In a highly competitive business-to-business (B2B) world, distribution and omnichannel enterprises are constantly kept on their toes when it comes to being able to differentiate their offerings. These businesses operate in highly competitive markets where their customers have the advantage because they have the option to go elsewhere if they don’t get the best deal.
What are the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365?
In today’s digital world, it’s rarely sufficient for a distribution or omnichannel enterprise to be standing shoulder to shoulder with its competitors. If it is to be truly successful, it needs to mount a podium, so it is head and shoulders above its rivals. Combining the following elements with Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be the podium that allows your prospective and existing customers to see and hear you over the competition.
Provide a customer service experience your competition can’t deliver
Sales representatives, whether in-field, in-house, or both, interact with both prospective and existing customers and are key in building and maintaining customer satisfaction. Recording activity levels and identifying sales opportunities are essential tasks in the effective management of sales teams and proactive customer communications. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 “built-in” Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions within the core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), all business can be tracked from original opportunity to finalized sales and profitability analytics. The integration of CRM within Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides all-encompassing visibility which is critical for sales team members and for operations personnel too.
Nurture your customer relations and boost customer retention
In B2B operations, customer retention is critical. It might seem obvious but providing superior customer service is the key to keeping customers, yet it’s an area where a lot of distributors and omnichannel enterprises fall short of customer expectations. To nurture your customer relations and ensure customer retention you must be able to:
Meet customer expectations on time and with the right product
Customers expect suppliers to be experts at directing them to order the right products, whether that means previously ordered products, correct fit for purpose, or specific product configurations and options. B2B means distributors are expected to fulfill orders with the right products and quantities, with the highest possible fill rates. Companies excelling in this area have an integrated ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 that enables Sales and Customer Service personnel to quickly and efficiently order the right products for customers.
Outperform your competition on delivery
Whether your customers are in retail or service organizations, timing is “everything” when it comes to the delivery of products. Commitment to and performing on-time delivery is essential for customer retention, where delivery delays, shortages or other mistakes can be very costly and result in lost business for the distributor. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is designed to optimize accuracy, manage workflow processes with date controls, integrate tightly with delivery carriers and proactively trigger variance alerts to enable organizations to meet demanding delivery performance requirements.
Offer the right price the first time
The challenge for supplier distributors is often to manage highly complex pricing; for potentially tens of thousands of products, with unique pricing for individual customers who may be one of thousands of accounts. Successful distribution and omnichannel enterprises that leverage ERP solutions, like Dynamics 365, are optimized for high-volume pricing operations and effective trade and promotions management. In today’s digital marketplace, advanced ERP tools are required to manage the “right price” requirement while retaining optimal margins.
Business Impact of Microsoft Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 has acquired a lot of fans since it was launched in 2016. Given half a chance, these admirers will wax lyrical about the following bottom-line-boosting aspects of Microsoft’s marriage of CRM and ERP solutions:
A 360-degree customer view: Microsoft Dynamics 365 hoovers up transactional, behavioral, and demographic data from a range of (Microsoft and third-party) sources, to create unified customer profiles.
The personalization this plentiful data facilitates: Big Data usually generates valuable insights that can then be used to deliver real-time personalization throughout the entire customer journey.
Industry-leading AI/ML: Power BI, Cortana Intelligence and Azure Machine Learning are part of the package with Dynamics 365. Put simply, this translates to a massive amount of computing power that allows even the smallest businesses to do things such as expertly segment the audience they attract, grow the lifetime value of customers, and reduce churn.
Increased employee productivity: Any employee with access to Dynamics 365 is likely to have all the tools, data, and insights they need to complete their tasks quickly and effectively.
Barrier-busting agility: Silos of information and barriers between critical business platforms make everything slower and harder. Microsoft Dynamics 365 dissolves these silos and barriers by leveraging a shared business database (called the ‘Microsoft Common Data Model’) that smoothly connects data and processes, making everything more efficient and effective.
An impressive collection of tools: Need built-in tools to automate sales, marketing, customer service, field service, or project service processes? Microsoft Dynamics 365 has you covered. And if those ‘off-the-shelf’ offerings aren’t sufficient, you can always modify workflows or use customization tools to define additional fields and new objects.
How Flintech can help you with Microsoft Dynamics 365
Flintech is a long-time Microsoft Gold Partner. Our expert staff have lots of experience in helping businesses of all shapes and sizes select and then implement the appropriate Dynamics 365 solutions.
Final takeaway
Sales, marketing, and customer service teams at countless businesses love Microsoft’s powerful and user-friendly CRM-ERP solution. If you want to keep your employees happy and make it as easy as possible for them to retain existing customers and attract new ones, there is nothing on the market that comes close to Dynamics 365.
Need support with your Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation? Flintech can help. Book a free consultation with us today to find out more.
