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Customize Your CRM Software’s Feature Set with Cloud Native and AKA

June 27, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Need Custom Features for Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Cloud Native Can Help!

“We love our CRM solution! It’s great. But…”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from a client. No one’s ever completely satisfied with their CRM. Companies want to know if this or that CRM will be “the one” that solves all of their problems. We’ve received more RFPs than we can count requesting a feature-by-feature comparison of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with another CRM solution. The reality is that no CRM is perfect, and there are always trade-offs involved.

But most companies don’t want to compromise: they want a CRM that actually meets their needs. Fortunately, this is easier than ever to achieve, with the help of a custom solution…and it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

Cloud Native: Custom CRM Development in the Cloud

That’s right: developing a custom CRM solution doesn’t have to be a major headache. In the past, any attempt to customize a platform would run up against serious challenges. Finding someone with the right expertise was difficult, and you’d just be setting yourself up for a hassle down the road when it came to support—not to mention excessive hosting costs. But thanks to Cloud Native, things have changed.

“Cloud Native” is a relatively new term in the IT world, so let’s be clear about what exactly it means. Here’s how the Cloud Native Computing Foundation defines the term:

“Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.

These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.”

So, what does this mean for you? Put simply, Cloud Native gives you the ability to build custom features into your CRM without the need to customize the packaged software.

Let’s look at an example. Imagine that you’re using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and you want add the capability to verify customer addresses before shipping. The thought of adding this functionality to Dynamics CRM might seem daunting (and expensive) — and, in fact, it is. With so many CRMs these days moving to the cloud, trying to build a custom solution into the CRM itself is just a bad idea. Fortunately, there’s no need to go that route.

Let’s say you launch an eCommerce platform down the road and need the address validation also to take place when a customer is finalizing the details of their order on your website. Instead of building a custom solution into Dynamics CRM itself, you can create a new enterprise service — we’ll call it AddressValidationService — that’s both external to your CRM and your website. This means that both your website and CRM could use it seamlessly, at the same time. Customer address data coming in from your website can now be validated with ease, avoiding delays between your website and CRM system. If you had the feature built into your CRM system, you would have been forced to validate the address.

There are some major advantages to developing the feature in our above example in cloud native, including:

Higher quality data
Focused system maintenance with Dynamics CRM and your website—they get to do what they do best
Real-time CRM data that’s clean
Better performance and user experience
External address validation

…and the list goes on.

What About Costs? Will Cloud Native Be Expensive?

The above example is simple enough — but what will it cost? Are you looking at a high price tag? Not at all.

Thanks to the focus on developing an individual, isolated microservice, Cloud Native development is quick, easy, and affordable. Features like the one in our example can cost as little as $ 2,000 to build.

What about hosting prices? Isn’t hosting a service like this expensive? Not by a long shot! If you look at my previous posts about hosting, you’ll see what I mean. The hosting service in the above example would cost next to nothing if hosted using Azure Functions, or as little as $ 50 per month with something like Azure App Services. Think about that for a second: most CRM per seat costs are higher than $ 50 per month for each user.

In addition to reduced costs, Cloud Native features are also easier to roll out than the traditional IT Release Management we’re used to. In fact, a developer can verify their code without having to contact your IT Release Management division. Cutting out the Release Management process results in huge savings, especially across multiple projects. Sound too risky? Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and countless other major companies roll out these kinds of releases constantly, and you never experience a hiccup in service.

To recap: the missing CRM feature that you were afraid might cost an arm and a leg is likely going to run you a couple thousand dollars, a few hours in developer time, and could be ready to go live by next week. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Don’t waste your time comparing one CRM to another, trying to find the perfect fit. Let AKA help you customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Cloud Native. Call us today to speak with one of our cloud experts!

To learn more about AKA’s Cloud Services, watch the video below:

[embedded content]

Read the full article on the AKA blog to learn more about Cloud Native.

ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Oracle NetSuite a Leader Again in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Systems for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises

June 27, 2019 NetSuite

gettyimages 1063562264 Oracle NetSuite a Leader Again in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Systems for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises

Posted by Paul Farrell, Vice President, Product

For the second year in a row, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. has placed NetSuite in the Leaders quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Systems for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises.

One of only three vendors to be named a Leader among the 10 Gartner evaluated, Oracle NetSuite has improved upon its ability to execute and completeness of vision since the last Magic Quadrant, according to the report.

This is an important data point because customer satisfaction throughout the entire lifecycle has always been an emphasis for NetSuite, and the company has taken it to another level with the SuiteSuccess customer engagement model. Based on the experience gained from tens of thousands of deployments worldwide amassed over two decades, SuiteSuccess provides leading practices tailored by industry that deliver rapid business value. Intelligent, staged implementation begins at sales contact and spans the entire customer life-cycle so that there is seamless continuity from sales to services to support. It includes predefined roles, dedicated process flows and KPIs targeted by industry and pre-built reports and dashboards.

