Dubai-based Majid Al Futtaim Ventures today announced it has adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365, Office 365 and a range of supporting apps, as a means of enhancing customer engagement and optimising internal efficiencies across the group’s many business units.

The deployment occurred across Majid Al Futtaim Ventures, the company’s leisure, entertainment and general-business entity.

Majid Al Futtaim Ventures’ brands include VOX Cinemas, Magic Planet, Ski Dubai, iFly Dubai, Wahooo! Water Park, City Centre Clinic, an energy and facilities-management solutions company called Enova, and a strategic partnership with Gourmet Gulf. The company also operates a fashion and retail business.

Majid Al Futtaim Ventures had been looking for ways to bring its siloed information together and usher in a new era for its operations and its customers. Its digital transformation strategy was three-pronged. The company committed itself to “digital for customer intimacy and revenue acceleration”, using technology, to better understand and anticipate customer requirements. Secondly, decision-makers wanted to use technology to ensure that the company’s internal operations were as efficient as possible. Majid Al Futtaim also initiated a programme to reshape its corporate culture, to ensure that its people, at all levels, could use software tools effectively, to enhance customer experience, said a statement.

"Majid Al Futtaim literally invented the modern shopping format in our market," said Ahmed Galal Ismail, chief executive officer, Majid Al Futtaim Ventures. "We see ourselves as in the business of creating great moments for everyone, every day, but great moments depreciate very quickly, so we have to keep them fresh. Our main challenge was how to consolidate information so we could learn who our customers were within each business – and identify, at a group level, those customers that have relationships with multiple brands. Essentially, this comes from our commitment to replicate our offline leadership online”

The company set about finding the optimum platform for warehousing customer data and creating real-time, useful views of information at both group and division levels. Majid Al Futtaim believed that if it could build an effective information-management solution, it could empower its employees to serve existing customers more effectively, and convert those shoppers into customers for other brands in the Majid Al Futtaim Ventures stable.

After a rigorous procurement process bridging the information-management and CRM spaces, Majid Al Futtaim Ventures adopted elements of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, including Dynamics AX 2012 and Dynamics CRM, as well as Office 365. It also chose to deploy Power BI, SharePoint Online and Delve.

“We were already making extensive use of Office 365, as well as PowerBI and AX 2012,” said Ismail. “We were just starting to discuss the need for a homogenised, but flexible, customer view when Dynamics 365 was launched, and its common data model was very attractive to us.”

Dynamics 365 includes ERP tools designed for productivity, equipping departments such as operations, sales, customer service and finance with global scalability and digital intelligence to boost growth. Dynamics 365 applications come together to provide greater visibility across all systems, and allow operations to become more connected. As a result, business leaders can deliver strategic, data-driven insights that enable their organisations to transform business models.
Following the rollout of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Office 365 solution, Majid Al Futtaim Ventures achieved a single view of its customers, optimised its internal operations and delivered informative customer profiles to field staff – satisfying the triple-core of its digital transformation programme, the statement said.

“The Dynamics 365-based solution that Microsoft built for us has empowered our employees to transform customer experiences and to cross- and up-sell opportunities across our business units,” said Ismail. “As a result, we are seeing increased revenue across our divisions.”

“The Microsoft cloud contains all the business apps you will ever need to help you and your organisation achieve more,” said Naim Yazbek, regional director for enterprise and partner group, Microsoft Gulf. “Majid Al Futtaim Ventures has engaged customers and optimised operations - two of the pillars of digital transformation. Dynamics 365 is a multi-purpose suite that draws on the most advanced AI capabilities ever seen in a business application. Improve your manufacturing and supply-chain execution; enhance operational efficiency; up-sell; cross-sell - all the tools are there.”  - TradeArabia News Service