Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program

Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Copilot is breaking down data silos, turning insights into actions, and giving customers a new reason to embrace the cloud.

Since March, when we introduced Dynamics 365 Copilot—the world’s first copilot for both customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP)—and Copilot in Microsoft Power Platform, we’ve seen an incredible response with more than 63,000 organizations experiencing Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Customers like Campari Group, Leatherman Tool Group, and Northrop & Johnson are able to transform how work is done, from the front office to the back office. Copilot assists employees wherever they are working, surfacing valuable business data and delivering business insights so they can focus on the most meaningful parts of their jobs. And with this momentum in AI, it’s a great time for our customers to move to the cloud.

Colorful graphic design

Microsoft Sales Copilot

Empowering sellers to increase productivity and personalize customer interactions.

Introducing Microsoft Sales Copilot

Today, we are announcing Microsoft Sales Copilot—a role-based copilot designed for sellers that empowers them to increase productivity and personalize every customer interaction so they can close more deals. Designed to be a seller companion, Sales Copilot can be accessed in the tools where sellers work, whether that is Outlook, Microsoft Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales, and connects to other CRM systems like Salesforce.

Sales Copilot saves sellers time with CRM task automation, auto-generated email or meeting summaries, and more. Sellers can go from one customer meeting to the next feeling prepared, armed with AI-powered, real-time insights such as top opportunities and customer opportunity summaries. Sales Copilot also helps sellers with customer follow-up by generating AI-assisted content and recommendations, such as contextual emails based on Outlook and CRM data.

Microsoft Viva Sales, announced in June 2022, kick-started our work of transforming seller experiences, and these capabilities are now part of Sales Copilot. In our own sales organization at Microsoft, more than 10,000 sellers have been using Sales Copilot. Early results show that 85 percent of surveyed sellers report completing one or more tasks faster, and 70 percent stated that Sales Copilot helped them improve productivity.

Today, we’re also announcing new Sales Copilot capabilities. Sellers can now: 

  • Get auto-generated opportunity summaries including status, progress, and highlights of key changes, inside Dynamics 365 Sales.
  • Create contextual emails that utilize customer CRM data to pull in product, customer, and opportunity information, inside Dynamics 365 Sales.
  • Prepare for customer meetings with a summary view including account information, recent notes, highlights of any issues or concerns, customer news, and more—in Outlook, Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales.
  • Get real-time tips and suggested answers during Teams meetings prompted by competitor or brand mentions by the customers to stay ready to handle objections.

“Opportunity summary in Microsoft Sales Copilot is a huge and important leap in our direction to save more time for our sales personnel. With this capability in the hands of our sellers, they can spend more time equipping organizations with best-in-class security solutions to help make our world a safer place.”

—Philip Eklund, Vice President of Client Engagement Platform, Securitas

“At Investec, we are very excited to see how we can leverage Microsoft Sales Copilot and AI within the Microsoft stack to connect our internal teams and to enhance our understanding further of prospective and current clients to ensure we are providing a best-in-class experience.”

—Dan Speirits, CRM Product Manager, Investec

Sales Copilot is generally available today both as a standalone subscription and included as part of customers’ existing Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium licenses at no additional cost, with the new capabilities above rolling out this month.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights: AI-powered customer insights and journeys

Delivering exceptional customer experiences is at the heart of what sellers, marketers, and customer service agents do. From building brand loyalty and generating leads to addressing customer issues and closing deals, these roles all rely on knowing the customer in the context of their journey with the brand. Yet, limitations in managing and harnessing customer data in meaningful ways, coupled with organizational silos, have prevented organizations from delivering and realizing the value of a truly connected customer journey.

To help organizations increase the speed of acting on customer insights and orchestrating personalized customer journeys, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will offer both customer data platform and customer journey orchestration capabilities as a single solution and continue investments into real-time marketing. In March, we announced content ideas, query assist, and dialogue with data—copilot capabilities for brainstorming marketing copy for email campaigns, creating new targeted marketing segments, and using natural language to infer key insights from your customer data and support better business outcomes. These copilot capabilities are available now for use, and we’re adding enhancements in the coming months to include the ability to refresh and improve existing marketing content as well as to summarize audience definitions and suggest improvements to simplify definition.

