Dynamics 365 For Retail: Products, Features, And A Business Case Explained

Key Takeaways:

• Addressing retail challenges: With AI-powered and unified CRM solutions, Dynamics 365 addresses significant retail challenges in customer experience and the lack of integration across multiple touchpoints.
• Powerful features for retailers: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Customer Service, Sales, and Commerce are the primary CRM tools that connect data, strengthen predictive analytics, and improve operations.
• Seamless Microsoft integration: To address the need for scalability, users can extend Dynamics 365’s capabilities by making use of other Microsoft products such as Power BI, Azure, and custom solutions from AppSource.
• Success story - Nestlé: The case of Nestlé highlights the role of Dynamics 365 CRM in managing processes, enhancing customer experiences, and providing capabilities for scalability.

6 Significant Operational Challenges Impacting Retail Transformation

The retail business is growing rapidly due to shifts in consumer behaviour, electronics, and strong competition. However, here are the six operational issues that hinder growth and productivity of the business:

• Inconsistent customer experience: Due to disintegrated touchpoints (i.e. online stores, physical stores, or mobile applications), retailers cannot communicate with their customers effectively, leading to a higher level of dissatisfaction. These often result in more customer complaints and lower sales productivity.
• Customer loyalty erosion: Many retailers struggle to retain their customers due to traditional methods of customer engagement, lack of personalisation and high levels of industry competition. The lack of appropriate customer data and the inability to incentivise loyal consumers also hinder retailers’ customer retention efforts.
• Sales & marketing misalignment: This problem arises when the sales and marketing teams work separately from each other. Specific challenging patterns include not fully synchronised advertising campaigns across channels, poor lead nurturing, and disconnected applications. This is even more difficult in retail, where coordinated communication efforts are required to convert leads, attract traffic, and increase sales.
• Inadequate predictive analytics: Without proper predictive analytical tools, managerial decisions end up depending on assumptions, which could lead to overstocking, stockouts, or lost growth opportunities. This is primarily due to the lack of integrated data from advanced technologies.
• Disconnected inventory control: Fragmented systems and lack of real-time visibility can impair order delivery and increase the dissatisfaction level of customers. Retailers may encounter these problems due to using outdated tools for inventory control across multiple platforms.
• Disconnected vendor & partner ecosystem: Isolated systems across store chains hinder the data exchange and interactions among vendors and partners. This leads to time wastage, increased cost and ultimately less opportunity to compete effectively in the market.

Dynamics 365 Products For Retailers

1. What are the key Dynamics 365 products?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a collection of AI-powered applications that improve retail customer engagement and operational efficiency. These apps consolidate data from multiple organisational functions, such as sales, marketing, supply chain, and customer service, into a central hub. This integrated approach allows retailers to offer personalised services, increase efficiencies, and make use of real-time data for long-term growth.

2. Why is Dynamics 365 ideal for retail?

Here are some key ways how Dynamics 365 CRM supports retailers to transform their operations and exceed customer expectations:

• Unified omnichannel experience: Dynamics 365 Commerce and Customer Insights enable consistent and engaging customer experience across the touchpoints. These tools help collect and manage real-time customer data in a single system while connecting online/physical stores with mobile applications, POS, and other touchpoints. Moreover, AI-powered features help improve identity management with advanced analytics, enabling retailers to refine offers, grow customer interest and deliver more effective marketing. 
• Intelligent loyalty reinforcement: Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Insights offer AI-based customer experience mapping, targeted offers, and customer loyalty strategies. With predictive analytics, retailers can gain insights into customer behaviour, discover potential customers, and develop more efficient loyalty programs.
• Sales & marketing synchronisation: Dynamics 365 Sales links perfectly with marketing and customer services tools, including shared reports, forecasts, and leads. Marketing lists and promotional campaigns can be integrated with sales objectives in real-time.
• Predictive analytics: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provides retailers with AI-powered tools to enhance sales, future demand, and customer behaviour prediction. Businesses can take advantage of these technologies and analyse inventory, pricing, and promotional strategies for better decision-making.

3. Customisable Microsoft Solutions For Complex Retail

Microsoft also provides users with customisable solutions that can meet the retail industry's specific requirements. These solutions are designed to add value to Dynamics 365 by extending its functionality, enabling retailers to achieve operation efficiency, better customer experience, and more effective decision-making processes.

