Executive Insight

How Every CFO Can Use Technology To Help The Business Succeed

Community Editor — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:53:52 GMT

Written by: Rebecca Roedell

In just about every role as retail CFO—from Tower Records to Sharper Image, the board has always asked me to act in a CEO or COO capacity. It’s a natural fit in retail for a CFO because in retail it’s all about the data. As a CFO, you have the experience and understanding of the numbers so you can answer questions from the leadership team to help run the business. You want to have a proactive approach, to execute with insight by accessing critical information in real-time, with a thought towards optimizing performance, anticipating trends, and capitalizing on opportunities. All of which requires a genuine 360-degree view of the business—naturally, provided to us by Microsoft Dynamics for Retail.

Recently, for example, our team was having a conversation about determining how we’ll hit a certain revenue number this year. People can always throw out thoughts and ideas, sketching on the back of an envelope…But when you can get the hard data (such as comp sales, traffic, and conversion) to quantify what’s realistic, you don’t have to rely on quickly generated hypothesi. Once we pull data, we can work out the “what ifs” and see what the impact will be in difference scenarios—tweaking sales mix, gross margin, promotional impact, traffic rates, conversion rates, and so on, and then analyzing how changes can impact the results over a given time.

Reliable, Accurate Data

My team relies on reporting features extensively to help me get the numbers I need to present to the leadership team. Scott Strapac, Senior Finance manager, uses sales reporting from the POS for daily, weekly, and monthly reporting—he claims it’s actually pretty easy, the numbers are accurate, and he doesn’t have to reconcile due to system mistakes. He gives me the numbers I need to report up the chain—helping us all be successful.

Bryan Beymer, our inventory controller, agrees. He supports the merchandising team, providing detail on inventory and gross margin that I report to and discuss with the leadership team. They both know that analytics are key. “Having the ability to report on attach rates by product is very valuable to the business and gives us the opportunity to identify then focus on the most profitable, margin increasing products we should present in our sales motion.” This allows our stores to focus on sales motions and training to improve our financial results.

Micro-evaluation and In-depth Analysis

Unlike retail software built to solve the problems of the past, Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics for Retail is a modern, unified technology offering that reduces complexity for retailers like us. It helps us to focus on what matters most – connecting to customers, empowering their people, and delivering on the brand promise through excellence in execution. Right now, we’re in an expansion mode. So, we can look at data from all different angles to determine next steps. For instance, we can look at store data points per region that can make us smarter about how we expand next. For instance, maybe one store location didn’t generate as much in sales as another store in the same region. We can drill into the data to discover answers around how to improve top line by learning how the better performing store converted the sales, it’s sales mix, gross margin experience, and more. That’s the sort of example that becomes important for us to analyze and make well informed decisions and give direction to the business.

We can evaluate to the micro-level, to look at how particular SKUs are performing in certain stores…or compare using a “store overlay” to find out how different types of mall settings affect these numbers and determine why that may be.

Rapid Response

In retail, CFOs know that it’s really all about speed—and the ability to flex, grow, or evolve business without constraint. Thanks to today’s technology, we can drive our retail vision across channels quickly in response to market changes or other events. It’s what we call being a Dynamic Retailer, and it’s what lets us take advantage of new opportunities more quickly.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/05/06/retail-by-the-numbers/

Why A Mobile Sales Team Beats The Competiton

Community Editor — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:06:08 GMT

Written by: Stephanie Dart

Today’s sales teams work in a hyper-fast and competitive environment—salespeople and other field-based workers require instant access to information and insights from wherever they are and from whatever device they choose. To stay relevant and ahead of the competition, sales reps cannot afford to wait until they are in the office to be productive and capitalize on new opportunities. Five minutes before going into an appointment, sales reps need real-time information about what’s happening with prospects. They need to know what conversations are going on about those prospects and they need additional market data and news feeds. Did the prospect recently go through an acquisition? Is there an existing service issue with this customer that they might not know about?

Having access to the information they need on their mobile device can mean the difference between winning and losing the deal. And mobile access to applications and information, for sales in particular, has gone from secondary to primary access point.

Some companies think that the solution is to provide the same applications on all devices—whether it is a desktop computer in the office through a touch-enabled mobile device, like a tablet. To me, that doesn’t go far enough. An experience that is specific to the device and the role of the person using it is more ideal. Imagine applications for process-oriented roles, to make sure people get what they need, when they need it. Mobile applications should move beyond static data—lists and forms. Wouldn’t it be better for the sales person to be guided by the software and to have the experience tailored to his or her particular role?

The people at Sealord have been extremely impressed with the capabilities offered around mobility by leveraging both Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Windows 8. The combination has allowed them to develop a unique end user experience at low cost that simplifies how they interact with the business process system. Neville Richardson, CIO at Sealord, tells us that the feedback from the company’s teams in the field has been excellent, including this latest message: “The Mobile App that Datacom developed for us is going to make Out of Stock issues and Account wide ranging so much easier to track and correct, and being able to see live trade spend data rather than waiting for the end of month accounts is going to allow us to control our costs and budgets more proactively.”

I think there’s an opportunity for the best sales organizations—like those at Sealord—to use new trends, like BYOD and better mobile apps, for competitive advantage. Sales executives, managers, and professionals all need to be equipped with the right tools to win. The tools must provide organizations with efficiencies for internal processes and help advance initial relationships into profitable customer accounts and strategic partnerships.

All of this helps sales teams to outsmart and outpace the competition, to learn to win as a team, to create compelling and differentiated customer interactions, and ultimately to close more deals faster—to become a truly Dynamic Sales Team.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/05/03/building-a-dynamic-mobile-sales-team/

How Technology Helps CFOs Move Beyond Collecting Data To Analysis

Community Editor — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:33:21 GMT

Written by: Claude Changarnier

I’ve been working in the world of finance for large companies—for one company in particular—for well over twenty years. Like everyone else, the Finance organizations (and CFOs in particular) have undergone a terrific evolution thanks in large part to progress in technology. Twenty or thirty years ago, we spent most of our time managing transactions using big, complicated systems. It was our job to find the data and present it, primarily to the leadership team. Back then, the biggest power in the CFO’s office was access to this data.

Today, it’s a different story, thanks in large part to advances in technology. Modern business systems make it relatively easy for us to provide the right information to the right people at the right time, even when organizations are physically separated. These innovations have been helping us move away from this job of managing transactions, where we have to get information through an IT person. Now, many people across the company—in various roles—can have access to the data, in real time. For me, that means tracking data on 110 subsidiaries worldwide, and making sure the appropriate people in each organization have access to the data they need to make decisions that will result in success for them and for Microsoft as a whole.

Not surprisingly, my department and I are now are perceived differently these days; we’re advisors and consultants…not just to the leadership team but to organizations, such as sales and HR, that are vital to the success of the company as a whole. We use these tools to gather information directly—quickly—and then help each department unlock the meaning of the data points and determine how best to move forward. My focus now is on analyzing the data, not just providing it—based on the data, for instance, how can we increase revenue or control costs? Now we can use real-time insight and analysis on up-to-date financial and operational performance to inspire action.

For example, we can help the sales team by giving them real insight about their customers. The way we do our job today—it’s not just to show up with some report. We are working extremely closely with sales people to help them understand where they are doing well and where they need help.

Let me give you another example of how technology makes our job easier. At Microsoft International, we benchmark all sorts of KPIs—cost per head, revenue per head, and so on—and we make that information available to all our subsidiaries can see how they are doing. They can see where they fall in the spectrum—are they doing very well compared with the other subsidiaries? I don’t have to tell them. If they are not doing well, they can look at the subs that are and figure out how to apply some of those best practices.

The world is moving at a rapid pace. Speed and agility are essential in responding changes like shifting markets and changes to regulatory requirements. Modern systems have helped me manage this complexity, streamline business processes, and provide insights into the vast amount of business data to make smarter and better decisions for my company.

Claude Changarnier is CFO at Microsoft International

Reducing Complexity In Global Organizations Cuts IT Costs By Millions

Community Editor — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:47:28 GMT

Written by: Ricky Klint

Enterprise companies find that deploying a single, global ERP system can lead to unmanageable IT complexity.

As all CIOs know, the more complex the technology environment, the more difficult and expensive it is to keep the entire operation running seamlessly. Yet over time, many companies find the complexity of their applications has gradually increased to an almost unmanageable degree. They’re paying very high prices to operate their core business, or they feel paralyzed by their systems. Some worry that they’re can’t easily support future change or execute on strategic direction. They’ve reached a point where IT complexity is preventing the business from realizing its potential, and they wonder how they got there…

In the 1990’s many companies embraced an idealized vision for enterprise IT, which was predicated on putting in place a single, global ERP system from end-to-end. But as many companies and many CIOs have discovered, this isn’t necessarily a practical vision. The world around us changes fast, and business requirements change right along with it. And monolithic ERP systems can have a hard time keeping up.

