Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Wave 2 Release 2020: Sales & Marketing
This is the first in a series of articles that will give an overview of the new features being introduced in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) and associated elements of the Dynamics platform as part of the Wave 2 release.
The release notes were published July 8th 2020 and the planned features will be rolled out between October 2020 and March 2021.
Early access to selected features is available from August 3rd 2020, for testing and validation purposes. Details of those features be found here. Alternatively, general availability (GA) commences on October 2nd 2020, when regional deployments will begin. The full Dynamics 365 and Power Platform product roadmap is available here and full details of the Wave 2 release are available either online or in PDF format.
The Dynamics 365 CE areas covered by this article are:
- D365 Marketing
- D365 Sales
Dynamics 365 Marketing
With features introduced in the Wave 2 release, you can:
- Use natural language to create targeted segments
- Benefit from in-place editing of email and forms
- Use continuously updating, multi-data source segments from Customer Insights in marketing campaigns
- Create engaging customised emails as a faster pace
- Create and manage social media posts and easily monitor performance
- Build customer journeys more efficiently using the new canvas experience
- Collect data from form submissions more easily with expanded entity options
- Run webinars and meetings using direct integration with Microsoft Teams
“D365 Marketing improves the customer journey canvas experience and adds integration with Microsoft Teams for virtual events. Segmentation is enhanced, with a new, natural language experience to create and consume segments, helping eliminate the specialised skills needed to build complex segments.” Microsoft
Dynamics 365 Sales
The D365 Sales offering comprises Sales, Sales Insights and Product Visualize. The Wave 2 release features for each of these areas are outlined below.
As well as usability improvements to the Sales area, the following key features have also been added or updated:
- Gamification admin experience available in Unified Interface
- Enterprise grade, fully customisable forecasting
- Support for D365 Assistant, ad-hoc reporting and programmatic upload of quotas
- Simplified duplicate detection and merge
- Enhanced capabilities for PDF, email and adding products to opportunities
- Standalone sales app for mobile, with improved search, lists and forms, making it easier to complete tasks
“D365 Sales continues emphasis on simplified experiences, app integrations, gamification, a new mobile experience for quick access to customer information and new enhancements to forecasting to natively create and manage bottom-up sales forecast processes.” Microsoft
Dynamics 365 Sales Insights
There have been improvements to Sales Insights to provide an enhanced experience in several areas, including predictive forecasting, deal flow, predictive score and snapshot. Additional features include:
- Modified infrastructure for scoring leads and opportunities
- Easily onboarded conversation intelligence
- Holistic conversation intelligence customer view
- Auto-capture for relationship intelligence data capture
- Improvements to the Sales accelerator to help inside sellers prioritise and engage more effectively
“D365 Sales Insights Continues investments across multiple areas; sales acceleration, conversation intelligence, relationship intelligence, and advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence with predictive lead and opportunity scoring to help sales teams uncover top deals.” Microsoft
Dynamics 365 Product Visualize
It is expected that the following features will enter public preview in March 2021:
- 3D animation
- Improved rendering quality and performance
The date for GA is yet to be announced.
The next article in this series will focus on D365 Service.
“D365 Product Visualize empowers sellers and accelerates complex sales processes by showcasing and customising products in their real-world environment. Sellers can place a 3D digital twin of a product in their customer’s environment and make detailed notes about their requirements.” Microsoft
Updates
