CRM capabilities of Dynamics 365 Business Central – Step up to Dynamics 365 Sales

Hello and welcome to this video series Dynamics 365 bc and crm we’ll explore the crm capabilities of dynamics 365 business central. My name is john hoyt solutions architect at tmc and this is the step up from crm and bc to dynamics 365 sales integrated to the dynamics 365 bc as the erp system dynamics 365 sales is a true crm system in this video Let’s see what d365 sales integrated with bc looks like.

Let’s get started demo in this case rather than logging into business central as we did in the first two videos in this series i’ve logged into a dedicated site specifically for a sales team member who’s part of the dynamics 365 sales system.

Accounts and Contacts

We’re integrated to dynamics 365 business central. Iit’s still the erp in the background that holds the dollar values it holds the inventory counts it’s going to process payments from customers but the sales activity has been freed up moved out of business central and moved into d365 sales but for our sales person it’s the same components they were working with previously back in business central i’m still going to work with my accounts those accounts just like in business central will typically represent my customers but they can also be set up for vendors or other organizations or entities that i’m working with these are the long-lived legal entities that i have a relationship with that i want to manage and monitor over time just like in bc we have contacts these are the people the humans that i’m going to be working with and i can divide them into my contacts i can look at all the contacts in the system a variety of ways to filter in those predefined lists again just like we saw back in the business central world when i’m looking at contacts and the relationship between a human and an organization between a contact and an account remains a soft or a fluid relationship that we can change over time as we move individuals leave companies go from one customer to another one customer to a vendor – whatever their paths might be,

Opportunities and Interactions

Our opportunities remain the same. I’m still going to identify any revenue that is potentially coming into the company i’m going to do that by making sure that i know who’s the contact i’m working with what company are they representing what is the nature of that opportunity both by dollar value and by date i might tie it into specific product lines coming out of my erp system for fulfillment purposes or they might be services that i’m going to be providing again all the same kind of basic building blocks that i was working with previously we expand out the notion of the interactions a little bit beyond what was available simply in the bc world uh in this case if i’m working with any one of my contacts i have the ability to go in and create a new interaction for them or a variety of other activities above and beyond what business central could have done beyond just recording that i had an email or that i had a phone call with them or some type of interaction like that with dynamics 365 sales there’s also a more full fledged or better developed campaign function which allows me to do things like quickly add this contact to a marketing list i want to add him to a list of people that we’re going to be communicating with about a particular upcoming activity or event or trade show or something of that nature so again that same basic concept that we saw inside business central but developed further and with more functionalities now associated with that we’re also going to introduce a couple of new functions inside the sales beyond what business central could do in business central the first real indication that there might be some future activity was the creation of an opportunity and that’s done with a known entity someone who’s already a contact someone who’s already a customer in sales i can take it one step prior and this is simply going to be a lead that i am aware of this might come in from a variety of sources might come from a website might come from a trade show might be a reference that i received from another contact whatever it might be but not yet increase involved in the company in any real significant way shape or form but i can start to work with this lead i can qualify it i can advance it to the next stage of a process etc start to add in those a little more granular a little more specific features and functions and again starting to work from an earlier point.

Campaigns

Now when we’re working with the sales team member role you’ll see that i don’t have access to the campaigns here the sales team member is not involved in the creation or management of campaigns uh their in their activity or their interactions with campaigns would be limited to associating on a lead or an opportunity contact interaction etc that might be associated with that with the adoption of dynamics 365 sales we also add in a concept of split roles if i move from the sales team member role and move over to what’s called the sales hub i get much of the same information that the sales team member could see i still get accounts and contacts i get leads and opportunities but because i’m in more of a management role and i have access to greater information i can also start to see details like keeping track of competitors this is business intelligence about my competitors and i can evaluate my lost opportunities by acknowledging that the opportunity was lost because that prospect chose to go with one of my competitors and i can start to learn was it better pricing was it better terms was it quicker delivery dates higher customer satisfaction ratings better word of mouth what’s driving that competitor to win that opportunity and what steps can i take to do a better job of competing against them in the future that sales management role here from the sales hub though also starts to see marketing activities and this is where the campaigns live in the business central world they’re just kind of all mixed in with the standard crm kind of functionality.

Advanced Features

Here in the sales side we break it out into a separate function but all the same capabilities are here i can generate my campaign i can define the start date the end date what services or products are going to be covered by that campaign what special pricing what special discounts are going to be offered as an incentive for my customers to participate in the campaign etc Summary.

So just to review quickly we have the same basic components that we saw originally in business central here in d365 sales the accounts are present and these are the entities that i’m working with customers or vendors or other organizations contacts the people that work at those con those accounts whatever they are customers or vendors or something else and that same soft relationship between an account and a contact and the ability to change that information over time as necessary we have the opportunities a potential revenue has been identified and quantified we know the dollar revenue potential we know the date that we expect to close we can have associated product lines for physical items or for services etc.

The campaigns to define a date range for particular marketing activity with special prices and discounts offered above and beyond what might have been offered during the normal course of business with that customer we add in a stage prior to the opportunities and identify leads whether they are generated internally or externally.

This is activity that we can pursue and ideally qualify and turn into an opportunity that becomes revenue at some point those activities will be grouped together i can then assign those leads to be my sales people so they can work the leads.

So in this video we looked at stepping up from the crm functions in business central to adopting the full dynamics 365 sales system we have a lot of overlap in the functionality that’s why we’re stepping up to the accounts and contacts the opportunities and interactions and the campaigns all in common with business central but now we can add in lead generation we can add in better workflows and better templates so that’s it for crm in business central and the extended features to allow you to better manage your relationships and to drive revenue if you have any questions or would like to make a suggestion of what we should cover in the next video please comment down below i’ll do my best to answer your comments if you need any immediate technical support i invite you to visit our website www.abouttmc.com also don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel it does really help thank you for watching and you can follow our social media accounts there in the descriptions down below.