There are many built in artificial intelligence (AI) features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 that you may not know exist. The ‘network effect’ of a cloud based platform, such as Dynamics 365, enables organisations, even very small ones, to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and other previously unachievable and expensive technologies.
A lot of the AI features in Dynamics 365 are underpinned by Power BI (find out more about Power BI’s intelligence in our related article). Power BI is equipped with a suite of features powered by cutting edge AI. These features give Dynamics 365 users the ability to use data to guide their decisions and carry out informed actions. Many of these features are already included in Dynamics 365 out-of-the-box at no additional cost.
So what AI features are right there in Dynamics 365 that you might not be aware of?
Virtual Agents
Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI for Customer Service provides organisations the ability to utilise virtual agents to answer queries and resolve issues. These are bots which are trained to answer customer queries in live chat. This reduces the time customer agents spend answering recurring, simple questions such as “what are your opening hours?” and frees up their valuable human time to focus on high-value interactions.
With Dynamics 365 AI for Customer Service you can identify common and time-consuming issues and feed this information into the system and then use bots to resolve these issues when they occur again in the future. The platform enables managers to quickly divert traffic of a specific topic to a virtual agent using intelligent workflow based on AI logic. Managers are able to train the virtual agents to resolve customer issues through the use of natural language understanding (which is also AI driven). This is all created through easy drag and drop logic and not limited to coders/techies.
Virtual assistants could also be used internally to cut down internal support efforts by solving more basic IT issues for staff and freeing up IT support’s time to address more pressing and complex customer issues.
Microsoft’s customer, HP, is using virtual agents to address up to 80% of their customer support issues. Find out more:
Predictive Lead Scoring
The built-in AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales gives sales managers the ability to make better, more informed decisions and drive better results from their team.
Dynamics 365 AI for Sales proactively analyses the data stored in Dynamics 365 to draw together crucial insights to assist sales managers in the evaluation and improvement of their team’s sales performance. Managers receive relationship health and risks with signals direct from Microsoft Dynamics 365, LinkedIn and Office 365, providing a holistic approach to their organisation’s data.
The home page of the Dynamics 365 AI for Sales application provides updates on sales team performance against quotas and important sales notifications. The application also includes a machine learning model-based predictive scoring mechanism that considers various factors to score leads based on their likelihood to become an opportunity. Sales managers are able to instantly assess opportunity pipeline health from a graph on the home page and focus their valuable time on helping to drive the most important opportunities.
The AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 for Sales enables sales teams to be more efficient in their work and focus on closing their more high-value deals. This will ultimately lead to increased sales for the organisation and streamline time which can be used trying to generate additional deals.
Cortana Intelligence in Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central has Cortana intelligence built-in to the system. This provides you with intelligence capability across all areas of the solution. It can be used to prompt next best actions for your sales teams, identify trends in your expenditure and help with inventory management.
Cortana Intelligence can be used to forecast your sales inventory requirements. The AI in the system embeds intelligent predictions for all items and highlights when they are likely to go out of stock. It does this by analysing your current stock level and your historic data, analysing this through several different time series models to provide you with as precise a prediction as possible. The system also takes into account factors such as delivery time from your suppliers and other items you order from that supplier, so you can streamline operations and minimise delivery costs. Find out more about this feature by reading our inventory management article.
This article has covered just a few ways which the AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 can improve how your business and the people within it operate. All of these examples help drive business efficiencies, improve decision making, reduce manual tasks and help organisations provide a better customer experience.