Rocking with A.I. is the New… Normal

AiDEA: the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Dynamics 365®

When it comes to marketing and, more generally, business, we often refer to a series of challenges related to a central topic: the continuous evolution of Customer Journey in the aftermath of an increasingly important and faster digital transformation.

All this is confirmed by the exponential growth in market demand for CRM tools with a special focus for 2020, it goes without saying, on E-Commerce.

Analysing data from Osservatorio CRM & Marketing Automation 2019, we read that out of 300 Italian companies participating in the research, the greatest demand lies in the B2B sectors of Northern Italy. Whilst this may not come as a surprise, it should be noted that 51% of the panel is made up of small companies with a turnover of < €10 million.

This implies that CRM tools are becoming more and more strategic even in smaller environments.

Still looking at the research, it reads of a remarkable growth between 2018 and 2019 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (+ 6.5%). An element certainly linked to the growing investments by the company as well as to the specific capabilities of the solution that make it particularly interesting.

We’ve seen incredible growth of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform just in the past year. This momentum is driving a massive investment in people and breakthrough technologies that will empower organizations to transform in the next decade.

We have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars in our business cloud that power business transformation across markets and industries and help organizations solve difficult problems.

This fiscal year we are also heavily investing in the people that bring Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform to life — a rapidly growing global network of experts, from engineers and researchers to sales and marketing professionals. Side-by-side with our incredible partner community, the people that power innovation at Microsoft will fuel transformational experiences for our customers into the next decade.

Tallying the momentous growth and continued expansion of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform (Nov 12, 2019 | Judson Althoff – Executive Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Business)

Let’s go through it. The overview summarised above suggests one thing: CRM tools play an increasingly important role in the marketplace, and it’s the evolution and continuous digital change within companies, combined with the need of strong data analyses to optimise Customer Experience (CX), that drive their rise. On top of this, we cannot forget an essential component of today’s world, that is to say the interesting and delicate subject called Artificial Intelligence. Raise your hand (or put a like) if your home does not yet have an “Intelligent” device: highly unlikely.

The Path of Artificial Intelligence

This is precisely the direction that is gradually becoming clearer and clearer in a world, that of IT, which cannot deny the evidence of the recent events. The idea of postponing to the next Quarter the adoption of processes, methods or tools that will actually simplify working life is now more than ever unthinkable.

Now let’s go one step further and simply turn on the TV or radio (a media which I personally prefer). The data we listen to every day, particularly for about a year now, is the simplest example of the application of technology to real life, and the one that is closest to us today.

New Way of Working for Reps

If we go deeper and contextualize everything in the specific dimension of the Pharmaceutical & Life Science industry, it goes without saying that the complexity linked to the production of a drug and its marketing is obvious to anyone, regardless of their specific notions and experience in the field. Beside this, now more than ever we have realized that, especially for medical care, research and innovation are vital.

Now, how do you find the best way to make such complex processes for companies in this market become simpler at least from a strategic and operational point of view? In fact, it is not always easy to be protagonist of decisive and “transgressive” turning points (in the etymological meaning of the term, from Latin transgrĕdi ‘going further’), for structural, organisational, political and sometimes also for historical reasons.

Before March 2020, as a matter of fact, the job of the Sales Rep was almost never imagined as a job that could be carried out remotely. It was far too far from today’s conception to assume that the experimental choice on a drug could be made effectively, promptly and timely online as it is done with a Face to Face approach. Yet, this, and much more, has happened. And it happened thanks to innovation.

The Importance of being… A.I.

So let’s get to the heart of the matter: what would you say if all this could be translated into data, analyses, marketing actions able to make customers really at the heart of our business strategy? What would you say if you were offered a CRM tool based on AI and on voice interaction? The same voice interaction with which we ask our Smart Speaker to set up a reminder to go to the dentist on Tuesday at 9.30 a.m., or the interaction we do with Siri on our mobile phone.

Someone would say: “We’re working on it”. Someone else would say: “Seeing is believing”. Some others would say: “For now I don’t care but the idea is brilliant”… Well, Trueblue chose to say “Let’s do it” and guess what, we really did it.

How? Well, as obvious as it may seem, if you remember the growth in Dynamics 365® market I was talking about at the beginning of this article, we’ll get to the answer right away. Developing such an innovative Customer Relationship Management system has required work, research, experience and know-how, but above all it has required a major partnership: that with Microsoft.

From this story AiDEA was born. A solution that is the epilogue of a narration made of bits, codes, conference calls, intelligent journeys and actionable insights. A story made up of Teams Meetings but above all of teams, collaboration and most of all of that so much debated Artificial Intelligence that is in fact nothing more than the fruit of intellect, research and development linked to a dream.

We are Dreamers

A dream that means allowing Sales Reps to organise their agenda and meetings while knowing perfectly well that everything is in line with what the company’s strategy requires. A dream that means giving the chance to revolutionize the way we do marketing, not because Dynamics 365® is one of the best-selling CRMs in 2019, or rather, not only because of this. But because behind every step of the suggested processes lies the thinking mind of those who know that suggesting a Customer Journey already optimised for a DEM linked to an event is probably better than requesting thousands of steps to set up a personalised journey. Let’s be clear, who doesn’t like to do the right things in a simple way?

A dream that translates into a set of possibilities that, from a marketing point of view, are interesting for two main reasons, which, if you think about it, are perhaps the main ones in such a context:

Integration – Let’s not pretend. Having the world’s most advanced CRM tool without integrating Sales and Marketing activities would be like having an unfinished puzzle.  You get the sense of the image but you can’t see the whole picture.

User-friendliness – Here I’ll spend a few more words because I have used several CRM tools, I would say the main ones on the market. For a marketing manager or a marketer in general, nothing, really nothing is more important than the ability to plan but also to act promptly to respond to the demands of business. If the complexity in the practical execution of tasks becomes the bottleneck of the tasks themselves, we know very well that that campaign to launch the new Product, which was due to start yesterday, will start next week. Minor problem? Well I think I can say straight away: let’s talk about it again in December with results in hand.

In conclusion, whatever your point of view, just to keep up to date with what’s happening around us, I suggest you take a look below.

AiDEA: the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Dynamics 365®