18.04.2018 14:00 EEST (UTC +3)
Press Release
For Immediate Release
Microsoft's Office 365 Customer Immersion Experience (CIE), a half day workshop where customers can try out the modern collaboration and productivity tools in a ready-made demo environment, has been extremely successful. The lack of a similar experience room concept for Microsoft's Dynamics 365 solution prompted Innofactor's Swedish CRM experts to build one of their own. Barely a few months later, customers are lining up to experience this modern cloud-based CRM solution hands on at Innofactor's Stockholm office.
Digital transformation is perceived to be business critical by nearly all CxO's yet engaging in projects related to business process digitalization is often feared to be complex and laden with risk. Innofactor Sweden offers a helping hand with its brand-new experience room concept, similar to Microsoft's Office 365 CIE, which allows customers to try out first-hand how Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables them to modernize and simplify the way their sales, marketing and field services work.
"Our objective was to show customers the tangible benefits they can achieve instead of just talking about the product", says Marianne Lager, Marketing and Communications Manager at Innofactor AB.
"By experiencing how effortless these new tools and ways of working are as a team, customers see for themselves what impact e.g. social selling and 360-degree visibility to customer data could have for their entire organization."
Business scenarios and teamwork
Innofactor is now opening the doors to its in-house built Microsoft Dynamics 365 experience room in Stockholm. The concept is targeted at management teams who want to take their organization to the next level in digitalizing their sales and marketing processes. During the 4-hour session, the participants will assume different organizational roles and manage their team through a fictional business scenario with the help of Microsoft Dynamics 365. This allows them to experience how new ways of working and modern cloud-based solutions create value, support their decision making and simplify work by automating tasks and processes.
"We want to show customers how this solution supports their work and give them a better idea how they could take it into use quickly and cost-effectively in their own organization," says Marianne Lager.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Digitalization of the sales and marketing processes provides sales leaders the edge they need to face competition. "Legacy CRM and ERP systems are often too inflexible or expensive to adapt to the quickly changing environment. Integrating them with new competitive cloud-based marketing tools and solutions such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator or marketing automation platforms like Marketo or HubSpot can become a nightmare," says Marianne Lager. "Competition is tough, and today's account managers have to stay one step ahead and be present and active in the channels where the customers are, e.g. on LinkedIn. Those who succeed in doing so will be the ones closing the best deals."
Microsoft Dynamics 365 brings together CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and helps customers to break down the organizational and business process silos. Microsoft has deployed a new common data model that allows different business applications to communicate and exchange data in the background, facilitating the digitalization of cross-functional business processes and usage of data within the organization. In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator has now become a central part of its offering, with off-the-shelf connectivity to e.g. the Dynamics 365 for Sales CRM solution.
"By integrating external information from LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Microsoft Dynamics 365, organizations are able tap into huge new opportunities to engage their customers at right times during their digital buyer's journey," Marianne Lager continues. "It's that moment of insight for the customer we're after in our experience room. How the simplifying of tasks creates faster lead-to-revenue cycles, saves more time and improves teamwork and communication."
"It's the best way I've ever seen to not only explain, but also demonstrate the CRM concept in action. Entertaining, easy and straightforward – it's easy to see the benefit for our customers' management teams. It was really an a-ha moment also for us!"
Peter Nicks, Territory Channel Manager, Microsoft
More information
Marianne Lager, Marketing and Communications Manager, Innofactor AB
marianne.lager@innofactor.com, +46 70 223 73 18
Innofactor is a leading Nordic provider of digitalization and cloud solutions. Innofactor has Microsoft Ecosystem's leading expertise and the most comprehensive offering in the Nordics. Innofactor has over 600 eager and motivated top professionals in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Innofactor serves over 1,500 commercial, public, and third sector organizations. In 2013 to 2017, the annual growth of Innofactor's net sales has been approximately over 20%. The Innofactor Plc share is listed in the technology section of the main list of NASDAQ Helsinki Ltd. www.innofactor.com