Data Analytics

Review: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Can Help Governments Serve Their Communities

The readily deployed customer relationship management tool boosts citizen interaction and streamlines internal processes.

John Breeden II

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John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer and public speaker with 20 years of experience covering technology.

In business, customer service and relationship management can mean the difference between bringing in new clients and losing revenue. But state and local governments traditionally do not have to worry about loss of business, as citizens can’t go anywhere else for permits, licenses, or access to key government services and information.

But states and cities want to keep their constituents happy. Thankfully, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is available to help tie millions of data points and services together, track and evaluate interactions, and generally help states quickly ramp up and improve how they interact with their constituents or customers.

How the Right Tools Enhance Citizen Interactions

The Dynamics 365 platform is an entire suite of tools, so states can start small and expand as needed, or jump into a full-scale digital transformation. And because it’s deployed as a service, it can be installed immediately to begin collecting and analyzing data in all its forms, within a single day.

The star feature of Dynamics is its ability to improve customer interactions. At the most basic level, Dynamics can watch as government customers navigate websites and applications, timing how long each interaction takes, watching for bottlenecks and examining drop-off rates versus how many people got whatever service or information they needed. It can then help to streamline those interactions, checking later to see how much time is being saved with every new change and monitoring for new efficiencies.

The Importance of Streamlining Processes

At a higher level, Microsoft Dynamics 365 can streamline internal staff processes and interactions, helping to ensure that employees are not wasting time searching for or using the tools they need to conduct government business. Advanced features include the ability to deploy and manage artificial intelligence in the form of chatbots. So, for example, a city, state or county could fully automate its 311 information services, with Dynamics making sure that callers or online visitors get everything they need quickly.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers state governments a powerful toolset to capture insights, drive efficiencies, improve user experiences and generally help government agencies transform from legacy dinosaurs to efficient, businesslike organizations that their constituents will appreciate.

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SPECIFICATIONS

PRODUCT TYPE: Customer relationship management tool
CONNECTED APPS: Works with data from almost any public or private application, database, IoT network, cloud application and more
CLOUD-READY: Native with Microsoft Azure, also functions in other clouds
DISTRIBUTION: As a Service
LICENSE: License per seat or user

A Smooth Supply Chain Yields a Good Customer Experience

While the pandemic has put a new focus on customer experiences, having a positive interaction with constituents does little good if a state or local government can’t provide requested services or is severely hindered because of supply chain disruptions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help with that as well.

Dynamics can ingest almost any kind of data, including traditional spreadsheets, databases, photos, video, and almost anything generated by online forms or applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted supply chains, and fixing them is an issue that spans the globe. Dynamics can’t fix the worldwide problem, but it can use data to analyze things such as the use and repair history of machines and devices being used within the government. It can then discover, for example, when a machine or part is likely to break or lose efficiency, and order appropriate replacement parts long before they are needed.

LEARN MORE: How the modern data platform fuels success.

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to study the supply chains of seven large organizations with complex supply chains to see how much Dynamics could improve operations in an era of constant disruptions. The results were very impressive, even more so when combined with an IT modernization program at studied organizations that decommissioned legacy silos in favor of more modern or cloud-based assets.

Across the board, every organization studied experienced streamlined operations. For example, accurately predicting that a part would likely fail in six months gave some organizations time to order replacements long before it became a critical issue. And by analyzing IT overall, Dynamics also recommended which systems, applications and processes could be replaced to get the biggest total economic impact, and which could wait until future budget cycles. That also contributed to greater ROI across the board, especially for IT assets.

Because Microsoft Dynamics 365 is able to ingest and analyze almost any kind of data from almost any source, its potential uses are nearly limitless. State and local governments might initially deploy Dynamics to improve constituent interactions but will easily find many more places where this powerful set of business tools can prove its value.