With a portfolio of business applications (CRM and ERP), Dynamics 365 delivers superior operational efficiency and breakthrough customer experiences enabling businesses to become more agile and reduce complexity without increasing costs.

The addition of AI to the Dynamics suite of applications has helped in lightening the workload of mundane tasks. The insights help in increasing productivity and reducing operational time and costs.

We shall now delve into an interesting business scenario that discusses the use of this Dynamics 365 Sales offering.

Transforming Tender Proposal Management: Dynamics 365 Sales at the Helm

A Bus Manufacturing company needed to automate its current process of developing a Tender Proposal System. The existing process involved the following steps –

• A Salesperson monitors a dedicated mailbox for incoming Tender requirements to identify business proposal needs.
• They collaborate with various organizational stakeholders to gather the required details.
• They collate the information and come up with a 20-page proposal in response to said Tender.
• The proposal details are put together in a document and emailed to the prospect.

Due to the manual nature of this process, there were potential delays that could affect business development.

Subsequently, IncubXperts deemed Dynamics 365 Sales solution to be a fit, for the following reasons:

• A custom Business Process Flow can be developed to cover all the stages of Proposal Development. All required users can directly collaborate on the same opportunity to develop thefinal Proposal.
• Users can leverage the power of Copilot to boost productivity.
• Being a low code / no code platform, time to market and training time for business users is reduced.
• Integration capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales with other Microsoft products and third-party products enhance interoperability.

Thus, the proposed system can completely be automated and customized to boost efficiency.

Here, the typical Dynamics 365 Sales approach would have been –

• Triggering an instant flow based on tender inquiries received at a dedicated mailbox using Power Automate. It scans through emails and transforms them into leads, seamlessly entering the first stage of the tender management process.
• The Salesperson(s), then takes charge of nurturing the leads into full-fledged Opportunities.
• Through a well-defined Business Process Flow, a diverse team (employees on the shop floor, warehouse, paint shops, etc) aligns their efforts with the meticulous specifications outlined in the tender and syncs their efforts in a collective push toward completeness.
• As collaboration is automated here and in a single place, time to develop this opportunity is significantly reduced.
• Opportunity integration with Azure Function and a third-party tool generates a Word or PDF file, which is sent using Outlook’s integration features.
• Based on the response received, the Opportunity can be marked as ‘Closed-Won’ or ‘Closed-Lost,’ reflecting the outcome of the tender in the CRM.

The challenge with a conventional approach.

Data gathering turned out to be a tough nut to crack. The client required inputs from various users across the company to formulate comprehensive proposals. Herein appeared an added need – comprehensive training sessions for all users within the manufacturing unit. This would add a new learning curve for users that are not related to Sales. This would inflate the time taken to roll out the solution.

IncubXperts delved deeper into business research to grasp the essential aspects of the problem at hand. It became clear that the pivotal requirement for the client was enabling diverse users to effectively ‘collaborate’ on tender development prior to submission.

 Enhancing Collaboration: A Strategic Integration of Dynamics 365 and JIRA

IncubXperts initiated comprehensive discussions to discern the vital components of the system. These conversations provided clarity on the core requirements and offered valuable insights into the client’s existing technological ecosystem.

Upon closer examination, it was revealed that the client was already using JIRA for workflows. Moreover, users were already using Teams and Outlook for team communication and emails. This is how we found an opportunity to enhance collaboration by using integration capabilities to link D365 Sales with existing applications like JIRA, Teams, and Outlook.

 Streamlining Tender Management: A Seamless Workflow Integration

IncubXperts crafted a comprehensive solution that maximized the utility of the existing JIRA system and provided a seamless platform for collaborative tender development.

Here’s a detailed breakdown:

Lead Creation and Notification

An instant Power Automate flow was created in Power Apps to monitor the dedicated mailbox, triggering when a new email arrived with specific keywords in the subject line.

The flow, when triggered, added a new Lead into Dynamics CRM, parsing the email content to extract tender details and associating them with the Lead.

Notifications for the created new Leads were sent using the Outlook app for D365 to the respective Sales users.

Lead Qualification and Opportunity Generation

A Salesperson would review the Lead, to qualify it using a customized Lead -> Opportunity business process flow.

Once qualified, an Opportunity was generated, merging all details from the Lead.

Opportunity development with Teams and JIRA Integration

Once an opportunity is developed a Teams Channel is created to discuss its details. An opportunity owner and relevant stakeholders can discuss and collaborate on opportunity development in the channel. These details can be linked back to D365. With Teams integration and Copilot, a salesperson can arrange a Teams meeting to discuss details, gather analytics from the meeting, and update opportunity details.

Another way to involve stakeholders is through JIRA integration.

Opportunity owners would create tasks from the ‘Activities’ tab in Dynamics 365 Sales.

The out-of-box Task entity was customized to include an option to create a corresponding issue in JIRA.

Task creation in Dynamics 365 would trigger a Power Automate flow, using a JIRA connector to create the issue with Opportunity details and attach the JIRA issue code to the Dynamics 365 task, establishing linking.

Users then discuss the opportunity in the JIRA issue.

Once all details are gathered, the Opportunity owner can retrieve details by clicking the ‘Get JIRA issue details’ button on the task ribbon. This triggered a Power Automate flow that fetched comments and other details based on the Issue ID stored with an Opportunity in Dynamics 365 Sales.

Opportunity Finalization

After fetching the necessary details from Teams and JIRA, the Opportunity owner would add any additional details required and complete the Opportunity development.

Azure function integration to generate Proposal Document

Post opportunity development a salesperson would click on a button, triggering an Azure Function. This would gather the required opportunity details. With the help of a third-party library and document template, it would formulate a Word/PDF document as a final Proposal document.

Proposal Submission using Outlook Integration

The Salesperson would then review the generated document and click ‘Submit’. This would trigger another flow that would use an Outlook Connector to send an email with the generated Proposal document as an attachment to the Tender Issuing Authority.

OutcomeBased on Proposal acceptance, the Opportunity could be marked as ‘Closed-Won’ or ‘Closed-Lost,’ concluding the tender management workflow seamlessly.

In conclusion, the integration of Dynamics 365 Sales with existing applications like JIRA, Teams, and Outlook streamlined the Tender Proposal Management system for our client. From lead creation to proposal submission, Dynamics 365 Sales perfected the tender management process, enabling quicker response times and improved outcomes for the client.