In today’s world, sellers struggle to meet their goals due to competing priorities, manual processes and increased customer expectations. Most spend their time on administrative and non-selling tasks. However, it’s now the age of AI. Agents help free up sellers’ time to focus on higher value activities, engaging customers and moving them through sales cycles faster. For example, the recently announced Sales Qualification Agent (available soon in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales) automatically researches and prioritizes inbound leads and develops personalized sales emails to initiate sales conversations.  

This week at Microsoft Ignite, we announced new capabilities to further enhance agents in Dynamics 365 Sales by grounding them in your company’s unique data and taxonomy, as well as enriching the agents’ knowledge with third-party data. This allows the agent to assess a lead’s intent to buy with greater precision, while saving sellers precious time they may currently spend piecing together information from disparate sources. These capabilities will be rolling out in early 2025. 

Enhance Copilot and agents with your business terminology and knowledge sources 

Organizations will be able to enhance their interactions with Copilot and agents by training them to understand and use specific business acronyms and terms through a customized glossary. This means tailoring AI to the unique language and terminology of a particular business or industry, improving interactions with Copilot and enabling agents to perform tasks on your behalf with higher relevancy. 

For example, if a company frequently uses the acronym “TCV” to refer to “total contract value,” they can train the agent to recognize and use this term instead of the more generic “estimated revenue for opportunities.” This customization ensures that the agent’s work aligns with the company’s internal language, improving communication and reducing misunderstandings. 

Additionally, organizations will be able to add various knowledge sources to Copilot and agents, such as documents created in Word or Excel, files from SharePoint and tables from databases and lake houses such as Microsoft Fabric or Azure SQL, to complement the Sales data in Dataverse. Agents are built on Microsoft Copilot Studio, which announced new knowledge integrations this week at Ignite and will continue expanding the portfolio–meaning access to even more options over time. This allows the agent to leverage the full power of your organizational data, no matter where it is stored or which apps you use. 

By incorporating a business-specific glossary and relevant knowledge sources, the agent becomes more powerful, capable of understanding and responding in a way that is consistent with the company’s unique terminology and data needs. 

Enrich your CRM with data from third party enrichment providers  

Integrations with third-party data providers and Dynamics 365 Sales, as listed on AppSource, provide data and insights to augment the agents’ customer understanding beyond conventional sources.  

We announced a new data integration with Clay, a leading enrichment and orchestration provider. Clay combines first-party data with over 100 enrichment providers and an AI research agent, maximizing data coverage to create a more comprehensive view of the customer.  

Through the integration between Microsoft and Clay, Dynamics 365 Sales customers can add insights that would typically not be available in first party sources, such as valuation of private companies, headcount, key competitors and more. With these additional insights seamlessly synced back to Dynamics 365 Sales, agents can perform tasks with more precision, such as identifying leads that fit your ideal customer profile or their intent to buy. 

We’ve designed this integration to be user-friendly and efficient. Here’s how it works: 

Setting Up Connection: You can easily connect Dynamics 365 Sales to Clay using the out-of-the-box integration and select the specific data tables and fields you want to enrich. 

Populating Insights: Once set up, you can enrich your selected Dynamics tables with a variety of insights that can help your sales teams – either from one of 100+ data providers or from scraping public web sources through Clay’s AI agent. 

Automatic Synchronization: The enriched data is then synchronized back to Dynamics 365 Sales automatically, ensuring that your agents always have access to accurate and up-to-date information. 

Clay joins other integrations already available on Microsoft’s AppSource that can similarly augment your first party data. While data-hungry autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 Sales work tirelessly on behalf of your sales team to reduce time spent while increasing the number of closed deals, these integrations feed unique insights to them to power even the most complex sales playbooks. 

Summary 

In summary, you can customize your agent to meet your business needs by integrating relevant data sources that are bespoke to your business.  You can configure the agent to use your business-specific terminology and response styles, ensuring it aligns with your internal language. Finally, enrich your data with one of the many data enrichment integrations and ensure a perfectly optimized agent for your requirements.  

Take the next step 

Today’s sellers need the right data and tools to find, qualify, and close deals – all while offering personalized engagement at every step. The innovations introduced this week at Microsoft Ignite can not only help sellers with time-consuming sales activities but also provide access to actionable insights and superior agent performance to build stronger customer relationships and win more business. 

To learn more about these updates and how they can benefit your organization, be sure to explore the resources below: 

• Check out the recorded session on Dynamics 365 Sales from Ignite 

• Learn more about Clay for Dynamics 365 Sales  

• Learn more about Dynamics Sales 

• Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer? Take a tour and start your free trial today. 

