can be an efficient and straightforward sales engagement tool for businesses that seek to provide guidance to their sales representatives. By incorporating automation (e.g., automated emails), sequences can reduce manual effort, making the sales process more streamlined and effective. Furthermore, with our new sequence insights, sales managers and operations teams can better understand how sequences are working for their sellers, including the identification of bottlenecks within the process. This data can be used to benchmark overall sequence execution velocity and success rates, allowing for more informed decision-making and ultimately improving the sales process.

Next steps

Don’t have Dynamics 365 Sales yet? Try it out now: Sales Overview Dynamics Sales Solutions | Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn more about sequences and how to create them:
Sequences in sales accelerator | Microsoft Learn

Explore our getting started templates to quickly create sequences and try them for yourself:
Sequence templates | Microsoft Learn

Learn more about sequence analytics:
View and understand sales acceleration reporting | Microsoft Learn
Understand the sequence stats page | Microsoft Learn

The post Improve Sales process efficiency using sequence insights appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Achieving supply chain excellence today requires orchestrating complex global operations with agility, adapting to rapid and continuous change, and navigating economic headwinds and ongoing disruptions. Yet only 22 percent of companies have a proactive supply chain network, meaning disruptions or shifts in supply or demand can quickly escalate into significant issues.¹ To truly deliver a proactive, resilient supply chain, Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) need a clear digital transformation strategy that builds on top of existing investments in data to uncover new insights. At the same time, CSCOs must enable the adoption of new productivity tools, such as generative AI, to help organizations rethink the status quo.  

At Microsoft, we recently introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot to bring next-generation AI to every line of business. It can help CSCOs solidify the strategic importance of supply chain functions and its value as strategic business partners. That’s why on May 8 through 10 in Orlando, Florida, at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023, we’re presenting a deep dive into the practical ways organizations can unlock supply chain productivity with a copilot approach to AI.  

Practical ways to copilot with AI and unlock productivity

May 9, 2023 at 11:30 AM EST in Northern Hemisphere C, Booth 443

Register for the session

Attendees can also join us at our booth (#443), where we will highlight how supply chain leaders can utilize Microsoft Dynamics 365 to: 

• Embrace AI-enabled risk mitigation to deliver better business outcomes while improving customer and employee experiences. 
• Generate intelligent insights and rapidly act on recommendations with Microsoft Supply Chain Center. 
• Gain agility and deliver world-class fulfillment experiences like accurate available-to-promise (ATP) and direct store delivery (DSD) for direct-to-consumer (DTC) orders. 

Generate intelligent insights

At the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium, attendees will see how the Microsoft Supply Chain Center empowers supply chain professionals to use AI copilots to generate actionable insights to increase productivity, shorten lead times, and improve overall supply chain performance.  

The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform harmonizes data across legacy and new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems to provide real-time data visibility; facilitate actionable insights; predict supply shortages, potential stockouts, or shipment delays; and improve collaboration across teams and suppliers. The end-to-end visibility possible using Copilot in the Microsoft Supply Chain Center allows leaders to proactively manage supply chain events. 

Customers like iFit have leveraged the intelligent insights from Supply Chain Center to reimagine their distribution network, staging products in locations based on customer demand instead of relying on history. In doing so, iFit increased its efficiency from 30 percent to 75 percent in its forward stocking. Before Supply Chain Center, iFit took two weeks to fulfill customer demand far more than the desired two days. 

Embrace AI-enabled risk mitigation

For most supply chains, particularly those crossing international borders and using multiple transportation modes, disruptions that risk diminishing the customer experience occur regularly. Such disruptions place immense pressure on operation teams to assess the situation, coordinate with various stakeholders, and maintain production momentum. Even simple delays, such as bad weather requiring load rerouting, can cause disruptions with ripple effects of up to two weeks and effecting multiple tiers. Production planners may lack integrated systems, resulting in limited visibility of inbound shipment issues until they experience a delay. At that point, planners contact suppliers and may discover factors, such as weather, causing a two-week production delay. 

The planner now has no choice but to push delivery of sales orders out two weeks, giving the sales team and customers little time to pivot and find solutions. The planner may also spend half a day or more manually evaluating purchase orders to understand the impact on operations. Not to mention any time required to adjust production schedules to accommodate the supplier’s updated delivery windows. 

Using Dynamics 365 Copilot to integrate supply chain data and provide critical insights, the planner in the scenario above would receive a real-time alert about weather issues at the supplier’s location. The system would also generate an email listing all purchase orders affected by the production delay, reducing the planner’s workload from hours to minutes. 

