Evidi helps OBOS build better customer experiences with Dynamics 365 Marketing
Microsoft
OBOS is the largest housing developer in Norway and, as a member-owned cooperative, offers other housing and property sector services like banking, property management, insurance and more. With each business unit running its own marketing and communications to members, OBOS did not have a unified view of customers across all of its businesses, nor a complete record of what messages had been sent to which members. Marketing teams relied on highly manual processes to perform marketing outreach to 550,000 members, and communications didn’t reflect the strength of the overall OBOS brand.
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Transforming member experiences with personalization, unified voice
To transform its customer experiences, support membership growth, and improve cross-selling opportunities, OBOS decided to implement Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. OBOS turned to long-time partner Evidi, whose team of experts helped ensure that the Dynamics 365 Marketing implementation aligned with business goals, automated processes to streamline communications, and enabled personalization by business and segment via integration with Customer Insights. The result was a digital data and service platform that enables personalized customer experiences and provides a foundation for future innovation.
With the new solution in production, OBOS has a single data repository for member and prospect data that allows the company to deliver highly targeted, personalized customer journeys. Efforts can now be coordinated across teams, presenting a unified identity to members regardless of what service area it comes from. Integration with Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service means that sales and customer service representatives can now trigger marketing emails based on their direct interactions with the customer, making marketing actions even more targeted and effective.
With Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, we can deliver individualized, highly tailored customer experiences, said Harald Wiker Aulstad, CRM Tech Lead at OBOS. - Because everything is on one platform, we can truly appear like one OBOS between all of our brands.
In addition to improved experiences, OBOS was also able to dramatically improve marketing efficiencies and increase job satisfaction for employees that used to have the time-consuming task of manually managing more than 80 journeys and 160 email templates.
Working with OBOS, we’ve been able to decrease the time employees spend manually updating digital solutions, and we reduced the number of digital components that had to be maintained, said Ida Madeleine Aasvistad, Head of Engagement at Evidi.
This has increased operational efficiency, freeing up more time to focus on marketing goals across the organization.
OBOS is already looking at expanding its usage of Dynamics 365 Marketing by enabling lead scoring functionality to move leads more efficiently through the sales funnel. The housing provider is also exploring how AI capabilities integrated in Dynamics 365 could realize further time savings.
One reason that the project was so successful is that the OBOS team was very committed to the transformation. They have a strong foundation and are already looking at opportunities to drive further innovation, continued Aasvistad.
Creating holistic Microsoft Cloud solutions
While Evidi boasts one of the largest Microsoft customer experience practices in the Nordic region, a big part of the value that the partner brings to customers is as a complete provider of Microsoft Cloud solutions. In fact, Evidi was born out of five separate consultancies with diverse skillsets in Dynamics 365, Azure Data & AI, and Microsoft 365 that merged to offer a one-stop shop for customers looking to drive digital transformation across their entire businesses.
Customers of all sizes have embraced the approach of the new company. With a strong enterprise customer base around customer experience and a large presence in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market around finance and supply chain management, Evidi sees a huge opportunity for cross-selling solutions to help each of these segments get the most out of their Microsoft investments. The partner also has a products department dedicated to developing new IP solutions that will help accelerate adoption of Microsoft Cloud technologies in different segments or verticals—such as customer experience solutions for SMBs.
We find that our holistic approach has enabled us to better support customers throughout their transformation journey, said Ranja Pedersen Ovedal, CMO at Evidi. - Since forming Evidi, we have seen a 20 percent increase in revenue and we’ve expanded our team by more than 30 percent in the same time period.
Ranja Pedersen Ovedal, CMO, Evidi
While focused on growing its business, which includes recent acquisitions in Denmark and India, Evidi is just as invested in how it achieves that growth. The partner has set a high bar for practices around both sustainability and diversity.
We’re very proud that our values help us attract and retain the best employees, said Ovedal. - To provide just one example, of the 60 new employees hired since January 2023, 56 percent of them are women.
Driving continued innovation around customer experience
When it comes to its customer experience practice, Evidi sees a huge opportunity to continue on its fast growth trajectory with Microsoft business applications. One of the top areas of focus is AI, which will have a big impact on how rapidly customer data can be analyzed and segmented, enable automation that previously would have taken months of coding, and even change the very nature of how customers interact with businesses.
However, Evidi also identifies the SMB market and Power Platform as other areas where customers are demanding better customer experience-related solutions.
We have a whole development team formed around Dataverse and Power Apps because they are essential to deliver the agility and speed to market that organizations need in today’s business environment, said Aasvistad.
There has never been a more exciting time to be a Microsoft partner.
Do you have any questions about our deliveries or products? To learn more about how we can assist your business in creating better customer experiences, please get in touch with our advisors.