Today, we also announce two new copilot capabilities for marketers—all included in the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights subscription. The new capabilities help you:

  • Easily style your email, forms, and event registration pages to perfectly match brand guidelines (as simple as using an existing website) using natural language, so you can deliver a consistent brand narrative and customer experience.
  • Use natural language to easily orchestrate contextually relevant customer journeys across marketing, sales, and service, so customer actions can be responded to appropriately and quickly, generating sales leads or increasing customer satisfaction.

These new capabilities will start rolling out in preview next month. The new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offering will be generally available on September 1, 2023.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights unlocks the full potential of your customer data and elevates customer experiences with predictive real-time insights, contextual and relevant customer journeys, and built-in next-generation AI. When customers combine the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, they can create even more seamless leads-to-sales-to-retention cycles with differentiated capabilities, including these features that are available today:

  • A 360-degree view of the customer profile, associated marketing interactions, and predicted customer lifetime value to guide both sellers and service agents in their customer interactions.
  • Ability to surface the next best action to the sales team or service team when a lead engages with the marketing team.

“Super exciting—it’s the right move to bring together the customer data and journey capabilities into a single solution”… “this will enable our team to deliver more cohesive experiences quicker and easier.”

—Keith Perfect, Director of Technology & Intelligence, Northrop & Johnson

“At Leatherman, we are thrilled about the potential of generative AI and Microsoft Copilots to advance our business. We are beginning to realize the benefits of improved productivity, streamlined processes, and personalized customer experiences. This technology will undoubtedly propel us towards greater innovation and success.”

—Liz Lee, IT Director, Leatherman Tool Group

Customer service organizations around the globe are using AI technologies to improve service delivery and customer experiences. As examples, AB InBev and Virgin Money are empowering their customer service departments with tailored chatbots built with Copilot in Power Virtual Agents. Within minutes, businesses can train a bot using natural language to reference internal and external knowledge sources, customer service applications, and web data through Bing. Virgin Money’s chatbot addresses more than 195,000 customer interactions a month, helping their service agents to focus on more complex customer inquiries. In the next few months, we’ll be rolling out additional role-based copilots, similar to Microsoft Sales Copilot, that will help customer service agents be more productive and better engage with their customers using the innovation of Copilot in Power Virtual Agents. Learn more about Power Virtual Agents.

AIM for the future with Microsoft

Copilot is redefining productivity, efficiency, and collaboration across business workflows. However, today many businesses are challenged to access new technology innovations, like AI, to improve profitability and maintain a competitive edge because they are still operating on legacy on-premises solutions. At Microsoft, we are committed to helping customers gain access to and take advantage of AI capabilities, starting now.

So, today, we’re also announcing AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move), a brand-new program that offers a tailored path for our customers to move from on-premises to cloud-first Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications.

With AIM, customers of all sizes can accelerate their migration to the cloud to adopt AI-powered technologies starting with AIM assessments. These assessments are designed to help customers understand the business value, expected outcomes, and key steps and dependencies for moving their on-premises business applications. Customers can innovate faster to stay ahead by using the proven Success by Design methodology from Microsoft to implement Dynamics 365 and go live with confidence. Customers get expert implementation guidance and services from FastTrack and its certified partners. And finally, they’ll also be able to move with agility and scale as their business grows. AIM provides exclusive offers that help customers optimize their investments and transform the business processes in an incremental manner.

AIM is a comprehensive offering that unlocks the potential of AI-powered business systems while reducing costs, providing agility for business model innovation, and operating securely with resilience. AIM provides access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, assessments, offers, tools, and support to give customers a faster route to innovation and success.

Get started today with AIM and future-proof your business.

Looking forward to Dynamics 365 solutions

  • Learn more about Microsoft Sales Copilot.
  • If you are an existing Dynamics 365 Sales or Marketing or Customer Insights customer, start using the new capabilities in preview. To learn more about the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offering, read more here.
  • If you are not a customer yet, learn more and sign up for a trial on our website.
  • If you are a customer using ERP and CRM systems on-premises, and want to migrate to Dynamics 365 in the cloud to accelerate adoption of AI-powered technologies, get started today with AIM.

The post Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Introducing Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing, and Microsoft Sales Copilot

Introducing Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing, and Microsoft Sales Copilot

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Today, at Microsoft Inspire 2023, we announced the next steps in our journey to empower every person on the planet to work in a new AI-powered way.

