Microsoft reinvents productivity with upcoming release of customer engagement solution
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 features enhancements in productivity, intelligence, mobility and customer service.
REDMOND, Washington, Sept. 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq "MSFT") on Tuesday unveiled new capabilities it will deliver later this calendar year with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, the latest release of its customer engagement solution. The most comprehensive upgrade ever for Dynamics CRM includes advancements in intelligence, mobility and service, with significant productivity enhancements to help businesses and workers achieve more.
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The new enhancements are designed to increase productivity for organizations by providing a simple and seamless experience across their Dynamics CRM application and their productivity applications like email, Excel, OneDrive for Business for easier task management, an enhanced mobile experience for the worker on the go, and enriched data and analytics, all of which will be available later this calendar year.
"Microsoft's obsession with customer success is rooted in our ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes," said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "Dynamics CRM 2016 is designed from the ground up to deliver core capabilities all in a single system to eliminate distractions, to make it easier to get things done, and to dramatically increase productivity so our customers can spend more time serving their customers."
According to the Journal of Experimental Psychology,1 every time a user switches programs or applications, there is a 40 percent reduction in productivity. Microsoft has taken this issue head-on in the new release with a design principle that allows organizations to manage their customer-facing activities in a single experience, with no need to export or switch, drastically reducing the time to completion and saving time by automating fundamental tasks. Through an enhanced Excel experience within Dynamics CRM, complete with new Excel templates for various tasks, functions and scenarios, users can now efficiently toggle between functions as opposed to time-consuming and complex exporting, enabling them to augment their customer processes with simple, familiar analysis within their CRM experience. Organizations will also have access to their documents within Dynamics CRM via integration with OneDrive for Business and new document generation capabilities. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 release also introduces Delve functionality into the application. Powered by Office Graph, Delve helps users increase productivity by surfacing key content — enabling salespeople to discover information that may help them with their opportunity or account, such as popular sales presentations and proposals.
Turning data into intelligent action is a cornerstone of business transformation and productivity, and the new Dynamics CRM release includes data management and advanced analytics capabilities powered by Cortana Analytics Suite. This includes Azure Machine Learning that can enable business insights so that sales reps are able to predict their customers' needs.
Mobility is core to productivity, and the next version of Dynamics CRM will provide full offline capabilities for sales and service professionals on phones and tablets and across all major mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows). The release also introduces the ability to create task-centered mobile apps to streamline the completion of sales-related activities on the go and next-generation Cortana integration to surface core deals, accounts and activities within the personal assistant.
Customer service is a critical element of any customer engagement strategy. The next version of Dynamics CRM delivers an end-to-end solution for customer service across self-service, assisted service and field service to close the customer relationship loop.
Proven success in sales productivity
Last year, Microsoft launched sales productivity promotional offers (Sales Productivity, Connect with Customers, and Connected Cloud promotions) to make it easy for organizations to reap the benefits of productivity and intelligence in a single offering through Dynamics CRM Online, Power BI and Office 365. This solution will continue to be available for purchase as a discounted programmatic offer. The company will offer these comprehensive services aligned to a new sales and pricing model, via the Dynamics CRM Online Professional Add On to Office 365 beginning in October.
The sales productivity offering has proved to be very popular with businesses as they have cited its success in breaking down silos at a great price, increased collaboration leading to increased revenue, personalization that helps differentiate from competition, and help in growing both the business and loyal customers.
"We want to be a better company, a stronger company, and, of course, a larger company," said David Goff, sales & marketing manager at O'Neal Steel. "Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 are helping us maintain our focus on service as our business grows. When our customers need something, they know the person to call; and when they call that salesperson, they know they're going to get accurate and timely information."
The company this week will post the Dynamics CRM Release Preview Guide, which outlines all the advancements, features and capabilities in Dynamics CRM 2016. The company will announce additional details related to advancements made in the areas of mobility, intelligence and service in the coming weeks leading up to the availability of the update.
A blog post by Bob Stutz is available on CRM Connection. In addition, all can follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community @MSDynamicsCRM at http://www.twitter.com/msdynamicscrm, #MSDYNCRM.
About Microsoft Dynamics
At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
1 Rubinstein, Joshua S.; Meyer, David E.; Evans, Jeffrey E. (2001). "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance," 27(4), 763–797
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