Organizations found that the reality of the global ERP vision failed to live up to its promise, for three reasons:

One size does not fit all. The global enterprise typically comprises a huge range of businesses: large subsidiaries and small subsidiaries; emerging markets and established markets; products and services; manufacturing and multi-channel distribution. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to address specific local needs of your many businesses with a single, global system.
Difficult deployment. It can take too long—years in some cases—to deploy a single ERP system across the global enterprise. And meanwhile, the world keeps right on changing. The resource requirements of a multi-year global ERP deployment can be a drain on the enterprise, taking time away from high-value IT projects or forcing you to play host to an army of highly paid consultants.
Change management. Once in place, a monolithic global ERP can be very difficult—or very expensive—to modify. That means that your business is slower to respond to changes in strategy or changes in the marketplace. What you gain in visibility and process management, you give up in agility, trading off competitive advantage because you can’t respond to future changes.

To respond quickly to a specific business need in a single local office, most companies put in place a point solution rather than undertaking a major change to the global ERP. It’s a reasonable short-term response. But multiply that point solution by the number of offices around the world and the number of unique business needs that crop up, and an enterprise can one day find its ERP surrounded by dozens or even hundreds of smaller applications. Take into account the integrations between these small applications, individually as well as to the main ERP, and the enterprise IT environment will grow extraordinarily complex—ironically, as a result of attempting to “standardize” on a single, global system.

This is a story we’ve heard again and again, from some of our biggest enterprise clients. And we have a solution. Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions can strike the perfect balance: support for standardized industry best practices and the ability to implement global processes, while allowing rapid deployment and even faster modification and reconfiguration at the local level. By deploying Microsoft Dynamics business solutions across their operations, companies like Revlon Revlon and Dell Dell have consolidated hundreds of smaller applications onto a single, global platform, reducing IT complexity, saving millions in IT costs, and increasing the speed and agility of their businesses. Where they were once faced with overwhelming complexity, today our customers can actually act on their strategy and adapt rapidly, realizing tremendous return on their technology investment and saving significantly on IT costs while reaching new levels of strategic agility.

Microsoft is another great example. Ten years ago, if you had suggested that we would be operating retail stores and selling hardware in the year 2013, people might have looked at you funny. And yet, here we are, 10 years later, with a global retail presence, and we’ve transformed into a devices and services company. The world changed. And our business changed to stay relevant. And we wouldn’t be here if our business solutions hadn’t been able to change, as well.

What does the next ten years hold? It’s anyone’s guess. According to “Back to the Future,” by 2015, kids will be riding hover boards and we’ll all be driving flying cars (not to mention the Cubs will win the World Series). That may seem far-fetched, but one thing’s for sure: nothing stays the same. And you need business solutions that allow you to keep up with change.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/04/04/how-did-we-get-here-reducing-complexity-in-global-organizations/

Developer of High-Performance Telco Software Powers Global Operations with Microsoft Dynamics

Community Editor — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:37:53 GMT

Written by: Mikko Hytonen

Let’s think about what happens when you buy a new phone plan. What we do at Comptel is provide the software that translates something like a platinum voice package into the technical language needed so that that subscription can become operational in the telco provider’s network. In other words, we provide the mediation software between the telco network and the CRM and billing systems of our customers so they can then bill their customers.

Most recently, we have acquired an analytics company. And what that means is that we can now provide real-time analytics as a part of our solutions. Imagine, for instance, that you are sitting at the airport and trying to download a movie before your flight arrives, but you are having connection issues. Through our real-time analytics, we would be able to see that issue and then provide you with an alert, offering to increase your bandwidth for a certain cost, let’s say two megabits in two minutes—all for five dollars.

And in this space of providing mediation software for telcos, performance is everything. Some of our customers have 300 million subscribers. They must be able to perform a huge volume of transactions; and if they can’t, that can have a big impact on revenue. They won’t be able to bill.

That being said, when I joined the company in 2009, I found that we had a different kind of software challenge—and it had nothing to do with performance. Our challenge was that we relied on an ERP system that dated back to 2003 and was almost out of support. That solution, which was SAP R3, was also only being used in only 3 of our 19 offices. Our other offices all used home-grown systems; and as a company that had really grown into a global player, we simply needed a global view into the numbers. So it was here that we began our search for a new system.

In the end we narrowed our choices down to either SAP ECC or Microsoft Dynamics AX. In addition to its ease of customization, we ultimately chose Microsoft Dynamics AX, over SAP ECC, based on the following criteria:

Total cost of ownership. For the same cost as our yearly support contract for SAP across three offices, we were able to make Microsoft Dynamics AX available as a service for our 19 offices worldwide.
User experience. Microsoft Dynamics AX offered a user experience similar to other Microsoft applications, leading to higher adoption rates and improving productivity.
Time to value. By turning to a partner-hosted model, we knew we could get running on the solution fairly quickly. In fact, we were able to get all 19 of our offices on the solution in 10 months, versus a projected 13 to 16 months for SAP ECC, which would have also required us to purchase and deploy new hardware.

And now, I can say that we have certainly met our primary objective. We have achieved the holistic view of operations we needed to support us as we grow into a global brand. And we were able to do it without incurring the costs of an ERP system like SAP ECC, which, in the end, was simply too big for a company of our size. It offered more capabilities and came at a price point that we didn’t want to pay. Microsoft Dynamics AX, on the other hand, was the right fit.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/04/02/developer-of-high-performance-telco-software-powers-global-operations-with-microsoft-dynamics/

For Formula One Team, Business Software As Important As A Mechanic

Community Editor — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:25:24 GMT

Written by: Matthew Woodget

We’re constantly being told that technology will handle the mundane and administrative, so we can focus on what we love. Often, despite inarguable benefits, technology falls short of its promise and we end up right back performing the humdrum: entering the same information twice or manipulating data from one system so it will work in another.

Who better than a Formula One team to understand the challenges and pressure of ongoing performance requirements? In an earlier post, we talked about how, because milliseconds often determine the win, teams have an extreme degree of focus on the prize and continually improve their product (the car) and processes. Responding to spending caps and other regulatory changes in the sport, Lotus F1 Team embarked on a business transformation project, with the goal of winning the 2014 championship.

It’s a journey with a lot of twists and turns—one that continuously pushes the limits of the financial, human, and technological potential because the pressure to improve never relents: once the team has designed and built the car, the work is not done. Lotus F1 Team continues to develop and refine it with each race, hoping to shave off the winning millisecond.

Building a custom car requires skills that are as unique as the parts themselves, many made by hand. Some team members spot-weld custom exhausts manually, exclusively. Others hand-build the car body with carbon fiber parts using laser guidance. It takes a lot of specialists to design and build the 20,000-plus custom parts.

Each person has only a limited amount of time in a day, and the team, as a whole, has a precious window of opportunity in which to prepare. Having up-to-date information to enable the best possible decisions is understandably critical for the car on the track. Responding to that data means making changes to settings or components to improve areas like down force, grip, and acceleration in order to drive performance gains. The same goes for business operations; visibility into financials, hiring top talent, and making the best logistical and supply chain decisions all have a tangible and very real impact on teams ability to be quick and agile. Minutes wasted transferring information from one system to another slows down the agility of the entire business and can mean milliseconds given up on the track, and missing out on lucrative race win related bonuses.

Like other manufacturers, Lotus F1 Team is always looking for ways to gain a competitive edge, whether it’s in manufacturing and performance or business operations.

As Lotus F1 Team gains more control of its business by consolidating manufacturing and operations in Microsoft Dynamics software, the team expects to realize the opportunity promise of technology. That promise is this: By reducing manual busywork, team members can focus on their specialties and protect that moment of inspiration that leads to the breakthrough that contributes to a win.

Every person at Lotus F1 Team stands to make a greater contribution through their use of Microsoft Dynamics.

Hiring Managers easily being able to liaise with the teams recruiters in a shared workspace to manage the hiring process.
HR managers recruiting uniquely qualified specialists with very narrowly defined skill sets through integration between HR and ERP.
The finance team, from budget analysts to the CFO, gaining the insights it needed to control costs, and digitize paper-based processes.
Financial information coordinated and centralized in one version of the truth ensuring that teams can make faster decisions by using the same, up-to-date information.
Tracking of financial commitments by the team (procurement) and to the team (sponsorships) is manageable and predictable
The challenges of managing budgets across disconnected and out-of-date spreadsheets rapidly vanish into the rear view mirror when the team is able to have a clear view of the financial road ahead.

And that’s just in lap one. With the new racing season underway this month, and its business transformation on track, the Lotus F1 Team is gearing up to win.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/28/accelerating-business-performance/

How Dell Saved $50 Million A Year Through Software Rationalization

Community Editor — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:03:11 GMT

Written by: Matt Griffiths

In 2008, we started an initiative to rationalize the systems in Dell’s manufacturing and supply chain facilities. We looked at the options out there and decided that Microsoft Dynamics AX was the right fit.

