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With the recent release of Microsoft’s plans for Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1, many exciting new features for the Dynamics 365 platform were announced. Dynamics 365 Sales is receiving numerous updates to make it easier and more accessible for sellers to effectively reach and communicate with their customers. A large portion of the updates are expected in April, with more release over the following months.
Digital sales
New sequence automation features are being added to reduce time spent manually deciding on next steps for customers. Create email templates to be automatically sent with personalization options. Sequence listeners and forks can also be added to listen for how customers are engaging and split the sequence path based on triggers. On a similar note, new personalization options for the work queue make it easier for sales team members to stay on task working on what is most important for that day.
Finding prospects will be made easier with options to integrate with third-party lead acquisition services. Some of the integrations may also have the ability to search for similar contacts and companies for better targeting.
Sales team managers can make use of the new manager dashboard to monitor team performance. This dashboard gives a quick view of active leads and can compare with previous periods. This lead view can be broken down by source type and by team member. Similarly, it shows the ratio of lead to opportunity conversions. Companies will also be able to define KPIs for their teams that are tracked in real-time for teams to follow along. Examples include qualified leads, calls, meetings, and an estimate of value.
Personalization settings will give further flexibility to sales teams with better email template and signature editors.
Engagement platform
These updates make integrations with communication providers easier. For businesses using the Dynamics 365 Channel Integration Framework for telephone integration, calls will be recordable and can be used for the conversation intelligence feature from Sales Insights. Insights can also be gained from video calls. Not just 1 to 1 calls, but calls with multiple people as well.
Forecasting
Accurate forecasting is an important part of sales functionality. With this release wave, businesses will have additional options available for fiscal period configuration. New options include broadcast, 4-4-5, and 3-3-3-4. Additionally, an extra week can be added to any week for leap years.
Mobile
Sales teams need to be able to effectively access customer information and input interaction data. The new Sales mobile experience bridges the information gap for on-the-go team members. Recording data for calls is made easy by creating automatic transcriptions of calls and meetings. Insights and action items are pulled from the transcriptions. Calls are also automatically assigned to the related entities.
Information on each customer can be quickly pulled up in-app to allow the seller to prepare for interactions with the customer. Information can be pulled from LinkedIn and Dynamics 365 Insights, as well as any file, notes, and emails associated with the customer. Personal contacts can be accessed and quickly integrated into Sales. The interface also allows management of activities, tasks, and follow-up actions. Quickly scan cards and notes to be added to the record as well.
Pipeline manager workspace
Controlling the sales pipeline requires quick information gathering in order to guide action. The new Pipeline Manager workspace provides a space more tuned in to the needs of the sales team members that need to manage opportunities as they appear.
The record side panel will be added as a more optimized version of a form that can be customized to fit each business’ needs. A full form may not always be needed, so this gives the option to create a more condensed version that appears as a side panel for faster information creation. Data can be quickly entered in the side panel. Sales Insights scores and other data points can be made available in the panel as well.
The deal manager workspace will have the inline editable grid situated in the center for quick viewing of opportunities and editing. Data can be sorted filtered and search directly within the grid with the option to show or hide columns entirely. New columns can be added to give widened views of data. Columns showing numbers can be modified to include full totals.
The new workspace includes interactive data visualizations of opportunities. Data viewable in the workspace can be filtered through the use of slicers based on grid columns. Time slicers can also be used to change time periods. The workspace gives an efficient method to track statistics and other opportunity data within the sales pipeline while also give quick access to action items.
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