Why Marketing Teams Are Migrating to Dynamics 365 for Unified Customer Data

Introduction: Why Unified Customer Data Is a Priority for Marketing Teams

Today’s marketers have set the bar even higher regarding the development of tailored high-order campaigns. Fully integrated customer data exemplifies the demand marketers strive to meet. Teams develop actionable insights informed by integrated customer data to understand customer behavior and preferences. Consequently, carefully crafted strategies can be deployed to improve performance, engagement, and conversions.

Growing customer interactions within the email, social media, and website channels have created a constant influx of information that marketers attempt to manage; the data integration trend stems from marketers attempting to manage this congestion. Absent a unified platform, silos manifest data inconsistencies and missed opportunities.  For example, a customer’s online behavior would be misaligned with their previous purchases if data were stored in separate silos. With unified data, marketers can develop in-depth customer profiles with precise segmentation and timely outreach.

Marketers must balance regulatory demands with consumer privacy concerns. Managing service data within integrated systems improves compliance and builds trust. For companies operating in competitive markets, integrated data provides the ability to forecast and adapt, becoming a competitive advantage. Combined with the regulatory demands on marketers, this phenomenon depicts data as a foundation for sustainable growth within the discipline.

What Unified Customer Data Means for Modern Marketing

Unified customer data is the integration of all customer-related data in one easily accessible location. This includes customer profiles, transaction history, activity history, and feedback across multiple customer interaction channels. From a marketing perspective, it is the integration of data into a cohesive whole, relaying a complete and actionable picture to inform the marketing strategy. From a practitioner’s perspective, it enables real-time campaign optimization. Also, data unification can enable advanced analytics, such as predictive analytics, to identify and anticipate future customer behaviors. Improved customer data analytics to identify and predict customer behaviors results in the elimination of wasteful spending on ad impressions, an enhanced and more targeted user experience from consistent, unified messaging, and a greater overall team productivity and collaboration from everyone working off a unified customer data set. All this marketing automation is possible because of data analytics technology and processes capable of merging varied data sets without analytical quality compromise. These data integration technologies are the most relied upon in modern marketing to achieve competitive customer personalization. Outdated marketing automation processes are more common in a fast-paced environment without integrated customer data.

Why Marketing Teams Are Migrating to Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is becoming a favorite for many marketing teams due to its CRM-focused features. It has split CRM and ERP features, which is perfect for companies looking to make their processes and operations more centralized. These migrations tend to happen because their legacy systems don’t make sense to remove, nor do they scale with the business.

Integration with other Microsoft software, most notably Azure and Power BI, is helpful for reporting and tracking. Because these products all work seamlessly with each other, teams don’t have to use a stack of other software to get their work done. They also work well within their business software, which is important for companies with remote employees.

Some reasons for migration to Dynamics have to do with:

• Fully automated processes that use built-in AI.
• The ability of marketing and other teams to actively work in the same digital space. Dynamics is built for omnichannel.
• The ability to handle large and growing amounts of data seamlessly.

For these reasons, many organizations turn to Dynamics 365 migration services to ease the transition from legacy systems. It, in turn, allows for more tailored systems and processes so teams can hit the ground running. It also saves pain point data, so the Dynamics 365 system works and incorporates its data. It is a clear win for all teams to be able to have their pain points addressed.

How Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supports Personalized, Data-Driven Marketing

Microsoft Dynamics 365 uses the Customer Insights module to improve personalized marketing strategies for businesses. It pulls data from many sources to build specific customer segments according to behaviors, preferences, and histories. Machine learning helps data-driven approaches by analyzing patterns and providing suggestions for businesses to take. For example, journey orchestration designs customer pathways that adapt in real time. If a customer interacts with certain content, the program will recommend an email with similar products. Marketing automation tools integration helps with campaign execution, covering everything from planning to measurements.

