Microsoft (MSFT) Presents at Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (Transcript)

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference Executives Dave O’Hara - CVP & CFO, C&E, Office, Dynamics, AI and Research Analysts Michael Nemeroff - Credit Suisse Michael Nemeroff Good morning, everyone, day two of the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference. Thanks for joining us. We are thrilled and delighted to have Dave O’Hara, who is the CFO of Cloud and Enterprise, Office, Dynamics, AI and Research from Microsoft. Dave, welcome. Dave O’Hara Thank you. Michael Nemeroff And before I begin, I was asked to read a safe harbor statement from Microsoft. Before we begin, Microsoft may make some forward-looking statements during this presentation and you should refer to their SEC filings for the Risk Factors relating to their business. That’s true whether you are here in person or listening on the web. With that out of the way, Dave, welcome. Maybe for the audience members, if you could just give us little bit of a background and your role at Microsoft? Dave O’Hara Sure, thanks. Well, the simplest way to describe, Michael, I think is that I’m the CFO for the commercial business which includes our cloud business and that cuts across Cloud and Enterprise, Office and Artificial Intelligence and Research and many other areas. So, that’s my current role, came into Microsoft through the acquisition of Great Plains many years ago, worked in the dynamic business for a while, was the CFO for the online business and CFO for Office and then Cloud and Enterprise and then as also that came together. Michael Nemeroff So, basically everything that grows at Microsoft is what you’re responsible for? Dave O’Hara Not everything, but I would say that it’s a unique position as Satya pushes for more and predictable and consisting growth, we have a lot of levers that we can pull. And so, I think within that remix, there are a lot of really good healthy growing businesses. Michael Nemeroff So, you’ve been at Microsoft for over 17 years. So, you’ve seen a couple of different CEOs in that position. Satya has come in. What do you attribute the success of Microsoft over the last couple of years? Dave O’Hara Well, there is a couple of things. Some decisions were made when Steve was still the CEO, like investing in Azure, for example, was the decision that was made originally under Steve’s watch. And Ray Ozzie, who I’m sure people know, was the original founder of that. Steve was there when we started the move to Office 365. Steve was there when we decided to get into CRM online business. And so a lot of that stuff was started many years ago. And I think what Satya did is really to step on the gas. And he just said, hey, the world is moving here faster than we thought and we need to get there faster than we thought. And so, he drove just better agility and acceleration I think as we move to the cloud and we were able to move resources over there and we were able to catch up. In a lot of the cloud services, we weren’t first mover but I think we did a good job, especially on something like Office 365 for Google Apps, cloud offering first. I think we did a really good job catching up and passing them and becoming the market leader. And so, I would say, the simple answer for me is Satya drives sort of the cultural shift in terms of agility and acceleration and really focusing on growth. Michael Nemeroff Does this feel like a new age for Microsoft, completely different than it’s been over the last five years? Dave O’Hara Well, if you’re there, I think it’s harder to see sort of the instant change. I think the market perceives if there’s some instant or overnight change, and there really wasn’t. It was more over the course of a few years. I do think we are in a better position than we were. So, if there is an incentive of the new age, I just think we’re better positioned in the cloud, we are better positioned even in SaaS and the Office 365 offerings. And so, overall, I think the Company is better positioned for growth than it was five years ago.

