Get started with a sustainable travel outlook of your business within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

Let us meet Sam, the Accounting wizard at a small business, Pally Tech, owned by his friends. The monthly accounts for November had an astonishing high expense amount and Sam had been following this pattern for quite a while. One large chunk was contributed by the amount spent on gasoline by the company’s reps. Sam had been attending several workshops on being ready for situations like the global lockdown. He was imbibing the art of sustainability in this quest and had been adding it to his work life to offer extra support to his employer friends. These astonishing patterns were a hindrance to his learning of sustainability. Sam took his list of concerns to a Sales Consultant friend after having a chat with his owner friends.

They met over coffee along with Sam’s friends, the CEO, and the company Sales Head. The Sales Head highlighted multiple day-to-day problems that could be considered an obstacle to company sustenance in the long run.

• He lamented, “My reps often lose track of their route and have to backtrack to reach the meeting venues. This often wastes a lot of time and cuts into the meeting hours. They end up spending on tolls or climbing unnecessary highways as they do not know the shortest routes.
• My reps do not have an organized schedule. They visit the office, check where they are required, and then proceed. As a result, we fail on prioritizing our client requirements or are unable to accommodate impromptu requests despite the bandwidth. This ultimately affects our Client relationships and downs the field productivity!
• The rate of gas is $3.5/ gallon today and after a steady increase. With the gas lost on tracing routes and backtracking, our overall expenses are platonic.

We need a better working model as we can distinctly see the parasite eating into our productivity and growth. All suggestions you would have for our roadblock are highly appreciated”, he concluded.

The Consultant jotted down all the points and nodded understandingly. She pondered over the issue for a few minutes, and said, “I will get into the depth of this crux, and post an organized review. However, at the first instance, and as Sam’s friend, I would suggest you need Maplytics. Ever heard of it?”

“Yes, I have seen it being used by a few of my acquaintances at similar posts. Isn’t it the preferred app of the Microsoft AppSource for geo-mapping and analytics?”, replied the Sales Head. The Consultant said yes and continued, “many of my clients use it as it is a cost-effective package that harnesses the power of Location Intelligence. It integrates maps with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and puts to use the spatial factors from CRM data for business engagement and growth. Maplytics has numerous unique features that help in visualizing data over maps, searching clients around a specific area, scheduling appointments in advance with the clients, tracking field reps in real-time, and much more. Of all these, the one that would help your organization and Sam’s highlighted problem the most would be ‘Route Optimization’”. The consultant tilted her laptop and started presenting the technical working of the feature to all those present.

“You mentioned that a meeting planner is not used at your organization. Here, check out this case study”, she said handing out printed copies of a case study. “This is a Case Study of one of my clients who use Maplytics regularly. This story explains how she has used it efficiently for Auto-Scheduling. Your Field Reps can have a pre-planned schedule well in advance to act upon so you all could start up by being organized and informed. Now that the schedule is updated, let us take a day’s chart for your field rep. Once the appointment locations for the day have been marked, an optimized route with the shortest travel distance avoiding highways, tolls, and traffic can be plotted by checking the options.

The travel route can be for live travel or could be pre-scheduled for future requirements.

This route can be saved with a name for future reference or to be used at a required time.

The route also comes with turn-by-turn navigation directions and links for the same. These links have the proper driving directions and can be printed as well as mailed to the stakeholders concerned.

The navigation links can then be shared with the field reps, managers, or even the clients expecting them for convenience. This combined along with the feature of real-Time tracking helps in knowing the whereabouts of the reps to address last-minute requests.

If a new waypoint is added to accommodate the last-minute changes, the travel directions can also be altered and the navigation turns to get auto-updated for the field rep.

The route, if, saved already could be updated or deleted completely.

 Thus, if you see, the above procedure can be done for multiple clients for multiple days by the Manager responsible and the reps can view it all on the Dynamics 365 Mobile app conveniently. The directions can be redirected to Google Maps and Waze App easily”, the consultant highlighted.

“This could turn out to be a revolutionary solution for our organization. Proper, optimized directions would save our time, expense, client relationships, etc., and help us sustain with ease”, agreed, the Sales Head and the CEO.

The Consultant suggested the Team write to Maplytics at crm@inogic.com  for their mapping queries, a free trial of 15 days, or a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse. To learn more about Maplytics, she asked them to visit their Website or the Microsoft AppSource. For further details, she mentioned they could hop on Maplytics’ Blogs, Client Testimonials, and Video Library and left saying,

Until then,

Travel smartly and safely!