It’s safe to say there has never been a time like the present. We have seen changes in how we conduct business, in our customer’s business, and in our lives as consumers. With Microsoft partners, we are empowering organizations to adapt their business processes to respond to changes in real-time, retain and stay connected to customers and employees, and maintain business continuity.
During Microsoft Inspire 2020, our annual partner conference, I hosted a session with Ray Smith, highlighting the challenges we’ve overcome, the possibilities that lie ahead, and continued investments in Microsoft Dynamics 365. We acknowledged this year’s Partner of the Year finalists and winners—Avanade, Power Objects, and Hitachi—all contributing tremendously to helping customers accelerate and build digital capabilities across our sales, marketing, and service solutions.
By working with partners, we continue to build innovative solutions to real-world challenges. As an example, Clarabridge is debuting its latest offering, an omnichannel CX analytics platform that integrates with recently released Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice. Clarabridge weaves customer interaction speech, text, and conversations together, and leverages AI to generate insights into customer behaviors. It’s creative solutions like this that are game changers for the industry and reaffirm our commitment to our partner’s success.
An inspiring year
Without a doubt, the last fiscal year was an amazing year for Dynamics 365. We crossed the finish line with 95 percent of new customer relationship management (CRM) customers choosing the Microsoft cloud. Finally, we have had remarkable success with our fastest growing application, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, the Microsoft customer data platform (CDP) solution. Major customer wins such as Walgreens Boots Alliance, Coca-Cola, FedEx, BNY Mellon, and Ecolab to name a few are a testament to how brands are using Dynamics 365 to reinvent the customer experience and deepen engagement.
Microsoft continues to accelerate market momentum and is recognized as an industry leader for product innovation across the entire customer lifecycle, as evidenced in recent analyst reports.
1. The Forrester Wave™: Customer Analytics Technologies, Q3 2020—A LEADER
A Leader in the most recent Customer Analytics Technology Wave, Microsoft also received the highest Net Promoter ScoreSM from its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights client references. Forrester cited, “High client satisfaction coupled with rapid market success make Dynamics 365 Customer Insights a compelling option for marketers and CI pros looking for a new solution.” Forrester noted that Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is an enterprise real-time, self-service CDP solution with pre-packaged customer analytics capabilities and easy data exploration, and visualization through integration with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Graph.
2. Gartner Magic Quadrant: CRM Customer Engagement Center—A LEADER
For the seventh consecutive year, Microsoft is a Leader in the June 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center with improved placement YoY. The analysts looked for emerging capabilities that demonstrate innovation of the CRM CEC solution and recognized our ability to execute and completeness of vision in this space.
3. Gartner Magic Quadrant: Sales Force Automation—A LEADER
For the 10th consecutive year, Microsoft is a Leader in the July 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation. According to Gartner, this “market grew 11.1 percent to an estimated $7.8 billion in 2019,” and “vendors improved usability, forecasting, and guided selling.”
4. Gartner Magic Quadrant: Field Service Management—A LEADER
As shared in our blog, “Gartner positions Dynamics 365 Field Service Magic Quadrant Leader,” Microsoft is a Leader in the July 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management. According to Gartner, “vendor” positions in this Magic Quadrant reflect clients’ new expectations in areas such as collaboration, safety, business models, and AI-driven decision support for parts and labor planning.” Microsoft pioneered leading edge technologies including, Microsoft Azure IoT, Microsoft Power Platform, and mixed reality applications that have led to the development of rich features that empower technicians and increase productivity, optimize resources, and enhance customer satisfaction.
The road ahead
Our vision and AI investments enable organizations to become “customer-first” by providing a journey perspective that completes more cycles of the digital feedback loop. The insights surface a better understanding of the customer—who they are and what they care about—allowing organizations to adapt experiences and create more high-value engagements. We’re also helping organizations create trustworthy customer experiences, using enriched data and billions of signals, to capture changing customer needs and intent without putting privacy at risk.
Better together
The past six months have generated a tsunami of unprecedented change and its legacy lives on in many ways. Though physically distanced, we’re uniting to help organizations adapt, work better, and anticipate and serve the customer’s changing needs. We’re realigning and rebuilding with greater innovation and precision in an ever-changing landscape. We’re discovering new opportunities and surfacing talents that we never knew we had. We’re enhancing our products to overcome real-world challenges, and it’s getting noticed by analysts, partners, and customers alike. The year of change has generated unimaginable creativity with our partners and customers, and together, we will reap the rewards