7 power tips for Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s interactive data visualization and analytics tool for business intelligence. You can use it to pull data from a wide range of systems in the cloud and on premises and create dashboards that track the metrics you care about the most, or drill in and (literally) ask questions about your data. You can create rich reports or embed dashboards and reports into reporting portals you already use. The dashboards, reports and visualizations you can create go far beyond bar and pie charts, but you don’t need to be a designer to use them. Here’s how to get more insights from the information you already have, in more areas than you might expect. [ Deliver deep insights with the 7 keys to a successful business intelligence strategy and find out why you’re failing at business intelligence. | Get the latest business intelligence and IT strategy analysis by signing up for our newsletter. ] 1. Visualize the services you use Power BI has hundreds of content packs, templates and integrations for hundreds of data services, apps and services that include pre-set reports and visualisations — and not just Microsoft ones like Dynamics 365 and SQL Server. If you use Xero for accounting, or K2 Cloud to build business processes, or Adobe Marketing Cloud, SAP HANA, Salesforce, MailChimp, Marketo or Google Analytics, or even GitHub, you can use Power BI to visualize the data you have in those services, create reports against them and bring them together in a custom dashboard. You can also set up the on-premises gateway to use Power BI to explore data sets on your own servers. That way you can compare website visitors with sales, or see which promotions have brought in new customers. You can create your own reports and visualizations, perform calculations (Power BI calls these calculated measures) and set access levels for individual users, data sources, or specific dashboards and reports to control who can view more sensitive information. 2. Tell stories with your data Charts are great for numbers, but if you want to show information that changes over time in a way that’s easy to understand, try the new Timeline Storyteller custom visual for Power BI. You can create a linear list of dates or times, or lay them out in circles, spirals, grids or custom shapes. You can also show a chronological list, a sequence that shows the duration of events, or pick relative or logarithmic scales. Pick how to best represent, scale and lay out your data and Power BI will build a timeline from it; use that to tell the history of your business, show how demand is growing, or explain anything else in which the sequence of events matters. Software Visualizing data with Power BI (3:49) 3. Explore ‘What-ifs’ You can compare different scenarios in Excel, but Power BI lets you do it by dragging a slider bar to show changes. Add a calculated measure for a figure such as revenue and you can use the New Parameter button in Power BI Desktop to add parameters that change in your What-if scenario – setting the data type, minimum, maximum and increments. That creates a calculated measure that you can reference in other calculated measures; so if you create a What-if parameter for the number of customers who respond to a particular promotion you can plug that into a formula that you create to show how many customer support tickets you can expect to have to deal with. Tick “Add slider to this page” in the What-if parameter dialog to add a slider bar that you can drag to show the difference when the number of customer responses is higher or lower. 4. Ask questions in real time Instead of designing charts and reports, use the natural language features of Power BI to ask questions and get visualizations in response. You can specify the way the data is presented — ask for “total sales by region by month as a line” — or let Power BI pick a layout that suits the data with a more general question like “what were the sales numbers for last quarter?” If there are tiles pinned to the dashboard, Q&A will suggest those as questions, and as you type a question it will suggest terms you could add based on the tables in the data set. If the question turns out to be extremely useful, you can pin the visualization to the dashboard, making this an easy way to create visualizations for a data set. If you own the data set, you can also add featured questions in the dashboard settings. Q&A uses the names of tables, columns and calculated fields in the data sets; if the column is called area rather than region, you’d need to ask for “sales by area” unless you add synonyms, and table names like CustomerSummary will make Q&A less natural than names like Customers (even though Q&A would know that’s the table you want if you ask about “customer summaries in Chicago” because it can break words up and understand plurals). Power BI Q&A works in the Power BI website and the iOS Power BI app. It can work on data stored in an Excel table (or in a database via the on-premises gateway if you enable Q&A for the data set) or you can use Power Pivot to optimize the data set for Q&A. Make sure all the tables in your data set are joined correctly, check data types for dates and numbers, and create the default field set for columns and default label for tables to tweak the columns displayed and the type of graph or chart Q&A will show. 5. Custom visualizations Power BI includes a good range of visualizations, and you can add more, either by downloading them from the Office Store or by creating your own with the open source Power BI Custom Visual Tool (which uses CSS, TypeScript and NodeJS). The Office Store includes vizualisations from Microsoft, like word clouds, a correlation plot based on R script, chord charts to show interrelationships in a circular matrix, the “box and whisker plot” that highlights outliers, clusters and percentiles to show data that might otherwise get lost in summarized figures like averages, as well as visualisations created by other Power BI customers. You can also link Visio diagrams to Power BI to use those as custom visuals, if you want to analyze progress through workflows and processes. If you have Excel analytics models, you can use Frontline’s Analytic Solver to turn them into custom Power BI visualizations without having to design the custom visual in JavaScript. What you get isn’t a static report; it’s a dynamic model that you can drag and drop different Power BI data sets onto to simulate or optimise different options. 6. Fit more data into executive dashboards Different BI users need different levels of information in their visualizations. Managers and business analysts may want a lot of details, but if your executives are tracking 20 or 30 key metrics, maybe for multiple regions around the world, it’s better to present that at a glance with a simple view that shows the target and the actual figure rather than a more complex visualization. That way you can look up information quickly in a meeting without getting lost in too many charts and figures. The Power KPI custom visualization combines multiple report types into a single tile. 7. Power BI is for IT data, too It isn’t only business users who have large amounts of information they need to distil down for insights; you can use Power BI to visualize data for IT monitoring tools. The Power BI solution template for Azure Activity Logs uses an Azure SQL database and Stream Analytics to collect logs and display them using pre-built Power BI Desktop reports, so you can look at trends in usage and problems. There’s also a set of pre-built Power BI reports for the Intune Data Warehouse that shows device details like configurations and compliance state, and a solution template for System Center Configuration Manager with a dashboard that covers client and server health, malware protection levels, software inventory and which devices are missing updates. There are templates for a range of other tools, and you can build your own dashboards and reports for other tools as long as you can get the data into a SQL Server or Azure SQL database.

Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Overview & Industry Landscape by Focusing On Top Key Vendors: Microsoft Corporation, OpenText Corporation, Oracle Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, SAS Institute, Inc., and Information Builders

A comprehensive analysis of the Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market is been done in this intelligence report. It includes the investigations done on the past progress, ongoing market scenarios, and future prospects. An accurate data of the products, strategies and market shares of leading companies in this particular market is mentioned. This report presents a 360-degree overview of the competitive scenario of the Global market. The report further projects the size and valuation of the global market in the coming forecast period. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting the projected impact of these factors on market’s future growth prospects. Microsoft Corporation, OpenText Corporation, Oracle Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, SAS Institute, Inc., and Information Builders Get Sample Copy of this Report @ https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=193924 It explains a detailed outline of the Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market depending on the important parameters. End users, products, regions, and many other segments are studied and explained. A brief idea of the driving forces which help make the market more flourishing is discussed in order to help the client understand the future market position. According to the research report, the global market for Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market is witnessing a continual rise in its valuation with the advancement in technologies, which is impacting the consumer behavior and, accordingly, their purchasing patterns to a great extent. In addition to this, the rising penetration of internet and the surge in mobile surfing are anticipated to boost the demand for Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services across the world, states the research report. On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years. Get Up to 40% Discount on this report: https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=193924 This statistical surveying research study presents an all-inclusive evaluation of the worldwide market for Card Personalization Equipment, taking various industry parameters, such as the capacity of production, product pricing, demand, supply, and sales dynamics, returns on investments, and the growth rate of the overall market into consideration. In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report. Table of Contents The Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Research Report 2018 1 Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Overview 2 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Competition by Manufacturers 3 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2018) 4 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2018) 5 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type 6 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Analysis by Application 7 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis 8 Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Manufacturing Cost Analysis 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis 12 Global Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Services Market Forecast (2018-2023) 13 Research Findings and Conclusion 14 Appendix

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?