It’s not only Gartner’s data that, we believe, confirms this commitment to the customer is paying off, but NetSuite’s own internal measurements as well. In the past year that has meant:

45% faster go-lives
35% increase in overall Net Promoter Score (NPS)
97% increase in professional services NPS
45% reduction in implementation costs
10% reduction in change orders during implementation

It’s those types of results that has customers like The Second City in Chicago, the American Cancer Society and many more to sign on with NetSuite.

“Born in the cloud” as a multitenant application, NetSuite was created to run a business. It extends beyond just the cloud financials piece to provide a full ERP system with capabilities for Commerce, HR, CRM, professional services and more.

We believe, this is one reason that NetSuite is the only vendor in the Leader’s Quadrant that serves all the business sizes Gartner evaluated for in this report – midsized, large and global organizations.

Read the full Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core FMS for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises report.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises, John Van Decker, Robert Anderson, Greg Leiter, 13 May 2019

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Posted on Wed, June 26, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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The NetSuite Blog

Subject Lines That Will Make Your Open Rates Sing

June 26, 2019 CRM News and Info

While email continues to be an effective marketing tactic to capture, nurture, and convert leads, your success depends on your ability to craft a message that lands in the inbox and engages your customers. So while many organizations boast huge contact lists, they’re of very little use if you can’t use them to capture your audience’s attention and nurture them through the sales funnel.

If you want your audience to start navigating the customer journey, the first thing you need to do is motivate them to open and read your emails, which is where a good subject line comes into play. It might seem ridiculous to focus on such a small detail of our email content, but paying close attention to your subject lines can improve inbox placement, open rates, and conversions.

A catchy, compelling subject line is only the first step toward helping your audience embark on a path toward discovering more about your brand, but it’s a very important one. So, if fueling your demand generation efforts is the goal, then following best practices will help you make sure your recipients notice and click on your next email so you can start seeing better results.

Personalization Gets Better Results

The days of sending the same email to broad contact lists are over. While casting a wide net to improve your chances of catching the attention of your audience might seem like a good idea, it can actually lead to poor engagement and an uptick in spam complaints. In reality, the key to reaching your audience is to get as targeted and personal as possible with your messaging.

Practicing segmentation allows you to get more specific and personal with your subject lines. Grouping customers based on their interests and where they are in the sales funnel enables you to develop subject lines that are relevant and inspire engagement. This might seem like a serious and time-consuming undertaking if you’re performing this task manually, but you can easily automate this process with Act-On so that your lists stay up to date as you learn more about your prospects.

Be Clear About Why Recipients Should Open an Email

With the increasing amount of spam and irrelevant messages cluttering our inboxes, recipients are more reluctant than ever about opening emails. The key to gaining your customers’ trust and interest is to be as detailed as possible about what to expect when they open your email.

Failing to be specific can be construed as an attempt to mislead recipients to drive more opens, which is a bad practice for both email engagement and deliverability. If you aren’t delivering on your promises in the content of your emails, your readers will develop a negative image of your brand, mark your messages as spam, and unsubscribe. You want to avoid these scenarios because they can lead to a bad reputation and drive down engagement and conversions.

Create a Sense of Urgency (and Be Specific)

One of the best ways to motivate your recipients to action is by drafting a subject line that indicates that quick or immediate action is needed. Including a deadline or specific dates for an event or offer indicates to customers that it’s best to open your email sooner rather than later, especially if they don’t want to miss out on a special deal.

One thing to note is that urgency only works if you are specific. Making your subject line “Hurry Up to Save on Shoes!” probably doesn’t deliver the same sense of urgency as “Hurry! Only 24 Hours Left to Enjoy 30% Off Shoes!” The latter will make interested recipients want to open the email and start browsing, while the former might make them think that they can probably wait until they receive another email reminder in the next few days.

Use Proper Grammar and Correct Capitalization

Emails are all about making a good first impression, which is why paying attention to grammar and capitalization is crucial. Avoid using all caps or lowercase letters, and make sure there aren’t any glaring typos in your subject line before clicking “Send.”

Avoid Emojis in Your Email Subject Line

While emojis are a great way to get your message across via social media or text, they are best kept out of email subject lines. Not only can they set off spam filters, but they can be interpreted differently than you intend based on who your recipients are. Only use emojis if the situation seems absolutely appropriate, they make up a small portion of your complete subject line, and you know the audience you’re targeting will completely understand the meaning.

Never Use Confidential Information!

While personalizing your subject line and email content can lead to better engagement and make your open rates skyrocket, there is certain information that is off limits. Making reference to things such as your recipient’s medical condition, annual income, and any other personal details they would not want to be made public should not be mentioned in your email content. Including confidential information in your subject lines could lead your audience to question your integrity and motivate them to unsubscribe or even file a complaint.

Don’t Forget to A/B Test Your Efforts for Continous Optimization

Even if you follow all the best practices outlined above, there are always going to be certain subject lines that appeal more to your audience and generate better results. Thankfully, A/B testing can help remove the guesswork and easily pinpoint which phrases are a hit with your audience and which ones are not.

For best results, we suggest testing two subject lines for each email you send. Once the results are in and you have a winning subject line, you’ll have a better idea of which subject line elements resonate best with your audience. Use these insights to continuously improve and optimize your email marketing efforts and determine the perfect formula for email subject line success.