The post Customize Dynamics 365 Sales Agents with your data sources and taxonomy appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers often need to manage numerous long documents to understand customers’ unique requirements and deliver the personalized attention advancing deals. These documents require sellers to invest significant time reviewing and understanding them, leaving sales team less time for their customers. With the summarization capabilities provided by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can now obtain pertinent details from sales documents in minutes. Sellers quickly gain insights into customer requirements, budget details, timelines, and main decision makers, enabling them to prepare for prospect meetings more effectively and engage in more informed and meaningful conversations. 

Close deals faster with seller-specific document summary

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales can create summaries of sales documents that include insights specific to your sales team’s needs. For example, sellers can quickly get details about the issuing organization, items to be procured, deadlines and timelines for submitting a proposal, contact information and meetings with stakeholders mentioned in the document, and other important information needed to move a deal forward, such as compliance and legal considerations. 

Sellers can ask Copilot to summarize sales documents stored in SharePoint or associated with any lead, contact, opportunity, and account in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

Next steps 

• Learn more about summarizing documents linked to records in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

• Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer? Take a tour and start your free trial today. 

The post Boost seller productivity with document summary by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Revolutionizing Your Scheduling Experience 

Welcome to the next chapter in scheduling. Today, we are thrilled to unveil the dramatically enhanced Schedule Board on Universal Resource Scheduling. 

A Seamless Transition 

At the core of this update, we are moving from the legacy ExtJS to a modern React component for the schedule board. Our guiding principle for this upgrade has been visual parity. The Resource panel, Requirements panel, Filters, and Views are all exactly as you know and love. But look closer, and you’ll discover the subtle enhancements we’ve made based on your valued feedback. 

Performance You’ll Feel 

You’ll notice that everything feels a little bit snappier, and that’s because it is! A more efficient React infrastructure means  

• a 30% reduction in load times when navigating through pages in the resource panel 

• a 40% reduction in load times when switching views 

• a 55% reduction in load times when saving bookings 

• a staggering 68% reduction in load times when switching tabs 

and more.  

This isn’t just performance improvement; it’s a performance revolution. 

Intuitive Usability Enhancements 

We’ve heard your feedback and incorporated your top requested usability improvements: 

1) Days of the Week: With the new React board, you can now filter which days of the week you want to have displayed on your board’s hourly view. For example, if your technicians only work Monday to Friday, you can exclude the non-working days Saturday and Sunday for a more space-efficient board. 

2) Reorder Tabs Control: Another top request from you was the ability to reorder tabs. For example, you can now prioritize your frequently used tab to load first when you open the schedule board. You can also multi-select more than one tab and move them all at once! This additional flexibility streamlines your day-to-day operations, making your workflow smoother and more intuitive. 

3) Ellipsis control: In the past, your dispatchers may not have known that there was other capabilities off the resource panel such as View resource card or Get driving directions. Now with the new ellipsis (3 dot) control, they can access these options quickly and intuitively.  

4) Dayline: On the previous schedule board, locating your current time and day position on a dense board was be a challenge. The new dayline makes it easier than ever to navigate the schedule board with precision and ease. 

Experience the Next Chapter Today 

The new Schedule Board on Universal Resource Scheduling is not just an upgrade; it’s a transformation. It’s faster, smarter, and more flexible, all while maintaining the familiarity you rely on. We can’t wait for you to experience the new level of efficiency and usability it brings to your scheduling tasks. 

Join us in embracing this leap forward on 1 Nov 2024. Your scheduling, reimagined. 

The post The next chapter for the Schedule Board: Enhanced Usability and Performance  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As organizations globally grapple with the accelerated development and adoption of AI, business leaders are keen to use the potential of generative AI in transforming revenue-generating functions like sales. Investing in cutting-edge AI capabilities will set up sales teams to bolster customer experience, being able to understand the customer needs and delivering a highly personalized buying experience at a much faster pace.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Increase seller efficiency.

Learn more

Today, many sales teams are bogged down with legacy customer relationship management (CRM) systems designed decades ago, manually entering data and dealing with interfaces built for a slower pace, all of which leaves little time for what truly matters: connecting with customers. Sales leaders are now looking for AI-powered technology that helps them build a stronger pipeline, convert opportunities quicker, and build strong relationships with customers. By using technology that reduces the amount of time spent on manual tasks, sellers gain valuable hours each day to work on opportunities that are already in motion. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, B2B sales organizations using generative-AI-embedded sales technologies will reduce the amount of time spent on prospecting and customer-meeting prep by more than 50%.¹ 

With this context, today, we’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation for the fourteenth consecutive year.

