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Socket Mobile enhances user experience with Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365

Socket Mobile enhances user experience with Dynamics 365

Founded in 1992, Socket Mobile is a leading manufacturer and supplier of Bluetooth barcode scanners. Headquartered in California, the company has several European sites that primarily serve the retail, field service, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

Learn how we helped Socket Mobile to transform user experience, optimise internal processes, and gain channel opportunities with managed service for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales below. 

The Challenge:

Socket Mobile had been using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for three years, but its external support resource wasn’t providing the accessibility or coverage that it needed as Anna Buckman, Global Sales Systems Manager at Socket Mobile explains: “We were reliant on one person to support our global Dynamics 365 deployment, but they had less capacity to help us. Increasingly, we were waiting longer for support and resolutions for routine requests would often take several weeks, so these delays were beginning to hold us back. My role had changed to manage all of the systems used in our sales processes, including responsibility for leading our Dynamics project. As I am based in the UK, we sought a larger provider closer to my time zone that would be responsive.” 

The Solution:

Socket Mobile appointed ANS Group as its Dynamics 365 partner and subscribed to its managed service, which provided the company with access to technical support, training and consultancy to help the company move forward, as Anna confirms: “I’ve been delighted at the speed that they have been able to answer our questions and the outcomes that we’ve achieved in Dynamics 365. Our managed service has increased the pace that we’re able to do things such as configuring more features, adding more processes and making the system work better for us.” 

Additionally, Anna states that “one of the ways that we’ve been able to step up has been through regular engagement calls with our Technical Account Manager at ANS to discuss proposed changes. They understand our business and are familiar with our configuration of Dynamics, so it avoids us having to explain all the details and results in productive calls to discuss options and get their advice. When actions are agreed upon, we have good visibility of what the team is working on for us with the current status of each item.” 

"Since partnering with the team at ANS several years ago, we have been extremely impressed with the support provided. Having a partner who knows our CRM system inside out—even better than us—means that when we have issues or customisations to make, we don’t need to explain every little detail as they are already familiar with our set-up. I would highly recommend ANS to anyone looking for a Dynamics 365 partner, and in fact, I have done so multiple times!"

Anna Buckman

Global Sales Systems Manager

Socket Mobile

The Outcomes:

Anna highlights some of the improvements that Socket Mobile made to its Dynamics 365 configuration through managed service during the last 12 months: “ANS made us aware of the new unified interface and we’ve now completed our migration which has proved timely. We weren’t looking to be early adopters, but we did want to avoid remaining on an older interface that Microsoft had stopped developing. From our research and testing we saw that the unified interface offered some new features that could improve the experience for our users. We’d also identified some gaps, so we arranged a day with ANS to work through these and adapt the new UI before deploying it to our team. 

 This involved a significant change in the handling of some processes, so I created new user documentation including ‘how to’ guides which covered the main changes and explained how the new interface works. During our transition to the unified interface, they made further changes in response to user requests so that after a couple of weeks we were able to switch off the old interface and we’ve seen positive feedback since everyone moved across.” 

For another project, Socket Mobile used its managed service to improve the segmentation and analysis of its sales data: “We work with diverse organisations including distributors, resellers and directly with end-users. Through an account categorisation process that ANS has implemented, we’ve been able to build a better understanding of each account that includes primary and sub-categories. This is giving us a clearer understanding of the opportunities in the channel and provides a good steer on important focus areas. Each opportunity that our team is working on is also categorised and they helped us adapt this process to better understand all aspects of each potential deal. This includes being able to rank opportunities, which is supported by a confidence score that represents the likelihood of a deal being won.”