If you’re interested in learning more about how subject lines can improve email engagement, reputation, and deliverability, please download the eBook below.

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Highlights of Upcoming Dynamics 365 October 2019 Updates

June 26, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

During the recent Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Microsoft announced the availability of the “2019 Release Wave 2 Plan”. The Release Plan covers all of the upcoming updates for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform (PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI).

For many CRM users the breadth of areas to keep up with can be overwhelming at times. So, here is a high-level overview to help set the stage.

The Power Platform

According to Microsoft, the Power Platform is comprised of 3 main areas of PowerApps, Microsoft Flow and Power BI. The Power Platform is in Azure and utilizes the framework of the Common Data Service.

Power Platform Overview Highlights of Upcoming Dynamics 365 October 2019 Updates

_{From Microsoft’s “PowerApps Platform Overview” page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/wp-powerapps-platform-overview}

Therefore, Dynamics 365 is now a app (model-driven app) within the PowerApps area of the Power Platform.

Now that you have a better understanding of the Power Platform, the following highlights can be better understood; and, keep in mind, this is not the full list of updates. So, you should review the Microsoft Documentation site to see all the updates.

Some of the features have been requested many times from the community, other items are new, some will be resurrected functionality, and some will be new features.

Dynamics 365 Items

I will first cover items that are focused specifically on Dynamics 365. Next, we will cover the PowerApps items.

Customization of Opportunity Close Dialog Box

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/customization-opportunity-close-dialog-box}

This feature has been a request for a long time. There are countless forum posts asking how they can customize the Opportunity Close window to fit their specific business needs.

According to the feature post, administrators can leverage a customized Quick Create form. But, it’s unknown if there are any limitations, or if this can be customized like any other Quick Create form.

Simplified Lead Management Experience

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/simplified-lead-management-experience}

This feature is actually a resurrection of the old Qualify Lead dialog window. Here’s a throwback screen shot.

The new experience has some elements of the old, but will probably take advantage of the Business Process Flows.

However, it’s unknown how this will impact existing records in the system after the updates are applied. Hopefully the functionality will be seamless and provide a good user experience.

Improve or Simplify Most Common Sales Workflows

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/improve–simplify-most-common-sales-workflows}

The information provided here is lacking in details. However, there is one nugget of information that I found intriguing: “Make the Documents tab visible in the main form for Contact, Opportunity, Lead, and Account entities.”

This sounds like the Documents area can viewed as a sub-grid on the record’s main form. This has been a request by many for a while. Hopefully, this will be a reality and give admins an easy experience in setting this up. Ideally, it would be great if the sub-grid properties in the Form Editor are similar to the sub-grid options today.

Business Card Scan

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/business-card-scan}

This feature sounds amazing! How many times have you traded business cards with someone at an event or meeting? How many times has the business card ended up in a drawer or the bottom of your laptop bag?

The Business Card Scan feature is part of the Quick Create Contacts form. It will leverage the mobile device camera to capture the business card image. However, it’s unknown if this will be released for iOS and Android at the same time.

Microsoft Teams Integration Enhancements

The integration of Dynamics 365 in Microsoft Teams was introduced in 2018.
_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/basics/teams-integration}

As part of the Wave 2 updates, the integration will be enhanced.
_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-sales/teams-integration-enhancements}

Microsoft Teams will be enhanced with Relationship Assistant to provide better interaction.

What is the bottom line? These enhanced features are good, but will it drive greater adoption of Dynamics 365 when coupled with Teams? Some users have experienced app overload or confusion of which app to use at which time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love using Teams. But, to be honest, after setting up the Dynamics 365 integration, I only used it only a couple of times.

Power Platform Updates

Since Dynamics 365 is part of the Power Platform, the following items will highlight some features coming.

AI Builder

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-powerapps/add-intelligence-ai-builder}

AI Builder was announced during the Microsoft Business Applications Summit. AI Builder will allow you to automate predictive outcomes using a low-code approach of configuration.

Currently AI Builder is available in Public Preview. If you would like to try it out, just sign into your Power Apps site at https://make.powerapps.com.

Dynamics 365 Mobile App Update

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-powerapps/sign-using-email-address-dynamics-365-mobile-app-android-device}

The Dynamics 365 Mobile App for Android is getting updated. So you will be able to sign in using just your email address and password. The current experience requires you to enter the URL and then your credentials. However, on-premise users will still have the current experience.

Entity Designer

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-powerapps/improvements-entity-designer}

Since Microsoft is shifting the administrative experience to the Power Platform, the future enhancements will be in this area. As such, the Entity Designer is no exception. The “classic” method of creating and updating an entity is through the Settings/Customizations area of the system. This method has been in place for several versions.

But now you will have an improved experience in the Power Platform. There are a few details mentioned in the reference link above. This may or may not be the full list of enhancements. I do know that the current Power Platform administrative experience is lacking many features and functionality. This is understandable as the shift is still happening, but has been a frustrating experience when trying it out.