Since then, we have driven the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX across seven of our facilities, replacing around 75 highly customized applications, and we are now in the process of completing the final rollout in Poland. Over this period, we have reduced manufacturing IT costs by $96 million a year, with the Microsoft solution contributing to around $50 million of those savings. The other savings came from standardizing our manufacturing processes and implementing lean manufacturing principles.

While the primary goal was to reduce the IT cost of running our Dell factories, the second goal was to drive business process consistency across our manufacturing operations. The culture at Dell has always been best-in-class. In an effort to drive innovation, the factories were often developing new products or processes on different platforms. By standardizing on Microsoft Dynamics AX, we have been able to streamline our development teams, reuse testing across factories, and fix defects across the whole business in one big swoop.

The last goal of the project was to improve the reliability and stability of the environment. When we started the project, we were seeing downtime in the region of two percent of man capacity which added up to significant IT downtime over a month or a year. Since deploying Microsoft Dynamics AX, we have seen a massive reduction from where we were back in 2008. We are now at three 9’s reliability—approaching four 9’s (99.99 percent) reliability in our most mature factory, and we are on target to achieve that across the other Dell factories.

But perhaps the most important thing we’ve been able to achieve with our ERP deployment is the evolution of our business model. The consumer market has moved away from configure-to-order (CTO) products; now, they want more standardized products in different form factors, such as tablets. While Dell maintains the CTO model for our enterprise and large customers, there are definitely efficiencies and cost-savings to be realized in our factories with the shift in the consumer market. By leveraging the Lean module in Microsoft Dynamics AX, we were able to change our business processes to take advantage of these market changes.

We’re also receiving great feedback and a boost in morale from our staff with this change. Now operators only have one screen to look at, rather than the five or six of the past, and they don’t have to sit around waiting for the systems to come back online. The results have been so positive that the first factory we deployed the software to in India refers to Microsoft Dynamics AX as the “Magic Energy System,” which is a play on the term MES (Manufacturing Execution System). It is really fulfilling to have the system accepted so rapidly by the factory floor operators.

Matt Griffiths is Executive Director of Manufacturing IT at Dell

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/26/how-dell-saved-50-million-a-year-through-software-rationalization/

How To Succeed In Sales With Social Technology

Community Editor — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:24:14 GMT

Written by: Neil Halloway

Uniting the worlds of IT and business.

I’ve just spent the past 2 days at our annual Dynamics community event: Convergence. It has been a whirlwind of positive activity, from the pre-event community outreach here in New Orleans, to the Expo, roundtables, and training sessions. But it’s particularly refreshing to listen to business leaders across all industries, to find out what is top-of-mind for them right now.

To me—and to those I’ve been listening to—it’s an incredible time to be in business. It’s certainly different—and challenging. People are uniting in ways they never could before. And it’s primarily driven by the extraordinary technology innovation that we see today. For example, in the area of social technologies, businesses like mine are realizing that it’s not just about having a social presence or numerous followers. The main value to our businesses resides on how insights obtained through social technologies are integrated in our core business processes and are executed at scale. Social technologies only really make sense in our business if they help us unite ideas, obtain sentiments real time, or prioritize our investments.

In my opinion, this is an amazing opportunity for sales teams in particular. It’s clear that sales executives are meeting customers at very different points in the sales conversation. Today’s customer in general is proactive in searching for information before speaking with a sales executive directly, which provides more opportunities to get the message out and to interact with customers and prospects in different ways. At the same time, we have the challenge to quickly recognize where the customer is in the buying process and respond appropriately. We look to gaining insight into our customers, but we also need to effectively collaborate as a team to find ways to respond quickly. To me, it makes sense to respond to customers via the same social channels that everyone uses to connect and collaborate. The same goes with respect to your internal sales organization.

As a sales leader myself, I see how the unification of my technology infrastructure and my business processes can make all the difference. But of course you do it in a thoughtful and strategic manner. You can’t just click a button and become collaborative overnight. You have to build on the investments you have already made. Many organizations are sitting on a gold mine of functionality in terms of IT assets—from SQL Server to BizTalk Server to Exchange Server—that can be liberated through the use of solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics.

It’s what we call a Dynamic Business: connected, forward-looking organizations that thrive by empowering their people to reach their full potential. Dynamic Businesses have the right infrastructure in place, united with best-in-class business applications. A united company is in the best position to take advantage of the new work world of tomorrow.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/21/how-to-succeed-in-sales-success-with-social-technology/

To Improve Marketing, Look No Further Than Your IT Department

Community Editor — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:54:18 GMT

Written by: Wayne Morris

As a CMO, I am in the middle of the marketing evolution, as are all my fellow marketing professionals. We are adopting new ways of connecting with and engaging our customers, prospects and partners. While our ability to substantially increase our reach is growing through social outreach, viral adoption, and an increasing number of communication channels, conversely our ability to manage our brand image is impacted by this very same new marketing reality. At the same time, through the use of behavior analysis, social listening and analytics we have much more insight into the concerns and interests of our customer and prospects. Using this and the shift to more focus on digital channels allows us to do more two-way engagement and deliver more personal, differentiated experiences.

This has led to an increasing awareness of the business value marketing can bring – we are now very much in the spotlight. Because of this, there are higher expectations of the results marketing can deliver and a corresponding increase in and accountability for technology budgets allocated to the marketing function. The majority of us are under a CEO mandate to improve marketing effectiveness, while most of us are struggling to account for how our budgets are spent and how to quantify the associated returns from this spend.

Typically, we have limited ability to obtain a complete 360 degree view of our prospects and customers. If we don’t have a closed-loop approach to measuring and optimizing campaign effectiveness our visibility is reduced, which makes it harder to improve the return on our marketing investment. Many of us have felt frustration at our IT department’s slowness in delivering these capabilities and so we may have moved to cloud-based marketing and CRM solutions that didn’t involve the IT department as an expedient way to obtain the supporting systems we require. However this may be a short term fix with longer term consequences.

We already understand that marketing needs to partner closely with the sales and operations functions to ensure we are delivering qualified leads into the hands of a selling organization equipped to take the lead through the sales cycle to closure. Similarly, we also need to build strong partnerships with the IT department to ensure we have an integrated marketing management system that enables our ability to execute effective marketing while also supporting overall business and financial goals. The benefits of this partnership are two-fold:

It ensures we have a safe, secure environment that protects customer and prospect privacy;
It enables closed-loop measurement and analysis of marketing effectiveness across the full customer lifecycle.

We’ve all heard or experienced the negative consequences associated with privacy breaches and the loss of trust from customers and prospects that is a result. This continues to be a highly visible concern for most organizations, not just in terms of a brand’s reputation, but also in regards to compliance. A core competency of professional IT departments is security and privacy protection, so by working together, we can mitigate the risks associated with potential security breaches.

While we are mostly concerned with the outreach to and initial engagement with potential and existing customers, we really need to see a complete picture of what happened to the lead generated by these marketing. What was the outcome in terms of purchase? How much revenue did we generate? How are the customers using our products and offerings? Are they experiencing any issues or usage difficulties? How satisfied are they? Are they advocates? What might they want or need next?

These questions can only be answered if our marketing, social, sales, customer care, financial and product instrumentation systems are all working together. Most IT departments able to implement the necessary integration or, at the very least, will be needed to open access to these core systems.

Enlightened CIOs and IT departments already understand the business reality and want to support effective marketing. As CMOs we can champion strong partnerships with IT in the same way we have built strong working relationships with our sales channel partners. If we do so, we mitigate risk and increase our overall marketing effectiveness. CMOs and CIOs – delivering better business results together.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/18/cmos-and-cios-better-together/

Why Social Media Is One Of The Best Ways To Keep Your Customers Happy

Community Editor — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Written by: David Pennington

Customer care professionals are challenged these days to identify and resolve customers’ issues through an ever-increasing array of communication channels. They want to know: How can I make my customers happy and bolster our brand?

The service professional has always played a critical role in driving positive customer experiences. Often the service professional is the only human touch point to the customer. Today’s social customer will use social networks to air opinions and find out if an organization is listening, wondering if they will respond quickly — or at all. The proliferation of mobile devices means that customers can air their thoughts just about anywhere, anytime—including “in the heat of the moment.” This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the service professional. The challenge is how to capture and analyze the thousands of conversations in the social universe to identify the right issues your care team can and should address. The opportunity is to determine respond in real time and demonstrate that company is listening, turning negative experiences into positive ones and winning your customer’s trust.

Furthermore, service organizations can analyze these opinions and views to provide a valuable “early warning” system that identifies emerging problems before they become larger in severity and scale.