Because of this, real-time personalization is introduced through email dynamic content that is based on customer data, advanced analytics dashboards to monitor performance and ROI, and automation of lead scoring to prioritize prospects and score high. To achieve this, companies use Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation services. These services help to configure the platform so that it matches the marketing objectives, including the installation of personalized workflows. Thanks to data-driven decision making, Dynamics 365 helps teams deliver campaigns that grow customer loyalty and increase revenue.

Data Governance, Security, and Compliance Benefits

Features using Microsoft’s Data Governance tools help with the proper use and handling for data governance. The use of role-based access control, which restricts access to certain and sensitive data, minimizes the chances of internal data breaches. Automated auditing helps track modifications for internal oversight.

The Microsoft security measures for data also include artificial intelligence. Microsoft 365 uses security encryption for data that is both in transit and at rest. Microsoft security also includes external threat protection for things like malware and phishing attacks. Microsoft 365 is built for compliance with regulations like CCPA and GDPR, which helps with reporting and managing user consent to stay protected in the system.

Some of the benefits of these regulations include:

• Easy and centralized policy implementation for the whole company.
• Microsoft frequently offers updates to the 365 systems for any external breaches and threats.
• The identity management systems are integrated for secure user access and authentication.

These systems and tools allow marketing to have peace of mind to have data practices that are secure. This also makes it possible to innovate without the worry of a data breach. Microsoft keeps security and data governance core to the system for customer trust.

Dynamics 365 vs Other Customer Data Solutions

Compared to Salesforce and Adobe Experience Platform, Dynamics has its strong suits and weaknesses, and integrations with Microsoft products like Office 365 and Azure can be strong advantages to Dynamics 365 users. Salesforce does, however, offer heavier product customization, though it does come with a price, as numerous 3rd party integrations become necessary.

Dynamics 365 is, in many cases, the best choice on the price-to-value spectrum for mid-sized businesses. Their licensing is modular, with scalable options. Adobe is heavily fixated on content management, and as such, is well-suited for creative teams. However, extreme focus does lead to the neglect of some elements, and in the case of Dynamics 365, the neglect of ERP systems is evident.

Notable differences are: Dynamics 365 has far greater systems integration and natural language programming query systems with its proprietary systems compared to the offering with its competitors, like HubSpot.  As the best option of its kind for integration and process management of systems with a variety of both structured and unstructured data, Dynamics 365 has no parallel offering. Despite some dated UX, it has no parallel offering, as most systems have fallen to far too simplistic a UX design instead of the demise of levels of pre-technical design, making XML and scripting principally simplistic integrations reminiscent of the pre-technical.

While some options are far more simplistic in other regards, Dynamics 365 usually possesses extreme simplicity in pre-technical styled integrations, scripting, and XML layers.

While some offerings are more simplistic in some regards, Dynamics 365 usually possesses a greater pre-technical style simplicity, offering noteworthy levels of scripting and XML rather than a simplistic aesthetic beyond the demise of levels of pre-technical design.

Key Considerations Before Migrating to Dynamics 365

To avoid problems when data is imported, analyze your records prior to a migration to Dynamics 365. Remove falsifications and duplicates to make your datasets accurate. Assess the readiness and training requirements of your team to bring adoption to its fullest.

Build your budget, as it will be necessary to include licensing, customization, and consulting (if needed). Reflect on integration with your current systems to avoid interruptions when using your systems.

Key factors to consider:

• Timeline: Try to establish realistic phases and commence with a pilot to assess functionality.
• Data mapping: Align data fields of your current systems with the Dynamics 365 data model.
• Vendor selection: Seek vendors who know the industry and have handled similar transitions.

Everything must be running as expected when testing post-migration. If the outlines are kept, the implementation will be more successful.

Conclusion: Why Dynamics 365 Is Becoming a Marketing Data Hub

Dynamics 365 is becoming a primary choice for centralizing marketing data, streamlining the process of unifying data, and supporting planning initiatives. It shifts the focus to strategic achievement by overcoming certain barriers to data management. As more users integrate the system, the platform is constantly evolving and addressing modern marketing demands. Such evolution makes Dynamics 365 a more dependable choice for those who want to bolster their data management capabilities.