The Public Preview will available in August 2019 with General Availability in October 2019. So, I would suggest you try the experience in August to see how it stacks up against the classic experience.

One Admin Center to Rule Them All

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-powerapps/one-admin-center-rule-them-all}

FINALLY!!! How many of you can raise your hand to the frustrating experience of hopping from one admin center to another? However, with the strong reference to “Lord of the Rings”, one can hope that a centralize Admin Center will not provide an “evil” experience. But, on a more positive note, I truly hope the Power Platform Admin Center will be easy to use and navigate.

On a side note, I hope the embedded links within Dynamics 365 for accessing the administrative areas will take you to the new admin center. Currently, if you are in the new Unified Interface, if you click on “Advanced Settings” from the gear icon, you will be taken to the classic interface.

PowerApps Portals

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-powerapps/portal}

Microsoft is really extending the creative experience in the Power Platform, and has now introduced a Portal app. So, you will now have Canvas Apps, Model-Driven Apps, and Portal Apps.

This new Portal app looks like what Dynamics 365 Portals should have been. I hope these will allow you

To easily connect to multiple entities
Utilize Microsoft Flow to automate steps and gather data
Embed Business Rules for field interaction
Surface Power BI within pages
and much more

The Public Preview is July 2019 and General Availability in October 2019. I know I will be jumping on this in July and trying it out. I would be interested to hear your feedback.

Business Process Flow Immersive Experience

_{Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2019wave2/microsoft-flow/business-process-immersive-experiences}

I’m excited about this update. I have had mixed response from customers on the interaction with the Business Process Flow (BPF) in the new UI, and even with the classic UI. However, with the upcoming Vertical Layout, this may provide a better interactive experience with the BPFs.

In the reference link, the article indicates you can “dock on the side of existing content”. However, does “dock” mean fixed in place for all records? What I mean is that, with the current BPF, you can “dock” the BPF to the side, but it’s not fixed there. If you navigate to another record, you have to “dock” the BPF again. Hopefully, the Vertical Layout would be an optional replacement to the current Horizontal Layout. By having the setting as optional, this will allow administrators to provide an experience that works best for their users.

On a side note: There is a simple line in the referenced article that states: “We’re deprecating task flows (which offered a similar vertical experience)”. So, if you are utilizing Task Flows today, I would suggest you review your current usage and plan for an alternative approach.

There are many more updates to explore in the Microsoft Documents site. So, take the time to review areas that could potentially impact your business.

Also, many of these updates will be only for Online environments. If you have and on-premise environment, you will need to evaluate if you should shift to online or stay on-premise. The tools and features being made available to online-only environments makes it tougher to justify staying on-premise.

If you have questions on any of these items or other items in the documents site, reach out to me. If you are looking at implementing Dynamics 365 or Power Apps, reach out to ACE Microtechnology and let’s get the conversation started.

If you are interested in a Dynamics 365 Assessment, check out our ACEMicroApps site to start the process.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

From English Major to Data Analyst

June 26, 2019 Self-Service BI

When I was a Sophomore in college, I got a job doing tape backups at a food ingredients company. The developers there maintained a stack of paginated reports for the managers in the corner offices. At the time, I thought it was very sad to know coding and end up working on reports all the time. Flash forward to today. I am implementing Power BI at a nonprofit in Kansas City (opinions are my own). How did this happen?

In college I ditched computer science for a BA and MA in English, and after college I found myself in a series of sales jobs. In one of these jobs, I took over administration of Salesforce, which was my gateway drug into the joys of custom reporting. Working as a salesperson made me see the value of reporting for business.

Eventually, I found myself in a job where I was re-creating three pivot tables every week from a table with too many VLOOKUPS and too many rows. Power Pivot in Excel saved me so much time (and oh so many Excel crashes). In the last two weeks of my contract, I bought the P3 video class and learned the fundamentals of data modeling and DAX.

Working with P3

Next, I started working for P3 as a principal consultant. This was an awesome and intense experience which caused me to really learn DAX on another level. I did incredible things in two-hour increments. While I loved working for Rob Collie and working with other consultants, I didn’t want to travel a whole lot. And, since discovering the Microsoft ‘power tools,’ my ideal job was helping a small organization implement Power BI.

In September 2017, I got an opportunity with the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, which serves donors nationally as Greater Horizons (Opinions are my own!). The Community Foundation is a nonprofit organization that helps families and companies build their charitable legacies through donor-advised funds and other giving vehicles.

Power (Query) to the People!

In my first six months, I learned as much about Power Query as I had learned about DAX at P3. Why? Because my manager saw the opportunity to give employees greater access to all kinds of data locked in disparate systems. Power Query is a great tool for connecting to (almost) anything and for beating that data into shape. We’ve empowered accountants and others on the IT team to use Power Query for their own purposes. And, We’ve automated tedious tasks to free up staff for more interesting work.

Wrangling with the Data Warehouse

We built a data warehouse to shift the burden of reporting out of transactional systems and into Power BI. This was a totally new experience for me. I learned about surrogate keys, slowly changing dimensions, and other data warehouse concepts. I also taught the guy who built the data warehouse a few business-friendly terms, like lookup table and transaction table. I’ve built reports that wrangle this data warehouse data into forms that business users can easily use.

