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carlydanner
Copper Contributor
Jul 18, 2023

Microsoft Inspire July 18-19

 

Release summary                                          

At Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft will announce the next wave of AI capabilities and innovations for Business Applications including:  

  • Microsoft Sales Copilot, a Copilot designed for sellers that can be accessed in the tools where sellers work, whether that is Outlook, Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales, and connects to other CRM systems like Salesforce.
  • The new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will now combine customer journey orchestration (CJO) and customer data platform (CDP) capabilities as a single solution.
  • AIM for the future with Microsoft, a new initiative that enables customers to move from on-premises to cloud-first Dynamics 365 business applications and access new innovations like AI. 
  • Power Automate Process Mining will become generally available on August 1, provides an opportunity for customers to maximize process insights, reduce complexity of processes and drive efficiencies with automation.
  • 2023 Release Wave 2 plans are now available on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release plan page and will be updated frequently with new capabilities that will become available in the Business Applications Portfolio starting in October 2023.

 

Event Information

Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft’s annual partner event, brings together partners from around the world to build business, empower possibilities, create and strengthen connections, and celebrate together. It’s Microsoft’s opportunity to articulate to partners how to build your business with Microsoft and the benefits you receive from Microsoft’s differentiated business model and technology. This year, Inspire will deliver digital core content combined with selected in-person area activations. Join Satya Nadella, Judson Althoff, Nick Parker and Nicole Dezen as they deliver keynote content aligned to Accelerate AI transformation with Microsoft, Drive customer success together, and Fuel partner business growth and profitability themes. For Business Applications, the list of announcements and disclosures below highlight Microsoft’s competitive differentiation and market momentum across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.  Register today!

 

Announcement Details

Microsoft Sales Copilot

Microsoft Sales Copilot, a role-based copilot designed for sellers, is an evolution of Microsoft Viva Sales. Sales Copilot empowers sellers to increase productivity and personalize every customer interaction so they can close more deals. It is experienced in the applications where sellers work, whether that is Outlook, Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales, and connects to other CRM systems like Salesforce. Viva Sales, announced in June 2022, kickstarted our work of transforming seller experiences, and these capabilities are now part of Sales Copilot.

 

Since February, we’ve been adding new generative AI capabilities to help sellers be more productive with capabilities like email drafts and email thread summaries with sales-specific prompts and actions informed by Outlook and CRM data. Within Teams, sellers receive coaching tips during meetings, helping them reply to customer inquiries, and meeting summaries with action items that are automatically converted to tasks in CRM, saving seller time and personalizing customer interactions. These capabilities from Viva Sales are now part of Sales Copilot and available within Dynamics 365 Sales, along with new capabilities like AI-generated opportunity summaries for sellers to quickly catch up on pipeline and meeting preparation which summarizes customer details, past interactions, and related news.

 

Sales Copilot is generally available today both as a standalone subscription (the subscription name itself will transition on September 1, 2023) and included as part of customers’ existing Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise & Premium licenses at no additional cost, with new capabilities rolling out this month.

 

Readiness & Enablement Resources

 

Partner Call-To-Action

 

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

To enable connected customer experiences across sales, marketing, and customer service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will now combine customer journey orchestration (CJO) capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing and customer data platform (CDP) capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into a new single solution.

 

Microsoft is also announcing two new Copilot capabilities that will be in preview in August: use natural language to orchestrate customer journeys, and use natural language to style your email, forms, and event registration pages to perfectly match brand guidelines – all included in the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offer. This builds on existing capabilities already in preview: content ideas, query assist, and dialogue with data – and we are adding enhancements to content ideas and query assist.

  

Readiness & Enablement Resources

 

Partner Call-To-Action

 

AIM For the future with Microsoft

Announcement Overview

“AIM for the Future with Microsoft”, is a brand-new initiative that provides qualified on-premises business applications customers a tailored path to the cloud. It covers a range of activities and initiatives to support customers in their cloud transformation journey.   Partners are trusted advisors to customers in their cloud transformation, providing services from implementation and deployment to advisory and change management. Partners can amplify AIM, and the AI market momentum, to accelerate their go-to-market motions to engage with their on-premises customers.

 

Partners can make use of AIM-supported marketing campaigns (coming in September) to create awareness with their on-premises customer base about AIM and why now is the time to progress with their move to the cloud.  With AIM, on premises customers can unlock limitless innovation and productivity now in this new era of AI only by modernizing their ERP and CRM systems. Microsoft is expanding the coverage of the incentive and support programs under AIM to a broader range of products, so all on premise customers across Dynamics AX, NAV, GP, SL and other on-premises ERP and CRM products can benefit.