The logistics of running a business gets complicated, and keeping it all down on pen and paper has become unrealistic. Customer relations information is essential for retaining buyers and clients, keeping track of leads, and knowing when and where to approach customers. More than ever, it's essential to have software that helps you manage your company's financials, including sales, inventory, purchasing and analytics. There are tons of customer relationship management systems (CRM) on the market. But for those already familiar with Microsoft's range of business programs, the company's all-in-one package of applications called Dynamics 365 could be for you. It can handle all these aspects of running your business from a CRM point of view. Like Microsoft's Office 365, this is a software as a service (SaaS) application that you pay a monthly subscription for and can be accessed through a web browser. It shares data between the different applications, allowing for seamless movement through programs and sharing with other users. It integrates with Office 365, and both come with their even more comprehensive package, Microsoft 365 Business. Pricing Dynamics 365 comes in two main varieties: the Business Edition for small to medium-size businesses and the Enterprise Edition for larger companies. A user license for the Business Edition costs $40 per month, which grants you access to the main three applications and their functionality: Sales, Marketing and Financials. This is also accompanied with team member licenses that cost $5 per month per user. The team member license grants employees light access to applications like the customer service module and read-only access to most applications. The Enterprise Edition gives you full access to all Dynamics 365 applications. The user license is $210 per month, with team member licenses costing $8 per month each. There are cheaper packages focused on operations or customer engagement, and you can get individual applications a la carte. Customer relations management If your business thrives on longstanding relationships with clients or customers, then CRM software is great for maintaining those relationships and nurturing new ones. Dynamic 365's CRM application organizes customers' contact information, but it does much more by fielding key information and helping you make sales decisions. When reviewing the leads you want to convert into sales opportunities, you want as much information as possible about their needs, behavior and other consumer intelligence. CRM also plays a role in your company's marketing and customer service. Marketing teams use the stats generated by CRM to make decisions on materials and campaigns, then to track the results. Customer service reps use it to look up critical information about a customer when assisting them. Dynamic's customer service interface allows reps to quickly pull up information, such as customer history, trending issues and past interactions. The most important aspect is that information recorded from any team, such as customer service, can be shared with the other departments, such as sales. This information-sharing can not only assist other employees in your organization but ultimately improve customer retention. Dynamics 365 allows you to customize how data is gathered and displayed, with graphs and other visual representations. Financial management and operations Any business owner is likely familiar with organizing their business's expenses, revenue, inventory and other assets. Dynamics 365 can make this task easier with its financial management applications that help you keep track of budgets, make projections, plus it offers other bookkeeping functions. The inventory manager allows you to track your supply chain and lets you know what's in stock at any given time. Dynamics 365 extrapolates trend data to predict when you'll need more of a certain item and will advise you when it's time to order. This ties into a purchasing application so you can be sure that you're staying on budget when ordering new inventory. Invoices and orders are saved and organized. Other expenses, such as equipment, labor and leases, are factored in as well. Another logistical aspect Dynamics 365 can help you with is human resources. The talent module allows you to organize potential new hires, track of employee performance and set goals. Here's the complete list of applications in the Business Edition: Dynamics 365 for Sales Dynamics 365 for Marketing Dynamics 365 for Financials Applications in the Enterprise Edition include: Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Dynamics 365 for Field Service Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Dynamics 365 for Retail Dynamics 365 for Talent Bottom line Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful suite of tools that can help you organize and run your business, with applications to handle nearly every aspect of your business. Even the Business Edition, by itself, is a good CRM program and operations tracker. You can sign up for individual modules to fill your business's needs; however, the seamless sharing of data allows all modules to work better cohesively and allows you and your employees to better collaborate. Andreas Rivera Andreas Rivera graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. in Mass Communication and is now a B2B writer for Business.com, Business News Daily and Tom's IT Pro. His background in journalism brings a critical eye to his reviews and features, helping business leaders make the best decisions for their companies.

CognitiveScale to Deliver Industry Optimized AI for Financial Services on Microsoft Azure

