Having transformed the worlds of office software and video conferencing (among other things) in recent years, Microsoft has now set its sights on the sales world.
The computing giant has introduced Microsoft Viva Sales as it seeks to give companies of all sizes an AI-powered boost when it comes to modernizing CRM.
The latest addition to Viva’s suite of work tools will work with any CRM platform, including Salesforce, Zoho and Freshworks, meaning there’s no need to learn new systems or pay for new subscriptions.
Microsoft Viva Sales
Viva Sales connects directly to the Microsoft 365 suite to sync with tools like Excel, Outlook or even Microsoft Teams, drawing data directly and eliminating large periods of “busy work” caused by manual data entry.
Users can tag customers in Microsoft 365 tools, with Viva Sales automatically capturing it as a specific customer record for a single individual, creating a new profile with all the relevant data about that customer. These can be shared with co-workers to quickly pass on tips or leads without a lengthy research process.
When processed, Viva Sales can use this data to provide recommendations and reminders to users thanks to its built-in ContextIQ AI models, providing real-time insights that Microsoft says can make all the difference when it comes to closing a deal.
“As we come out of the pandemic, there have been some really important changes in the job market and really in the heads and hearts of the people who are in it, how they expect their work to get done – and that’s where Viva herself was at. born,” said Jared Spataro, CVP, Modern Work, Microsoft, Pro.
“Viva has a number of different modules associated with it that are for all employees in an organization,” he noted. “Viva Sales is a whole new take on this – it’s still the employee experience, but we recognize that while there are many things that apply to all employees, everyone has a job within an organization and that job is specific, with inputs, outputs , and performance, expectations and vision.”
Spataro added that Viva Sales is the start of a new approach for Microsoft, being the first app that takes the idea of an employee experience into the role itself.
“It essentially functions as a bridge between systems of record and systems of communication – and is intended to help sellers get their job done,” he adds. “This allows us to really connect the dots between people who are working, sometimes on the same thing, and then we can join that to Microsoft’s graphical data together with the system of record, and you have a very rich experience dataset to reason about. .”
“This is just the beginning for us,” he concluded, “there’s a lot that we believe will be possible, because we’re essentially bringing communications and AI together and putting that at the top of their registry system — and we think this is just a new domain. of application area really in the industry.”