(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] We're living in uncertain times again, aren't we?
As parts of the globe experience a recession, and others anticipate one.
How should we manage our businesses?
Should we focus on protecting them by cutting costs
or differentiate by investing in innovation?
We're making the decision far simpler,
in this wave, our features help you save costs and innovate.
Let's check them out in our vision overview
of the 2023 Release Wave 1 features
in Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations
and Human Resources.
Tailwind Utilities is a global energy provider.
Vandana, a member of the sales team,
is pulling together a proposal for a new client
building 3000 apartments.
Thanks to new enhancements, the process is incredibly simple.
First, she creates a project plan.
Using a template project that reflects previous engagements,
she's confident that the estimate is realistic.
The template project plan captures the worker's sequences
of parent and child tasks and resources,
with this work sourced from employees and contractors.
By next tying the project plan to the project quotation,
it's really easy for her to create a credible proposal for her customer.
Using the new interaction patterns for editing
the resource model hours and prices on some of the work components,
she can easily make the bid more appealing.
The estimated margins, revenue and competitiveness score
of the proposal update in real time, giving her real clarity
of the finances for this deal.
Feeling confident, she sends a proposal to the customer,
they accept.
Using new performance enhancements, she can convert the quote
into a signed contract in seconds.
Updates to the quote to win process means Vandana
can close deals in half the time.
Fast forward a few weeks and with the project kicked off,
the team starts to record expenses.
Using our new generally available mobile experience,
it's really simple to capture receipts using OCR,
enter per diems, and log mileage.
The team love the new frictionless experience.
The project manager creates a budget from the estimation
done on the project plan.
As the team works on the project, he's able to track progress
towards schedule and spend.
He can re-forecast if he detects any discrepancies
in the execution versus what was planned
during the sales stage.
As time expenses and material usage roll in,
it's time to start invoicing.
The Billing Administrator used to spend days each week
creating hundreds of invoices.
New features mean the steps required to create an invoice
are reduced by 90%.
He saves huge amounts of time.
Invoice lines and transactions are displayed directly
on a draft and he can easily make changes to the quantities,
add and remove transactions, and see the impact this has
on invoice totals right in that moment.
Next, it's time to confirm the invoice.
New features mean this process takes half the time
and Tailwind's Billing Administrator is freed up
to focus on other impactful work.
Turning to HR, helping employees grow is a major priority for Tailwind.
They ask their employees to complete a series of mandatory
trainings ranging from professional learning, safety,
and compliance to inclusive working.
To manage this training, they used multiple learning
management solutions.
Tracking training across each of these systems
was unnecessarily complicated.
We've made it far more simple.
Using Dynamics 365 Human Resources, they connect all of their systems
to our central e-learning hub.
Managers and HR can come to one place to track course
completion on an employee or group basis, meaning they spend
less time jumping between systems, and more time
supporting their team.
Focusing on Finance,
effective financial operations are key to Tailwind success.
On a daily basis, their Finance team manages
a massive product service and operational invoices.
They often analyze transactions across the business
in an effort to spot opportunities to reduce costs.
Historically, they've been adding important information
against each transaction using our existing
financial dimensions features.
With the rules and validation required for financial
dimensions, this was dragging both the performance
of the team and their system.
Using the new financial tag feature,
it's far easier for them to capture and analyze information
needed about each invoice.
We've also helped them significantly increase their output
by separating the operational and accounting
posting processes.
The AR clerk can now post accounts receivable invoices
without needing to wait for the account process.
This stops those frustrating waiting periods in their tracks
and means the team can work through far more invoices.
What's more, the Accounting Manager feels confident
that, just like with dimensions, they can filter, sort,
and analyze financial data plus perform automatic ledger
settlement using tags.
Alongside that, the AP Manager has seen a massive reduction
in how long it takes to process all types
of vendor invoices.
Why?
As they arrive on new invoice capture and vendor invoice
automation capabilities automatically read
and process them.
The weight of invoice processing is lighter than ever.
At this point, Tailwind has so many transactions.
They want to simplify things by archiving some general
ledger data.
Our new archive and purge data feature moves data
from work to history tables, reducing storage space
by 80% and resulting in significant cost savings.
They still want to be able to view this data
and restore it if needed, and with archive to history,
they can do just that.
As a global organization, the team exists
in a complex financial space.
Common business practices tax and regulatory compliances
vary between each country and this gets complicated fast.
Our out of the box localization solutions are designed
to lift that stress.
We're excited to share that we are now adding localization
solutions for seven additional LATAM countries.
That means we now cover 51 countries and regions
out of the box. Adding on ISV localization solutions
and configurable globalization capabilities
for non-developers,
customers like Tailwind now run Dynamics 365 Finance
in more than 200 countries and regions.
Getting more specific, we're making it easier
for Tailwind to operate in Chile, by automatically
calculating sales tax VAT or withholding tax, submitting
electronic e-invoices to the government, preparing purchase
and sales VAT books and reports to report taxes.
A wave of new regulations are being introduced
in an attempt to close the multi-billion dollar gap
between business taxes owed and paid.
To help businesses like Tailwind meet these regulations,
Dynamics 365 Finance now produces and issues e-invoices
to government services in their required formats
for over 20 countries.
For operations in France, we're helping Tailwind
to meet the e-invoicing and e-reporting requirements
for business to business transactions that come into effect
starting July, 2024.
We have a direct e-invoicing integration with the French
government's Chorus Pro platform.
Now, their accountant can issue a project invoice
with new contract details required
by French tax authorities.
Behind the scenes, the system will submit the invoice
to the French government via the Chorus Pro platform
and provide the status of this submission.
For Tailwind's operations in Japan, we're shipping
electronic invoice and other
invoicing process change features in time for
new regulations going into effect in October, 2023.
What's more, for both France and Japan,
the system will receive vendor e-invoices
in the government required formats.
We've just seen the amazing investments we're making across
Finance, Project Operations, and HR, that help you navigate
the recession, by saving costs, improving efficiency,
and innovating.
To learn more please check out the entire release notes
and try out the early access features for this release
as they become available.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)