Software

Review: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Better Agencies View Into Citizens’ Online Interactions

The platform allows agencies to start small and expand as needed, or jump into a full-scale digital transformation.

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John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer and public speaker with 20 years of experience covering technology.

In business, customer service and relationship management can mean the difference between bringing in new clients or losing revenue. But the federal government doesn’t have to worry about that, because citizens can’t go anywhere else for veterans’ benefits, Social Security payouts or passports.

But federal agencies still want to keep citizens happy. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help tie millions of data points and services together, track and evaluate interactions, and generally help agencies quickly ramp up to improve the customer experience.

The Dynamics 365 platform is an entire suite of tools that allows agencies to either start small and expand as needed or jump into a full-scale digital transformation. And because it’s deployed as a service, it can be installed immediately to begin collecting and analyzing data in all its forms within a single day.

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Dynamics’ Powerful Observations Inform Agency Interactions

The star feature of Dynamics 365 is its ability to improve customer interactions. At the most basic level, it can watch as citizens navigate websites and applications. It will time how long each interaction takes, watch for bottlenecks and compare drop-off rates with how many people got the service or information they needed.

It can then help streamline those interactions and monitor for new efficiencies, checking later to see how much time is being saved with every new change.

At a higher level, Microsoft Dynamics 365 can refine internal staff processes and interactions, ensuring that employees are not wasting time searching for the tools they need to conduct government business.

The platform’s advanced features include the ability to deploy and manage artificial intelligence in the form of chatbots. For example, an agency could automate its customer service response, with Dynamics making sure callers or online visitors get everything they need quickly.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers federal agencies a powerful toolset to capture insights, drive efficiencies, improve the user experience and generally help government agencies transform from legacy services to efficient, businesslike organizations their constituents will appreciate.

SPECIFICATIONS

PRODUCT TYPE: CRM tool
CONNECTED APPS: Works with data from almost any public or private application, database, IoT network or cloud application
CLOUD-READY: Native with Microsoft Azure; also functions in other clouds
DISTRIBUTION: As a service
LICENSE: Per seat or per user

How Dynamics 365 Improved Disrupted Supply Chains

While the COVID-19 pandemic put a new focus on the customer experience, having a positive interaction with constituents does little good if a federal agency can’t provide requested services or is severely hindered because of supply chain disruptions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help with that as well.

Dynamics can ingest almost any kind of data, including traditional spreadsheets, databases, photos, video and almost anything generated by online forms or applications.

Repairing the supply chains that were severely disrupted by the pandemic is an issue that spans the globe. Dynamics can’t fix the worldwide problem, but it can use data to analyze the use and repair history of machines and devices deployed within the government.

It can then anticipate, for example, when a machine or part is likely to break or lose efficiency and order appropriate replacement parts long before they are needed.

LEARN MORE: How to create a better customer experience across industries.

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to study seven large organizations with complex supply chains to see how much Dynamics could improve operations in an era of constant disruptions. The results were impressive, especially when combined with an IT modernization program at organizations that decommissioned legacy silos in favor of more modern or cloud-based assets.

Across the board, every organization studied experienced streamlined operations. For example, accurately predicting that a part would likely fail in six months gave some organizations time to order replacements, preventing a potential breakdown from becoming a critical issue.

And by analyzing IT overall, Dynamics also recommended which systems, applications and processes could be replaced to achieve the biggest total economic impact, and which could wait until future budget cycles. That contributed to greater ROI across the board, especially for IT assets.

Because Microsoft Dynamics 365 is able to ingest and analyze almost any kind of data from almost any source, its potential uses are nearly limitless. Agencies might initially deploy Dynamics to improve citizen interactions but will easily find many more ways in which this powerful set of business tools can prove its value.