With general availability deployment of Microsoft Dynamics 365’s (D365) 2022 release wave 1 underway – with new features and updates being rolled out from now through to September – there’s a whole host of new innovations to try out, spanning the full spectrum of applications.
So, to find out more about the features that will help you drive digital transformation in your business, without having to trawl the 562-page plan, read on to discover our top functionality updates across the wave 1 release.
A unified activity timeline across Marketing, Sales and Customer Service
Personalisation is not only widely recognised as a valuable and successful marketing tactic, but in today’s world it is a real customer expectation. With the unified activity timeline feature showing all Marketing application interactions alongside data from Sales and Customer Service applications, customer interactions can be even more highly personalised across multiple channels. There is now the capability to access a 360-degree view of all marketing activities in real-time, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered insights, content creation and delivery significantly enhanced. New event triggers based on data changes across any of the apps (marketing, sales and customer service) can automate no-code conditional text to speed up the creation and delivery of personalised content.
Furthermore, with the new built-in Microsoft Teams chat, it is easy for colleagues to work collaboratively to develop the most engaging content, all while working within the content creation and editing windows. People can be invited, added or removed from the chat as required – as well as the functionality to have chat enabled only on specified entities – to maintain efficient and job role appropriate processes.
In Sales, the conversation intelligence has new search functionality that will help salespeople access more valuable insights, while AI will help with forecasting and performance measurement, based on predictive scoring. The new collaboration capabilities within Teams will enable sales professionals to accelerate performance, with managers able to track this and provide coaching. Productivity can be improved as deals can be closed quickly and effectively.
In the remote working scenario that exists in many organisations, we anticipate the new collaboration features within Teams will be a popular and useful addition to the application capabilities for users.
Financial visibility is further enhanced
Financial visibility aids the agility needed in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, and the accessible insights, automated processes and simplified compliance that Microsoft D365 Finance offers just that. With the evolution of the finance and operations space meaning many organisations need to automate billing, ledger settlements and year-end closing, there are some handy new features from the 2022 release wave 1 plan. The aim is to remove the time-consuming tasks that can cause major inefficiencies in any business, not-for-profit or membership organisation.
The launch of subscription billing will help organisations in a service-based economy, while a tax auditing and reporting service has been added, and investment made to the globalisation offering with tax calculation and electronic invoicing. No-code configurable electronic invoice submission and tax calculation formula speeds up invoice processes and helps organisations with tax compliance.
Gaining tighter control over the supply chain with enhanced insights
For those businesses who rely on a supply chain, never has there been a more volatile landscape, with a variety of disruptors – from the pandemic through to Brexit – causing havoc for organisations. Microsoft D365 Supply Chain Insights has had investment in this release wave 1 to help businesses in the quest to drive agility and resilience in the supply chain, with the provision of early warnings around risk factors. From the weather and natural disasters through to world events and other potential risks, Microsoft D365 Supply Chain Insights uses data and AI to make predictions and flag warnings to ensure businesses and non-profits can plan effectively. Additionally, deep integration with Supply Chain Management has been built into the application to provide collaboration across both applications, enhancing monitoring and metrics capabilities further.
When it comes to inventory management, there is a new global inventory accounting functionality that simplifies operations for businesses working in multiple currencies or with varying local or global accounting standards. This is an important element and valuable addition for any business in the wholesale distribution space.
As always, our highlights offer an at-a-glance view of just a handful of the new features unveiled in the 2022 release wave 1 plan. So, for a deep dive, do head over to the Microsoft site for the full plan.
You can of course get in touch if you’d like to chat to us about how any of the new features could benefit your organisation.
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