Microsoft Dynamics CRM For Manufacturing: Key Solutions & A Business Case Study

Microsoft Dynamics CRM for manufacturing helps businesses to centralise their operations, integrate production with demand, and provide customers with an outstanding experience. Whether you’re dealing with issues in analysing data for forecasts, establishing efficient processes or managing your customer relations, this solution is capable of handling these critical challenges.

In this blog, we will explore the core features of Dynamics 365 CRM and how they have become powerful tools for manufacturing companies.

7 Critical Challenges In Modern Manufacturing

Manufacturing is a dynamic industry where competition is high, and efficiency, accuracy, or quality are the must-have determinants of success. However, manufacturers often face various problems that appear as barriers to improving productivity, satisfying customers, and gaining more profitability.

• Complex B2B relationship: Manufacturers often work with multiple stakeholders such as suppliers, distributors, and customers. The difficulty lies in managing these interactions throughout the supply chain, making sure that they communicate well and products are delivered on time. This challenge often stems from poor system integration and siloed systems.
• Inconsistent demand forecasting: Accurate demand forecasting is important to ensure production plans match the needs of the customers in the market. However, when the forecasting information is inconsistent, it can lead to overproduction or stock out - which eventually causes lost sales or excess stock. This issue arises due to using inaccurate data, excel, or legacy systems where data might not be real-time and easily accessible.
• Production-sales misalignment: This could mean the sales teams are not in sync with the production team and vice versa. These cases often occur due to a lack of communication, unreliable data exchange, or misaligned objectives. Aligning output with demand is essential in satisfying the customer’s needs while making sure that there is no waste of resources.
• Disconnected field service management: Manufacturers that require post-sale services often struggle to meet maintenance, repair, and installation requirements. Most of the time the customer services are not fully integrated with the field operations hence resulting in delays and poor customer experience. This usually occurs when the service data is disparate, making it challenging to deliver real-time solutions.

Related topic: Digitising The Shop Floor With ERPs.

• Inefficient quotation & order management: Being able to provide accurate quotes in real-time is critical for quoting complicated manufacturing orders. Sluggish response times and errors occur when companies use manual approaches or separate solutions, which contributes to waste. This challenge affects the customers’ satisfaction and sales productivity.
• Customer experience fragmentation: Ensuring a smooth customer experience is vital for customer retention. However, many manufacturers struggle to deal with disconnected data across different departments. Isolated customer data makes it difficult for the organisation to deliver quick and personalised customer service.
• Global operations scalability gap: This involves dealing with different currencies, languages, and regulations of different countries. It can be challenging for manufacturers to expand their operations when their siloed systems prevent growth, effectiveness, and compliance.

Read more: A Must-Read About Manufacturing Digitalisation.

Explaining Dynamics 365 CRM For Manufacturing

1. About Dynamics 365 Solutions

Dynamics 365 CRM offers a suite of robust applications that enable manufacturing companies to cater to effective customer engagement with the help of AI capabilities.

Dynamics 365 CRM applications are designed to easily connect and work with other Microsoft solutions. It serves as a centralised hub to collect and process data from different departments including Sales, Service, Marketing, Finance, Supply chain, etc.

Related topics:

• A Guide To Dynamics 365 CRM For Beginners
• Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Explained

2. Why Is Dynamics 365 CRM Ideal For Manufacturing?

From managing complex sales and product planning to delivering outstanding after-sale services, manufacturers need an appropriate solution that can integrate different workflows, and increase productivity and customer satisfaction. Dynamics 365 CRM helps manufacturing overcome these challenges in the following ways:

• Integrated lead-to-order lifecycle management: Dynamics 365 Sales offers a complete solution to manage lead-to-order processes. It provides powerful functionalities to manage leads, opportunities, quotes, orders, invoicing and renewals - all in one centralised platform. This allows manufacturers to track and manage the sales pipeline, predict demand and convert opportunities into sales with ease.
• Unified customer engagement framework: For manufacturers, Dynamics 365 Customer Service creates a single place for all interactions within an organisation and across different channels. It provides targeted and quick support services to solve the customers’ issues and retain their loyalty. This solution helps align customers and services to standardise customer interactions.
• Predictive demand & production alignment: When integrated with other Dynamics 365 apps such as Supply Chain Management and Finance, Dynamics CRM helps connect demand planning with sales and production plans, enabling manufacturers to balance supply and demand. AI capabilities are also utilised to collect data, and this assists in lowering wastage, controlling inventory, and delivering orders on time.
• Field service excellence: Dynamics 365 Field Service helps manufacturers provide efficient post-sale support services such as maintenance, installation, and repair works. Thanks to technician location tracking, IoT connectivity, and AI-powered resolution tools, this solution ensures that there will be no significant disruptions for the customers.
• Automated CPQ (configure, price, quote) for custom orders: With Dynamics 365 Sales, manufacturers can manage custom and intricate sales quotes with ease. This is achieved by linking the product catalogues, production data, and pricing rules, hence making it easier for users to set the right prices and quickly generate quotes.
• Personalised customer experience: Using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, manufacturers can create customised customer experiences by processing Customer ID, previous interactions and predictive capabilities. This enables teams to provide more proactive recommendations and resolutions.

