Modernizing Business Process with Cloud and AI

Modernizing Business Process with Cloud and AI

The world is awash with digital transformation. Every customer and partner that I talk to, across every industry, is pursuing it. Why? To stay ahead of the competition, realize new opportunities, new markets and reimagine how they do business.

For companies to reimagine how they do business, they need to reimagine the processes at the very heart of their enterprise. These business processes connect the people, data and systems distributed across every enterprise and connected to every customer. Yet, despite all the technology at our disposal today, these business processes – and the systems behind them – are often complex, cumbersome and unintelligent. We believe there is a better way and our vision, quite simply, is to make it easy for every business – and every business function – to transform how people work.

To that end we introduced Dynamics 365. Our unification of the siloed CRM and ERP systems of the past, and the beginning of a world of business applications. Applications infused with intelligence that let you start small, transform specific functions, and grow as you need.

Since then we’ve introduced new applications, like Dynamics 365 for Talent, to help you manage your most precious resource – people. We’ve also put the world’s largest professional network at the fingertips of your sales organization, with the Microsoft Relationship Sales solution, and celebrated how customers like Visa, Dolce & Gabbana and Chemonics are putting Dynamics 365 to work for their business.

This week at Ignite I’m excited to share new technologies you can bring to bear for your business, including, new Dynamics 365 AI solutions, modular applications that take our promise of starting small one step further, integrations that make it easier for any business user to build apps that extend and automate their business processes, and greater LinkedIn integration.

Introducing Dynamics 365 AI solutions

AI – powered by decades of research from Microsoft– is already infused throughout Dynamics 365. These new solutions are designed to tackle high value, complex scenarios – end to end. To do that we apply cutting edge AI technologies to existing Enterprise scenarios and tailor it to your existing processes, systems and data. The first solution – introduced in Satya’s keynote at Ignite – is focused on customer service. It includes an intelligent virtual agent for customer care, an intelligent assistant for customer service staff and conversation management tools, all powered by Microsoft AI.

We’re already using this solution in Microsoft Support – along with Australian Government Department of Human Services, HP Inc. and Macy’s – to handle more customer requests, in a shorter amount of time, while improving overall customer and employee satisfaction. You can read more about these solutions at Gugg’s [Steven Guggenheimer] blog on Business AI, here.

Start even smaller

While we continue to offer a complete line of business solutions, like Dynamics 365 for Talent – which includes core Human Capital Management (HCM) capabilities a company needs, we realize some customers need more targeted solutions.

For example, most business have a core HCM system for basic functions like payroll and benefits management. To transform that entire system – and every HR related business process – can be quite an undertaking. So, we are introducing easy to implement, modular SaaS apps designed for business users that let you transform a single process, like how you engage job candidates or onboard new employees. These apps are more like the consumer apps we all use every day, apps that let you get up and running quickly. They take advantage of your existing data, connect to your existing systems, deliver insights from LinkedIn and connect to Office 365 and Dynamics 365 to delivering meaningful results, in minutes.

• Attract the right people. Profile the most qualified candidates for your company and role, gain better insights into the hiring pool and improve the ROI of your hiring process. Job candidates are also engaged with their own application experiences.
• Onboard new hires to accelerate productivity and ignite employee success. Personalize the onboarding process with the right resources, training and team connections.

These new apps will be available later this year and are just the start of our plans to help you transform your business, one discrete, high-value business process at a time.

Bringing more of LinkedIn to Microsoft Relationship Sales

• To better elevate relationship insights, we’ll be updating the user experience to move beyond a standard widget, and instead offer fully configurable insights that take advantage of immersive experiences and intelligent business processes to allow for increased flexibility and adaptability to a seller’s unique sales process.
• Soon LinkedIn InMails and messages will be able to be sent directly from within Dynamics 365 for Sales and these activities will be added to the Relationship Insights capabilities of Dynamics 365 for Sales. This will allow Relationship analytics to be expanded to included activities such as InMail and PointDrive interactions as well as all Relationship Assistant cards to be triggered with LinkedIn data.
• Customers will be able to natively render profile photos from contact records in LinkedIn, enriching lead and contact data directly within Dynamics 365.

Making it easier for every business user to create, augment and extend business applications

Since we launched PowerApps and Microsoft Flow 12 months ago we’ve been working to realize the vision of a single low code/no code app platform.

• Create a custom list form experience within Office 365, enabling users to easily extend task-specific forms that embed directly in SharePoint
• Embed your PowerApps directly into SharePoint pages with a web part
• Use a point and click rule builder to express conditional logic in apps for formatting and actions. This will enable the creation of sophisticated apps in less time without the need to create advanced formulas
• Upload attachments into a list, and multi-select items from a list, with improved SharePoint column types support and Microsoft Flow to:

• Implement a modern approvals system using Flow, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Dynamics 365
• More easily create approval workflows using Built in SharePoint document library support for Flow

A growing business app ecosystem – powered by partners