Today, social listening and analysis tools can help organizations identify an escalating issue. Often when the issue has been surfaced via social media, then one of the response channels needs to be social media as well. Businesses gain kudos and credibility when they acknowledge and respond to problems through social channels. Social avenues provide an opportunity for the business to proactively address issues at scale—including quickly reversing a negative situation.

Customers who have great experiences will also use social networks to tell those positive stories, amplifying affirmative feelings about your brand. Since most customers listen to and trust peers more than advertising and collateral, a glowing recommendation is incredibly powerful in sustaining customer loyalty, building equity in your brand, and strengthening your community. In essence, your social customers can become an extended service community for your business. Ideally, you’ll be able to identify advocates and champions and work with marketing to incent influential customers to be brand and service “ambassadors,” with the help of business tools that tap into the social stream.

Social communities represent a constant source of real-time feedback that can give business leaders valuable information to improve future products and services—information that previously would have taken considerable time, effort, and expense to collect. We look at social experiences not as destination, but as a way to accelerate your business strategies.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/15/making-your-customers-happy-through-social-media/

Social Tools At Work Can Help Manage And Close Deals

Community Editor — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:04:09 GMT

Written by: David Pennington

Social media is often thought of as an external, customer-facing sales tool. But inside the organization, social technologies are powerful tools that you can use to engage your employees for real-time feedback, enabling them to collaborate on tasks and connect to the resources they need for success. Imagine your ability to harness and develop new business ideas when your employees are all connected, working together, real-time.

Sales professionals need to be able to get up to speed quickly, keeping track of the network of people and business events that are relevant to closing deals. They are looking for tools that can make them more educated not just about the prospect but also about your organization’s offerings, before, during, and after sales discussions.

But what’s the biggest complaint in sales? Having to spend too much time on non-selling activities. Sales people are constantly looking for answers and expertise to close more deals faster. In our personal lives it’s fairly easy to find people and information we need – we use search engines and social networks to find what we want. Why wouldn’t the same approach make sense at work? This is why social experiences should be an integral part of business solutions.

Ask any salesperson how they meet revenue targets and they’ll tell you it’s all about how they can stay on top of the situation. How does a sales rep cut through the clutter of daily business and listen to what’s going on in the context of his specific accounts, leads, contacts, and deals? He wants business tools that help him “follow” the people, organizations, and events he cares about. And of course he needs access to this information no matter where he is—at his desk or on the road through a tablet or phone.

Social tools can also help accelerate the sales process. Salespeople constantly need to make decisions about the deals and people they work with. Public social networks like LinkedIn provide additional insight into customer connections, preferences, behaviors and sentiments, which can lead to more productive sales engagements. Pulling this information into daily productivity tools—such as Outlook email client or CRM, for instance—in a way that allows people to manage their social networks and stay up-to-date directly in that tool, is a real benefit to the sales professional and the organization as a whole.

Salespeople are results-oriented—they like to have achievements acknowledged (and shared). Social tools for business can be configured to automatically post updates when actions occur, such as closing a deal. The system can be a real support to someone in this role, offering instant acknowledgement and making sure everyone in his organization’s network—from the boss to the VP of Sales—is aware of the efforts and successes of the sales team.

We are committed to providing tools for your sales teams to bring them rich social experiences that help them communicate and collaborate while also harnessing external social networks for new ways to find, connect with, and understand customers. We think it makes sense to help sales reps spend less time looking for information or reporting to the team and more time turning prospects into customers. What do you think?

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/14/embracing-social-sales-inside-and-outside-the-organization/

How Social Tools Lead To Business Opportunities

Community Editor — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Written by: David Pennington

Business success hinges on one or more of the following aspirations: increasing revenue, driving customer loyalty and identifying new business opportunities. These days everyone is looking for the silver bullet to achieve success. For years, we have been focusing on the business benefits of increasing productivity, but let’s face it: your people can be communicating, collaborating and generally doing lots of things faster, but that doesn’t guarantee they are the right things.

Social technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent in daily personal and professional life. Social technologies provide simple collaboration for employees and new means of understanding and interacting with customers. Many, if not most, companies are now talking about social media functionality as an enterprise tool, supplementing email, file shares, and other established processes for internal company conversations as well as for customer interaction—particularly as new, tech-expectant workers join the labor force.

But let’s put this technology wave in perspective. Telephone has not replaced face-to-face meetings; email has not replaced telephone; social technologies are yet another means for people to connect and interact. Your customers expect flexibility in the way they engage with you, whether that is via the web, face-to-face, phone, email…and now social.

Some people would have you believe that social technologies alone will guarantee the success that businesses seek. The reality is: social for the sake of being social is just noise without context. Many executives view social technologies as distractions rather than enablers for this reason. Social is a critical channel; but it’s not a means to an end.

So, what are the business opportunities with social technologies? Social technologies can serve as a catalyst for your business—helping you put your business strategies into action quickly and effectively. Use social to:

Listen, by monitoring and dissecting social conversations to uncover trends and key influencers.
Engage, by conducting a dialog with stakeholders to inform, respond and influence.
Amplify, by utilizing communities to broadcast your message and drive awareness.
Solve problems, by harvesting and reusing community knowledge and connecting customers to solve problems.
Innovate, by identifying business opportunities and ideas through crowd-sourcing communities.
Analyze, by measuring buzz, calculating stakeholder sentiment, and determining impact.

The true power of social technologies is realized when it’s an integral part of the business applications you use every day—supporting truly strategic initiatives like driving a customer-centric organization. We believe that having social tools within the context of your customer information enables you to increase the agility of your business. Our vision goes beyond just a social enterprise – we are defining a connected and forward-looking enterprise: an enterprise that connects its employees, partners, and customers to what they need, in the right context, using the device and channel they prefer.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/11/letting-social-technologies-serve-as-a-catalyst-for-your-business/

The Real Mobile Revolution Isn't About Mobility

Community Editor — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:04:00 GMT

Written by: Joshua Greenbaum

The hundreds of millions of smart phones and tablets now in use across the world are harbingers of a revolution that goes well beyond what we think of as the mobile market today. The original mobile market, which as a mass-market phenomenon is already more than 20 years old, was about accessibility in an always-on, always-connected world. Wherever and whenever, mobile technology would keep us connected, first by voice, then via email, and now through social media. Mobile was a means to interact in real time with an increasingly interactive world.

As that vision has evolved to include smart phones and tablets, the appeal of the mobile market has moved well beyond that initial interaction-driven use case. As we race into the second decade of the 21^st century, it’s clear that the mobile market has spawned an increasingly broader use case that is based on a unique set of user experiences. These user experiences promise to change our conceptions of what mobility is all about — and make it clear that a mobile experience isn’t the only thing consumers and the enterprise are looking for after all.

Three key trends have piggy-backed on the mobile revolution that have significantly changed how users inside and outside the enterprise consume technology: the rise of small, easy-to-use apps as the means by which software developers seek to embody business and consumer processes in technology, the rise of the online apps store as the place where developers go to sell their apps and their customers go to buy them, and the rise of the touch-based user experience as the predominant means by which users interact with technology.

What’s important to bear in mind about these three trends is that they are not necessarily predicated on being delivered on a device that is purely and uniquely mobile in nature. This is especially important for the enterprise, where a majority of business processes do not necessarily take place on the road or in the field, and where many processes require more user input than is possible on a tablet or smartphone. Indeed, even though tablet and smart phone sales surpassed PC sales over two years ago, there remain a significant amount of business processes that are best accomplished at something resembling a desk, using something that is much more akin to a PC than a phone or tablet. Whether it’s because the process requires using a real keyboard or mouse, or by having more workspace than is possible with a 9.7 inch screen – or both – it’s clear that no enterprise can run every aspect of its business on tablets and smart phones.

However retro that may seem to the smartphone and tablet crowd, as we move into this new world of enterprise apps, smartphones and tablets will still have something important in common with their desktop brethren: the touch experience. The smartphone and tablet have created an expectation for a touch experience that will revolutionize the enterprise and its desk-bound business processes and their users. The users of these processes – many of whom work with the time-honored back-office ERP domains of finance, human resources, and asset and resource management – all have smart phones and tablets. And many of them already are catching themselves with increasing frequency trying to reach out and touch non-touch enabled screens in the course of doing their work. The familiarity and usability of touch are just that compelling.

This makes the rise of touch an important outgrowth of the BYOD phenomenon, and perhaps its most significant result. Those business users reaching subconsciously for their touch screens will pull touch into the enterprise desktop experience the same way they succeeded in pulling smartphones and tablets into the enterprise. Which was no different than the graphical user experience revolution of the 1980s: the green screen user experience began to look ancient the moment users became familiar with the much more usable and effective GUI experience, and a wholesale redesign of enterprise software was underway.

