A connected customer platform

G&J Pepsi, a family-owned US Pepsi bottler, described in Microsoft's 28 August customer story how it combined sales and field service on Dynamics 365 and built workflows and apps with Power Platform. The company reported $30 million in increased annual profit over three years. This was the customer and vendor's case calculation, not a controlled experiment or a directly transferable result.

The story connected seller customer views with service and field work. Technicians and other mobile roles gained access to customer and job data, while automation reduced manual handovers. Analytics gave management shared measures. Value therefore came from process, data foundation and adoption together rather than enabling one function.

AI extensions depend on the same foundation

Microsoft's 29 August post on new AI experiences described personalization, productivity and Copilot across Dynamics 365. Marketing could use customer insight for targeted follow-up, sales and service could receive summaries and recommendations, and field roles could retrieve work information. The post included different availability states and vendor claims, so each use case required its own status check.

For G&J Pepsi or another organization, sequence matters. Customer identity, product data, work orders and sales activities need consistency before generated suggestions can be assessed. Collaboration improves when roles see the same history and next action, rather than when each team receives a separate text generator.

Build a local benefit account

Choose one customer process and establish baseline time, error, revenue and cost. Divide results among data cleanup, process change, automation, analytics and any AI support. Record the owner of every measure and other changes affecting the period.

Marketing can track response and consent, sales activity and conversion, service resolution and reopening, and field service first-time fix and time to billing data. Management assesses the whole without counting the same effect twice.

The case covered several years and technologies. A comparable management view therefore needs investment cost, internal effort and the date each process change entered use. Monthly cohorts or business units can show whether movement follows adoption while price, volume and market conditions remain visible as alternative explanations.

The August case shows that a connected platform can form part of measurable business change. Its strongest lesson is the connection between work processes and records rather than the amount alone. A new adoption should use local baselines, traceable handovers and a sober explanation of what technology actually contributed.

Sources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog, “G&J Pepsi profit rises by $30 million with Microsoft Dynamics 365,” 28 August 2024

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog, “Elevating experiences with AI: from productivity to personalization,” 29 August 2024

Join the discussion

What have you learned from trying new marketing tools? Share what worked and what you needed to change.