Figure 1: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms** (25 August 2024)  

How Microsoft is making selling easier 

Close more deals and spend less time on tasks 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to close more deals and increase personal productivity with a feature-rich CRM system that includes next-generation AI features out-of-box. Sellers can confidently develop and prioritize their pipeline with lead and opportunity qualification. Sales helps sellers deliver high-quality engagements with prospective customers by helping them prepare with relationship insights, next-step recommendations, and suggestions for improving their interactions. Sales managers can build high-performance sales teams with the ability to identify sellers who need coaching, monitor business health with intelligent forecasting, and scale best practices with automated sales sequences. 

Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales works as a companion for sales representatives by providing generative AI-powered features designed to reduce manual and time-consuming work for sellers. For instance, sellers can quickly get up to speed with accounts, opportunities, contacts, and leads with record summarization and recent changes in the prospective customer organizations. They can also get news updates on accounts along with answers and content recommendations for that account using access to sales documents in SharePoint. Sellers can get help summarizing long email threads and responding to threads with Copilot drafting emails with infused CRM context. Right before taking meetings with customers, sellers can ask Copilot for meeting preparation assistance as well. 

Access sales insights everywhere, no matter where you choose to work 

At Microsoft, we know first-hand that sellers often spend their time outside of their CRM in productivity apps like Outlook and Microsoft Teams. That’s why Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales seamlessly brings CRM insights right into the seller’s flow of work. Copilot for Sales brings together Microsoft 365 Copilot with a role-based agent that connects with your CRM platform to bring sales insights and generative AI into the flow of work. Sellers can simplify their daily tasks by using Copilot to draft e-mails, set up meetings, or summarize previous meetings and e-mail threads. They can save time with Copilot by generating pitch decks, meeting preparation briefs, and data visualizations in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. When it’s time for a sales call, sellers can use Copilot to get insights right within Teams, with AI-generated sales tips, related information, and answers to customer’s questions. After the call, Copilot provides a rich meeting recap that allows the seller to stay focused on next steps.  

Integration with an expanded ecosystem 

Organizations can unlock the full potential of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with seamless integration at every step. The Sales integration with Teams fosters open communication and collaboration across marketing, sales, and service departments. With automatic data synchronization between Microsoft 365 apps and Sales or other CRM platforms, sellers can access customer and opportunity information directly within Teams and Outlook. Additionally, sales operation leads and managers can utilize Microsoft Power BI to analyze trends and generate reports. Microsoft Power Platform further enables sellers to automate workflows, develop apps, and analyze data, enhancing agility and driving innovation. 

Our customers’ success 

First West Credit Union is headquartered in Langley, British Columbia, and operates through four locally-known brands to serve members across the province. After a comprehensive request for proposal (RFP) process involving multiple vendors, First West decided to replace its earlier CRM solutions with Sales. The implementation was completed in record time.

“In my experience, these are typically 24-month journeys. The initial deployment of our Sales system was completed in just 11 months. This expedited rollout enabled us to seamlessly transition from and decommission our outdated legacy CRM systems, marking a significant achievement in our digital transformation journey.”

Darrell Jaggers, CIO & Chief Transformation Officer, First West Credit Union

The sales advisors at First West Credit Union are already realizing value. The manual reporting process used to take 20 minutes, but member discovery now takes only a few minutes with Sales, driving productivity gains of more than 75%. Within the first month of launching Sales, First West’s advisors had completed more than 2,600 member discoveries, marking a 54% surge in adoption compared to the previous approach. 

Alkemy, a specialty chemical systems company, transformed its sales operations by adopting Sales in 2019. Partnering with Intelibis, they automated customer segmentation, digitized sales processes, and integrated with Power Automate and SharePoint. This shift reduced their operational burden by 90%, generated over 2,900 reports, and significantly improved customer service. Alkemy now aims to become fully digital, using predictive controls to expand in the marketplace. 

As organizations continue to adopt AI at an unprecedented pace, at Microsoft we are focused on delivering the most cutting-edge experiences built on trust and security in leading products like Sales.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 and sales 

• Read the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms report 
• Microsoft Dynamics 365  
• Dynamics 365 Sales  
• Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales 

Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the best way you can get started with Sales and Copilot for Sales. 

Sources:

1. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Varun Agarwal, Steve Rietberg, 24 August 2024.  

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.  

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.  

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