What will be different is that the touch-based revolution isn’t going to result in a wholesale rewriting of the enterprise back office, at least not yet. Thanks to huge improvements in web services and application interface design, the user experience of legacy enterprise applications can readily be reengineered for touch. Meanwhile the white space in the enterprise – the functional areas where enterprise software has yet to conquer – will be filled by a combination of desktop and mobile-based apps. Touch, not mobility, will be the common denominator. And they’ll be available in an apps store as well.

Soon after that we will be seeing a new class of app – the hybrid mobile/desktop app – that will offer both user experiences, depending on whether the particular function within the process needs to be fulfilled using a mobile device or a desktop device. The artificial distinction between apps that largely display information and those that largely create it – the divide that Apple created when it launched the iPad, and made it distinct from the Mac – will disappear. Operating systems like Windows 8 will allow developers to create apps that cover both desktop and mobile requirements – creation and consumption – without having to create two entirely different apps on two entirely different code bases.

At which point the mobile revolution will go the way of all successful revolutions, replaced by a ubiquity that makes mobile and, more importantly, touch, less a distinguishing characteristic and more the basic table stakes for innovation and new functionality. The enterprise worker – whether tethered to a desk or roaming the world – will be all the more productive for it. Until the next revolution comes to show us how relatively unproductive we’ve once again become.

Joshua Greenbaum is Principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/08/the-real-mobile-revolution-isnt-about-mobility/

Helping Sales Succeed Through Better Automated Marketing

Community Editor — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:58:00 GMT

Written by: Seth Patton

Closing a sale used to begin with a cold call: meeting a customer who may or may not be happy with the product or service they own, and guiding them through the process of purchasing new or upgrading to something better—all of this based on proven methods of providing information to bring the customer to the logical conclusion that they want to purchase. Today, a telesales rep has less than a 9 percent chance of even getting a prospect on the phone, much less converting them to an opportunity. Sending a cold email message with an offer averages less than a 1 percent response rate. Prospects get a majority of their information from sources other than sales reps—often online, from web sites, search, and of course social networks. A recent CEB study found that on average, customers are 57 percent of the way through the purchase process before ever contacting a vendor.

How can companies and their sales teams look their best and win the sale over the competition? We think that the key to success starts with marketing departments—and their alignment with sales teams. Marketing can bring it all together because marketing is at the center of driving closed-loop business processes and ROI measurement spanning the entire customer lifecycle. Marketing has always had “early access” to this audience, but the duration and opportunities for impressions are increasing.

Marketing automation can help marketing teams carry out campaigns more effectively, control their brand, and drive significant revenue contribution with real-time insight into return on marketing investment (ROMI) by:

Engaging and executing across multiple channels. Customers today have many choices when it comes to how they want to connect. Creating a meaningful relationship can require many touch points across multiple channels along the way. Whether you are looking to use social media, pay-per-click on the web, or use email, radio, TV, or billboards, you need perfect execution, insight into your spend, and an understanding of the effectiveness of your marketing investments.
Optimizing your mix and measuring success. The famous phrase, “If you can measure it, you can manage it,” definitely applies to successful marketing efforts. Knowing what is working allows you to invest in the right places to help increase the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns. If you can easily leverage your data for rapid insights, you can make informed strategic and operational decisions. Real-time intelligence from your website can help ensure that you can surface the right campaign to the right customers.
Knowing your customers. Business revolves around the relationships you are able to cultivate with your customers. Powerful behavioral and marketing analytics, can help you easily target and segment your customers, understand what they are interested in, and then engage them at the right time with the right message.

Products like MarketingPilot can help with these tasks, as Nova Southeastern University recently discovered. “By automating these communications as well as giving us the ability to keep all of our marketing information in a consistent format that can be accessed at a glance,” explains Brian Croswhite, Marketing Director, Nova Southeastern University. “MarketingPilot is giving us the tools to do our job better as well as to keep our clients better informed.”

In addition, these marketing activities help reduce the effort on the sales team while increasing the number of times an organization can “touch” the prospect and grow a relationship as a trusted advisor. They also build engagement and a relationship, so that it will be clear when the lead is truly qualified and ready for sales handoff.

At the top level, organizations are focusing more and more on driving top line revenue growth. Our vision is to arm marketing teams with the tools and insights to help their organizations execute and measure closed-loop, integrated marketing that helps them better acquire, retain, and grow customers.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/07/helping-sales-succeed-through-better-automated-marketing/

Innovate To Stay Relevant: The Power of Agile Development

Community Editor — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:42:05 GMT

Written by: Ben Werner

Lessons from Agile Development can help any business foster a culture of innovation

The pace of change in today’s markets is faster than ever, and your company needs to be able to change quickly, too, or risk becoming obsolete. Companies that succeed in creating a customer-driven culture of innovation and that demonstrate a willingness to adapt while maintaining their core principles will be well positioned to thrive in an uncertain future.

In a recent interview with BBC News, Yale Professor Richard Foster predicts that “by 2020, more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will be companies that we have not heard of yet.” Think of it: in less than 10 years, more than 375 new arrivals will define the state of the global economy— and they’ll replace more than 375 formerly blue chip companies that find themselves on the brink of obsolescence.

While that may spell opportunity for these as-yet-unheard-of up-and-comers, for leaders of established companies it’s a chilling forecast. Foster’s research focused on the pace of change, and his message is clear: if your organization is going to be around 10 years from now, you need to adopt a culture of change and innovation—today.

So how can business leaders cultivate the organizational agility needed to adapt to rapidly shifting markets and consumer preferences, especially in an established company? Companies in any industry can take a lesson from the world of high-tech, where the concept of agile development has taken hold, leading to unprecedented iterative and fast development times, and new ways of thinking about team dynamics.

It’s widely recognized in software development and engineering organizations that agility is critically important. But despite the sophistication of agile principles in the development space—and numerous examples of their successful application in organizations of all shapes and sizes—the broader community of business leaders is just starting to understand the value of agile development in solving more general business challenges, including issues around market forces, competitive pressures, company culture and values, technology, process improvement, and others.

There are many formal and informal methodologies and approaches to agile development, but most share a few common principles that can be applied to any business:

Speed is critically important. Dynamic companies are defined by their ability to respond quickly to shifting market demands, competitive pressures, and other business challenges, as well as their success at shortening development cycles for bringing new products and services to market.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Agile organizations uniformly reject boil-the-ocean problem solving and thinking. Instead, they think small in everything they do, breaking down larger issues into manageable tasks, constantly testing and iterating on these small, tactical solutions while assembling the pieces into larger, strategic initiatives.
Focus on high-value tasks. Agile teams know how to prioritize their time, ranking tasks, maintaining a prioritized, master list of work or action items, and ruthlessly eliminating wasted work by not doing the things that don’t matter.
Create real customer value. Agile organizations know how to deliver products, services, and incremental improvements that are meaningful to their customers. They open customer feedback channels, using social media and active listening, and take action on what they learn.
Build effective teams. Agile organizations recognize the importance of the team over the individual. They start by establishing a common language and shared understanding of the problem, and continue by introducing a minimum set of rules that define the culture without being overly limiting. This results in open, two-way communication, enhanced productivity, and often, less stress than traditional hierarchical or rigid organizations.
Lead from the back. Agile teams exhibit a grass roots approach to problem solving and ideation that taps the creativity of entire team, and that eschews the top-down leadership model engrained in many traditional organizations. New ideas are as likely to be elevated from the rank and file, as to be handed down from the executive suite—often with surprising and highly effective results.

Whether or not Foster’s predictions come true remains to be seen, but we do know that organizational agility and a willingness to adapt to changing times can contribute to organization’s success. Perhaps by embracing these principles, you can ensure that your own organization is around to see for itself.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/06/innovate-to-stay-relevant/

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada Serves More Kids, Better with Help from Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Community Editor — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:27:00 GMT

Written by: Malcolm McAuley

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada is a national charity that serves over 33,000 children a year. Through our mentorship programs, we strive to help the kids realize their full potential.

As we come into our 100^th year now, what’s interesting to point out is how little our company has actually had to change. Since the beginning, the need for mentoring has remained strong because, we know, every child can benefit from a mentor guiding them through the difficult times in life. What has changed, however, is the backgrounds of the people we serve. For instance, over the last ten years, the formulation of a family and a family’s support network has changed considerably and our programs have adapted to that need. We’ve also learned that supporting children in school has a dynamic impact on a child’s life. So keeping that in mind, one of our biggest growth areas has been our in-school programs in which we work directly on campuses to help keep kids stay motived and do well in school.

While we are continuously changing our programs to better serve the children, it’s important to point out how we are also keeping our technology up to date to support this mission. And, like any company, we have real IT challenges. First, as a national organization with 125 agencies, gaining holistic insight into all our volunteers, the children that we serve, and the success of our programs is difficult to gather, as you might imagine. Secondly, driving accountability across our entire organization, for instance to ensure all our volunteers are properly trained and screened, can be equally challenging.

