Recently, I bought a shirt from a US-based brand. Curiosity got me to the understanding that the fabric was threaded in Vietnam, the buttons were from China, and the shirt was assembled in India after the raw material was transported through ships made by Germany. The decisions on manufacturing, outsourcing, and target marketing were all taken from the headquarters in New York while the shirt was globally produced. The journey of the shirt is an epic travelog in itself and so is the journey of its brand’s business.
Globalization of businesses has become the norm of society. It involves a lot of business travel, research, local assistance, and more! Can we make it a bit easier and more streamlined for businesses using Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM? Of course! Let’s see how.
Imagine a personal care brand, ‘Halo’, headquartered in Paris wants to produce its products in Milan, the global fashion capital, and sell them across Italy. The brand could start off by finalizing a place to set up its production unit. The factors considered for this shall be the type of land, availability of water sources around, distance to nearby marketplaces, the proximity of retailers, suppliers, transport facilities, etc. Being available and near the target group is equally beneficial. All these questions could be answered with Maplytics.
The feature of Land Area Mapping helps in figuring out the type of land, and its surrounding region to choose the setup land for the production unit. Census data Mapping could be used to map and visualize the census data to study the demographics of the Target Group around the shortlisted lands for production setup. These two features could help in shortlisting production lands even from a different country.
Halo can then hire a local agent/assistant in Milan, fly in personnel from their headquarters to instruct him, and get the land booked for use with this team. This would reduce the number of international trips required, the back and forth involved, and the global decisions could be made locally.
The next important step would be to pick the raw material suppliers. Here, the suppliers producing locally could be plotted on the map and shortlisted after verification. International suppliers having local offices in Milan can also be plotted with custom/ colored pushpins and researched. Their distances from the production plant, delivery practices, revenue details, etc. can all be checked post-plotting on the map. Transport facilities too can be searched for in this manner.
The local agent hired by Halo will need to visit the shortlisted suppliers, transporters, etc. before finalizing contracts with them. In order to make these visits fruitful, they could be scheduled at the convenience of all the stakeholders with dedicated time plans. Auto Scheduling could be used to organize schedules for days/weeks for the local agent with meeting time, duration, travel time, buffer time, lunch break, etc. prescheduled and in place.
With the meeting schedule fixed, the agent could be helped with optimized travel routes too to reach these scheduled appointments on time. The feature of route optimization can be used to plot optimized travel routes that avoid traffic, highways, tolls, etc. These routes would be shortest in terms of travel time or travel distance. The agent could use the same and save on time, backtracking, fuel, and costs. In case the project in charge in Paris wants to check on the local agent’s work, he could use the Real Time tracking feature. Once the agent has enabled the live tracking option, the project in charge can view the route plotted for him, the one followed by him, the different turns taken, his live position, et al. Remember, all this is being done while in different countries!
Imagine being able to share documents required for a meeting while the agent is in meeting with a supplier/client in a different country!
The local agent of Milan may find himself in a situation where he is on a schedule to meet retailers and he happens to stumble upon an additional retailer in the same region. He could search his exact location using Radius/ Proximity Search and if the retailer is within his preferred travel distance /time, the agent could set up an ad hoc meeting with him! He could use his laptop, tablet, or mobile device to do it while being on the go. Once his travel gets rerouted, the project in charge in Paris too would get aware of it.
In this way, an entire business could be set up across the globe using maps integrated with Dynamics 365 CRM.
The unique features of Maplytics could be experienced when explored more with a trial. One can write to the Team at crm@inogic.com for mapping requirements, a free trial of 15 days, or a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse.
To learn more about Maplytics, its applications across industries, and another multitude of features, do visit the Website or the Microsoft AppSource. For further details, one can hop on to the Blogs, Client Testimonials, Success Stories, Industry Applications, and Video Library for a quick query resolution.
Until then,
Happy Globalizing!