• Microsoft Products Integration: Dynamics 365 connects well with other Microsoft solutions to ensure a centralised solution for retail businesses. For instance, one of the core features of Dynamics 365 Commerce is omnichannel management, which enables retailers to integrate online and offline operations for a more unified customer experience. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management deals with inventory, demand and sales management, while the Finance app deals with the financial performance of a business. You can also integrate Dynamics 365 with Power BI to experience advanced reporting and analysing tools that help convert raw business data into strategic insights.
• Microsoft AppSource: Microsoft has extended solutions for different industries on Microsoft AppSource. Regardless one wants to improve inventory management, CRM capabilities, or integrate ERP solutions, AppSource offers a wide variety of custom solutions for retailers. This flexibility enables users to design the system based on their organisational requirements.
• Azure: Azure provides retailers with scalable cloud solutions to securely manage business processes. It also offers an AI Builder that can predict and deliver strategic insights on customer demand, inventories, and more. Azure also supports IoT integration with real-time assets and inventory tracking to meet customers’ ever-changing needs, as well as providing security and compliance for retailers.

Nestlé Innovates Business Growth Strategies With Dynamics 365

Nestlé is the world’s leading consumer packaged goods and retail company that experienced severe problems in managing its complex business processes during merger and acquisition (M&A). These processes required Nestlé to handle global activities and follow different regulatory demands, as well as provide consistent customer experiences.

The lack of a unified system

The main challenge that Nestlé experienced was during M&A projects when it had to manage and integrate different business models across multiple locations. Lack of systematic coordination resulted in difficulties in systems migration, inconsistency in customers’ experience, and legal compliance. For its retail businesses, maintaining a seamless customer experience across its online shops, physical outlets, and call centres was critical.

Why Dynamis 365 & How Nestlé Transformed

To overcome these hurdles, Nestlé adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365, using its integrated set of tools. This is why Dynamics 365 was the logical choice, as it offers a modular structure, low/no code functionality, and strong compatibility within the Microsoft environment. Nestlé had highly ambitious goals for scalability: create reusable frameworks so that M&A projects could be accomplished quickly and with great accuracy.

"Thanks to built-in automation and functionalities in Dynamics 365, productivity increased in both boutiques, call center and after-sales activities, drastically removing paperwork and allowing employees to spend more time on value-added tasks, which improved both customer service and profitability,”

- Manuel Sancho, Global Acquisitions & Business Development Manager, Nespresso (source: Microsoft)

With Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Commerce, Nestlé could lay down the framework to build and support its retail strategies. These solutions helped to avoid difficulties with data transfer, meet regional requirements and optimise their workflows. The Customer Service and Field Service apps also successfully advanced customer interaction by optimising the call centre, shortening the time to resolution, and providing timely after-sales services.

Furthermore, with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Nestlé can make use of complicated algorithms and study more strategic insights about customer behaviour. This helps create effective campaigns and build a more loyal customer base. Integrating Power BI with Azure Data Lake also helped execute real-time action and utilise smart analytics to support leadership’s decision-making.

Refine Your Retail Business With A Trusted Local Microsoft Partner

Retailers are under constant pressure, which requires flexibility, accuracy, and focus on the needs of customers. Dynamics 365 CRM for retail provides great solutions with a set of AI-powered tools and advanced insights that improve processes and customer experience. Knowledge generation, trend prediction, and integrated service delivery make a significant difference for retailers.

As a Microsoft Partner in Australia, Havi Technology focuses on delivering professional services to unleash the full potential of Dynamics 365 for retail businesses. Contact us for a more personalised discussion and craft a secure implementation journey.

Dynamics 365 For Retail - Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can Dynamics 365 for retail integrate with my existing systems?

Its possibilities depend on the compatibility of your current systems and Dynamics 365. It is advisable to have professional technical support in order to avoid any problems during implementation.

2. What makes Dynamics 365 stand out among other CRM solutions?

This includes AI features, integration with other Microsoft tools, on-the-go analytics, and custom-made solutions for businesses within the retail sector.

3. What support is available for implementing Dynamics 365 with a local Partner?

Certified local partners like Havi Technology provide tailored support for Australian businesses. Key services may include process mapping & gap analysis, implementation and customisation, training and ongoing support to maximise the solution’s potential.

References:

• Microsoft. Nestlé innovates business growth strategies using Microsoft Dynamics 365.