The post Introducing Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing, and Microsoft Sales Copilot appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Top 5 “dos and don’ts” when you implement Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile

Top 5 “dos and don’ts” when you implement Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile is a robust and scalable mobile application created for your frontline workers. With the capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform and Dataverse, you can customize and configure the mobile application to meet your unique business needs. In this post, we’ll explore the most important things you can do—and not do—to create the best possible experience for your frontline workers when you implement Field Service Mobile.

5 “Dos” when you implement Field Service Mobile

Do use “mobile offline for frontline workers

Frontline workers often perform tasks in areas with variable network connectivity. Online-only applications can experience slow performance when network connections are poor. Responses can be delayed or even fail when the network isn’t available.

Using offline-first mode with Field Service Mobile provides a consistent user experience for frontline workers regardless of network conditions. Even if the network is often available, offline mode has advantages for your organization.

  • The offline-enabled application stores and retrieves data from a local database on the device. App performance improves without the dependency on network calls to fetch data from the server.
  • When a network is available, the offline application automatically synchronizes data with the server. Without a network connection, the sync pauses until the device is back online. Frontline workers can focus on completing their tasks without worrying about network connectivity.
  • Frontline workers’ job progress is not delayed by long waits or networking errors in cases when they temporarily lose network access.

Learn more about offline mode:

Do keep the mobile workflow simple

When configuring Field Service Mobile, you have control over the precise layout of forms and fields. It’s important to keep core user scenarios in mind when defining the layout of your forms to create a streamlined experience. Focus your customizations on making the interface intuitive and efficient. This is especially useful for new employees to help them familiarize themselves with the necessary processes and steps to complete their work.

Here are some suggestions to simplify the application:

  • Use fields in a logical sequence. Avoid forcing users to move between forms.
  • Consider performance when you lay out form fields and tabs. Fields that are off-screen are loaded on a delay to avoid impacting the user accessing data that’s visible on the screen. However, sub-grids and charts are loaded with the initial form and can have an impact on performance if they’re added to the form’s default tab.
  • Use Work Order Service Tasks, Services, and Products. These out-of-the-box tables help guide frontline workers to complete a work order.

Do minimize customizations

Field Service Mobile provides much of the necessary app experience out of the box, but there are times when business requirements necessitate business logic unique to your organization.  When customizations are necessary, follow best practices and use common Power Platform capabilities. This enables your organization to get the latest new features and enhancements sooner. It also helps to improve supportability and lower maintenance costs.

We recommend documenting your customizations. This helps you to understand changes and set yourself up for success when making future revisions.

Do train users and use feedback for improvements

Training your users on how to use the app and any unique workflows leads to higher productivity and satisfaction. Training should include a feedback loop to assess user satisfaction and be responsive to misunderstandings or requested changes that will improve the frontline workers’ workflow.

Do take advantage of documentation and the Field Service community 

A wealth of information is available in Field Service documentation and learning sites. Help is also available in the community-driven Field Service forum. Use these resources to build solid understanding of Field Service, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform.

General documentation:

Customization:

Community support and feature requests:

5 “Don’ts” when you implement Field Service Mobile

Don’t skip user acceptance testing 

Assessing the end-to-end application in real-world scenarios with your organization’s customizations and data is critical to a successful rollout. This can be a challenge when introducing diverse Field Service scenarios in addition to complex online and offline capabilities.

  • Focus testing on the “happy path” workflow through the application. Make sure frontline workers can complete that workflow without error in various situations.
  • Test with the same set of devices that users will have.
  • Test with the same security role and data access that users will have.
  • Test with production-level amounts of data.
  • Test offline mode in variable network conditions emulating real-world usage.
    • Strong network access: Wi-Fi or stable cellular networkNo network access: Device disconnected
    • Intermittent or ‘flaky’ network access: Weak or variable cellular signal or areas of high latency
  • Test customizations and make sure they work well on different devices with the network and in offline scenarios.
  • Enable a feedback loop with your tests. Listen closely to actual users who are taking part in user acceptance testing. Plan a phase to incorporate feedback, which will help users during the final rollout.

Don’t use low-performance hardware or outdated software 

Mobile devices evolve quickly, and it’s best to keep up to date by using recent hardware with sufficient memory and processing power. Using modern, high-performance mobile devices increases productivity through faster access to data and better battery life. Additionally, apps on modern devices are more reliable and less prone to slowdowns or crashes.  