AUSTIN, TX -- CognitiveScale today announced it is collaborating with Microsoft to combine the power of Microsoft Azure with industry-specific machine intelligence software from CognitiveScale. The relationship is designed to accelerate AI adoption in the financial services industry to transform front and back office operations for enterprise clients. CognitiveScale's augmented intelligence solutions extend human and process intelligence, fueling innovation by making sense of expanding volumes of structured and unstructured data. This approach to AI emulates cognitive functions like perception, abstraction, reasoning, and learning to build machine-accumulated knowledge for organizations. As a Co-Sell Ready Partner in the Microsoft One Commercial Partner Program, CognitiveScale will deliver financial services industry-specific AI solutions for: Client Engagement - delivering proactive, hyper-individualized service for wealth and financial clients to scale advisors to better support even more clients Trading Intelligence - providing traders and advisors timely, relevant market and trading insights for customers with highly personalized and powerful behavioral profiles based on their historical trading styles Research - improving research quality with machine-generated insights to power faster and better investment decisions and customer experiences Risk and Compliance - applying machine learning to reduce compliance risk incidents and exposure while reducing operating costs "AI has the power to transform the financial services industry more than any other technology has in recent history," said Akshay Sabhikhi, CEO, CognitiveScale. "CognitiveScale and Microsoft are in a unique position to deliver a full stack financial services AI cloud to transform how financial institutions engage their clients, improve employee decision-making, and manage risk and compliance." "CognitiveScale's industry optimized AI solutions help financial services companies understand the stated and unstated intentions of their customers, as well as improve their own business process intelligence, reduce costs and risk," said Janet Lewis, Vice President, Microsoft Financial Services at Microsoft Corp. "Infusing applications with this type of insight and intelligence at any point in time results in a democratization of AI to the benefit of every person and organization." About CognitiveScale CognitiveScale builds industry-specific augmented intelligence solutions for financial services, healthcare, and digital commerce markets that emulate and extend human cognitive functions by pairing people and machines. Built on its CORTEX augmented intelligence platform, the company's solutions help large enterprises drive transformative change by increasing user engagement, improving decision-making, and delivering self-learning and self-assuring business processes. CognitiveScale has successfully deployed augmented intelligence solutions in multiple Global 500 companies, and has formed strategic go-to-market and technology partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, and Deloitte. The company has been named among AI leaders in prominent research and publications including Fortune's Top 50 companies leading the AI Revolution. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, CognitiveScale has offices in New York, London, and Hyderabad, India, and is funded by Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, IBM Watson, Microsoft Ventures, USAA and The Westly Group. For more information on the company, please visit us at cognitivescale.com and follow @cognitivescale on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Media contact: Leigh Ann Schmidt Head of Corporate Communications CognitiveScale, Inc.

Stoneridge Software Acquires Microsoft Partner DFC Consultants

Stoneridge Software, LLC announces the acquisition of DFC Consultants, Ltd, joining forces of two prominent Microsoft Dynamics partners in the Midwest. The combination of the two firms positions Stoneridge Software as the leading Microsoft Dynamics accounting and operations software advisor in the area and creates a full-service resource for the entire Microsoft Dynamics suite of business technologies. The acquisition expands the consulting practice by 18 individuals and adds more than 200 organizations to the Stoneridge Software client base. "DFC is a veteran of the industry and a well-respected Microsoft partner that truly cares about the success of their clients," said Eric Newell, CEO of Stoneridge Software. "We welcome the talented team of consultants and look forward to providing for the needs of their customers, and continuing to establish ourselves as the go-to choice for business software consulting." Company leaders see many synergies between the two firms with similar company values, a client-centric approach, focus on end-user training and prioritization of creating a great work culture. "In order to best serve our clients in the future we found an alliance and solid partnership in Stoneridge Software," said Carol Rogne, DFC's CEO and President. "We look forward to becoming part of this visionary company and continuing to provide our clients service and support for future growth." The acquisition was effective as of January 5, 2018. DFC Consultants will continue business under their current name as a Stoneridge Software subsidiary. About Stoneridge Software Founded in 2012, Stoneridge Software is the largest Microsoft Gold ERP Partner in upper Midwest with offices in Barnesville and Minneapolis, Minn. As a business technology firm with specialties in Microsoft Dynamics 365, Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics CRM, Stoneridge focuses on attracting the most knowledgeable experts in the field to provide stellar solutions that deliver maximum business impact. This means 1) a modern, easy-to-use interface that's available anywhere, 2) a fully connected system that pulls together data from multiple lines of business and best-of-breed systems and 3) The business intelligence to help companies make informed decisions based on real-time data. Stoneridge has industry expertise in manufacturing, distribution, construction, engineering, and professional services. About DFC Consultants In business for 28 years, DFC Consultants is a Microsoft Gold partner with locations in Fargo, Bismarck and Dickinson, ND. DFC Consultants is home to a Microsoft Certified Training Center, allowing customers to take advantage of hands-on, local training. DFC Consultants offers sales, implementation and support of Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, KEY2ACT (formerly WennSoft), Office 365 and DFC Property Management software. DFC is a proven leader and expert in the software field. About Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft Dynamics is a number of different Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software applications, as well as small and medium business solutions. Microsoft Dynamics can be used with other Microsoft applications, such as SharePoint, Yammer, Office 365, Azure, and Outlook. In the near future, Microsoft HoloLens will also be added to the experience. Microsoft Dynamics focuses on industries such as retail, service, manufacturing, financial services, and the public sector.

