Marketing + Sales + Service = One Cloud for All
At the risk of offending the people I work most closely with on a day to day basis, I do have to admit that the part of my job that I most enjoy is talking to customers. Only when I can get out on front of someone who is looking to rely on our products to run their business can I see first-hand how excited they are about what we can do together to help their business succeed in a complex market.
Lately, a lot if not all of those conversations involve marketing. Partly this is indicative of the times we live in—the role of marketer is mission critical given changes in how customers are buying. But mostly this is because we are delivering a solution to the market that is frankly the only end-to-end solution out there.
What do I mean by end to end? First, start with the marketer…with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, marketers can turn their budgets and plans into campaigns executed across multiple channels that deliver highly qualified leads to sales. Now, let’s look at the sales side of the house, we are giving your sales team incredible transparency into how the prospect was marketed to, what tactics were they targeted for, and as a result, they can see what their customer is interested in, what activities they participated in, how they have engaged with you, what whitepaper they have downloaded, what webinars they have attended – the examples are endless. Think about how important is it that your call center agent also has line of sight into all of your activities across marketing and sales so that if you have a problem, they know how to better service you. But whereas visibility is one thing, intelligence is another. By being able to track these processes across marketing, sales and service we’re helping customers develop the insights that tell them exactly how they can more effectively and efficiently work together to optimize the customer journey.
Let’s be clear, this isn't just giving your team the ability to see a marketing calendar, we give them the unprecedented ability to see what marketing campaigns are in flight, what the tactics for the campaign are, which of their accounts is targeted, even allowing them to help refine targeting. Whereas our competitors seem to want to keep these business functions siloed, even giving them their own separate ‘clouds’, at Microsoft we recognize the need for marketers, salespeople and service agents to align their efforts. Only by working synergistically together will your organization truly be able to deliver amazing and personalized experiences to your customers every time. Is it time to get your act together? Tell me what you think.
To read more about what is coming, download the Release Preview Guide.
To see what is available today, take a test drive.
Bob Stutz
