Reinventing the sales pipeline using AI based Microsoft Dynamics CRMAn AhaApps Point of View

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By introducing Artificial Intelligence-based techniques & tools in the overall CRM strategy B2B and B2C enterprises can nurture a healthy sales pipeline, which is powered by carefully curated customer relationships and hyper-personalized services built on the foundation of being digital first.

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Executive Summary

In this age of being hyper-connected, customers are always on the move and ever ‘online’. As a result of this, the brands are also required to be upgrading and updating themselves when it comes to their customer acquisition and sales strategies. This means the enterprises need to understand the customer buying lifecycle in a hyper-connected and hypermobile world and strategize to maximize impact at every touch point.

This ‘Point of View’ analyzes how the most evolved and recently launched Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which is powered by Artificial Intelligence is helping enterprises gain insights on buying patterns of the customer, while tactfully and strategically analyze the sales pattern, and how AI-powered hyper personalization will help enterprises in audience segmentation.

Finally, this paper also tries to understand how the AI-powered Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be efficiently used in the emerging and niche domains such as sports management and non-profit management to drive long-term and profitable growth.

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Leverage - As recent as 2 years back, a lot of sales and marketing professionals in any organization used to create, analyze and refresh GBs of MS Excel workbooks to understand their customer. Cut to 2019, and the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques in the CRM space, enterprises are now starting to be able to connect the dots and leverage vast amount of data efficiently and effectively to increase their sales pipeline.

CRMs as a function of them being connected to various departments in the company generate a lot of data. Utilizing AI based features will not only help enable deeper understanding of the customer’s buy-ing pattern but it will also assist the sales force on the field with everyday information such as intelligently analyzing conversations to quickly suggest the next steps to connect with the customer to predicting when a particular deal could possibly be closed.

With the implementation of various AI, ML and IoT based techniques, an enterprise can not only benefit with a healthier sales pipeline, but will also be able to conceptualize hyperlocal and strategic offers and service offerings for its customer.

Understanding the Lifecycle of a CRM in the Age of AI Dominance

11.42

2017 2024

40.19% CAGR

USD

in b

illio

n

123.28

Global AI Market for CRM Expected to Grow Over

USD 123.28 Billion by 2024

Source: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/10/12/1620559/0/en/Global-AI-Market-for-CRM-Expected-to-Grow-Over-USD-123-28-Billion-by-2024-Zion-Market-Research.html

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Process and Utilize - the Available Data to Arrive at Actionable Insights

Today, virtually every object is a source of information. This means, there is a very high volume of data, which is created and the enterprises will need to know how to process this data for effective utilization.

If the CRM is built on a strong foundation of AI techniques, then there are many ways in which an enterprise can actually process the available data from various sources in the organization such as the PoS, store walk-in, website traffic, shelf consumption pattern, etc. and utilize it in a very beneficial way and hence de-velop a healthy sales pipeline.

Here are some use cases –

• Individual data, such as personal details, social media data, professional information about a customer can provide critical data for a retailer to develop exclusive and hyperlocal offers for it’s customer.

• Store information or sales information such as the number of products sold, how were those products sold (offline or online), details from the customer help desk (complaints, feedback, etc.) if processed and analyzed efficiently can significantly improve the way products are stacked in the store and frequency of refilling the same. This in turn will also help moderate both inventory and logistics related outlays.

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Track Behavior - Spends, Product Choices, Personalization, And Much More!

McDonald’s sometime back, through a survey realized that Americans needed healthier food choices. To cater this demand, it redesigned its menu and launched healthier options on the menu. However, it failed! Moral of the story – customer wanted a healthier food option but not from the brand McDonald’s.

In the digital advertising scenario today, it is easier to track the behavior of a customer. It is easy for a brand to show that they understand the requirement and hence are presenting offers which are relevant and beneficial.

In an offline scenario, by tracking sales pattern, demographics of the neighborhood, store walk-in traffic, a brand can effectively develop its product marketing strategy. Essentially, an AI-powered CRM can connect all of the various sources of information and help track be-havior of a specific customer or a store or an online marketed product.

Strategize & Monitor -Social Media And Other Touch Points To Repeat The Process

The process of extracting the information from various data sources, transforming the data into real and actionable insights and eventually loading the processed data into various systems helps an enterprise strategize and monitor the sales pipeline.

Periodic review of the data using AI based CRM helps plan for newer products and services, and monitoring the campaigns.

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How Microsoft Dynamics CRM Will Help Enhance Customer Experience?

According to a recent survey, 59% of the consumers in the USA say that “I don’t remember when a brand experience exceeded my expectations”. While this is a case in the retail industry, it however helps us understand that less importance brands, and enterprises gave to an overall customer experience. The same survey continues to say that 86% of the marketers are ready and willing to invest more in Mar-Tech.

While there are many solutions to the problem mentioned above, in our opinion CRM tops the list. It helps tackle the problem of data in silos, redundant data, old and outdated data to name a few.

In this section, we try to evaluate Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI and how it is helpful in enhancing the overall customer experience.

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Humanizing the Experience

Today, the customer is intelligent than ever before. He/she can research about the products, read reviews and would have already made a decision even before visiting the website of the brand or the store. In this scenario, enabling a seamless customer experience becomes a necessity.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI with its innovative algorithms gives the enterprises an ability to personalize the campaigns while providing a unified view of a customer. The customer insights module is AI-powered and helps an enterprise with the following – One customer, one view – the common data model, which leverages AI/ML-based algorithms help transform the customer data intelligently. The pre-built data connectors, help the administrator present various formats of the data in a unique, easy to comprehend dashboard enabling informed decisions by the management.

