Over the past 20 years, the suite of Microsoft Dynamics Business Applications has transformed beyond recognition. However, during that same period, the way that Dynamics 365 partners sell, design, and deploy Dynamics 365 has changed less. The GYDE365 platform from Seer 365 is leading the charge in changing that.
In this article, Theo Smith, our Product Development Manager, who previously worked as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM consultant, discusses some of the benefits for Dynamics 365 partners of GYDE365-Design, one of our suite of Dynamics 365 project productivity applications, for running better Dynamics 365 implementations.
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All too often a CRM (or an ERP) implementation can become inundated with pre, and post go-live change requests. These are often caused by failing to identify, discuss and accommodate some requirements. Spiralling costs, resource pressures and extended timelines are just some of the consequences that can ultimately lead to a strained partner-customer relationship. However, many of these issues can be mitigated using GYDE365-Design, Seer 365’s Dynamics 365 analysis and design application. Here are some of the key benefits of using the application:
Run more effective and structured workshops
The way that GYDE365-Design captures functional requirements also provides a structured approach to running customer workshops, ensuring the right discussions are had and requirements aren’t simply overlooked. In fact, the best time to introduce GYDE365-Design to customers is in advance of a workshop as a ‘pre-workshop’ readiness tool. In doing this, when it is time for the workshop, the objectives are clear and everyone can hit the ground running, make the most of the time they have together.
Understand your customer and the wider solution context
There is so much more to workshops than functional requirements gathering. For a solution to address the customer’s pain points and business challenges the wider ‘why’ question needs to be explored, discussed, and documented. GYDE365-Design tool not only gathers the functional requirements, it also auto-generates effective documentation that includes the success criteria and pain points.
Educate your customers in the product and its capabilities
Using GYDE365-Design’s in-built product help articles and videos, both customers and more junior team members can gain a better understanding of the capabilities of the Dynamics 365 applications. These resources can help the customer to better understand product capabilities, helping them to understand if the core Dynamics 365 solution can target their specific pain points or some customisations are required. It empowers customers to make informed decisions regarding tailored solutions.
Accelerate the development lifecycle
When requirements and other relevant information have been captured using GYDE365-Design, the application automatically generates comprehensive output documentation at the click-of-a-button. The automated production of the output documentation avoids the misalignment that can occur when multiple team members work on different sections of manually produced documentation before consolidating it. The documentation generated by GYDE365-Design is a valuable internal resource for the partner in the build of the customer’s desired solution and is usually shared with the customer for their approval – providing both parties with an audit trail of what has been agreed.
In addition to the output documentation, GYDE365-Design integrates to Azure DevOps (a Microsoft tool for automating, orchestrating, and managing application and service delivery), saving valuable time as the creation of project user stories/work items is done automatically.
Empower more junior resources
With GYDE365-Design, the more junior members of an implementation partner’s delivery team are empowered to lead workshops and document requirements correctly with the assurance that they are being ‘GYDE-ed’ through the process. All too often junior resources require significant time investment from more senior resources to work alongside them until they have the relevant expertise to run workshops alone. GYDE365-Design reduces this burden, allowing junior members to take full ownership of workshops much earlier, knowing and feeling confident that they are conducting them correctly. Senior team members are then free to work on other important customer-focused activities.
If you would like an informal demo of our GYDE365-Design tool to understand how it can be used to drive efficiency and customer satisfaction in your next Dynamics 365 implementation, arrange a demo here: seer365.com/demo/