Threading the Needle

What’s it like to implement Power BI? Let me start with an example. A while back, I volunteered with a youth group in a program that included teaching practical skills to teenagers. A fellow volunteer decided to teach the students how to sew a button. He planned, rehearsed, and had an image of what that would look like. Instead, he discovered that most of the session was spent teaching the teens how to thread a needle. This is what Chip and Dan Heath call The Curse of Knowledge : “once we know something […] we find it hard to imagine not knowing it.”

Operational Data and Reports for Excel

A tremendous amount of the initial stage of implementing Power BI has involved getting operational data into the hands of staff, and this includes tables with many columns for exporting into Excel. Don’t get me wrong: there’s LOADS of value in these wins. And, these are the building blocks for answering strategic questions including: correlation, forecasting, predictive analytics. I’ve been working on these solutions along the way, and keeping them in mind while building the base solutions.

What’s Next?

We’ve been hiring people, building out our team. More people are using the reports every day. And more people are learning to use the Microsoft “power tools” – which is my personal metric for success. Along the way, we’ve been developing our agile governance, and we’re in a good position for unlocking insights about our organization. I’m especially excited by the opportunity for staff to connect to a basic model for creating reports with their own visualizations, and I have some people using analyze in Excel. As we continue, I hope to keep blogging about things that I learn along the way.

No one knows the Power BI ecosystem better than the folks who started the whole thing – us.

Let us guide your organization through the change required to become a data-oriented culture while squeezing every last drop* of value out of your Microsoft platform investment.

* – we reserve the right to substitute Olympic-sized swimming pools of value in place of “drops” at our discretion.

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Apple acquires self-driving vehicle startup Drive.ai (updated)

June 26, 2019 Big Data

Self-driving car startup Drive.ai will cease all operations and lay off 90 employees, according to a June 12 filing with California’s Employment Development Department that was initially spotted by the San Francisco Chronicle. The news comes after reports that Apple was exploring an acquisition of Drive.ai to bolster the former’s secretive self-driving car project.

Drive.ai general counsel Thomas Yih wrote in the letter that the closure was necessitated “[by] events beyond Drive.ai’s control or current knowledge.” CEO Bijit Halder will be among those out of work when Drive.ai’s Mountain View office shutters on Friday, along with the company’s directors of finance and robotics.

Drive.ai declined to respond to VentureBeat’s request for comment.

In what might be retroactively interpreted as a sign of instability, Drive.ai cofounders Sameep Tandon and Tao Wang left the company in June and February, respectively, according to LinkedIn. Three weeks ago, five other Drive.ai employees — mostly data, systems, and software engineers — changed their LinkedIn profiles to say they left Drive.ai for Apple.

Drive.ai was at one time valued at $ 200 million, and it managed to raise nearly $ 80 million in four years from backers including New Enterprise Associates, GGV Capital, Northern Light Venture Capital, HOF Capital, Nvidia GPU Ventures, and others. Andrew Ng, formerly Baidu’s chief scientist and a researcher at Stanford, once sat on the company’s board of directors.

Drive.ai’s abrupt shutdown comes after it announced it would pull out of Frisco, Texas, one of its launch cities. At the time, it said it was because its contract with Frisco, where Drive.ai has operated a small fleet of autonomous Nissan NV200s shuttles on a single route between an office park and a high-end shopping complex, ended later in the month. (The City of Frisco opted not to renew it, citing high costs.)

That move came months after Drive.ai began piloting its driverless tech in Arlington, Texas.

Drive.ai’s shuttles — each of which was equipped with lidars, radars, GPS, cameras, and inertial measurement sensors that collected data about the outside world, along with onboard computers that interpreted incoming data in near-real time — ferried passengers on routes connecting the Dallas Cowboys stadium, an office park, a convention center, the Texas Rangers ballpark, and the University of Texas at Arlington. They featured screens that displayed symbols, emojis, and other visual cues to communicate their next course of action — a lane change or right turn on red, for example — to human drivers and pedestrians around them.

The vans operated with safety drivers aboard, but Drive.ai had planned to remove humans from the loop by the end of 2021.

Drive.ai’s service was paid for by the City of Arlington and the U.S. federal government and was originally slotted to run through October 2019, with an option to extend. The city requested that it end early, and a spokeswoman for the city told the Chronicle that Drive.ai’s vans dropped off their last passengers on May 31.

Updated 6:27 p.m. Pacific: Apple confirmed to Axios this evening that it acquired Drive.ai for an undisclosed price. A source tells the publication that the Cupertino company hired employees in engineering and product design, and that it additionally purchased Drive.ai’s autonomous cars and related assets.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

New study: “Digital natives” value brick and mortar stores more than their parents or grandparents

June 26, 2019 NetSuite

Global Study Highlights the Varying Shopping Expectations of Different Generations and the Role of Technology in Personalizing Retail

REDWOOD CITY, CA.—June 25, 2019—Despite clear differences in expectations among shoppers of different generations, almost half of retailers (44 percent) have made no progress in tailoring the in-store shopping experience according to a recent study conducted by Oracle NetSuite, Wakefield Research and The Retail Doctor. The global study of 1,200 consumers and 400 retail executives across the U.S., U.K. and Australia dispelled stereotypes around generations and found big differences in generational expectations across baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z.

