Getting buy-in to move away from a legacy system towards a new technology solution can be challenging for many organisations.
It is often difficult to articulate, in a compelling manner, the various ways in which new technology will benefit your organisation and convince your stakeholders of the value of such an investment.
A balanced business case discusses the quantifiable and qualitative benefits a new solution brings and provides a complete picture of the advantages and returns available. Luckily for those looking to build a business case for investment in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, an independent study has found that the platform yields significant ROI.
Nucleus study on ROI for Dynamics 365
An independent study by Nucleus found that for every £1 spent on Dynamics 365 (including implementation costs) organisations yield, on average, a £17 return in the first 3 years after deployment. This is twice the average return typically seen in the industry for CRM projects!
If you assume an investment of £100,000 for sophiscated implementation of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (including licences and support), that is a huge £1.7m return within the first 3 years after deployment.
Achieving this rate of return
So how is this huge rate of return achieved?
- Automation/integrations– Customer Engagement is shaped around your processes and automates and speeds up tasks. Seamless integration with other apps that your organisation uses, such as Office 365, saves time for users. Further process automation can be achieved with Microsoft Flow.
- User adoption– familiarity with solutions like Microsoft Office 365 drives natural user adoption as Microsoft products share a common design and user experience. High user adoption drives more efficient use of the system and less time and money spent on training and support.
- IT cost savings– moving to the cloud streamlines and reduces your ongoing IT costs by removing the need for servers, maintenance and system updates. All of this is managed by Microsoft as part of your subscription cost. The system also frees up your IT department’s time from being consumed by maintaining legacy systems.
- Deep insights through artificial intelligence (AI)– built-in reports, embedded intelligence and automated dashboards support better and faster decision making and provide deep insights right across your organisation.
- Customer management – used together, the three modules of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (Sales, Customer Service and Marketing) provides your team with the ability to more effectively manage customers – building deeper relationships and improving customer service. This all ultimately drives higher sales figures and strong retention rates.
What improvements can Customer Engagement drive?
In terms of the benefits Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement can bring once implemented, organisations can expect to see a range of improvements. Benefit from:
- A clear, holistic view for business leaders – Customer Engagement gives organisations a holistic business management approach that ties together all their customer relationships, global resources, project delivery, business process and data, all in one place. This gives leaders one source of the truth, displayed clearly.
- Data driven insights– Customer Engagement helps your people make better decisions every day through embedded dashboards that provide actionable insights right across your organisation. Connect to Power BI and perform even deeper analysis.
- Trackable sales performance – with analytics dashboards showing historical and predictive data, organisations can have greater visibility of sales performance and their team’s activity. Sales forecasts can be automated, helping leaders to have a more predictable view of performance.
- Targeting and selling smarter with AI – the system provides recommendations and guidance at every stage of the sales process with built-in intelligence, helping to move deals and prospects forward. In terms of marketing, personalise your communications per audience and send at the optimal time per contact and increase the impact of your activities.
- An adaptable, future-proof platform – Dynamics 365 empowers organisations to drive innovation with a future-proof application that’s easy to tailor, extend and connect to other apps and services that are already used – driving down future IT costs and the need for expensive bespoke solutions.
This article has been based on our experience of delivering successful Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement projects and the data provided by Nucleus as part of their independent study. If you are interested in seeing Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement in action and understanding the ROI the solution can drive for your organisation, book a free demo today.