Certified EDI for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018 Available From Data Masons

SARASOTA, Fla., Dec. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Data Masons Software, LLC., a leading provider of integrated EDI solutions for Microsoft Dynamics NAV customers, announces integration of its Vantage Point EDI solution with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018. This announcement demonstrates the company's continued support of Microsoft's go-to market strategies and commitment to providing customers with DayOne EDI integration for the latest Microsoft Dynamics releases. Data Masons' Vantage Point EDI for Microsoft Dynamics NAV is Certified by Microsoft, and includes an innovative integration architecture that allows customers to meet their EDI requirements with a less-evasive approach than alternative technology options. By avoiding customizations to Dynamics NAV, customers can immediately take advantage of the new features and leverage Vantage Point EDI for all EDI requirements. This means much lower risk and assurance that future Microsoft NAV releases can be quickly adopted. "Microsoft is continuing its commitment to make Microsoft NAV one of the leading integrated ERP solutions available. Microsoft NAV 2018 is offering tighter integration to Office365, Power BI, Microsoft Flow, Dynamics 365 for Sales, and many others. As organizations look to create more efficient, streamlined business processes, EDI is one technology that can empower them to make significant improvements" stated Dennis Bruce, Director of Business Development, Data Masons. Bruce added, "Our commitment to DayOne support assures our customers that no matter where their business is today or in the future, that their EDI processes and trading partner relationships are secure as they continue to invest in Microsoft Dynamics NAV." To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018, read the Microsoft post, which includes a product overview, capabilities guide, and a list of what's new. Additionally you can read our General Manager of EMEA's thoughts in this blog post on the Dynamics NAV 2018 launch. Data Masons, in partnership with MSDynamicsWorld.com, hosted a webinar, "EDI Made Simple for Dynamics NAV." Watch the on-demand webinar to learn more about Data Masons' approach to EDI integration using best practices that make it an ideal fit for the future direction of Dynamics NAV. ABOUT DATA MASONS Data Masons specializes in EDI Made Simple® for Microsoft Dynamics customers by offering advanced, turnkey EDI & XML solutions. Certified for Microsoft Dynamics, Vantage Point EDI provides an end-to-end EDI processing platform with seamless integration and predictable ownership costs for cloud or on-premise environments - all without expensive and disruptive ERP platform customization. Data Masons' compliance services, product flexibility, extensive EDI and ERP integration knowledge, and partner-driven experience have made Vantage Point EDI the winning choice for high-performance business document integration at more than 1,500 customers globally. Media Contact: Heather Robinson Data Masons Software Phone: 941-347-4781

Sunrise Technologies Announces Release of the Sunrise 365™ Retail Replenishment Solution

