Acquainting yourself with all the apps and technology required to perform your job responsibilities is a hefty task, let alone using your tech stack with peak efficiency. That’s why it’s so beneficial when applications work together to help you do your job. Enter Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 applications. Built to seamlessly and natively integrate with each other, these business and productivity apps make it easier to transition from one to the other throughout your workday—sometimes without having to actually open another screen.

Social media is a hotbed for marketing these days: everyone is on it, every business needs to take advantage of it, and there are many strategies to engage your audience across various platforms. Marketers work hard to create strong content for their business’ social media accounts—from witty, thoughtful, or research-backed posts, to content from their own website (like blogs, infographics, and whitepapers), to engaging advertisements.

So, when most of the hard work is done, how do you ensure that those efforts are as effective as possible and return as much on your investment as it can? Believe it or not, it’s often simple steps that lead to immense shifts in social media likes, clicks, website visits, and leads.

Plans have been released for the 2022 Release Wave 1, the semi-annual feature upgrades for the Dynamics 365 suite of business applications. These feature releases keep you on the forefront of technology with improvements based off user feedback – so you can always count on quality updates that really make a difference in your workday.

Here’s everything you need to know about the new, standout features coming to Dynamics 365 Marketing with Release Wave 1:

The Dynamics 365 suite of cloud-based business applications are always being improved as user needs are identified and the cutting edge of technology advances. The coming upgrade is Release Wave 1 of 2022, scheduled from April through September. Some of the foci for these updates across applications include leveraging data, AI, and ideal timing to create better experiences throughout the sales and marketing experience, simplifying onboarding, increasing productivity, optimizing collaboration, and improving connectors and integrations. Here’s an overview of what’s coming to Dynamic 365 apps—Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Business Central—for this release wave.

While Power Automate is intuitive and accessible for any level of coding experience, it does include its own set of vocabulary that must be learned, as with any new business application. To help you on your journey, whether you’re new to Power Automate or becoming reacquainted, below we’ve outlined the key terms you will encounter when working with Power Automate:

Things like real-time customer journeys, recommended actions, SMS messaging, and using natural language to create targeted segments are exciting (and relatively new) features that can help you connect with customers in the ways that matter most. Now, AI has been harnessed in Dynamics 365 Marketing for a new, imaginative feature called Content ideas.

Here’s how to use Content ideas to quickly generate on-message content to create personalized customer experiences:

Without a doubt, automation is at the front of the pack, in terms of efficiency-building technology. Automating processes within your business—especially time-consuming, manual, and repetitive tasks—can free up calendars and mindpower for activities that can lend more value to a business.

Enter Power Automate, an application made to connect other apps in order to help them work together to complete your tasks faster, with less effort from you. Power Automate is included these Office 365 subscription plans: Enterprise E3, Business Premium, and Business Essentials (head to our page for pricing and further details). We’ve compiled an overview of Power Automate for those wondering the key questions: what is it, what are its benefits, and how does it work?

So you’re thinking about migrating from Dynamics GP to Business Central, but have a few questions you’d like to answer first—like, are they really that different from one another? Well, the answer is yes and no. We’ve started this blog and video series to help break down some commonly asked questions and points of concern when considering a migration, and we’ll talk you through some differences and similarities to be aware of as you plan for the migration process.

For the next video in this series, we’ll zoom in for a closer look at some of the small details that differentiate GP and Business Central, like the terminology that each system uses for certain functions and features.

If you’re using NAV and considering a switch to Business Central, you may have many of the same questions our own clients have asked us. To help you make your most informed decision, here are our answers to the most frequently asked questions for a NAV to Business Central upgrade.

The story behind Business Central’s growth is steeped in Microsoft’s history, and it brings clarity to the movement that many Dynamics GP users may not be aware of: though Microsoft has several ERP’s—including Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV—Business Central is now Microsoft’s premier midmarket ERP solution. Undoubtedly, if GP is near and dear to you, you will not be on board with a migration without first knowing the answer to this question: why should a business move from an ERP they are comfortable with (such as GP) and forge ahead with a new ERP?