Copilot can also send the planner a list of suggestions that could minimize the impact of the disruptions. Now the planner has time to evaluate alternatives to meet delivery requirements and reschedule production jobs. The result is proactive management of the event, increased agility within the supply chain, shorter recovery times, and, most importantly, mitigating the customer impact in a way that preserves customer relationships and bolsters customer satisfaction. 

The above is one practical application of Copilot, but there is considerably more to share. In our recent blog, Applying next-generation AI to the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, you can take a deeper dive into how Dynamics 365 Copilot is transforming laborious processes, improving efficiency and responsiveness, and enabling enterprise supply chains to optimize operational agility, reduce cost, and improve customer experiences.

Gain agility and deliver world-class fulfillment experiences

Northern Tool + Equipment, a manufacturing and omnichannel retailer with more than 130 stores across the United States, serves a customer base that heavily relies on their tools for their livelihood. Accurate delivery times and product reliability are of the utmost importance. However, Northern Tool + Equipment faced significant challenges due to a fragmented supply chain technology infrastructure, resulting in four to seven days lead times for their extensive product catalog of 100,000 items. This, combined with the complexities of shipping large items like generators and air compressors, made optimizing shipping routes for cost and sustainability difficult. 

To overcome these challenges, Northern Tool + Equipment implemented Microsoft Supply Chain Center, an end-to-end supply chain solution that connects disparate systems and harmonizes data across the supply chain. This solution provides a comprehensive understanding of supply and demand, generating insights using AI to uncover patterns and projections based on historical and real-time inventory and order volumes. 

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands like Northern Tool + Equipment face unique challenges in delivering world-class fulfillment experiences to their customers. With an emphasis on speed, accuracy, and reliability, these brands require agile supply chain solutions that can adapt to continuous change and increasing technology clock speed. Microsoft Supply Chain Center enables DTC brands like Northern Tool + Equipment to gain agility and deliver outstanding customer experiences by offering real-time, highly accurate, available-to-promise (ATP) dates for direct store delivery (DSD) and more. 

Learn more about Northern Tool + Equipment’s success in our recent case study.  

See you at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 

As global supply chains continue reimagining what is possible by applying emerging technologies like AI and Copilot, Microsoft remains dedicated to enabling CSCOs with the solutions and timely insights they need to excel. We hope you can join us at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023, where you can attend our session using the registration link and engage with our supply chain professionals at our booth. In the meantime, we invite you to check out our guided tour of Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management or reach out to learn more today.  

Practical ways to copilot with AI and unlock productivity 

Location: Northern Hemisphere C, Booth 443 

Date and time: May 9, 2023, 11:30 AM EST  

Register: Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 

End notes

¹Zippia, 2022. 18 Stunning supply chain statistics [2023]: facts, figures, and trends.

The post Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Real-time analytics reports provide visibility into the overall support performance of an organization, so supervisors can monitor key operational metrics, make course corrections at the right time, and keep service levels high.

Starting Monday, May 1, 2023, we are deprecating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intraday Insights for Omnichannel for Customer Service reports and encouraging customers to move to Real-Time Analytics reports. This change is intended to ensure that our customers use our latest and best capabilities when it comes to real-time reporting.

Key dates

• Disclosure date: April 28, 2023
  We sent communications to affected customers that we are planning to deprecate the Intraday Insights for Omnichannel for Customer Service.
• Deprecation date: May 1, 2023
  After this date, we are no longer going to invest in Intraday Insights for Omnichannel for Customer Service.
• End of support: October 31, 2023
  After this date, we are no longer going to support the Intraday Insights for Omnichannel for Customer Service.
• End of life: April 30, 2024
  After this date, Intraday Insights for Omnichannel for Customer Service will be taken out of service.

Next Steps

We strongly encourage you to move to Real-time analytics reports in Omnichannel for Customer Service. We will be focusing our future developments on them, and these reports are our recommended solution for all Dynamics 365 Customer Service real-time reporting needs.

Real-time analytics reports provide information about the health and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your organization. Supervisors can use real-time metrics and review work distribution to adjust agent allocation. They can also drill down into agents’ ongoing conversations, view the customer sentiment, and join the conversation if necessary.

Please contact your Success Manager, FastTrack representative, or Microsoft Support if you have any additional questions.

The post Intraday insights are deprecated and replaced by real-time analytics reports appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.