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ReportDynamics 365 Customer Insights is relatively new addition to the Dynamics 365 family (launched in 2019), it is one of the offerings of Dynamics 365 AI platform.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a Customer Data Platform (CDP), which provides true 360 view of the Customer by unifying customer’s personal, transactional, behavioral, demographic, and social data.
Before we dive into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, let us take a brief look on Customer Data Platform (CDP).
Customer Data Platform
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a solution to Unify and Enrich customer data to take personalized actions and increase customer retention.
Usually a CDP has following features:
Unify
Bring in customer data from various sources (Apps, Databases, Datalakes, Files, etc.) and merge to form a Unified Customer View.
Segment
Aggregate and perform calculations on collected data, create segments to target customers effectively.
Enrich
Use algorithms (based on AI/ML) to enrich data, find patterns, and gain insights to make decisions.
Share
Export Unified and Enriched data to applications (such as CRM and BI), for further actions and analysis.
In today’s competitive market, it is essential to provide a customized experience to customers. It is essential to understand needs and preferences of individual customers. CDP plays a key role for Business Analysts and Marketers to grow the business.
Customer Data Platform is different than a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) and Data Management Platform (DMP), which targets on unified customer profiles and related data to gain insights.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Customer Insights is a real-time, enterprise grade customer data platform with all the essential tools enabling Business Users to gain insights and take timely actions without reliance on IT (or Technical Knowledge).
Customer Insights comes with following key capabilities:
| 1 – Audience Insights | 2 – Engagement Insights |
| Bring-in all customer data using pre-built connectors. | Use built-in Web analytics reports to understand who’s coming to the website. |
| Unify data using map, match and merge features. | Track Mobile App usage and touch-points using built-in reports. |
| Create measures and segments on customer data. | Create custom real-time reports on behavioral data. |
| Enrich profiles using Microsoft Graph and Custom enrichment sources. | Use funnel reports to improve customer journey. |
Here are few features, which makes Customer Insights perfect tool for Business Users and requires no technical knowledge:
Ingestion
Bring-in data from Dynamics 365 Apps, PowerQuery, Databases, DataLakes, On-premise Data-warehouses, and Files without writing a single line of code.
Consolidation
Use built-in match and merge capabilities to unify data from various data sources using multiple keys and fuzzy matching.
Aggregate
Create measures such as total-spend, life-time-value, churn-rate and create segments to target right customers.
Share
Export enriched and targeted customer data to take actions (Power Automate Flows), embed in Dynamics 365 Apps (ERP, CRM) and analyze using Power BI or other analytical tools.
It is hard to cover all aspects of this platform in one post, I will be posting more on Customer Insights including Demos and lessons I learnt.
Summary
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is an enterprise-grade customer data platform which is an essential tool to retain and gain customers in today’s completive market.
Business Users can unify data across multiple sources, enrich customer profiles, predict patterns, and take timely actions without any technical knowledge.
It is different than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Data Management Platform (DMP), which I will cover in an upcoming post.
To learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, go to:
https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/customer-insights/
For now, this is it, stay tuned for more updates on the Customer Insights.
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