3. Custom Solutions For Unique Manufacturing Workflows

Microsoft also offers extensive and customisable solutions that can help manufacturing companies enhance Dynamics 365’s core features based on their unique requirements:

• Integration with other Microsoft products: Users can also integrate with other solutions such as Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operation, and Supply Chain Management. These products help manufacturers align their financial management, project duration and production line in one platform. Power BI is another great option to transform reporting and real-time data analytics. Microsoft 365 and Teams are also great tools for integrated production, sales, and field service teams.
• Microsoft AppSource: Manufacturers can use Microsoft AppSource to explore extended services and industry-specific solutions. AppSource offers a wide range of solutions pertinent to the manufacturing industry, whether you need solutions for integrating with ERP systems, optimising complicated production, or improving CRM.
• Power Platform: Power Automate, Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents allow manufacturers to automate processes, set up complex workflows and build no-code applications to suit specific operations. As an Official Australian Microsoft Partner, the Havi team can give you a hand and offer the right solutions that address your unique industry challenges.
• Azure: With cloud-based scalability and AI builder, manufacturers can also handle massive operations efficiently with adequate security. Azure is augmented with AI workflows and allows for demand insights from real-time data, quality control, and IoT solutions.

A Japanese Water Treatment Company Enhances Customer Service With Dynamics 365

Kurita Water Industries is an industrial water treatment solutions provider that experienced problems with customer management and data utilisation. Previously, with paper and spreadsheets, there was no simple way for their sales representatives to access critical customer data. Instead, they spent a significant amount of time looking for the right data. Another problem was that the field teams could not have real-time updates during their customer visits.

Why Dynamics 365 Sales?

To overcome such problems, Kurita has implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and integrated it with Microsoft Teams and Power BI. Dynamics 365 Sales offers a complete overview of each customer activity, thereby making it easy for sales to adapt to different cases, review historical stats, and provide an appropriate solution. Integrating Microsoft Teams within workers’ workspace also made communication between back-office and technical teams clearer, thus helping to satisfy customers’ requirements quicker.

Kurita also implemented Power BI in its sales division, where specialists could implement their own specifics and build their own dashboards. This helped reduce costs, speed up decision-making, and enable live feedback on sales leads and communication patterns.

How Dynamics 365 Brought Change To Kurita Water

At Kurita, Dynamics 365 transformed its customer strategies for the better. Everyone could become a consultative seller who can make use of insights, push forward new solutions, and enhance customer trust. Advanced integration made the operation much more efficient, and the enhanced data access allowed the whole organisation to make faster decisions.

Get Started With Dynamics CRM For Manufacturing

Microsoft Dynamics CRM for manufacturing offers robust solutions for critical issues that manufacturers have to deal with. These can range from lead management and opportunity, demand forecasting, and field service, to compliance management, among others.

Havi Technology is proud to be a Microsoft Certified Partner in Australia, assisting manufacturing companies to maximise the potential of Dynamics 365 CRM. From integration, workflow adaptation, or your unique requirements, we guarantee success in your growth and operation. Let us help reinvent your manufacturing business and succeed in a new age of digital transformation.

Dynamics CRM For Manufacturing - FAQs

1. Does Microsoft Dynamics work for the manufacturing industry?

Manufacturing is heading towards digitalisation and this is where Microsoft Dynamics 365 comes into play. Dynamics 365 offers solutions for manufacturers ready to create leaner, faster and more informed processes and operations - from real-time analytics, predictive maintenance, and supply chain management.

2. Is there a demo of Dynamics 365 for my manufacturing operations?

Yes, it is possible to set up a demonstration of Dynamics 365 for manufacturing that suits your operations at Havi Technology. Being an Official Microsoft Partner in Australia, we provide clients with demonstrations of what Dynamics 365 can do. Get in touch with us today for a personalised product demo.