“We have seen decades of diminishing experiences in brick and mortar stores, and the differences identified in these results point to its impact on consumers over the years,” said Bob Phibbs, CEO, The Retail Doctor. “Retailers have fallen behind in offering in-store experiences that balance personalization and customer service but there’s an opportunity to take the reins back. The expectation from consumers is clear and it’s up to retailers to offer engaging and custom experiences that will cater to shoppers across a diverse group of generations.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: Retailers struggle to keep stride with generational shoppers

The in-store shopping experience remains an important part of the retail environment for all generations, but the progress retailers are making to improve the in-store experience is being viewed differently by different generations.

Despite the stereotypes of “digital natives”, Gen Z and millennials (43 percent) are most likely to do more in-store shopping this year followed by Gen X (29 percent) and baby boomers (13 percent).
Gen Z and millennials (57 percent) had the most positive view of the current retail environment feeling it was more inviting, followed by Gen X (40 percent). Baby boomers (27 percent) were more likely to find the current retail environment less inviting than consumers overall.
Gen Z valued in-store interaction the least with 42 percent feeling more annoyed from increased interaction with retail associates. In contrast, millennials (56 percent), Gen X (44 percent) and baby boomer (43 percent) generations all noted they would feel more welcomed by more in-store interactions.

Retailers view emerging technologies through rose-colored glasses

While more than three quarters of retail executives (79 percent) believe having AI and VR in stores will increase sales, the study found that these technologies are not yet widely accepted by any generation.

Overall, only 14 percent of consumers believe that emerging technologies like AI and VR will have a significant impact on their purchase decisions.
Emerging tech in retail stores is most attractive to millennials (50 percent) followed by Gen Z (38 percent), Gen X (35 percent) and baby boomers (20 percent).
Perceptions of VR varied widely across different generations. Fifty-eight percent of Gen Z said VR would have some influence on their purchase decisions, while 59 percent of baby boomers said VR would have no influence on their purchase decision.

Insta-famous brands reach Gen Z and millennial consumers, but not as much as retailers think

While almost all retail executives (98 percent) think that engaging customers on social media is important to building stronger relationships with them, the study found a big disconnect with consumers across all generations.

Overall, only 12 percent of consumers think their engagement with brands on social media has a significant impact on the way they think or feel about a brand.
Among those who engage with brands on social media, Gen Z (38 percent) consumers are much more likely than other generations to engage with retailers on social to get to know the brand compared to millennials (25 percent) and baby boomers (21 percent).
Gen Z (65 percent) consumers and millennials (63 percent) believe their engagement with brands on social media platforms have an impact on their relationship with brands.
More than half of baby boomers (53 percent) and 29 percent of Gen X consumers do not engage with brands on social media.

“After all the talk about brick and mortar stores being dead, it’s interesting to see that ‘digital natives’ are more likely to increase their shopping in physical stores this year than any other generation,” said Greg Zakowicz, senior commerce marketing analyst, Oracle NetSuite. “Stepping back, these findings fit with broader trends we have been seeing around the importance of immediacy and underlines why retailers cannot afford to make assumptions about the needs and expectations of different generations. It really is a complex puzzle and as this study clearly shows, retailers need to think carefully about how they meet the needs of different generations.”

To read more about NetSuite’s insights into the report’s finding visit NetSuite’s cloud blog.

Methodology
For this survey, 1,200 consumers and 400 retail executives were surveyed around the overall retail environment, in-store and online shopping experiences and advanced technologies. Both retailers and consumers were surveyed from three global markets including the U.S., U.K. and Australia with retail executives representing organizations between $ 10-100 million in annual sales.

About Wakefield Research
Wakefield is a full-service market research firm that uncovers insights for brands to help them solve problems and grow their business. Wakefield Research is a partner to the world’s leading consumer and B2B brands, including 50 of the Fortune 100. Wakefield Research conducts qualitative and quantitative research in 70 countries. For more information, please visit https://www.wakefieldresearch.com

About The Retail Doctor
The Retail Doctor is a New York-based retail consulting firm created by expert retail consultant and leading business mentor Bob Phibbs. With over 30 years of experience in retail, Bob has worked as a consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur, helping businesses revolutionize their brand and grow their success. Bob is also the author of three highly-praised books, including The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (WILEY). His clients include some of the largest retail brands in the world including Bernina, Brother, Caesars Palace, Hunter Douglas, Lego, Omega and Yamaha. For more information, please visit www.retaildoc.com

About Oracle NetSuite
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 18,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.

For more information, please visit http://www.netsuite.com.

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

About Oracle
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Safe Harbor
The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Technology Tools and Customer Engagement: It’s Complicated

June 26, 2019 CRM News and Info

The most successful brands today are those that have created engaged audiences and an exceptional customer experience. They have managed to humanize the most unsentimental of buying processes, and somehow made it look easy.

