Considering the Impact of Microsoft’s Viva Sales, Dynamics, Azure, GPT

In episode 3 of the “Inside Dynamics Communities” Podcast, John Siefert, CEO, Dynamics Communities and Summit NA, Ryan Gonzalez, Sales Director, Dynamics Communities and Summit NA, and Pam Misialek, Community Director, Dynamics Communities and Summit NA, explore how Microsoft is boosting Viva Sales with new GPT experiences, as it would accelerate the process of communicating with customers through email.

Highlights

00:21 — Lori Lampkin, Corporate VP of Dynamics 365 CE recently published a blog post called “Microsoft Boosts Viva Sales with New GPT Seller Experience.” John notes that the post offers some “pretty powerful stuff” for salespeople, a key takeaway from the blog being that time is money for those in the sales industry. A recent report suggested that 66% of salespeople’s days are “mired in email.” To decrease the amount of time spent going through email by using Azure’s OpenAI service and GPT solution would be a game changer.

02:06 — Pam says her head is “all over the place” about it. This solution would be beneficial for automating mundane tasks like payments. However, she also wondered if this solution would eliminate the need for salespeople, to which she concluded the answer was no. Beyond Viva Sales, there are other applications of these solutions that could “take the obvious work” away from employees.

03:08 — Ryan notes that when he first heard of this solution, he questioned how it would affect the relevancy of salespeople. How will this impact professionals that have been in the sales industry for decades? However, he notes the importance of humanity which is still valuable to many customers and buyers, so he “sees both sides of it.”

04:24 — Pam emphasizes that this solution — when used to replace “mundane” work — could allow salespeople to focus more so on fostering relationships with customers. However, these solutions cannot replace those relationships.

05:10 — As platforms get smarter, the “return on time investment” for salespeople becomes incredibly powerful. John points out that in order for “the juice to be worth the squeeze” for these GPT solutions, it is critical that these solutions align with the context of the customer, and not the product being sold.

06:16 — The idea of integrating GPT solutions into Viva Sales gives businesses the ability to capture some of the most important intelligence relating to the customer and customer process. John thinks that the outline of the blog post could make Viva Sales a very strategic tool for salespeople to “find kernels of intelligence” that the average salesperson would have missed.

07:48 — If humans can learn to ask machines the right questions, they will leave with more intelligence, suggests Pam. She predicts this solution could pivot the sales role altogether.

08:23 — It is important for humanity to start to reconsider what human intelligence means in an artificially intelligent world. However, the power of human intelligence cannot be fully replicated by AI — it can “take things a long way,” but not fully duplicate humans.

10:48 — Pam notes how these tools can be applied within the context of an ERP system, which would amplify the level of intelligence that can be communicated to other departments of a business, without needing a human to exert energy on the tasks.