Dynamics 365 for Retail: Transform Your Retail Business

17 Jan 2020

Rapidly changing demands of modern customers and their need for a seamless & personal shopping experience has completely transformed the retail industry and has also bought in modern business challenges. To help meet the modern retail challenges, Microsoft built an application specifically for retailers – D365. Dynamics 365 for Retail rolls a comprehensive set of features for managing the front end and the back end of the modern retail business alongside some industry-specific tools.

As a modern-age retailer, what customer behavior change have you observed in the last two decades? Aren’t the customers willing to buy anytime, anywhere? Aren’t they active on so many platforms? How do you plan to connect with them and capture them online while delivering unified customer engagement? Well. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help you stay ahead of the curve in commerce and retail services.

Dynamics 365 Retail Components:

various components make up an environment that is designed to perform varied functions keeping the needs and challenges of the mid and large market retailers:

How Dynamics 365 Impacts Your Business

As an end-to-end retail management solution that delivers unified commerce across all channels, D365 for Retail is designed to transform commerce businesses, optimize business operations, and support customer demands. It is engineered to help you improve back-end as well as front-end operations. Now let’s look at a few of the most prominent Dynamics 365 capabilities:

• Unified Commerce

As a retailer, what should be your priority towards your customers? Delivering a seamless customer experience. Microsoft D365 for Retails helps you to keep your customers happy by providing the ability to keep up with the trends. The unified commerce capability allows you to give your customers the flexibility of instore purchase, pick-up at desired locations, home delivery, and more such as:

• Fully customizable and functional modern POS (Point of Sale) that is usable on any device, with no limitations, even offline.
• Omni-Channel experience
• An extraordinary eCommerce platform that supports 3^rd party storefronts and features like payment integration, consumer-rich API, and customized retail experience delivery on Android and iOS devices.
• Easy and automated order management, payment processes

• Modern Store Experience

Retail business through Microsoft Dynamics gives you everything you need to build for modern digital commerce. You can seamlessly perform daily tasks, automate, and streamline workflows. The module is designed to scale as per our business needs across modern and traditional channels. Shift management, cashier management, productivity analysis, performance reporting, and comparison were never easier.

• Increase employee productivity by using smart schedules, time clock in/out, manager dashboards, and more.
• Manage inventory and define automated replenishment rules to create purchase orders and close deals.
• Enhance consumer convenience by using smart order accepting and fulfillment modalities. Provide customers the flexibility of replacing and returning outside of the assortment.

• Inventory Optimization

One of the best capabilities of Dynamics 365 is helping retailers provide the right product, at the right time, to the right set of customers using the right channel with flexible and dynamic inventory management solutions. The application enables you to make intelligent, data-driven decisions with smart features like data reports and analysis which helps you provide your customers with the best services.

• Inventory tracking lets you reduce stocking and reduce storage costs with Dynamics 365’s machine-learning capability.
• Eases supply chain management and inventory management processes
• Schedule deliveries, pick-ups with accurate order insights and information on orders
• Centralize inventory management gives customers the flexibility to search for products at one or more locations/stores and how they want to procure it

• Dynamic Platform

Dynamics CRM provides a unified shopping experience for your customers on the website, Mobile, stores, or Call Centers with flexible pick-up options and automated billing with payment processing, driving more customer satisfaction. Further, bringing flexibility to the inventory on allocating products based on season, market demand, etc. delivers effective merchandising.

• Integrated Point of Sale (POS) System

Microsoft D365 has a specific POS component for Retail to help you centrally manage inventory, merchandising, and channel management processes. You can operate this integrated POS both on-premise (mPOS) and on the cloud using the devices such as mobiles and tablets across iOS, Windows, Android as well as on web browsers. D365 for Retail brings you the opportunity to modernize business with a fully flexible POS experience that includes discounts, pricing option capabilities, and unique scenarios like loyalty benefits, etc. Why look for a separate POS software when Dynamics 365 can be your comprehensive Retail Management Software?

Dynamics 365 for Retails can satisfy the below POS system needs and demands of the vendors as well as the customers:

• Built-in Intelligence and Advanced Analytics

Wouldn’t you like to have an intelligence that presents you with the practical next actionable steps based on your customer data? D365 includes forecast features that let you know what to sell, when, where, and at what rate to sell with well-informed merchandising decisions. You can create customized intuitive business intelligence dashboards that present you with processed and analyzed customer data through detailed reports on sales, scheduling, and time tracking. The SaaS brings you advanced analytics with Power BI, Cortona Intelligence, IoT, and Azure Machine Learning that promote faster decision-making.

• Easy Deployment and Always Up to date

As a retail business, you need to operate 24/7 to monitor the customer journey right from the page hit until the checkout. To make sure a customer doesn’t drop off and there are no disruptions. Managing every customer journey can be difficult but not with D365 business central solutions. Powered by Microsoft cloud, Dynamics 365 is easier to deploy and it benefits you from the flexibility, speed, and intelligence out of cloud computing. And one of the biggest advantages of the D365 suite is that the applications are always up to date. You don’t need to worry about updates and bug fixes on the systems because Microsoft automatically rolls out the updates for you.

Conclusion

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Retail provides retailers with a consistent management solution across all retail channels. The application is designed to produce an excellent customer experience across traditional and modern digital channels. Star Knowledge as a recognized Microsoft Partner has helped implement Dynamics 365 solutions for clients from a wide range of industries. Contact our expert Dynamics 365 consultants for more consulting services.