Field Service Mobile recommends evaluating the device based on CPU benchmark scores as given in the system requirements documentation.  

Don’t implement offline mode without understanding data needs

It’s highly recommended that you use offline mode with Field Service Mobile. When implementing offline mode, plan based on your scenarios and data needs for a successful experience for your users.

Include only the required data. It’s important to take a minimal amount of data offline as required for frontline workers to perform their work. Reducing data helps with the sync time, cellular data usage, device battery usage, and device storage. It’s important to understand users’ true data needs and how security roles influence data access.

Minimize the number of relationships between tables to reduce query complexity. The amount of data isn’t the only factor to consider. Complex queries with multiple joins against large tables can also have a high impact on offline sync time.

Avoid frequent schema changes. Schema changes may force the redownload of tables that had changes, resulting in longer sync times.

Be aware of server-side business logic. The offline-enabled Field Server Mobile application syncs data from the server at regular intervals. If part of a workflow depends on interaction with the server, the response may take minutes to return to the client when the network is available and not at all if the user is truly offline. It’s recommended that you move as much business logic to the client as possible to reduce wait time and dependency on the network.

Understand limitations. There are limitations on the offline capabilities of the Power Platform.

Refer to the offline profile guidelines for more information.

Don’t design a workflow that includes switching applications or context 

Try to bring as much of the Field Service workflow into the Field Service Mobile application as possible so frontline workers don’t need to switch between multiple applications. Maintaining multiple applications is time-consuming and frustrating for the user and increases organizational overhead. Use the Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) to build custom experiences, bringing in other data sources when necessary.

If alternate applications are required, try to ease the burden of context switching by using deep links to navigate between the apps.

Don’t reuse web forms on mobile devices 

A benefit of working on the Power Platform is being able to reuse forms on both web and mobile. This capability can make development of your form more efficient, reduce maintenance, and provide a common user experience regardless of how the form is accessed.

However, a form intended for use on a larger-screen device may have information that’s not necessary for a technician using the mobile application. For this reason, we recommend creating mobile-specific forms in some cases to provide an optimized experience that contains only the data that’s necessary for the user.

Conclusion

Field Service Mobile is a powerful application that brings the robust capabilities of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform into the field. Following these best practices and avoiding common mistakes will help you implement Field Service Mobile successfully.


Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a tour and get a free trial.

The post Top 5 “dos and don’ts” when you implement Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Purpose built Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales

Purpose built Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales, transforming the way sales teams collaborate. Collaboration is essential for sales success, yet many organizations struggle to stay organized and find the right digital tools to bring them together. In the pursuit of closing deals, sellers find themselves collaborating with an average of over 15 cross-functional teams within their organizations, while simultaneously serving their customers. This intricate web of interactions adds a significant layer of complexity to their already demanding work.

With Collaboration spaces, sellers now have an organized and effortlessly created space, tailored to their needs, where they can collaborate seamlessly with their colleagues and customers.

Collaboration space in Teams for an account team

Collaboration made easy with Sales templates

Sales templates in Viva Sales simplify the process of creating purpose-built Collaboration spaces in Microsoft Teams, directly linked to D365 or Salesforce accounts or opportunities. Collaboration spaces are set up with predefined channels and pinned apps, providing a ready-made environment for effective collaboration built on the secure and trustworthy framework provided by Teams.

Once set up, sales teams can conveniently access these Collaboration spaces from the Viva Sales app in Outlook or directly from the Sales app, within the context of their accounts or opportunities. This eliminates the hassle of searching for the right place to collaborate, saving valuable time for the sales team.

We are excited to offer two sales templates as part of this release:

1. Account team template: The Account team template is designed for seamless collaboration within account teams and with customers. Applied at the team level and linked to a CRM account, this template provides a comprehensive solution. It comes equipped with predefined channels and pre pinned apps, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow for effective collaboration.

2. Deal room template: The Deal room template is tailored for focused collaboration on deal related activities. Applied at the channel level and linked to a CRM opportunity, this template provides a dedicated space for efficient teamwork. With predefined channels and pre pinned apps, it streamlines communication and enhances productivity, allowing sales teams to effectively collaborate and drive successful deal outcomes.

