Updates coming to Dynamics 365 Sales with the upcoming 2021 Release Wave 2

Microsoft will begin rolling out a robust update to the Dynamics 365 suite later this year, and Dynamics 365 Sales in particular will see quite a few improvements. The improvements were created based on customer feedback, so users can look forward to a highly optimized app experience.  

A major focus of this update is collaboration, with a key feature of upcoming enhancements being seamless integration of Microsoft Teams into a variety of Dynamics 365 apps. Check out our blog for an overview of the other Dynamics 365 updates coming with Release Wave 2, and take a look at Microsoft’s official 2021 Release Wave 2 notes for full release details and timeframes.

Dynamics 365 Sales makes sales-focused CRM easy, and organizations can expect even better features with updates that refresh the user experience and maximize efficiency. More AI capabilities will allow sellers to work smarter and prioritize the most gainful activities while keeping track of critical information for each lead. Here’s a look at what users can expect to see in late 2021 and early 2022 in Dynamics 365 Sales.

Accelerator workspace

It’s not uncommon for sellers to lose time by engaging with the wrong leads or struggling with busy pipelines clogged by less-than-useful records, or they are unable to prioritize the customers that are most likely to close. Ensuring that only quality leads are being assigned to sellers, with accurate data that enables personalized interactions, saves sellers valuable time, and will allow them to close more business opportunities. 

The accelerator workspace offers users a guided selling experience, powered by AI, that enables sellers to focus on the right customers instead of wasting time on lower impact activities or manually searching for information, ultimately helping them close more deals.

One enhanced feature that managers can expect is an updated dashboard experience to keep up to date with important seller KPIs, number of current active leads (and the ability to compare to previous periods), conversion ratios between leads and opportunities, as well as information on leads per seller and leads by source types. 

Real-time KPI information will allow sellers to be more data-driven with their decision making and keep the whole organization up to date. Users will be able to view the number of qualified leads, calls, meetings, and even estimated values; quickly prioritize leads with improved data quality — vetted with AI capabilities — like improved detection mechanisms and automated actions, configuration, and lead routing. New action capabilities will be able to update, close, or delete leads if false or invalid information is detected, merge two or more leads, and detect leads-related records and additional available data.  

In fast-paced environments, the ability to quickly and efficiently respond to incoming leads sets the tone for the outcome of a deal. New lead routing features will maximize the team’s operational efficiency, improve individual seller productivity, ensure timely lead assignment, and improve conversion ratios. 

Users will be able to declutter their workspaces with new worklist ownership enhancements that will populate worklists based on activity ownership, not entity ownership. Users will only see what’s most important, not clutter—for example, instead of viewing every task they’ve created and assigned to others, managers will only see their own tasks. Further enhancements will be made to intelligent worklist abilities, like suggestive actions, automated outreach recommendations, one-click task bundling, and prioritized pipelines.  

Updates will also include performance improvements to automated data sorting and assignments, configuring templates for easy-to-use sequence building, automated sequence tagging, and more. Learn more about the accelerator workspace improvements. 

Integrations and collaboration

Smooth integration of different communications providers like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and 3P will allow sellers to boost their digital selling capabilities with real-time analytics and action items. These integrations will allow users to send emails as well as make and receive calls right from Dynamics 365 Sales—not to mention all the convenient features of Microsoft Teams calls and meetings. 

For context-based collaboration, users can anticipate smoother chat and call experiences with sleek and secure Microsoft Teams integration into Dynamics 365 Sales. Sellers can take advantage of easy-to-configure collaboration tools and functionalities like meetings, chats, and calls—all embedded into the Dynamics 365 Sales interface. 

Collaboration is made easy with additional Teams features like message extensions and actions, an enhanced “suggested contacts” system, and automated chat notifications sent from Dynamics 365 to Teams. 

Mobile

Leads can be unpredictable, and sellers oftentimes need to take work beyond a desktop computer. Help them access what they need, when they need it, wherever they are with the mobile experience that makes it easy to log and share information in real time.

Sellers can come prepared to customer engagements with smart lookup that quickly connects the meeting to relevant records, as well as organized meeting cards that streamline data from any Dynamics 365 appointment on top of the Exchange data, LinkedIn information, and relationship insights for each contact. 

Sellers can conduct hundreds of weekly customer engagements—and each engagement has implicit and explicit information, some of which can be easy to overlook, especially if the deal is new, the seller's attention is split between deals, or if they can’t take notes at crucial moments. Never miss a detail in customer engagements with automatic transcription for Teams calls and online meetings, conversation insights, action item extractions, and automated activity records after calls.  

Learn more about other optimizations for the Dynamics 365 Sales experience on mobile. 

Forecasting and pipeline management

Managing the sales pipeline is a high-impact activity requiring rapid consumption of data and tools for quick editing actions, data visualization, collaboration, task management, and more. The enhanced, personalized workspace will be optimized for better pipeline management. Enhancements will allow sellers to view, manage, and execute opportunities by providing the in-context experiences needed to quickly filter deals, view necessary information, and directly take action without ever navigating away from the work surface.  

Accounts, contacts, and leads can be managed using an interface similar to the deal manager workspace, and pipelines can be managed using hierarchies and date-based filters. Sellers will be able to see data in a way that works best for them with annual views that expand the visibility of forecasts, as well as weekly and yearly periods that can be used to visualize period-over-period progress with year-to-date insights. 

Stay on top of rigorous quotas, prioritize prospects that are likely to close, and move quickly through the sales pipeline with improved forecasting and pipeline analytics like new predictive lead and opportunity scoring to helps uncover top deals and provides tools to forecast with confidence. Teams can know where to best invest their time, improve resource allocation, and boost overall productivity. 

Share forecasts with other stakeholders to better delegate tasks and share responsibility with other team members, and filter users from forecast hierarchies altogether to simplify workflows. 

New AI-powered predictive scoring models will make the most of CRM data-based insights, and intelligent field augmentation will be able to identify customer insights like if they’re a new or returning customer, recent account activity, contact ID, and more.  

Relationship intelligence

Help sellers use information across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 products to identify, build, and nurture relationships with customers using AI-powered automation tools. The “who knows whom” feature suggests members of the sales organization who are best connected to a contact using account-based data spanning emails, meetings, Outlook data, and other institutional contact information to instantly expand networks within the CRM system.  

Custom activities within relationship analytics can analyze how certain activities impact engagement KPIs, track communications with customers, holistically view team status with target accounts and contacts, and review the status of any given engagement with an account, opportunity, lead, and contact. 

Administrators will be able to pick which activities (including custom activities) should be part of relationship analytics charts and customize the default time taken for each activity to allow for accurate computation of engagement KPIs.  

Get started

Your business has grown to the next level, and you need a CRM sales solution that can keep up. Dynamics 365 Sales provides extensive tools that sales teams can use to leverage account data, keep up with leads, and close deals with greater efficiency. Find out how you can get started with Dynamics 365 Sales by connecting with a consultant today.