Microsoft Viva Sales aims to take the busy work out of CRM

Microsoft is attempting to simplify customer relationship management (CRM) with the launch of Viva Sales, the latest addition to the company's employee experience platform.

The 'Sales' version will work with all other CRM services, such as Salesforce or Freshworks, Microsoft has confirmed.

Viva Sales will take customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams with AI software offering personalised recommendations and insights for sellers so that they can be more "connected" with their customers. What's more, because it works with other CRM platforms, users won't need to learn a new system or even pay another subscription fee.

Customers can be tagged using Microsoft 365 tools with Viva Sales, automatically saving it as a customer record and creating a new profile with all their relevant data. These profiles can be easily shared with the rest of the sales team, which reduces the need for client research.

Viva Sales has "Context IQ" AI models built-in that provide "follow-through" recommendations and reminders to users. Context IQ, which was announced at the end of last year, ensures relevant content is connected across Microsoft apps and services, such as Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, so sellers save time and stay in the "flow of work" and close their deals.

The platform is an expansion to its existing Viva employee experience service, launched in February 2021, which aims to give businesses a way of combining staff training, management, and engagement into a single portal.

"The future of selling isn't a new system. It's bringing the information sellers need at the right time, with the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined," said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and CCO at Microsoft. "Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal - and we've done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales."

Viva Sales automates the "busy work", Althoff added, as it captures "critical information" about customers, enabling sellers to get their job done.