Microsoft Dynamics 365 – join us at APC to learn more!

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With digital transformation and customer engagement top of mind for our customers there’s never been a more relevant time to include cloud business applications in your discussions with your customers.  Last month we announced Microsoft Dynamics 365, bringing together our CRM and ERP cloud solutions into one cloud service with new purpose-built apps to help manage specific business functions, including: Financials, Field Service, Sales, Operations, Marketing, Project Service Automation and Customer Service.  We also announced Microsoft AppSource, a marketplace for business users to find and trial line-of-business SaaS apps from Microsoft and our Partners.

What does this mean for you, our Microsoft Partners?  You can find out more at next months’ Australia Partner Conference on the Gold Coast.  Alongside inspirational keynote speakers there will be a wealth of sessions valuable for you whether you’re an existing Microsoft Dynamics Partner or exploring what Dynamics could mean for your business.  Below are my top 6 favourite “must attend” sessions to hear more about Dynamics 365, AppSource and how they can help you change business processes into business advantage for your customers.

Join us on the Gold Coast next month to learn more and meet face-to-face with the local and regional Dynamics teams.

Sophie Corker, Business Group Lead, Business Applications, Microsoft Australia

 

Powering digital disruption with modern business applications

John Leonard - Dynamics Lead, Microsoft Australia

Wednesday 7 September; 14:00 - 14:45

Customers are looking for a trusted Partner to help them with the technology to support their critical business processes as they embark on digital transformation. Gone are the days of lengthy and costly implementation of traditional ERP systems.

ERP in the cloud is allowing customers to spin up and test business processes with little risk; roll-out in timely and manageable steps; and maintain flexibility to stay a step ahead of the competition.

What does this mean for you as a Partner? How do you make money in this new ERP world? How can you build SaaS business apps and sell at volume through marketplaces? Join us to learn more.

 

Building a practice to enable your customers to deliver intelligent customer engagements

Arman Masoudi - Senior Product Marketing Manager, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Australia

Tuesday 6 September; 11:15 - 12:00

Gartner’s 2015 CEO survey identified customer experience management as the top priority for technology investments over the next five years.

Discover how Dynamics 365 – together with insights and productivity tools and artificial intelligence – can provide your customers with a platform to deliver amazing customer experiences across sales, services and marketing. Also learn how to build a profitable practice supporting your customers with this critical challenge.

 

Grab the opportunity with Dynamics 365

Josh Burgess - CRM Partner Technology Strategist, Microsoft Australia

Tuesday 6 September; 13:00 - 13:45

Do you already have a successful Office 365 business with a strong customer base? Are you now looking for the next workload to deliver value to your customers? Are your customers asking for help to build stronger and longer-lasting connections with their customer base?

Learn more about Dynamics 365 and how it can help you grow your business in the SMB market.

 

A framework to create a customer experience to remember

Dr. Steve Nuttall - Director of CX Research, Fifth Quadrant

Wednesday 7 September; 10:00 -1 2:00 (Masterclass Workshop)

Once viewed as a soft metric, customer experience is now a priority for most businesses, ranking alongside profit and return as measures of an organisation’s success and a key point of differentiation. Businesses that see customer centricity as key to their future success are awakening to the benefits of understanding interactions from the customers’ perspective, and using this knowledge as a catalyst for business transformation.

These businesses have begun to embrace Customer Journey Mapping as an important technique and first step in the process to designing and creating better customer outcomes.

This master class will provide a practical demonstration of how Customer Journey Mapping techniques can be executed correctly and consistently and result in outputs which help transform the customer experience including:

  • Journey Mapping definitions, broad frameworks and templates
  • How to gather input from customers, and develop empathy
  • Creating Journey Mapping deliverables
  • Using journey mapping deliverables in the development of creative solutions

 

Outcome-Based Selling - Maximise Revenue and Value from your Sales Efforts

Bob Erdle - GM Worldwide Dynamics Enterprise Sales, Microsoft Corporation

Session date & time TBC

Ever had a customer waver at the last mile due to lack of stakeholder buy-in? Or, come to deal close and had the customer ask for a massive discount? In this session Bob will showcase a scalable and structured process to build a compelling business value proposition from a customer’s perspective.  You’ll hear how to change the conversation with your prospects to drive increased deal size, better sales velocity, improved deal qualification, reduced discounting and higher deal close rates.

Customer Experience: The new currency of power

Marcy Larsen - Industry Market Development Manager, Retail and Consumer, Microsoft Australia

Tuesday 6 September; 13:00 - 13:45

With the rise (and rise and rise) of social media, we all know the cardinal rule, mistreat your customers at your own peril.

So how do we explain the disparity between the $500 billion spent on marketing annually compared to just $9 billion on customer service?*. And when customers’ retention is recognised as the quickest way to profit growth.

In this session, hear from Australian businesses embracing the notion that customer experience and customer service IS the new marketing.

*source: Luke Brynley-Jones, Our Social Times