Launch event highlights new 2021 release wave 1 capabilities and spotlights how they benefit BNY Mellon, Patagonia, Rockwell Automation, and The Coca-Cola Company
Today officially kicks off a six-month wave of hundreds of new capabilities, feature updates, and applications across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
These updates include the first of two release waves this year, ensuring we continue our commitment to helping you adapt to rapid change in your industry, innovate and solve challenges collaboratively, and harness insights to stay focused on what matters. As the world prepares for life beyond the pandemic, we are laser-focused on helping build agility and resiliency into every layer of your business.
At this morning’s Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event at 9:00 AM Pacific Time (then available on demand), we will preview some of the new capabilities spanning end-to-end customer experience, commerce, and supply chain and fulfillment, in addition to low-code tools to power insights and innovation.
For a complete list of new capabilities, please review the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2021 release wave 1 plans, as well as the overviews of new capabilities for Dynamics 365, integrated Microsoft Teams experiences, and Power Platform announced at Microsoft Ignite in early March.
Modernizing end-to-end customer experiences
At the launch event, we will demonstrate the very latest innovation to orchestrate customer journeys for seamless engagement at the right moments. Additional customer journey orchestration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing bring together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation to engage customers in real-time based on interactions across marketing, sales, commerce, and service. And the latest customer analytics capabilities, such as surveys, segmentation, churn analysis, and product recommendations help create more personalized experiences.
We’ll walk you through how one of the oldest banks in the world, BNY Mellon, is leveraging some of these new capabilities to usher in a new era of customer engagement for financial services.
What’s next for Microsoft industry clouds
In October 2020, we launched Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare—the first end-to-end, industry-specific cloud solution that unlocks the power of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform to transform customer engagement and optimize operations.
Today we will discuss the Microsoft industry clouds approach, recently announced. Microsoft Cloud for Retail and Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services are now available for preview. Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit will be available in the near future. All four clouds enable organizations to tackle digital transformation by focusing on priority scenarios, then continue to transform customer engagement and operations at the right time.
At the launch event, you’ll learn how Patagonia, a leader in outdoor clothing, is activating solutions in the Microsoft Cloud for Retail to orchestrate seamlessly personalized experiences at every point in the customer journey.
Over the next few months, we will continue to share new innovations across the applications and services that comprise Microsoft Cloud for Retail, such as new capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce that introduce B2B e-commerce offerings, synergize task management with Microsoft Teams, and further bring together frontline and back-end operations, improving the way retailers engage customers.
We’re also building on our strong legacy in inventory management, order fulfillment, and intelligent orchestration by bringing these together in a new application, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, helping you optimize for speed, experience, and profitability by meeting future order and fulfillment complexities while supporting contemporary methods like buying online for in-store or curbside pickup.
Empowering unique data experiences and insights with Power BI
At Microsoft Ignite, we announced Power BI Premium Per User general availability and autoscale preview for Gen2, which automatically adds a vCore to Premium capacity when utilization peaks and removes it when no longer needed. At the launch event, we demonstrate how Rockwell Automation, a worldwide leader in Industrial Automation, is using Power BI and many of our AI capabilities to get great insights from data and act on those insights in familiar experiences such as Teams and Microsoft Excel. They are also leveraging Power BI Premium Gen2 as a way to create a better user experience, with deeper resource management and cost control.
Build and deliver applications faster and more cost-effectively
As announced at Microsoft Ignite, new capabilities across Power Platform will accelerate low-code application development for business users, business analysts, IT admins, and professional developers.
The Coca-Cola Company has recently started using Power Platform as part of its digital transformation efforts and has created some remarkable business solutions with Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, and Microsoft Power Automate, including the new Power Automate Desktop robotic process automation (RPA) capability. In a demo at the launch event, we will share how they are using Power Platform to help their bottlers easily update the expected sales date of its industry-defining syrup concentrates through an end-to-end seamless digital process.
In addition, Coca-Cola UNITED, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the United States, has also taken advantage of Power Platform to transform and reduce costs while improving customer and partner experiences through advanced automation. The video below tells their story.
Attend our launch event for a closer look at this wave’s highlights
Tune in to the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event today, April 6 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time or on-demand after the broadcast, for a first look at the new innovations on the way over the next six months. Be sure to check out our detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, key dates, and deep-dive demo videos.
Don’t miss your chance to learn from and connect with your worldwide Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community—register for Microsoft Business Applications Summit on May 4, 2021.
