On June 16th Microsoft dropped a new Viva announcement. A new module called Viva Sales. Below I’ll take a quick look at what it is, why it might be useful and what it can bring to the employee experience platform.
What is Viva Sales?
To quote Microsoft “Viva Sales is a seller experience application that lets sellers use Office 365 and Teams to automatically capture data into any CRM system, eliminating manual data entry and giving more time to focus on selling.”
Watch the below to see it in action
Why might it be useful?
What can Viva Sales actually do for your team members? It will allow your sales teams, or anyone who uses your CRM to input data more easily into it. It will give hints and tips to help remind your people to input data. It will help them to be more productive and efficient. Like all the Viva pillars it uses AI to help take some of the legwork out of somehting that can often be seen as a laborious task. If you ask any salesperson what they want to be doing with their time, its meeting with clients and building relationships and ultimately spend more time selling things and less time performing admin tasks.
Viva Sales will work with any CRM system, be that salesforce, dynamics or any other which I think is a real plus for this tool.
As with other the other pillars of Viva it will be integrated across the M365 platform and tools, it will be a seller experience application that will get your sales force out of the busy admin work and in front of your customers. It will use AI to send you helpful reminders for client interactions, it can automatically file your client communications directly into your CRM. Microsoft describe it a little like having a digital personal assistant which will help you to close the sale.
What can it bring to the employee experience platform?
As Microsoft Viva has grown and evolved, I think people are starting to see the various benefits it can have to the overall employee experience and I believe Viva Sales fits in very well here. Like all the Viva pillars it also sits right within the flow of work making people more efficient as a result. If you have a team of sales professionals who’s hectic busy lives you can make easier by using AI and havign all of your everyday apps like teams, excel, word etc integrated into a tool which ultimately means less time spent manually entering data or missing a follow up then ultimately you will have happier sellers, there will be less churn and better sales results, again meaning you can retain and attract better talent.
It’s great to see this new addition to the Viva product, and its yes another way of helping your employees to succeed and thrive by giving them all the tools they need to be the best they can. I’m really excited to see this new development and how it matures along with the rest of the Microsoft Viva Suite. Due for release in Q4 2022. Some more details and links below from Microsoft.
Useful links
Microsoft Viva Sales
Introducing Viva Sales, a modern way of selling that brings together any CRM, Microsoft 365 and Teams – The Official Microsoft Blog