Johannesburg, 18 Apr 2018
Intelligent apps (IAs) are proliferating. In our workplace, IAs are already in use; consider the way the latest version of Outlook prioritises your mail into 'focused' and 'other'. But, these are simple features. The real art is achieved through intelligent collaboration.
Consider LinkedIn Navigator, the recent launch by Microsoft and LinkedIn. It is a result of the convergence of cloud-based services, big data and IOT. Combining the features of Office 365, Dynamics 365, and LinkedIn, all supported by the cloud, Microsoft uses the power of IOT and machine learning to draw its users' attention to deals that have a higher propensity to close versus those that are at risk. All in the name of working smarter, not harder.
The platform is designed to provide increased visibility and intelligence on your professional relationships and sales opportunities for optimum performance, leveraging the concept of a predictive service model in the business sphere and alerting you to important updates using its machine learning capability.
While the platform is split into three key areas: Relationship Manager, Sales Navigator and Point Drive, the essence across all remains the same: a predictive service model can be used to drive better business outcomes.
Relationship Manager provides tracking and insight into your professional relationships via the integration of Office 365 and LinkedIn. Health scores are provided, based on the time the team has spent interacting with this customer: aggregating all interactions, e-mails, phone calls, and LinkedIn messages. Alerts are provided if a customer or contact hasn't been in touch for a longer time than usual. Another tool, Team link, identifies people within a company to connect with based on your LinkedIn network, thereby allowing you to broaden your contacts within a particular company.
Via the intelligent analysis of big data available on the LinkedIn platform, Sales Navigator guides sales teams to the next best action based on data they put into the CRM, and consequently, receive 'warm' leads. Power BI is used to aggregate data about the sales pipeline and inform the team where the opportunities exist; whether it be in reviving a professional relationship, or how far along an existing deal may be.
[Pullout] Thanks to the way Sales Navigator optimises searches and lead generation, Microsoft Corporation itself has seen an 18% increase in all of its deals.
Point Drive allows teams to develop a customer-specific document sharing platform. Thanks to the integration of Dynamics 365, teams can generate a proposal in an instant - ensuring no productivity loss. Thereafter, as this link is shared across the customer base within a company, the sales team can track who has viewed it, providing more valuable information about who is interested and up to speed with the latest proposal.
Taken together, these IAs can transform business productivity, cutting out the dead weight and focusing only on relationships and sales leads that are relevant via the use of big data insights.
In response to the question: "Cloud, now what?" Microsoft's experience of 18% increase in productivity since employing LinkedIn Navigator demonstrates how transformational this could be for any business.
LinkedIn Navigator promises to introduce a whole new approach and mindset to the way we work. Through the use of data analytics across these platforms, LinkedIn Navigator not only provides visibility on your CRM approach, but also dramatically improves productivity which could help your business become more agile and competitive.
Perhaps it's time to let cloud supported machine learning take over our administrative tasks at work, so employees can take time to build more meaningful business and professional relationships.
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