Microsoft integrates Cortana in Dynamics CRM 2016

Hoping to catch up and have an edge over market leader, Salesforce, Microsoft made public its own CRM, Dynamics CRM 2016 at its annual Convergence EMEA conference. The latest CRM comes with Cortana integration and provides the ability to create task-centered mobile apps to streamline the completion of customer-facing activities, like meeting follow-ups.

Microsoft stated that the latest version has offline capabilities, which can be accessed on mobile and tablets too and across all major platforms.

Powered by Azure Machine Learning models, Dynamics CRM 2016 previews capabilities such as intelligent product recommendations for sales reps to personalize up-selling and recommended knowledge articles to more effectively resolve customer service issues.

What to expect in Dynamics CRM 2016

Former VP of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Bob Stutz, had in August, this year listed the expectations from the latest version of the CRM:

1. An enhanced Excel experience within CRM, including new Excel templates to automate many core tasks. This helps our customers across the board but particularly in the sales as it allows them to do things like calculate commissions or manage a sales forecast. They get analysis and insights directly in their sales processes, without the need to export or switch – just easy toggling to reduce countless steps and eliminate the complexity.
2. The next generation of our CRM app for outlook enables people to track emails, add contacts from within an email or even create new records to track emails through the browser on PC, Mac or mobile browser on a phone.
3. Delve functionality to surface trending content that is most relevant to what a person is working on and what is trending around them. For example, Delve might show popular presentations or proposals to help our customers with their opportunity or account.
4. Contextual documents across SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Office 365 Groups for any CRM record. Our customers can now seamlessly open various Office apps within CRM or the CRM mobile app. We’re making it easy for people to open a document in the CRM app using different application on various devices like Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad or Microsoft Word for iPhone. After reviewing the document, they can return back to the CRM app simply by just tapping on the “back” button.
5. Personalized sales documents based on CRM data are now easier to build with Document Generation. People no longer need to manually extract CRM data for documents such as account summaries, quotes/orders/invoices, product sheets in Word. Automation of this core sales task is another way we’re saving people time.
6. Next generation Cortana integration. We’re taking our Cortana integration to the next level by embedding sales activities, accounts and opportunities into Cortana to surface what’s most relevant to salespeople at any time – across both personal and professional sources.

Meanwhile, Jujhar Singh, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, hopes that Dynamics CRM will continue to combine the strength of the cloud platform and business applications that will help businesses save costs, increase customer loyalty and even save patients’ lives. “For example, combining the field service capabilities from FieldOne with the power of the Azure IoT suite, will be able to deliver predictive maintenance right to the user, so companies can move away from a break-fix model to actually provide service before a breakdown. This will save time while creating efficiencies and predictability and increasing customer loyalty,” he added.