Power BI: Leveraging the Cloud-First Approach for Business Success Part 3

By investing in Power BI, Power Automate, and various Dynamics 365 solutions, Integrity Data has transformed our operations, enhanced data visibility, and streamlined processes. Welcome to Part 3 of our blog series exploring how Integrity Data has maximized the benefits of a cloud-first approach over the past three years. This series aims to inspire other businesses to adopt a cloud-first strategy for improved efficiency and growth.

Part 3; Customizing Dynamics 365 for Enhanced Business Operations

Integrity Data has adopted various Dynamics 365 solutions to enhance their business operations. This part of the series will delve into the specific customizations and integrations that have significantly improved their processes.

• Dynamics 365 Sales is a powerful tool that enables salespeople to build strong relationships with their customers, take actions based on insights, and close deals faster. It helps keep track of accounts and contacts, nurture sales from lead to order, and create sales collateral. Additionally, it offers features like marketing lists and campaigns, and the ability to follow service cases associated with specific accounts or opportunities. Dynamics 365 Sales also includes AI-driven insights, conversation intelligence, and relationship intelligence to guide sellers on their next course of action.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is designed to help businesses build and maintain strong customer relationships. It offers features like case management for creating, tracking, and resolving customer service cases, knowledge base management for building a self-service resource library, and omnichannel support for offering customer service via phone, email, chat, and social media. It also includes service level agreements (SLAs) to define and track service commitments and customer satisfaction surveys to gauge customer sentiment.
• Dynamics 365 Project Operations is a comprehensive solution that brings together sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams within a single application. It improves deal management, increases productivity with AI, optimizes resource utilization, enhances collaboration, and simplifies time and expense processes. Project Operations also provides enhanced project visibility and helps drive business performance through streamlined project financials.

Customization for Better Utilization

Integrity Data has customized Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Engagement, and Project Operations to better suit their needs. Here are some specific customizations that have improved team visibility and collaboration:

• Added a new entity called “Subscriptions” to display subscription information from our subscription management solution. By introducing the “Subscriptions” entity, we provide a centralized and comprehensive view of subscription information, enhancing transparency and enabling more efficient management of subscription data.
• Simplified Project Operations by removing the project components around tracking expenses & materials. Simplified the time entry and billing components given that invoicing is handled in a separate system. This greatly simplified the user interface, making Project Operations easier to use and feel less daunting.
• Added a new entity called “Product Features”. This allows us to connect these features to multiple customers & contacts, and to support cases. It enables us to easily track customer feedback and follow-up with those customers when related product features are released.

These customizations have added significant value by enhancing the usability of the system, improving team collaboration, and ensuring that critical information is easily accessible.

Integration and Data Visibility

Customized Dynamics 365 solutions integrate seamlessly with other systems, enhancing data visibility and operational efficiency. Here are some examples:

• Used the “Billing Documents” entity to display invoice information from our billing system. By leveraging the “Billing Documents” entity, we ensure seamless access to accurate and up-to-date invoice information, enhancing transparency and efficiency in our billing processes.
• Saved PDFs of invoices to the SharePoint Document Locations for the Account. Storing PDFs of invoices in SharePoint Document Locations for each account provides a centralized and secure repository, facilitating easy retrieval and improved document management.
• Deployed AdobeSign Agreements, providing visibility into customer and partner agreements. Implementing AdobeSign Agreements offers enhanced visibility and tracking of customer and partner agreements, streamlining the signing process and ensuring compliance with contractual obligations.
• Connected Accounts in Dynamics 365 to customers in Business Central and in our subscription management system using a custom field in Dynamics 365 that stores the BC Customer ID. Integrating Accounts in Dynamics 365 with customers in Business Central and our subscription management system through a custom field for BC Customer ID enables seamless data synchronization, improving customer relationship management and operational efficiency.

Customizing model-driven applications like Dynamics 365 Sales is made easy with tools like the App Designer. Administrators or customizers can easily customize tables, dashboards, forms, views, charts, and business processes without having to write any code. This flexibility allows businesses to tailor the application to their specific needs, ensuring that the system works optimally for their unique processes.

Success Stories

Integrity Data has seen significant success with their customized Dynamics 365 solutions. Here are some case studies and testimonials:

• C-Level executives appreciate being able to see the value of customers and partners easily by having the recurring revenue visible in Dynamics 365. Customer records show the recurring revenue for their subscriptions, and partner records show the recurring revenue for the subscriptions of their customers.
• Customer Success Team can easily see the active and cancelled subscriptions for a customer, including the invoices for those subscriptions. This gives them the information they need to better service our customers.
• Finance Team no longer needs to manually create AdobeSign agreements and communicate status changes of agreements via email. Agreements are now created automatically from Opportunities and displayed, and kept up-to-date, in Dynamics 365 automatically.

Conclusion

Customizing Dynamics 365 solutions has proven to be highly beneficial for Integrity Data. We encourage other businesses to explore and customize their Dynamics 365 solutions to achieve better results and drive business success.