How Microsoft Dynamics 365 is helping organisations ‘get IT all together’

• Multiple applications, disparate systems and siloed data lead to inefficiencies in organisations.
  
• Microsoft Dynamics 356 works on bringing the data together and building rich insights.
  
• Dynamics 365 & Power Platform are used by 500,000 organisations and 97% of Fortune 500 companies.
  

Let’s consider two different scenarios at two of India’s leading enterprises.

The first one - Keventer Agro, the largest FMCG company in East India that offers packaged, dairy and fresh food products. Keventer employed numerous Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendors. Each vendor worked independently at the assigned location on a distinct ERP platform. The distinct operations led to non-uniformity in processes, and impacted reporting and compliance procedures with manually generated statements.

The second one - Larsen & Toubro (L&T), the multinational conglomerate with revenues exceeding $21 billion. L&T was having challenges with transparency across the sales cycle and was struggling to support a digital-ready sales team that could sell from anywhere for L&T-NxT, a digital start-up.

None of these challenges are unique to these companies. Organisations often tend to use multiple applications to do their work, leading to disparate transactions, static products and siloed data that resides in fragmented, monolithic software suites. This introduces inefficiencies and conflicts.

Microsoft is working with enterprises in India to help change this. Praveen Mellacheruvu, Business lead – Business Applications, Microsoft, said, “Business Applications tend to become complex and not easy to use, creating an extensive learning cycle and adoption journey for enterprises. Data ends up being siloed when an enterprise uses an IT architecture that involves multiple such products from various vendors. At Microsoft, our aim is to bring this data together in multiple ways, to build rich insights and enable decision making.”

One example, he said, is the concept of collaborative apps where team members can work on Dynamics 365 directly in Teams without even having to access Dynamics 365 directly.

Another area of focus for Mellacheruvu and his teams is to work with organisations in transforming their sales and service functions. Modernising these functions is helping customers significantly enhance the effectiveness of their sales and service teams, helping them drive better customer experience.

With AI-based tools like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, enterprises can build a much better understanding and a 360 view of their customers, helping them serve their customers, Mellacheruvu argued.

Both the companies cited as examples in the beginning leveraged Microsoft Dynamics 365 in the process.

Keventer Agro has reduced the client software footprint by leveraging the Microsoft platform, which has led to distinctive benefits such as a unified platform with streamlined workflows and processes across the whole business.

L&T-NxT rolled out Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Sales Insights in just 26 days during the global COVID-19 crisis, ensuring uninterrupted business operations. L&T-NxT benefitted from better management of leads, increased sales agility and access to holistic data in one place, ensuring that its global sales force could easily access comprehensive customer history and other information from any location.

Quite naturally, Microsoft has seen an uptick in the adoption of Dynamic 365 technologies. “Globally, companies like Cracker Barrel and Unilever predict disruptions using our technology. Businesses like Heineken and Siemens leverage Dynamics 365 for personalised customer engagement and service. Another example is L’oreal, which installed and managed manufacturing equipment remotely using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens 2 – the mixed-reality smart glass.”

Businesses are looking at immediate and tangible business outcomes from their investments, said Mellacheruvu. And the tech giant has been making efforts to ensure this.

“For example, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service reduces customer complaints by 80% and Dynamics 365 for Sales shortens the sales cycle by 3 months. This delivery of business value has helped us see increased adoption.”

Dynamics365 and Power Platform are used by 500,000 organisations and 97% of Fortune 500 companies, he said. More than 4,500 organisations now use Dynamics 365 Commerce, Finance, and Supply Chain Management. The industrial metaverse is another opportunity that Microsoft is actively tapping into, using technologies such as IOT, Digital Twins, Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces, and Mixed Reality applications.

“There has been a radical change in how, when and where people work in today’s highly distributed workplace. People want simple ways to collaborate and work from anywhere they want and Microsoft’s focus is to enable just that,” Mellacheruvu summed up.
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