 

Readiness & Enablement Resources  

 

Partner Call to Action:

  • Familiarize yourself with the AIM announcement and new assets on the AIM Page on Partner Hub
  • As part of the FY24 solutions plays, you can find AIM aligning to both the Optimize finance and supply chain play, as well as the Scale Business Operations SMB play. AIM materials and CTAs are incorporated into the solutions play assets to be positioned as an enabler to accelerate the adoption of AI powered technologies by moving to the cloud
  • Reach out to your on-premises customers and offer an AIM assessment as the first step in their migration journey

 

Power Automate Process Mining

Process and task mining is changing the way businesses optimize their processes and save costs. With Power Automate Process Mining becoming generally available in Power Platform, Microsoft provides an opportunity for customers to maximize process insights, reduce the complexity of processes and drive efficiencies with automation and low-code apps.

 

Power Automate Process Mining is an add-on of Power Automate, an end-to-end hyper automation solution which provides customers the ability to build workflows to automate quickly and securely, run attended and unattended RPA, and enhance your workflows with AI.

 

Process mining is critical for any organization to provide deep process insights empowering customers to identify bottlenecks in processes and continuously improve them. Out-of-box templates in Power Automate Process Mining enable customers to seamlessly drive powerful business process insights from event log data in systems of records like ERP (SAP), CRM, HR systems as well cloud flows in Power Automate and Microsoft Power Virtual Agent.

 

Power Automate Process Mining enables your customers to:

  • Define and measure the business challenges of the process you want to analyze or improve
  • Use AI to analyze and generate insights used for creating a solution
  • Deliver ROI through action against the insights, continuous monitoring and improvement of the process

 

Readiness & Enablement Resources

 

Partner Call to Action:

 

Power Platform Licensing Updates

With the general availability of Process Mining, Microsoft further expands its low-code offering – providing customers with not only the most complete hyper automation offering in the market – but the most comprehensive low-code platform including copilot in Microsoft Power Platform, the AI powered assistant. Customers are increasingly standardizing on Power Platform as their low-code platform to modernize at scale and build innovative solutions. To that end, we want to share some changes that optimize our portfolio and align to our customers’ buying habits. The following updates will take effect on August 1, 2023:

  • We are optimizing the Power Automate and Power Apps SKU lineups with a focus on Power Automate Premium per user and Power Apps Premium per user
  • We are launching a new Power Automate SKU, Power Automate Process, which includes an ‘automation bot’
  • We are launching Process Mining in Power Automate Premium per user and announcing an add-on for additional capacity

 

Updates to the Power Platform pricing pages will be live August 1, 2023 to reflect the above changes.

 

Readiness & Enablement Resources

The following resources will be available soon on Partner Hub, including an updated Power Platform Licensing Deck and a Power Platform Licensing FAQ.

 

Partner Call to Action:

 

Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program

To further capitalize on the Business Applications opportunity, we announced general availability of the new Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, the next generation of our partner program, empowering every partner to deliver customer value leveraging AI and the Microsoft Cloud. As we emphasize our partner-first approach, we invite you to engage in this program to capitalize on new economic opportunities for you and your businesses. With program benefits that scale across the breadth of Microsoft AI Cloud solutions, including Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Security, partners have access to product benefits, technical consultations, skilling and enablement, go-to-market investments, co-selling and incentives.

 

Partner Call to Action:

 

*New* Intelligent Automation specialization

On July 11, we announced a new specialization for Business Applications – Intelligent Automation. This new specialization allows partners to differentiate their business by demonstrating expert capabilities delivering end-to-end business process transformation for customers with Power Automate. This specialization allows partners with an active Solutions Partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure) or Business Applications designation to validate your organization’s capabilities in enabling end-to-end business process transformation.

 

Aligned to the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, specializations are a way for partners to further differentiate their deep technical expertise across a set of priority scenarios with high customer demand.

 

Partner Call to Action:

  • Visit your dashboard in Partner Center to view the requirements of each specialization against your relative achievement. As soon as you have met the requirements, you will be automatically enrolled

 

ISV Connect consolidation into ISV Success

We have merged the Business Applications ISV Connect program into ISV Success to improve your ability to build applications on our platform. The ISV Success program offers technical support earlier in the journey, dev/test sandbox access at the Microsoft Cloud level, dedicated engagement managers to help you navigate the program and best in class marketing and sales tools to grow your business.

 

Partner Call to Action:

 

2023 Release Wave 2

The 2023 Release Wave 2 plans are now available on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release plan page and will be updated frequently with new products and features that will be available to partners and customers.

 

Call to Action

ai
BizApps
copilot
Dynamics 365
Inspire
Power Platform
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