Deals rooms that help sellers collaborate effectively

Eliminate set-up overhead for effortless teamwork

Setting up a Collaboration space is now easier than ever. With just a few clicks, sellers can create their own space for collaboration. By clicking on the ‘Set up account team’ or ‘Set up deal rooms’ button from Collaborate in Teams card in Viva Sales app within Outlook, sellers can quickly get the set up going. The process involves three simple steps: choosing a new/existing team, reviewing default team/channel names, and adding recommended team members to new teams.

Simplified setup for account teams

Convenient access within sales workflows

Once set up, sales teams can conveniently access these Collaboration spaces from the Viva Sales app in Outlook or directly from the D365 Sales app, within the context of their accounts or opportunities. This eliminates the hassle of searching for the right place to collaborate, saving valuable time for the sales team.

Next steps

New to Viva Sales? Sign up here: Microsoft Viva Sales | Microsoft Viva
Learn more about Collaboration spaces: Introducing Collaboration spaces for sales teams

The post Purpose built Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

The power of AI in Viva Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers

The power of AI in Viva Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Join me, Lori Lamkin, and my esteemed colleague Nathalie D’Hers, as we take you on an extraordinary journey through the development, deployment, and continuous improvement of Microsoft Viva Sales. As the Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Dynamics 365 Customer Experiences, I bring extensive leadership experience and strategic vision to guide the product team responsible for Viva Sales. Viva Sales is a tool that maximizes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce seller teams’ productivity with AI-assisted experiences in Microsoft 365 apps. Nathalie, another accomplished CVP, leads the deployment efforts across Microsoft, positioning the Microsoft sales field as customer zero. Together, we bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to revolutionize the way sellers engage with customers through Viva Sales. In this Q&A session, we will share our insights, experiences, and the remarkable story of Microsoft’s journey in unlocking the full potential of Viva Sales. Get ready to be inspired!

Rapid deployment: Unleashing the potential of Viva Sales

Lori: It’s been six months since you’ve deployed Viva Sales, what results are you seeing? What key considerations did you have when rolling out a generative AI tool like Viva Sales on a global scale?

Nathalie: Viva Sales is deployed across Microsoft. Being customer zero has been invaluable in this process. It has allowed us to confirm the product, learn important insights, and make improvements along the way. We’ve been focused on turning on Copilot features to enhance the seller experience, and the feedback we’ve received from our own teams has been instrumental in refining and perfecting the deployment. I’m so excited to partner with our teams to see the first commercial solution at Microsoft to combine Copilot and Viva Sales.

Since the launch of Copilot in March, we have seen incredible adoption with nearly 4,000 users taking advantage of its capabilities. The impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. It’s encouraging to see the positive response from our users and the value they are experiencing. In fact, during a recent customer conversation, the Senior VP of Sales expressed their enthusiasm to partner with us as early adopters, emphasizing their willingness to invest in any technology that enhances the productivity of their sellers. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Copilot and its ability to drive tangible benefits in the workplace.

Nathalie: It’s been quite the journey since we launched Viva Sales to our Microsoft sellers. What were the main goals your team hoped to achieve with this product?

Lori: We’ve been focused on seller productivity gains through taking advantage of conversation intelligence, enabling Copilot features, and ultimately improving customer connection, job satisfaction, and revenue for our sellers. Microsoft being customer zero has provided us with a unique advantage. It has allowed us to test these features within our own organization, gather valuable feedback, and fine-tune the experiences before rolling them out to more customers.

In the new update, we are adding some exciting capabilities to Viva Sales that have been influenced by your team’s customer zero work. Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.

Nathalie: Speaking of Copilot, how does your organization ensure that the implementation of Copilot features align with Microsoft’s ethical and responsible AI principles?

Lori: Supporting ethical and responsible AI practices is of paramount importance to us and our customers. As we use generative AI, we are committed to helping our customers be transparent, fair, and accountable to their employees and their customers.

As you know, one of the ways we do this here is with our works councils, where a few of our colleagues volunteer to help us protect the privacy of all our employees when we deploy new technology like Viva Sales. More importantly, they make sure we follow privacy laws in each of the countries and regions where we operate. We roll the feedback that we get from them directly into our products, which helps our customers protect their own employees. It’s this kind of thinking—and these kinds of checks and balances—that helps with the ethical use of AI in Viva Sales.

Lori: We were so excited to be the first Microsoft product to bring Copilot to our users; the feedback we have received from sellers has been incredibly positive! How have our newest Copilot in Viva Sales features influenced your thinking about supporting the employee experience?