We’ve compiled the most frequently asked questions, and our answers, on the subject.

A cornerstone of achieving web conversions is strategically placing landing pages as the first point of contact with your website. Landing pages are a bit different from your normal web page—having a smaller scope and narrowed down objective—although still an extension of your overall web presence. When done right, both you and your visitor gain something from this initial point of contact, and it can generate even more web engagement and repeat visitors in the future.

As the new year rings in, many people make resolutions—new habits, self-improvements, changes for the better. Whether or not you ascribe to New Year Resolutions, here’s a change your business can make to kick off this year and build up your bottom line: invest in CRM. A Customer Relationship Management system is a tool that, when added to your tech stack, can return massive ROI by improving your sales and marketing performance and potential. In fact, in 2014, every dollar spent on CRM returned between $5.60 and $8.71 (Nucleus Research).

In Dynamics 365 Marketing, customer journeys are orchestrated to guide a prospect through a predetermined, flexible path toward a preset end goal. Whether this goal is buying a product, scheduling a discover call, or closing a loan, a customer journey is easy to create and personalize to the needs of a segment, which may be thought of as a demographic, or group, of people who share similar characteristic.

When creating a customer journey, you want the most value for your efforts. Here are six practices that can lead to more effective customer journeys.

Business to business (or B2B) marketing is tricky and made even more so if you are a B2B marketer in an industry that might be considered, for lack of better words, “boring” in the social media space. But B2B companies can no longer afford to coast with weak or absent social media. A whopping 60-84% of people consider mobile devices essential to their work, and mobile devices are the main vehicle by which social media is consumed. With their devices out, it’s more likely they will check in on social, and no matter the platform they are surfing, their personal and professional wires are likely to cross on social media. With that in mind, a company is remiss if they don’t leverage that.

Sales teams know that using the right system is crucial to their success, and Dynamics 365 Sales is a sales-focused CRM that’s a cut above the rest. Get the most out of its features and functionalities with the Sales Insights add-on. Sales Insights allows users to generate predictive lead and opportunity scores, tap into revenue forecasts, automate sales tasks, and much, much more. Unlock a new world of capabilities to not only better understand where leads and opportunities stand, but empowers sellers to better prioritize work, realize where their time and energy is best spent, and focus on the relationships that matter most.

Here are some of Sales Insights’ standout features:

When you integrate an ERP such as Dynamics 365 Business Central, you get essential functionality and features out-of-the-box. But if you stop there, you’d miss out on opportunities to make your system work harder for you. Depending on your industry and specialty, you want to take advantage of add-ons, extensions, and ISVs that can take the already powerful ERP functionalities to the next level and more specifically geared to your needs.

Positive Pay and Continia are tools you can use to extend Business Central, not just to add functionality, but to keep your business safe and running smoothly.

Business Central is an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, and its built-in vendor management features can simplify and streamline purchasing processes right from your Business Central workspace, so there’s no need for an outside vendor management software.

Here’s an overview of Business Central’s vendor management features that keep all your vendors organized from the top-down.

Syvantis CEO, Janelle, hosts this video series covering just this question, the all-important, I’m already on GP. Should I migrate from GP to Business Central?

This episode is all about high-level differences, and in future videos, we’ll get to more granular details. We invite you to watch it, and we’ve compiled the major takeaways of the video below.

New features have been added to Microsoft Teams to make everyday communication and collaboration a breeze. Enhancements have been made to core functions like meetings, calling, sharing media during calls, as well as adding new certified devices, and more. Here is a roundup of some of the best new features in Microsoft Teams.

The search is always on for how businesses can achieve more with the effort they put in. To achieve the goal of more results with less effort, the Dynamics 365 Marketing 2021 Release Wave 2 focuses on engaging customers across all touchpoints when that contact will have the most impact, personalizing customer interactions using their own data for a heightened sense of connectivity, and making the strong and speedy business decisions that are afforded to Microsoft customers through AI-driven analytics.