Microsoft announces new capabilities and enhancements to Dynamics 365 for Retail

At the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual show last week, Microsoft announced several new capabilities and enhancements to Dynamics 365 for Retail. Microsoft claims that these new features provide tools for retailers to combine the best of digital and in-store to deliver differentiated customer experiences to drive growth. For example, a new feature can notify Store associates when a particular product goes out of stock so that he or she can place the order to refill the stock.

Read about the new features that are coming to Dynamics 365 for Retail below.

Associate productivity with task notifications. Store associates can be assigned various tasks like helping customers, running transactions, performing stock counts, or receiving orders in the store, all within a single Point of Sale (POS) application. To keep on top of daily tasks, a notification capability lets associates know when a task requires their attention, like when an order arrives or a product is no longer in stock.

Store order fulfillment. Many retailers would like to optimize order fulfillment by enabling stores to fill orders created elsewhere. To address this need, a unified order fulfillment operation has been added to the POS. This allows employees to fulfill orders much more efficiently, and lets retailers provide their customers with a true omni-channel experience.

Inventory visibility enhancements. With improvements to inventory visibility features, cashiers can now use the POS to get a clear picture of the inventory status of any product in their store – or in other stores and warehouses of their company – thus helping customers find the products that they want.

Inventory lookup now displays the reserved inventory and incoming order quantity along with the total inventory to help:

• Cashiers locate a product that is not on the shelf by verifying if the item is elsewhere in the store, or is in stock at a nearby location.
• Store managers determine if product replenishments have been ordered when stock the stock of a product is running low.

Dynamics 365 for Retail customers can now try out these features in preview and these features will be rolling to all customers in early 2018. Find the overview of the new features below.