New capabilities and features result in ‘unmatched platform for digital transformation’
Elly Yates-Roberts |
Microsoft has unveiled its spring 2018 release of Dynamics 365. The update includes hundreds of new capabilities and features in three core areas: business applications; intelligent capabilities; and transformational new application platform capabilities.
According to James Phillips, corporate vice president, Microsoft Business Applications Group, the collection of integrated capabilities spanning the Microsoft Cloud supercharge Dynamics 365, creating an unmatched platform for digital transformation.”
“As I talk with business leaders to learn what draws them to Dynamics 365, the answer is almost always the same: they want to digitally transform and believe Microsoft is uniquely capable of helping them succeed on that journey,” he said in a recent blog post. “Microsoft is the only provider of a modern, unified and intelligence-infused family of business applications that span the breadth of business processes – across marketing, sales, service, operations, finance, talent and commerce; all powered by a business analytics and application platform, built atop a common data model, on Azure, our planet-scale public cloud, connected to Office 365 and the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn.”
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing is generally available as part of the spring release. This is a new marketing automation application for companies that need more than basic email marketing at the front end of a sales cycle.
To simplify its Dynamics 365 offerings and increase ease of selection, Microsoft is also introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Professional, a new streamlined version of its sales application with core sales force automation capabilities. From opportunity management to sales planning and performance management, the solution optimises sales processes and productivity.
Microsoft is also releasing Microsoft Power BI Insights apps, delivering insights tailored to specific business scenarios across marketing, sales, service, operations, finance and talent. Insights are generated by applying advanced intelligence to a subset of Microsoft data. Customers can incorporate additional data from a range of third-party sources to enhance relevance and accuracy.
Power BI for Sales Insights include an embedded experience for Dynamics 365 for Sales, which will allow customers to take advantage of relationship analytics offering a single relationship health score, calculated from large amounts of data representing transactions, customer sentiment, emails and content exchanged, and frequency and level of customer interactions brought together from Dynamics 365, email, and social networks.
Microsoft had also released a significant update to the Common Data Service for Apps that ships with PowerApps and will enable a broad set of capabilities for modelling sophisticated business solutions.