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (PRWEB) December 19, 2017 Sunrise Technologies, a global provider of Microsoft Dynamics ERP, CRM, and BI consulting services, announced today the release of their exclusive Retail Replenishment Solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365. Sunrise 365™ Retail Replenishment automatically replenishes inventory for retail stores based on data within the Dynamics 365 ERP solution, with no additional integrations. Microsoft Power BI dashboards embedded throughout the solution provide key insights to users within the interface. Traditional retail replenishment tools require large amounts of data transferred to third-party software, calculated, and sent back to their backend systems. The Sunrise 365™ Retail Replenishment tool lives inside the Dynamics 365 ERP solution, dramatically reducing the time it takes to plan and execute retail replenishments. Over 2 decades of retail implementation experience combined with over 100 go-lives contributed to the creation of the Sunrise 365™ Retail Replenishment Solution. As an experienced Dynamics retail partner, Sunrise consultants have encountered many challenges surrounding retail replenishment. “This new release is a milestone for Sunrise,” says John Pence, president and founder of Sunrise. “Thanks to the innovation and hard work of Sunrise employees, our customers can replenish their stores’ inventory more efficiently, with less complexity, built within the solution they already own.” “This is great news for Microsoft retail customers, said Balaji Balasubramanian, Principal Group Program Manager from Microsoft. “The ability to manage store replenishments without a lot of cost and complexity and seamlessly integrated into the rest of their business processes is so important for retailers, especially during the critical holiday season.” More information on the The Sunrise 365™ Retail Replenishment Solution can be found at sunrise.co. Since 1994, Sunrise Technologies has delivered game-changing ERP and business intelligence solutions at a tremendous value, in partnership with Microsoft. With one of the largest apparel, footwear, and furnishings Microsoft Dynamics 365™ customer bases in the world, Sunrise is a global systems integrator operating out of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Microsoft drops plans to integrate Cortana with Dynamics 365

Microsoft has dropped plans to integrate its Cortana personal digital assistant with its Dynamics 365 ERP/CRM services. cortanadynamics365.jpg Microsoft officials made the announcement about the discontinuation in a very short blog post on January 5, as first noted by MSDynamicsWorld.com. The blog post in its entirety: "After carefully consideration, we've decided to discontinue the Cortana integration preview feature. Dynamics 365 will no longer appear in Cortana's notebook, and Cortana will no longer prompt users with relevant information about sales activities, accounts, opportunities, and meetings. "We welcome your feedback and ideas." The preview of Cortana integration was available as part of Dynamics 365 Online version 9.X and 8.X and Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update. There's no explanation regarding why Microsoft dropped its Cortana integration plans for Dynamics 365. I've asked company officials to see if they'll say more. No word back so far. Microsoft had been touting the coming Cortana-Dynamics 365 integration to its partners as a key differentiator as recently as this past Summer. Microsoft seemingly has been trying to more clearly position Cortana over the past several months.As originally introduced, Cortana was basically a prettier front end for Bing search. By doing this, Microsoft didn't make it clear that Cortana also was a key piece of Microsoft's plan to infuse its apps and services with intelligence provided by AI services on the back end. Recently, the company seems to be trying to build search in a way that optimizes users' ability to search on the Web, within apps and locally. At the same time, it has been building Cortana smarts into applications and services like Skype, Edge, Office and Outlook. I had thought integrating Cortana with Dynamics 365 was part of this new plan, but given the cancellation, apparently not (?). Despite the cancellation of Cortana integration, Microsoft is continuing work to add more AI technologies to Dynamics 365. As MSDyanmicsWorld noted, the Customer Insights module of Dynamics 365 adds predictive modeling to sales and service activities. And Microsoft has demonstrated image recognition driven by Azure services as a future add-in possibility for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. At Ignite in Septmeber, Microsoft showed off some new virtual support agent technology it branded as "Dynamics 365 AI Solutions." However, rather confusingly, the underlying technology has no connection with Dynamics 365 products. These agents are custom built by Microsoft for enterprise customers using Microsoft's Knowledge Graph, Bing data, and Microsoft machine-reading technology. What's today's move mean for Cortana? Good question. Microsoft's personal digital assistant is falling behind its competitors. At the end of last year, there were only 250 Cortana skills available, compared to Alexa's 25,000. Microsoft's best hope for Cortana seems/seemed to be to get it integrated into more first- and third-party applications and services.