The Microsoft Graphs component, helps present a customer profile in a very interactive fashion, to help enable visual analysis of the behavior and patterns. It helps spot trends, analyze patterns and hence gain actionable insights into the customer behavior and arrive at KPIs and ROI driven metrics.

Data Analysts at AhaApps, strive to evoke “Aha!” moments for its clients by demonstrating ways to harness the power of technology to improve business functions. The analysts can connect with your teams to understand the precise pain points and provide to you a bespoke CRM solution which is based on the AI-powered Microsoft Dynamic 365 AI framework.

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Easy Access to The Information

It is now easy to analyze customer and sales data using Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI.

The CRM now boasts of over 20 out-of-the-box connectors, which are available for various data sources such as Azure SQL DB, Azure Blob storage and many more. With this, it is easy to connect various sources of data and capture all the leads at one place. Leveraging the AI techniques, it is now easy to increase conversion rates by prioritizing the leads with a clear indication of likelihood of a ‘buy’ or ‘convert’.

With the help of the AI-powered Microsoft Sales insights module, it is now easy to access information using natural language, instead of searching through various reports or dashboards. For instance, the sales manager in an enterprise can key in “Opportunities closed in the Kentucky area in the last quarter”. This query will show results in a graphical way, which is easy to understand and easier to present.

The Data Engineers at AhaApps are focused on making life easier for its customers through the creation of bespoke CRM solutions which are both mobile-based and web-based.

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Audience Segmentation

Understanding the audience is the key to any marketing campaign or a new product strategy and Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI is evolved to be one of the best answers to analyze the customer data and arrive at segmented view of the customer database.

The AI-powered CRM now provides an ability to unify the data from various sources and help the sales manager get a holistic view of the customer da-tabase. Machine Learning based templates which are in-built into the CRM help the enterprise to segment its target audience, arrive at the best pos-sible strategy and launch campaign by triggering an intelligent workflow within the teams.

Account Based Marketing is a key area where enterprises can leverage the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI. The AI based insights can be leveraged to understand which companies are actively engaged with the enterprise or its content and also help make informed decisions on how many people from that company are in the sales database and hence suggest the next marketing campaign.

At AhaApps, our mission is to design CRM solutions that will inform consumers, record data, improve organization and connect individuals. We take pride in helping clients through our outside-the-box thinking and by in-spiring clients to create powerful apps that solve their customer challenges.

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Sports

Sports management is a very niche domain, yet a genre which demands expertise and experience. As the sport and its players up the ante on the field, it is a daunting task for the team managers or officials to manage various tasks. Micro-soft Dynamics CRM 365 AI which was released recently has all the capabilities to service to this niche industry segment.

Let us understand a few use-cases—

Enhancing ticket sales: It is one of the most crucial part of the sport management supply chain. It is very important that the team managers and the stadium officials get the systems to sell the tickets right the first time, every time. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 AI helps understand the demographics and psychographics of the fan base.

Intelligent understanding of the fan base will eventually help the managers understand which group of fans will be more receptive of season tickets, or what kind of fans will only be interested in the match day tickets. This eventually help craft precise and impactful sales and marketing strategy.

Fan profiling and engagement: The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 AI helps the sport managers and the stadium managers unify the customer database and provide a unique 360-de-gree view of their fan base. It leverages AI techniques to analyze various data points such as ticket purchase patterns, match attendance data, website or social media signups and present an intelligent dashboard. Data rich fan profile can be created using this information and present it in a visually appealing way using Microsoft Graphs.

An enterprise can in-turn use this dashboard to gain a detailed visibility on fan profile and create customized om-ni-channel marketing campaigns to keep the fan engaged.

Quick ByteWhile the benefits of Microsoft Dynamic CRM are immense, let us understand a few of the used cases in which the software can possibly benefit the enterprises.

Microsoft Dynamics DOMINATES the CRM landscape

65-70% percent of all sports

including teams, leagues and venues

>80% of major league baseball

use Dynamics CRMor some part of it

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sports-engagement-tech-company-lack-thereof/

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Non-Profits

The 2018 version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 AI sees extensive inclusion of various AI and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities in it. A lot of accelerators are now part of the standard shipment. In this section we look at some of the ways in this the Dynamics CRM can help the non-profit organizations.

Driving impact: One of the primary ways in which a non- profit organization can drive measureable impact is through establishing better donor and volunteer connect. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 AI precisely helps the organizations perform this function efficiently. The AI driven software will not only help the organization get a holistic view of the database but will also help enable delivery of contextual and meaningful messages across the spectrum of stakeholders, hence delivering positive impact and eventually driving more donations.

Organizations can also help establish an efficient workflow, to begin with, receiving donations for managing them, to spending them wisely. The organizations can leverage AI and business intelligence capabilities to arrive at critical insights using interactive charts and graphs.

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The key enables which are discussed above are already forcing the enterprises worldwide to rethink, redesign the business models and find better and efficient ways to contextualize the service offering to their customers.

Reinventing the sales pipeline using AI-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM is now possible. It is now all the more easier and embracing newer processes, and eventually providing contextual and superior customer experience is now a reality.

ConclusionArtificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Process Automation and much more which seemed like a distant dream in the space of CRM is already here.

The future of Customer Relationship Management is already here – is your enterprise ready for it?

References• https://www.clickz.com/survey-customer-experience-trends-2019228224-2/228224/

• https://go.forrester.com/blogs/modern-crm-drives-relationship-and-revenue/

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftservices/industry/sports-solutions

• https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2019/04/04/dynamics-365-nonprofit-accelerator-a-community-solution-to-drive-social-impact/

• https://marketrealist.com/2014/07/why-mcdonalds-added-healthy-menu-options/

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