Dynamics 365 Sales Relationship Analytics Preview

In March, we summarized the features of Microsoft's Spring Release for Dynamics 365 for Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. Today, we're further exploring Relationship Analytics, an Embedded Intelligence preview feature for Sales, which was included in the Spring Release (version 9.0.2).

Relationship Analytics analyzes your sales team's interaction with customers and opportunities, and presents pertinent information about the health of the customer's relationship with your organization. This enables your sales team to better prioritize their customers and leads based on insights gained from these advanced analytics.

To utilize this feature, you first must enable Embedded Intelligence.

As a System Administrator, go to Settings > Administration > System Settings. Navigate to the Preview tab and click the Install Relationship Analytics to Enable It for Preview link.

Select the appropriate instance to install the preview feature in (i.e. Sandbox), then select Open.

Then, go to Settings > Intelligence Configuration.

On the Overview tab, select I Accept, agreeing to Microsoft's privacy statement for Embedded Intelligence.

Now, the preview feature is enabled, and you're able to proceed with enabling Relationship Assistant, Email Engagement, Auto Capture and Sales Insights.

Install Sales Insights

From Settings > Intelligence Configuration, select Install from the Sales Insights add-on (preview).

Read the terms and conditions, then select Continue.

Wait a few minutes for the installation to complete; progress can be monitored from Intelligence Configuration.

Configure Sales Insights

Upon installation of Sales Insights, select Configure.

Read and accept Microsoft's terms and conditions, then Begin Setup.

Enable Relationship Analytics, then select Save.

Review and update the following settings based on your sales process:

• Data Sources:
  • CRM Activities: Utilizes all historical data from Dynamics 365 for analysis.
  • Exchange Data: When enabled, 30 days of Exchange data is analyzed. The connector analyzes three days of data each day until 30 days is reached.
• Relationship Health Score:
  • Inform Dynamics which types of communications emphasize sales activities based on your business processes. These importance rankings are accounted for when calculating the relationship health score.
• Communications Frequency:
  • Expected levels of communication vary by business; by indicating the planned communication frequency, the health score will be reflective of the plan. A longer frequency will reduce the expected frequency of communication, a shorter frequency will increase it.
  • Options currently available include: Once per day, every few days, once a week, once every couple of weeks, once a month

Once the settings are reflective of your business, select Save. Relationship Analytics is now ready to use.

Use Sales Insights and Relationship Analytics

Views & Charts

Relationship Analytics grants visibility into the quality of activity history, key performance indicators (KPIs), health score and trends for primary sales entities, including opportunities, leads, accounts and contacts.

When Sales Insights was installed, each of these entities had a new system view created, ending with "by Relationship" (My Active Accounts by Relationship, My Open Opportunity by Relationship, etc.). These new views display key details about the status of the overall relationship, based on the analysis made possible with the Sales Insights add-on.

Additionally, a new system chart, Relationship Pipeline, was created for Opportunities. Here's a summary of what the chart includes:

• Each opportunity is plotted as a bubble.
• The size of the bubble is indicative of the opportunity's estimated revenue.
• The Y-axis is indicative of the relationship health (the higher the bubble, the better the health).
• The X-axis is the estimated close date (opportunities on the left are closing soon).

With a single chart view, your sales team can easily see the opportunities requiring their immediate attention (those with large bubbles near the bottom-left corner of the chart) and those which they are likely to win (top of the chart).

By simply hovering over a bubble, additional details are surfaced about the opportunity, and a user can click the bubble to open the opportunity record.

There are a few key things to keep in mind about the Relationship Pipeline chart:

• Opportunities without a relationship health will appear in gray and display at the bottom of the chart.
• Opportunities without estimated revenue ($0.00) will be plotted as tiny bubbles.
• Opportunities without an estimated close date, or opportunities with an estimated close date in the past, are not shown in the chart.

Record Forms

You'll find a Relationship Analytics tab added to the entity records. Here, you'll be able to review specific relationship metrics such as the relationship health, activity interactions summary and details, time invested, which users have invested that time, and who they're most frequently interacting with. The example below shows a poor relationship that's now improving thanks to the insights gain from Relationship Analytics.

Sales Hub

Another view of the Relationship Analytics tab is available from Sales Hub, providing a slightly different UI than the standard Microsoft Dynamics Sales app. To access it, select Sales Hub from the Dynamics 365 navigation.

Navigate to Opportunities in the left panel, open the desired opportunity, then select the Relationship Analytics tab.

In summary, the features available with this preview utilize data in Dynamics 365 and Exchange (if enabled) to surface key sales metrics and relationship patterns, which were not readily available previously. Your sales team gains visibility into crucial information on where improvements must be made and where they are excelling. Additional information about Relationship Analytics, including how the calculations are defined, is available from Microsoft.