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Better Together: Dynamics 365 Commerce & Customer Insights

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This blog post is the starting point for a series of content describing how Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can work better together. We will cover how to combine the capabilities of these business applications and outline the use cases business applications will help to realize.

In this series, we outline the significance of this integration and reveal the potent capabilities that can be unlocked by harmonizing the apps. Additionally, we will explore how retailers can take advantage of the existing data in the system to facilitate this integration.

The first article in the series will set the foundations around how to architect the data integration from Dynamics 365 Commerce to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, precisely Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data.

The next articles in the series will deep dive into implementation guidance, functional, technical details and data modelling to support different scenarios and outline some of the marketing use cases that will be enabled by this data integration, such as retention with churn risk detection, nurturing of high-value customers and realizing up & cross-selling potential with product recommendations.
While the post emphasizes the synergies between Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, the data integration architecture would be applicable to all Dynamics AI ERP applications.

What is Dynamics 365 Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a comprehensive omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, call center, and digital experiences. Dynamics 365 Commerce enables you to build brand loyalty through personalized customer engagements, increase revenue with improved employee productivity, optimize operations to reduce costs and drive supply chain efficiencies, ultimately delivering better business outcomes.
 

What is Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights  is the combined customer data platform (Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data) and real-time journey orchestration (Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys) hat helps your organization deliver exceptional customer experiences. It lays the foundation to create truly personalized, responsive, and connected customer journeys.

Why Retailers would want to integrate Dynamics 365 Commerce with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a powerful tool that enables retailers to gain a better understanding of their customers. By unifying and enhancing customer data, retailers can attain comprehensive insights into their customer base. Leveraging this information, they can offer personalized experiences and streamline processes. This can lead to revenue growth, cost reduction, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
By connecting Dynamics 365 Commerce with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, businesses can realize a number of benefits, such as:
  • Creating a unified view of the customer across different channels and touchpoints.
  • Segmenting and targeting customers based on their behavior, preferences, and needs.
  • Personalizing and optimizing the customer journey and the shopping experience.
  • Increasing customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty.
  • Improving conversion rates and revenue thus enhancing marketing and sales performance and efficiency.
  • Engage customer in moments that matter with trigger-based customer Journeys.

How to integrate data from Dynamics 365 Commerce to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data


Dynamics 365 Commerce customers that already use Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse to synchronize data to their Lake, for example for BI & Analytics scenarios, will be able to leverage that architecture and extend it to make data available to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data.
For Dynamics 365 Commerce customers that have not embarked on this journey, please review [CB1] Finance and operation data in Azure synapse link as this is the recommended data integration path.
Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse offers several options as to the format and destination where data will be synced, though we recommend Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse with Azure Data Lake as a generic pattern which will synchronize data to the Customer’s Lake (ADLS Gen2) conforming to the Common Data Model (CDM) framework.
Once Dynamics 365 Commerce data is in the Lake, it will be required to prepare it with a data transformation stack of choice, so it is consumable by Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data.
In Dynamics 365 Commerce, data model and storage are optimized for transactional workloads, for example “Orders” are stored in multiple normalized tables.
In Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data, data model should be optimized for analytical workloads, therefore “Orders” would be expected to be integrated as a single denormalized table. This table should include all necessary information, optionally selectively filtered by rows and columns, ideally with easily understandable column names.
In the subsequent articles, we will delve into specific data transformations based on use cases. For now please utilize this link  Unlocking the Power of D365 Customer Insights: Best Practices for Data Modelling and Data Quality (dynamics.com).



(1) Finance and operation data in Azure synapse link and  Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse with Azure Data Lake
(2) Data transformation and preparation (e.g., Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, 3rd party …)
(3) CID Connect to Azure Data Lake Storage or Connect to Delta tables in Azure Data Lake

What’s next

Upcoming articles in this series will cover below topics:
  • Asynchronous Architecture - Data Pipeline / Journeys
  • Synchronous (Real Time) Architecture - Data Pipeline / Journeys
  • Use Cases, Data Model & Schema
 
 [CB1]Embarked on this journey, we’d recommend to review “Docs Link”
 

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