Providing a world class customer experience is so profitable that Gartner has estimated the customer experience and relationship management software market alone to be worth US$ 48.2 billion and rising steadily. There are thousands of options for marketers to consider, and we see new tools and market consolidation every day. It’s noisy and it’s overwhelming.

Do the Math

I think of this kind of like a math equation. There are several variables that all have various permutations that could get you to your end goal — perhaps you want to see a return on your marketing investments, or you want to activate a sophisticated cross-channel engagement strategy.

We’re constantly hearing from customers that they have several, sometimes 10 or more, tools in their “martech stacks” to achieve their goals. The trouble is, when you pull one out and put another in, the whole equation has to change. That’s not only confusing but impossible to modernize or scale.

However, to make the tools and tech the focus of this equation is to miss the point. The most important piece is the human element, and the customer should be at the center of decision-making. If customers are changing, marketers need to be able to efficiently change their technology to meet them where they are.

Customer engagement is a company-wide strategy, but marketing usually sits at the center of it all because of the need to access and interpret consumer data in a meaningful way. Smart marketers know they need to understand customers at a one-to-one level.

They want to discover hidden opportunities and immediately make changes to maximize conversion. However, sometimes — even when they have the data — that can feel like an impossible outcome.

When shopping for a customer engagement solution, marketers should focus on how they can simplify their customer engagement strategy and focus on the customer. It’s possible, and there is even a way to receive powerful analytics on each phase of a customer journey. Following are a few questions marketers can ask to ensure they will have access to the right customer insights that help them prioritize opportunities and make it all work.

1. Will This Solution Become a Money Pit?

There are customer engagement tools that promise to help you connect with your large or growing customer base, but historically vendors in this space have grown their capabilities through acquisition.

When different tools are stitched together, the integrations become complex. Disparate data sets and different code bases are prone to breakdowns. As a result, the implementations are complicated, time intensive and costly. Before you know it, you’re over budget, past your deadline, and once again further from your customers.

Unfortunately, we often see companies that adopt customer engagement platforms with implementations that become so complicated that time-to-value takes months or even years. These solutions are also very expensive, and a brand can waste hundreds of thousands of dollars or more without return. Ultimately, this mistake can cost a brand so dearly that it becomes impossible to catch up to competitors once they find the right solution.

Avoid the complex tech stack, and you will avoid fighting through drawn out implementations, broken integrations and other deployment issues. Choose a unified platform that will provide fast and effective ways to reach your customers and free you up to make your brand’s journey smooth and lucrative.

2. Am I Choosing a Solution That Works for My Customers?

It’s logical to look internally when making technology selections. You and your team are the users — and you probably have your favorite tools. The outcomes will serve your organization, and technology typically enables process. It’s important to consider all of this, but you also need to be asking if the solution has capabilities that will suit your customers.

Digital marketing messages create a ton of noise, and marketers are always fighting to be heard. Sending the right message at the right time through the right channel is what everyone strives to do.

Make sure your technology enables the personalized and connected experiences that are relevant to consumers. Sweat the details. Evaluate technology that makes it easy for you to make split decisions about each customer.

3. Do I Have a Single View of My Customers?

Related, but important to call out separately, is the single customer view. Your customer data is useless unless it’s in one place and you can make sense of it in real-time. You should be able to interpret things like purchase history, customer service history, website activity, app activity, email engagement, social media engagement, and customer lifetime value in a single place.

It becomes much easier to identify and replicate common customer journeys when you have a 360-degree view of your customers.

4. Can It Scale for Both Volume and Capability?

If you’re looking for a long-term solution, you want something that can grow with your team. Think ahead to account for your customer base growth. The more people you need to engage, the harder it will be to tailor your communications to the individual — but the expectations haven’t changed from your consumer just because you got busier.

You’ll still need to be great at one-to-one personalization at scale. Look for a solution that will let you segment your database an infinite number of ways and identify more opportunities to connect with your customers on their terms.

Then think about improvements to your program. Email may be an effective channel for your business right now, but what about the opportunities you’re missing to introduce or reinforce your messaging elsewhere? Does your solution let you easily add and expand to what you’re doing now? A rich set of marketing and commerce capabilities in an easy-to-use platform should be a prerequisite.

5. Will I Have the Right Level of Customer Support?

Technical support is fine, but things like a smooth implementation process, ensuring your email deliverability rates always exceed expectations, and having a trusted resource when your team needs to scale up are important.

Truly engaging with your customers is hard work. Is there a reliable service team to help you get everything stood up and producing value as quickly as possible? Will the service person feel like an extension of your own team?

Pick a support team that’s committed to making sure you’re successful before, during, and after purchase. Don’t settle for standard service levels. Expect your provider to partner with you and help make you successful.

The ability to establish trust and be relatable alongside a pleasant and efficient buying process is the ultimate result when it comes to customer engagement. It’s what can turn customers into fanatics, and that level of service is now the expectation for businesses of all sizes.

