At Inspire, Microsoft shows off progress on LinkedIn + Dynamics 365 scenarios

Business applications have a role to play in Microsoft's larger vision for digital transformation, and plans for new LinkedIn use cases have become an expected part of Dynamics 365 roadmap plans. At Inspire 2017 this week, the company is demonstrating plans for enhancing business scenarios like sales force automation and talent management by connecting Dynamics 365 apps with LinkedIn and the Microsoft productivity tools.

"It's not about a collection of more business applications," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the event's opening keynote address. "We need to connect processes end to end and create systems of intelligence, systems of action." Nadella added that monolithic suites "don't cut it anymore."

Better relationship sales with LinkedIn

Microsoft showed off a sales scenario using the Dynamics 365 sales app to pursue an open opportunity and a new employee onboarding use case using Dynamics 365 for Talent. Both were led by Alysa Taylor, general manager of Microsoft business applications.

The relationship sales scenario demonstrated by Taylor began with an alert to a sales rep from Dynamics 365 about an opportunity at risk. The prospect has not been responding to recent communications. The sales rep uses LinkedIn's social graph, connected to Dynamics 365, in two ways to attempt to save the deal. First, she searched her LinkedIn personal network beyond the primary contact at the organization in hopes of strengthening her position with a larger set of people there. Then, she looked to LinkedIn to help identify members of her own sales team ...