Addressing these challenges, we have, over the last three years, deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM to 92 of our 125 agencies. On a national level, we can now very quickly see where our programs are, where they are headed, and ascertain where they should be heading. Best of all, our ability to get that information is only a few clicks of the mouse away; we don’t have to bother our staff on the front line, which means they can spend more time serving kids.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also helping us be more accountable. We can now automate and track the steps for our training programs and screening processes, which, in turn, helps us ensure that children are in a safe environment and that volunteers can provide the quality of services that are expected from our programs.

In a video about our system, Bruce MacDonald, our President and CEO, put it best when he said that “[Microsoft Dynamics CRM] was the system that clearly met our needs.” And that couldn’t be truer. We wanted a system that could help give us at-a-glance information in an instant. We got it. We needed a system that could help ensure accountability, so that we could maintain safe programs. We got it. And what’s neat about the not-for-profit space is that all the efficiencies we’re now achieving with Microsoft Dynamics CRM don’t translate into layoffs. Instead, we’re able to take that time saved and invest it back into figuring out how to serve more kids, better.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/06/big-brothers-big-sisters-of-canada-serves-more-kids-better-with-help-from-microsoft-dynamics-crm/

Innovate To Stay Relevant

Community Editor — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:20:00 GMT

Written by: Ben Werner

Lessons from Agile Development can help any business foster a culture of innovation

There are many formal and informal methodologies and approaches to agile development, but most share a few common principles that can be applied to any business:

Speed is critically important. Dynamic companies are defined by their ability to respond quickly to shifting market demands, competitive pressures, and other business challenges, as well as their success at shortening development cycles for bringing new products and services to market.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Agile organizations uniformly reject boil-the-ocean problem solving and thinking. Instead, they think small in everything they do, breaking down larger issues into manageable tasks, constantly testing and iterating on these small, tactical solutions while assembling the pieces into larger, strategic initiatives.
Focus on high-value tasks. Agile teams know how to prioritize their time, ranking tasks, maintaining a prioritized, master list of work or action items, and ruthlessly eliminating wasted work by not doing the things that don’t matter.
Create real customer value. Agile organizations know how to deliver products, services, and incremental improvements that are meaningful to their customers. They open customer feedback channels, using social media and active listening, and take action on what they learn.
Build effective teams. Agile organizations recognize the importance of the team over the individual. They start by establishing a common language and shared understanding of the problem, and continue by introducing a minimum set of rules that define the culture without being overly limiting. This results in open, two-way communication, enhanced productivity, and often, less stress than traditional hierarchical or rigid organizations.
Lead from the back. Agile teams exhibit a grass roots approach to problem solving and ideation that taps the creativity of entire team, and that eschews the top-down leadership model engrained in many traditional organizations. New ideas are as likely to be elevated from the rank and file, as to be handed down from the executive suite—often with surprising and highly effective results.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/05/innovate-to-stay-relevant/

Microsoft Dynamics: Unlocking Potential for Our Customers

Kirill Tatarinov — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:10:00 GMT

At this week’s Convergence Conference, more than 11,000 customers and partners will gather in New Orleans to hear, to learn and to discover how business solutions can help them drive their businesses forward and enable them to do great things.

I am privileged to be joined at this event by some of the most exciting and successful businesses in the world today such as Revlon, Chobani, Weight Watchers, Shock Doctor and Habitat for Humanity among others - all have amazing stories of success that show how businesses are transforming themselves in amazing ways.

The theme of this year’s Convergence is about the world ahead – a world of promise and infinite possibilities. To realize these possibilities businesses need to ask the right questions: How do they stay relevant in the market? How do they stay ahead of the competition? Get more done with less? Attract and retain the right talent? And have deep engagements with customers?

These are important questions. In my interactions with customers, I have found a theme that is common to all successful companies – their unrelenting focus on helping people reach their full potential and fueling their innovation and imagination. They do this by ensuring that people are truly united in their approach to business and this includes the technology they use.

Today, and in the world ahead, a Dynamic Business is guided by the enduring belief in unity. A Dynamic Business puts people at the heart of the business. It’s connected with its employees, partners and suppliers and with its customers. It’s proactive. It’s agile. It’s forward looking.

With over thirty years of experience in working with businesses on their technology needs, our focus at Microsoft is to help each of our customers become a Dynamic Business. But how can we best achieve this?

We focus on ways to bring people together, to help companies achieve the type of unity with their customers, with their people and with their technology that will help them realize their potential.

We are committed to helping businesses connect with their customers: to help them quickly adapt their brands and how they engage with their customers in an Omni-channel environment that includes everything from the engagement you have with a customer at a retail store to having and tracking conversations on multiple social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.; to help them create ways to have new conversations that will enrich their relationship with their customers anytime and anywhere and on any device.

We work at helping bring their organizations together -- connecting people across geographies and cubicles, and across roles and teams. Working together, organizations set big, daring goals that are shared cross-organization and to which they are all committed.

We also help in bringing together all IT assets: front office and back office, devices and services, customer facing, back-end systems, devices, and applications – they all need to work together. People create powerful solutions and this power can only be achieved by helping them get the most from their total investment. Sales and marketing people use technology that integrates with financial systems to connect and engage with customers systems; providing 360-degree reporting, analysis and valuable insights.

Convergence is a celebration of how companies are achieving unity and becoming Dynamic Businesses. Throughout the conference, we will have our customer tell their own stories of how they are uniting and succeeding. As we look across the business landscape, I am excited and optimistic about what the future holds and the role that Microsoft can play in helping people succeed in every function across an organization. I’m optimistic because the customers that I speak with every day tell me that they are looking for solutions that can help them unite their people and help them equip their people to do their best jobs. They are investing in Microsoft Dynamics because we are best able to help businesses unite organizations, unite their people and technology and unite with their customers. This is an exciting time for all roles and functions if we all come together.

As I kick off the largest ever Convergence, I’m excited about the possibilities ahead, excited about what we can achieve together with our customers as we reimagine how people approach their work, unlock innovations and enable more meaningful experiences for their customers. When a business is truly united, great things happen.

When Telling The Customer's Story Becomes Personal

Community Editor — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:09:00 GMT

Written by: Jennifer Pollard

Part of my job at Microsoft Dynamics is to find compelling stories of customers that are using our software. Many times companies’ customer evidence is driven by the desire to find a customer whose brand is instantly recognizable. However, instead of looking for a customer whose name you might easily recognize, I believe it is more important to find customers who are building their brands by differentiating their company based on providing cutting edge customer care. I simply felt this would speak volumes when talking about our Customer Care solutions.

That is when my friend Tim Bakke from Avtex, a partner of ours, brought the story of MyAssist to my attention. Based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, MyAssist is the brainchild of John Noel. Sometimes referred to as the godfather of travel insurance, John Noel was the creator of TravelGuard Insurance which he grew to national prominence and eventually sold to AIG. On September 11^th, John and his wife, Patty, who had planned to be attending a meeting and spending the night together in the World Trade Center, instead found themselves stranded on the tarmac in Newfoundland—unable to get to New York, and unable to get good information about exactly what was going on. Being stuck in this awful predicament during what was arguably one of the most memorable experiences of our modern lives, John recognized a need. At that moment, he repurposed all the agents in his contact center to take calls from people desperately trying to find their loved ones and get home safely. The promise of MyAssist was born that day, when John decided there needed to be a service that anyone could access whenever and wherever they needed someone’s help.

For me, MyAssist is the perfect company to profile. First and foremost, in what Forrester has identified as the age of the consumer, MyAssist recognizes that their business depends on their ability to develop meaningful and lasting relationships with customers by helping solve their immediate problems. And further, they realize that the key to success with their customers stems from their ability to enable the success of their people. This is where Microsoft Dynamics comes in. MyAssist looks to technology to put the information at their employees’ fingertips so they can not only quickly find the answers they need, but also—confident that the system will provide the right information—allow their employees to really focus on the quality of their interaction with the customer.

Let me share my MyAssist story. Ironically, it starts with the trip to Stevens Point to film interviews with the folks who make MyAssist hum in order to create a customer video. I travelled there with two colleagues and we spent two days with the MyAssist team. Everything we heard coming out of the mouths of the folks who manage the business to the people on the front lines granting the wishes of their customers reinforced that this was a great story to tell. We captured the footage needed for the video and packed up to go home.