One in three consumers (32 percent) said they would walk away from a brand they loved after just one bad experience, according to PwC’s “Experience is Everything” report. Brands don’t have room to get this wrong.

Only a unified platform that enables engagement across all channels, with quick implementation and a single customer view, will allow you to get your job done. Customer engagement is already a tough enough mission. Don’t let your resources overcomplicate it.

Ross%20Paquette Technology Tools and Customer Engagement: Its Complicated
Ross Andrew Paquette is the founder and CEO of
Maropost, North America’s fastest-growing marketing automation platform, as ranked by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. Paquette has led Maropost to double its annual growth each year since its inception in 2011, turning a one-man operation into an international business that simplifies customer engagement for B2C brands and retailers by providing an effective and unified customer experience. Paquette is also passionate about using technology to power nonprofits. He founded MaropostCARES, which is focused on environmental protection and conservation, and education about global environmental issues.

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CRM Buyer

Announcing the New Viewer Role for Power BI Workspaces

June 25, 2019 Self-Service BI

We’re excited to announce we’ve started to roll-out the Viewer role for the new workspace experience, perfect for users who need to view content within workspaces without the ability to modify it.

The feature roll-out has started and should complete for commercial cloud customers 6/29/2019.

The Viewer role gives a read-only experience to its users. They can view dashboards, reports, or workbooks in the workspace, but can’t browse the datasets or dataflows. Use the Viewer role wherever you would previously use a classic workspace set to “Members can only view Power BI content”

If your workspace is in Premium, users who don’t have a Pro license can view the workspace in the workspaces list, navigate to the workspace, and view the content without getting a Pro Trial prompt.

The Viewer role has several benefits:

It is easier to navigate in Power BI for users with read-only access.
It helps smaller teams that want stakeholders to have read-only access to all workspace content, but do not want to publish and maintain a Power BI app for this purpose.
Any row-level security (RLS) you have defined on the datasets in the Power BI workspace is enforced for users who only have the Viewer role.
You can stop using classic workspaces based on Office 365 Groups if you needed the Members to only view Power BI content option, known as “read-only workspaces”.

Let’s look at the experiences. When you grant access in a new workspace experience workspace, you’ll see a new role called Viewer in the roles option.

Announcing the New Viewer Role for Power BI Workspaces — Screenshot of Power BI new workspace experience Access pane showing the Viewer assigned to a security group.

Users with the Viewer role get a read-only experience in the workspace. They can view dashboards, reports, or workbooks in the workspace. They can’t browse the datasets or dataflow or edit content in the workspace. This matches the experience users get in a classic workspace when they are set to “Members can only view Power BI content”.

One important difference with the Viewer role is how licensing is enforced. If the workspace is in a Power BI Premium capacity, users who have the Viewer role but do not have a Pro license can now navigate directly to the workspace and view the content. This helps smaller teams that want stakeholders to have read-only access to all workspace content, but do not want to publish and maintain a Power BI app for this purpose. It’s a really nice usability and efficiency improvement.

If the workspace is not in Power BI Premium or if the user without a Pro license has a higher privilege role, like Admin, Member, or Contributor, they will continue to get the standard Upgrade to Power BI Pro license dialog.

The Viewer role grants only the Read permission to items in the workspace. This means that any Row-Level-Security you have set on the datasets in the workspace applies to users who only have the Viewer role. If you want these users to Analyze in Excel, or export data from the datasets in the workspace, also give them Build permission on the appropriate datasets.

Learn more about the new Viewer role

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Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Tips To Make Pretty Bread

June 25, 2019 Humor

Weave away.

7 Nifty Tricks With Bread Dough – #5 Will Remind You Of The Stars

June 09, 2019

Need Custom Features for Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Cloud Native Can Help!

Cloud Native: Custom CRM Development in the Cloud

What About Costs? Will Cloud Native Be Expensive?

Personalization Gets Better Results

Be Clear About Why Recipients Should Open an Email

Create a Sense of Urgency (and Be Specific)

Use Proper Grammar and Correct Capitalization

Avoid Emojis in Your Email Subject Line

Never Use Confidential Information!

Don’t Forget to A/B Test Your Efforts for Continous Optimization

The Power Platform

Dynamics 365 Items

Customization of Opportunity Close Dialog Box

Simplified Lead Management Experience

Improve or Simplify Most Common Sales Workflows

Business Card Scan

Microsoft Teams Integration Enhancements

Power Platform Updates

AI Builder

Dynamics 365 Mobile App Update

Entity Designer

One Admin Center to Rule Them All

PowerApps Portals

Business Process Flow Immersive Experience

Working with P3

Power (Query) to the People!

Wrangling with the Data Warehouse

Threading the Needle

Operational Data and Reports for Excel

What’s Next?

Do the Math

1. Will This Solution Become a Money Pit?

2. Am I Choosing a Solution That Works for My Customers?

3. Do I Have a Single View of My Customers?

4. Can It Scale for Both Volume and Capability?

5. Will I Have the Right Level of Customer Support?

7 Nifty Tricks With Bread Dough – #5 Will Remind You Of The Stars

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