Nathalie: It helped a lot! Seeing a tangible implementation of Copilot with real value opened our eyes to what was possible and is influencing ways that we’ll incorporate generative AI into our own employee experience. Kudos to you and your team for dreaming big and acting fast to bring that experience to the market!

Lori: Thank you. So, tell me more about this employee experience and how deploying Viva Sales Copilot in Microsoft has given your team insights and learnings that shaped your approach to using AI?

Nathalie: Just like Viva Sales provides conversation summaries and next actions for sales opportunities, we’re thinking through scenarios that will enable us to transform the way employees interact with our different services—like support and HR—to make them more personalized and efficient.

Broadly, our efforts fall into three categories—AI for IT, AI for the hybrid workplace, and AI for the employee experience. AI for IT includes investments to help us proactively detect and remediate issues in our employee services and IT infrastructure. AI for the hybrid workplace includes investments to help us perfect space planning and to enhance the experience when employees come into the office. Finally, AI for the employee experience is all about transforming the ways that Microsoft employees interact with our services and support. Across each of these investment areas, Viva Sales provided us with a great benchmark for how AI can really propel employee productivity.

Male working remotely from his home office on a Dell Latitude 13 device, running Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft Viva Sales

Learn more about our internal deployment of Microsoft Viva Sales.

Talking about works councils and deployment

Lori: Nathalie, as the leader responsible for deploying Viva Sales across Microsoft, I understand that your team has been actively engaging with works councils. Can you provide insights into the impact of working with works councils during the deployment process?

Nathalie: Absolutely, Lori. Works councils play a critical role in standing for the interests of employees within our organization, particularly in European countries where they are prevalent, and they make sure that whatever we deploy internally within the company protects the privacy of the employees who live in that region. Engaging with works councils ensures that we consider the perspectives and concerns of the workforce during the deployment of Viva Sales. Their input is valuable in addressing compliance, privacy, and employee relations matters, making our deployment process more robust and aligned with local regulations.

Lori: What have you found to be some of the challenges in managing a global-scale deployment of Viva Sales?

Nathalie: Deploying any new technology globally has challenges, but the speed and efficiency with which we were able to roll out this transformative product was truly remarkable. We are working on a brand-new solution that is revolutionizing the way generative AI changes the workplace, and being customer zero has given us some unique advantages. We’ve had to navigate compliance and obtain necessary approvals for deploying AI features on a global scale. Our active engagement process, which includes working closely with works councils, has been instrumental in streamlining the deployment process and ensuring that our global teams can receive help from Viva Sales. Despite the challenges, the feedback from sellers has been incredibly positive, especially with the AI-generated email content enhancements we’re introducing. The best part is how easy and painless it is to enable Viva Sales, allowing our teams to quickly harness its productivity-boosting capabilities and experience a seamless transition to a more efficient way of working.

Lori: It seems like building an effective approval process is crucial. How replicable has Microsoft made this process for other companies?

Nathalie: At Microsoft, we have developed a globally recognizable, efficient process for enabling Copilot scenarios. By supporting open dialogue, we can gather feedback, address emerging concerns, and align our deployment approach with evolving regulations. We recently set up a framework with European works councils to supply valuable insights into employee needs and expectations, enabling Microsoft to tailor the product and deployment process accordingly. We encourage all companies to get connected with their respective works counsels to achieve a balance between rapid implementation and compliance, ensuring that their employees are protected, and the organization meets regulatory requirements.

Lori: It’s truly exciting to see the transformative power of Viva Sales in action and see the positive impact it’s having on our organization!

Learn more about Viva Sales

To learn more about our internal deployment of Viva Sales, read about how we’re simplifying sales with Viva Sales. You can also read more about our internal deployment of Viva at Microsoft by visiting our “Viva la vida! Work life is better at Microsoft with Viva” content suite. Learn more about other applications and capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales using the links below:

If you’re not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.

The post The power of AI in Viva Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Introducing Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing, and Microsoft Sales Copilot

3 ways Moveworks and Microsoft Teams use AI to improve employee productivity

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Since launching on Teams about four years ago, Moveworks has earned dozens of Fortune 500 customers by saving countless hours of employee time, making work more efficient, and reducing millions of dollars in IT support costs. Three key strategies helped generate that success.

The post 3 ways Moveworks and Microsoft Teams use AI to improve employee productivity appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.