At the Central Wisconsin Airport everything changed. Just following the departure of Leo and Scott who were flying on to Tampa for a subsequent engagement, my flight was cancelled. Luckily, Delta rerouted me out the next day and gave me a hotel coupon to comp my room for the night. I took the shuttle to the hotel. Trying to go to bed early in preparation for my 7:10 flight in the morning, I saw a strange number calling my cell phone. It was Delta, alerting me to a flight cancellation. I called the representative who told me not to worry, I was already rebooked and everything was fine. I hung up, only to have a second message come through about a cancellation. Once again I called Delta, and this time they informed me not to worry, my flight the next day had also been cancelled, but they had rescheduled me to fly out the day after that. So here I was, with my twin daughters expecting me home Wednesday but being told that I had a flight home Friday, which was, incidentally, when my husband had to leave on his own business trip. By now, as you can imagine, I was a bit flustered. I cannot possibly stay here until Friday. So I talk to the agent to understand what my options are. With a growing pit in my stomach, at 11:30 pm, I rebook my flight through Green Bay—a full two hours’ drive from the hotel where I’m spending the night. That meant that I needed to figure out how to get myself to Green Bay by 5:30 am. I called MyAssist.

“Hello, this is Vance. How can I help you Ms. Pollard?” I’ve called into centers like these before, but now I really get that this is a much different experience. In a strange twist of fate, I was able to see what the vision of John Noel and the words we had captured on film really meant when you are talking to the person on the other end of the phone. Vance was exceptional. His demeanor immediately put me at ease—he listened and he reassured me that he was going to solve my problem. And after the ten minutes he promised it would take for him to do so, he called me back with my ride not only scheduled, he knew the driver’s name, had gotten a referral from the front desk, he knew what it would cost me, and he was genuinely sorry about that. The result? At just before midnight, on what had become a frenzied evening, I was able to calmly relax for my three hour nap knowing that I would be home when my girls got out of school the next day. Just as I had promised them earlier that evening.

So, I am not only telling the MyAssist story from the point of view of the technology provider who is happy that this business who is branding themselves based on providing exceptional customer care has chosen our customer care product to support their efforts, I am telling it from having experienced what this can mean first-hand. Believe me, I will travel much easier wherever I go from now on knowing MyAssist is there when I need them. See for yourself at MyAssist.com.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/04/when-telling-the-customers-story-becomes-personal/

Insurance: Building A Customer-Centric Business

Community Editor — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Written by: Chad Hamblin

There’s a shift in the insurance industry being brought on by an increasingly competitive marketplace and the growing demands of more sophisticated customers. And with those dual competing pressures, there is an increased awareness by insurance companies that they need to move from a policy-centric business to one centered on customers. This shift requires not just a change in mentality but also technologies employed. With the potential to make insurance companies not only more productive but more importantly more responsive to their customers and agents, this shift in mindset can in turn boost profitability. And that is exactly where CRM comes into the picture.

As with any new toolor technology, success with CRM starts with adoption. A company cannot drive widespread change through a technology that nobody uses. That is why, especially in a space like insurance—where a large portion of the work force may be independent agents—it’s critical that CRM tools be easy to learn and use. If your software works in a way that is natural—for instance, through an email application like Microsoft Outlook—just imagine how much quicker and easier it will be for your agents to hit the ground running. What if your claims or call center agent could seamlessly use real-time communication capabilities like instant messaging and video sharing or productivity features like mail-merge right inside of CRM? How much easier it would be for them to capture customer information, collaborate and resolve customer issues? Or what if your sales staff could seamlessly export data from the CRM solution to Excel, make changes in Excel and have those changes automatically reflected back in CRM?

Many insurance companies have realized remarkable business benefits by using a familiar CRM solution that is natively tied to other productivity tools they already use on a daily basis. Garanti Pension and Life used Microsoft Dynamics CRM to establish a 360-degree customer view and streamline key processes, which, in turn allowed them to reduce customer service resolution times by 75%, improve sales efficiency by 25%, and ultimately increase the average customer contribution rate by 43%.

But a CRM solution that works through a familiar email application and provides visibility into the business is really just the starting point. For example, imagine making your CRM solution a single system where staff and agents can manage forecasting, client details, policies, premiums, underwriting, evidence requests, approvals, and much more. Insphere Insurance Solutions did just that as they use Microsoft Dynamics CRM across all facets of their business. And as Steve Jensen, Vice President of IT at Insphere points out, “Providing leading-edge tools … is a competitive advantage for our agents and key differentiator for us in agent recruiting and retention.”

Insphere also uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a graphical funnel interface to its agents for intelligent lead management. Using this interface, agents can click on funnel status sections to instantly identify the highest probability leads. And, as their leads transform into new wins, the lead status and funnel view updates automatically. Insphere has also extended much of the functionality of its solution to mobile devices, which helps agents work deals on the road or more rapidly respond to client inquiries while on-the-go.

But these examples are just a glimpse of how far CRM tools can be taken. Many insurance companies are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for an ever-broadening range of business scenarios including risk analysis, financial planning, policy enforcement, agent training, property management, and other key business areas. At Microsoft, we have a vision of CRM as a single system that provides support to the whole business. We envision an insurance industry where the customer experience truly comes first—and one where putting the customer first doesn’t detract from productivity, but rather is a consequence of being as productive as possible. Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help you get there.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/03/01/insurance-building-a-customer-centric-business/

Banking: Driving More Profitable Customer Relationships By Using CRM

Community Editor — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:29:00 GMT

Written by: Chad Hamblin

The halcyon days of big banks with big, multi-year IT projects and loyal-to-a-fault customers are gone.

Post financial crisis, a much tougher, leaner, and competitive banking environment has emerged, with more mature and sophisticated customers. In today’s new normal, banks not only have to meet stringent compliance requirements, but they also need to provide a more seamless customer experience and meaningful interactions to retain existing customers and increase wallet share. Ultimately, banks need tools that help them drive more profitable customer relationships in this hyper-competitive world.

But to do that, banks need a holistic view of customers across all channels. They need to understand their customers from all angles and be able to deliver more personalized products and services. Imagine, for instance, if when serving a customer, you could instantly know his or her risk profile, which of your colleagues that customer has spoken with or worked with at the bank, and the specific banking products that customer already owns. Maybe all of this information even feeds a marketing profile, which prompts you to offer the customer a tailored promotion, such as a credit card. Now we’re talking not just about speed-of-service , but also about customer satisfaction and retention, all with the goal of growing wallet share.

While these concepts may seem straightforward, implementing such a change is anything but. Technology can help aggregate customer data and automate key processes but at the end of the day it all starts with adoption. Simply put, bank staff and managers want tools that work the way they do and that are compatible with tools they already use in their daily work environment.

We think one way to banks can achieve this is through a CRM solution that is familiar and flexible. With a good solution, bank representatives should be able to leverage the powerful capabilities of CRM through tools and devices they already use every day, like Microsoft Outlook or a mobile phone. They should be able to view CRM data in CRM and then slice and dice data in their favorite spreadsheet program—and have any changes made automatically reflected in the CRM solution. Likewise, CRM data should be accessible to approved users through real-time communications tools like Lync or via the document management capabilities of SharePoint to foster increased collaboration or streamline offers. The ability to use CRM in a familiar interface with other everyday tools is key to truly unleashing the power CRM.

That is exactly what MKB Bank did by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. They were able to use the powerful yet familiar capabilities to reduce branch service times by 25%, decease customer churn by 5% and increase the profit of the most valuable customer segment by 20%.

As important as customer profitability is, compliance is emerging as another top concern for banks. And, in some cases, meeting compliance requirements can actually mean undermining the very productivity that drives the business. To meet the myriad compliance requirements, banks need solutions that are flexible and provide multiple delivery options (cloud, on premise, and hybrid).

To more fully enable improved customer profitability and successful compliance, a good CRM system should also include robust process automation capabilities; for example, a workflow that streamlines the customer onboarding process or automatically transfers calls of preferred customers to more senior staff. Sun National Bank did exactly that, using Microsoft Dynamics CRM robust workflow capabilities to increase cross-selling rates by 20%, reduce time to approve loans by 80%, and reduce time to market for new products by 67%.

In today’s ever-competitive banking industry, banks need familiar yet flexible solutions that will help them attain the vitally important, yet at times competing, goals of customer profitability and regulatory compliance. Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help you get there.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/02/28/banking-driving-more-profitable-customer-relationships-by-using-crm/

Complexity: The Practice Manager

Community Editor — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:37:00 GMT

Written by: Marie Huwe

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What could you do with business applications and tools that are integrated-by-design yet built-to-flex to evolving business demands? Could you rearrange a business unit quickly, to meet new priorities? Could you reorganize people and systems and retrain staff to take advantage of a new opportunity?

You know that professional services firms are responding to increasingly demanding clients. As a firm leader with P&L responsibility, you’re concerned with reviewing the numbers from all angles, detecting concerns before they become problems, and directing early corrective action. You need to orchestrate and balance utilization across time zones, business units, and even companies. Whether you are leading the consulting practice of an IT firm or whether you are a partner in an architecture and design business, you work to develop client relationships while delivering proposals and making sure that your team is ready when the time comes.

