Using Activity Data To Improve Opportunity Scoring Predictions in Dynamics 365 Sales

Microsoft has developed new capabilities in Dynamics 365 to discover email messages, meetings, and

phone call activities related to an opportunity, and then to factor these signals into the score.

 

Capturing activities to determine opportunity health

A healthy opportunity will usually have activities happening in it like email messages, meetings, and phone

calls.

Many of our predictive opportunity scoring customers were gathering these signals manually to determine

opportunity health.

Microsoft has replaced the need for customers to manually track activities by using AI to gather activities,

approving prediction accuracy, and compensating for cases where sellers do not diligently update the

opportunity fields.

This can help the seller make more educated choices about what the best next action might be.

For example, a high level of activity may indicate that the opportunity is heating up and is worth attention.

Likewise, an opportunity with where the activity level is low may need immediate attention.

 

Here’s an example showing the opportunity score improving

Here's an example showing the opportunity score declining:

Connecting opportunities with activities

In addition to activities that are explicitly connected to opportunities, an algorithm is developed to infer

indirect connections between activities and opportunities, using Contact and Account activity timelines.

Since these are not trivial connections (for example, an account may have multiple opportunities), AI is

assigning them appropriate predictive weights.

 

How the predictive opportunity scoring model is trained

First, we make sure, automatically, that the data we have is meaningful and contributing to the prediction.

Then we look at each recent activity level of every opportunity and try to find a correlation between this

signal and the likelihood of winning the opportunity.

After the model is trained, we can view the open opportunities in the system and give them a score based

on past examples.

What the AI does is learn how recent activity level affects the likelihood to win an opportunity in your

organization.


 

 

Microsoft SPLA | Changes to the 2017 Partner Pricelist

Microsoft will not be announcing any price changes in January 2017 for SPLA licenses. However, Microsoft Dynamics® 365 released in SPLA on February 1, 2016, will replace the current Dynamics CRM SKUs. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the next generation of intelligent business applications that enable organizations to grow, evolve, and transform. These applications provide CRM capabilities to help engage customers, empower employees, and reinvent products and business models. Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps customers to accelerate their digital transformation to meet the changing needs of their customers and capture the new business opportunities of tomorrow.

 Changes:

  • Dynamics 365 will include Sales, Customer Services and Team Members SALs.
  • The new SKUs/SALs will appear on the February 1, 2017 SPLA price list and the February SPUR
  • Microsoft Dynamics® 365 released in SPLA on February 1, 2016, will replace the current Dynamics CRM SKUs

The following SKUs will be removed from SPLA in February 2017:

Part Number Description
QHH-00028 DynCRMSrvcPrvdr ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL
QHH-00089 DynCRMSrvcPrvdr ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL Bsc
QHH-00090 DynCRMSrvcPrvdr ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL Essntls

The following SKUs will be added in SPLA in February 2017:

Part Number Description
EMJ-00429 Dyn365ForTeamMembers ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL
EMT-00565 Dyn365ForCustmrSrvc ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL
ENJ-00705 Dyn365ForSales ALNG LicSAPk MVL SAL

The following table includes the mapping of the old Dynamics Sku’s (AX & CRM) to the new Dynamics 365 Sku’s:

Existing User License New User License
Pro User SAL Sales User SAL
Pro User SAL Customer Service User SAL
Basic User SAL Sales User SAL
Basic User SAL Customer Service User SAL
Essential User SAL Team Members User SAL