Campus life: Students take up the Microsoft Dynamics 365 challenge

Insights into marketing trends

Before jumping into the challenge, the MSc students attended a lecture on data, marketing, and life-long learning held by Pascal Hary, Senior Director Solution Engineering Business Applications at Microsoft, in which he shared his insights into consumer trends. Consumers expect “more, meaningful, frictionless, personalised interactions with brands and companies, a human-to-human marketing approach,” he said. They “are more and more attached to brands and companies that have a clear responsible and sustainable message”.

To meet these challenges and adapt their customer journeys, companies rely on data collection, he continued. However, the large number of multichannel data sources “poses a challenge for enterprises, especially the ones with big legacy IT”. A customer relationship management (CRM) tool can help address these challenges. Empowered by AI and consumer insights, MS Dynamics is a collaborative end-to-end platform that tackles front- and back-office business processes: sales, marketing, service, field service, and augmented reality to provide modern and innovative customer journeys.

The student challenge

For the hackathon, students had to master MS Dynamics, then pitch a tailored solution to meet a fictitious company’s priorities and needs. They had to provide sales representatives with a bespoke tool for managing and facilitating daily activities, such as accessing contacts, following up on opportunities, appointments, and other actions, managing and monitoring the commercial process, and accessing dashboards that allowed them to monitor their results against quantified objectives and evolving opportunities. It also had to connect with existing tools. They further had to support the growth of this fictitious company, which was expanding apace both in France and abroad, by offering a common tool that facilitated access to data and allowed a transversal vision of commercial activity, as well as improving internal quality processes and procedures as part of the firm’s quality and safety certifications.

Two teams won the challenge and got the opportunity to visit Microsoft headquarters in Ile-de-France.

“I think there are three main outputs of the challenge,” said student Marie Désirée Yopo. “The first one is time management because it was not easy to do it in only 24 hours, but we succeeded, so we can all be proud of ourselves. The second one is pitching. We had to learn how to talk to a client and explain how the tool could help the activities of the company on a daily basis. Thirdly, we learned to master a totally new platform, which will be very useful on our resumés.”        

Life-long learning

“In a world transformed by technology, all jobs require students to possess soft skills, to be creative, and to grow their digital capabilities continuously,” said Béatrice Matlega, Education Skills lead at Microsoft France. “They will need to know how to use the right tools in AI, data collection, CRM, code and no code, cybersecurity, and how to use IT to reduce the environmental impact of the company’s activities.” In her view, mastering these tools will enable the students to spark innovation in the companies they join.

“In-demand skills evolve rapidly,” she added. “Students will need to keep on learning all their lives. This is why Microsoft is committed to education through Microsoft Learn. Through this platform, students and employees can learn and earn a certification that they can add to their professional profiles. It is an added value, a major asset on the job market. They signal to the company that they have received the right training.”       

Monica Prieto Langard, Digital Transformation Senior Tech Specialist at Microsoft and EDHEC alumna, concluded by paraphrasing Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get, so keep learning things that will make you grow.”