As practice manager, you are a master of both the complexity and fundamentals of business—of people, process, and financials. You’re a talented problem solver who can adjust to changing client, market, and operational needs. But in today’s market, that means you’ve got to be ready to change at a moment’s notice.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/02/27/conducting-a-symphony-of-complexity-the-practice-manager/

Balancing Supply And Demand For Talent In The Services Firm

Community Editor — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:53:00 GMT

Written by: Elliott Ichimura

Maintaining client relationships, delivering on commitments, and building the firm’s brand all depend on assigning the right people to work with each client despite the digital, generational, and cultural divides that permeate today’s changing workforce. Professional services firms live or die by their ability to attract, hire, retain, and motivate exceptional employees and indeed freelancers and subcontractors as well. You need the right people with the right domain expertise—saleable expertise. It’s a balancing act of finding the right talent, developing professionals, and encouraging the innovation that is necessary to create new thought leadership and to build on the value that the firm has to offer while managing the risk associated with talent.

Unlike in manufacturing or retail, many of the assets you have are uniquely fluid and highly portable, highly poachable. They can join a client organization or walk over to a competitor just about any day of the week. You have to get the right talent in the door to begin with, but you also have to “harvest” the right intellectual property or develop and improve the quality of the IP you have, to make it reusable throughout the rest of the firm and for other clients.

Compounding this ongoing challenge is the changing workforce, including the mass retirement of a generation of skilled professionals. In many markets, there is or will soon be a shortage of local and sufficiently mature successors. Meanwhile, we see rapid growth in highly educated and deeply digital, next-generation workers in emerging economic hot spots that offer new growth opportunities. This has created a very real digital divide between how current decision-makers and senior staff work and the way workers just entering the marketplace are naturally inclined to learn and communicate. How can the mature workers best connect with and train the new workforce? How can the new generation leverage their digital knowledge in the workplace while learning to develop trusted relationships with coworkers and clients in a more traditional sense?

Not too long ago, Virtusa tackled a similar issue. As a young multinational organization with a large number of ‘Gen Y’ employees, the company wanted to provide an engaging work environment. Its vision was to build a computing environment that closely resembles the social networking experience that its employees have at home, but with a business focus. “When you are considering adopting a social platform, it’s very crucial to think about how your ‘social graph’ (i.e., all social information such as friends, likes, and profiles) can be carried across to all applications and processes where your employees work, learn, share and connect,” explains Madu Ratnayake, Vice President at Virtusa. “We wanted the social experience to be pervasive. Social cannot be a webpage you go to. It has to be integrated with the tools people use every day to get the work done. It must enable people to find the right inputs at the right time.”

Global design firm Woods Bagot also understands the value of business-style social tools to facilitate knowledge management. “Being able to have social conversations in a specific context, within a site, within a community, is key for boosting productivity,” explains Felicity McNish, Global Knowledge Manager, Woods Bagot.

We know how critical it is to transfer knowledge between generations in the workforce and to make it easy for new workers to absorb that IP and then use it in their own unique way for the benefit of the company. This is reflected Microsoft’s mission to drive connections with people, with customers, and with business partners across processes, data, and the ecosystem in which organizations operate. This commitment to connected organizations includes our vision of anywhere, in-context collaboration services that link people and companies to the right people in the right place, in the right context, at the right time, through the right communications channel.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/02/25/balancing-supply-and-demand-for-talent-in-the-services-firm/

Agile Adaptation: Firm Administration For Professional Services

Community Editor — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:35:00 GMT

Written by: Elliott Ichimura

For professional services firms doing business today, there is a new normal: expanding into new arenas in response to increasingly demanding clients. This means employing an increasingly diverse talent pool scattered across multiple regulatory jurisdictions and deploying the right talent in a targeted manner across client engagements in multiple markets. And the support systems within a firm—from the CFO’s office to HR to IT—have to find ways to keep pace with these changing needs of the business.

Beyond compliance and reporting, how can the CFO’s office (and CIO and HR) respond to the demands of stakeholders within the firm? People, process, and technology assets of the firm need to evolve at the pace of the business—to respond quickly to the changing needs of the P&L owners who are driving the business. To date, this has been a challenge.

For instance, if your firm needs to acquire a business in order to achieve growth (to follow a client, say, or enter a new market)—can you quickly integrate the data and information from a different system and make it part of the fabric of the firm? How fast could you rearrange a business unit, in order to meet new priorities? What would it take to reorganize people and the systems that they have access to, retrain people accordingly, and so on? How quickly can HR and IT respond to such a need? If the answer to either of these examples is a year and a half of consulting time, that’s not good enough—by then, the needs will be different and the opportunity lost.

From its headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and offices across the United States, and in Europe, Australia, and the Philippines, Computer Aid understands these issues first hand. As the firm expanded into new markets, the task of aggregating operational and financial data became increasingly difficult because the homegrown ERP system they used was based on 15 individual systems and more than 200 spreadsheets.

Explains Andy McIntyre, CFO at Computer Aid, “We ended up with a system that required the equivalent of six full-time people to manage and support.” But finding a solution to that acquisition sprawl was perplexing. “I came from organizations that used SAP and Oracle. These alternatives are costly; would have given us, essentially, a ‘process-in-a-box’; and lacked the option to tailor them affordably, if at all, to match our way of doing business.”

With an explicit commitment to simplicity and agility, Microsoft designs software and cloud-based services that can help businesses be truly dynamic and inspire people to a higher level of commitment, innovation, and leadership and, in turn, help businesses and people realize their full potential.

Since deploying a Microsoft Dynamics solution, Computer Aid has cut its billing cycle in half and reduced ERP support costs by 60 percent. Computer Aid consolidated financial and business management of all its operating units in the solution, which means they can deliver highly responsive client service and manage operations confidently and profitably, and be ready for the next change.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/02/22/agile-adaptation-firm-administration-for-professional-services/

Transformational Trends In Service Delivery

Community Editor — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:46:00 GMT

Written by: Elliott Ichimura

Preparing for Complete Transparency

The service delivery lifecycle is where the rubber meets the road and where firms most need industry-specific capabilities. Firms have to be able to connect project colleagues to information, project tools, and each other while minimizing risks and maximizing delivery speed. Being able to impose methodology controls on the planning and execution of projects is so critical to the predictable, repeatable, and ultimately profitable delivery of an engagement. This is why practice leaders and chief operating officers services firms invest so much time and effort in driving the definition of archetypical projects with phased structures, milestones, and deliverables.

Clients today are looking for highly responsive and transparent service delivery with clear economic value. Our purpose is to help providers meet and exceed these expectations by delivering reputation-enhancing service experiences reliably across offices, practices, and time zones. And at the heart of our vision is the dynamic service professional: talented problem solvers who can adjust to changing client, market, and operational needs because their business applications and tools are integrated-by-design yet built-to-flex to evolving business demands.

The days when clients defined a scope of work and tossed a project over the wall to a services firm to be worked on in an independent and sequential manner are largely gone. Today, many clients consider you part of their larger team; likewise, they often expect their staff to operate as embedded and integral members of your core project team. It’s a brave new world where tight collaboration creates the expectation of a new level of transparency among the firm, client, and other team members.

The privacy that used to exist—where you used to be able to maintain back office operations behind a curtain—is rapidly going away, primarily because technology-driven flows of information have eroded organizational boundaries. Clients expect on-demand, self-service access to the status of projects, the burn rate of the budget, and so on. Increasingly, the attitude is, “There should be an app for that” to monitor all aspects of a project and team collaboration.

It’s no longer enough to be able to accomplish assignments repeatably, consistently, and profitably. Now, it’s about handling this much more complex tapestry of talent, information, knowledge assets, and deliverables within a constantly changing environment, and it requires that you be able to communicate changes and adjustments proactively throughout the project. If keeping today’s relentlessly engaged clients happy weren’t enough of a challenge, another aspect of this new world of collaborative execution is that you have to find ways to ensure that the third parties on the team—the other vendors, contractors, and freelancers—aren’t undermining your brand. How can you manage their interactions with your clients in meetings or webinars, for instance?

This situation can provoke anxiety and fear in project managers and their firms. How can Microsoft help? We can help you embrace these challenges and leverage familiar tools to make the most of collaborative execution. Unlike most other providers of business applications, Microsoft delivers both commercial systems and consumer products, so we understand both audiences. We have the benefit of applying learning about usability and adoption garnered from our consumer products to imbue intuitive simplicity into our commercial products.

Over time, we believe that more pieces of these collaborative projects will be “open by default,” but our tools allow you to control your pace of progress in this area, so you can start with the curtain completely closed and raise it incrementally.

Post originally written for Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoftdynamics/2013/02/20/transformational-trends-in-service-delivery/