The Challenge
The company ran the commercial activity of 50 account managers on spreadsheets and scattered email. There was no central pipeline view, revenue forecasts were manual and imprecise, and salespeople lost significant time to administration instead of selling.
The Solution
Avantit deployed Dynamics 365 Sales integrated natively with Outlook and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so salespeople manage leads without leaving their email. Power BI dashboards give management real-time pipeline, regional forecast and individual performance, and Power Automate handles follow-ups, activity reminders and stalled-opportunity alerts.
📋 Overview
A leading Iberian professional services company with offices in Portugal and Spain, and a team of 50 account managers responsible for more than 2,000 active clients across several sectors.
🎯 The Challenge
Business context Commercial management had reached breaking point:
- The sales pipeline lived in individual Excel files with no consolidation
- Revenue forecasts were imprecise and assembled by hand at the end of each month
- Salespeople lost 30% of their time to administration — reports, internal email
- No integration between email, calendar and customer information
- Management had no visibility of daily commercial activity
Technical requirements
- Native integration: the sales team refused to adopt “yet another tool”, so the solution had to live inside Outlook.
- Mobile access: field teams needed customer and pipeline data on a phone.
- Executive dashboards: management wanted real-time KPIs, not monthly reports.
- Automation: remove repetitive tasks and make follow-up systematic.
💡 The Solution
Strategic approach Deploy Dynamics 365 Sales with adoption as the design constraint. Rather than forcing a change of habit, the solution was built to work inside the tools the sales team already used — Outlook and Teams.
Technical implementation
- Dynamics 365 Sales + Outlook: any incoming email can be linked to a contact or opportunity in one click, with CRM context shown directly in the Outlook side panel.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: integrated to enrich contacts with professional data and identify decision-makers in target accounts.
- Power BI dashboards: three of them — Pipeline (funnels, conversion), Performance (rep ranking, activity) and Forecast (predicted versus actual by region).
- Power Automate flows: automatic alert to the manager when an opportunity has been stalled more than 7 days; a weekly report sent to management; follow-up reminders after a proposal.
Timeline
- Phase 1 (discovery and analysis): 3 weeks
- Phase 2 (configuration and integrations): 6 weeks
- Phase 3 (Power BI dashboards): 3 weeks
- Phase 4 (training and go-live): 2 weeks
📈 The Results
Success metrics
- 📊 Pipeline: complete visibility — management sees every opportunity at every stage, in real time.
- ⚡ Productivity: salespeople save an hour and a half a day on administration.
- 🎯 Conversion: lead-to-deal conversion up 35%, through systematic follow-up.
- 📈 Forecast: revenue forecasts with an error margin under 10%.
Business impact Digitising the commercial department gave management confidence in its financial forecasts and let the sales team concentrate on what it does best: selling.
🛠️ Technology Stack
- Dynamics 365 Sales: the core CRM, with pipeline and opportunity management.
- Power BI: sales, performance and forecast dashboards.
- Power Automate: follow-up and reporting automation.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: lead enrichment and social selling.
💬 Client Testimonial
“For the first time I know exactly what my sales team is working on, and I can forecast the quarter with confidence. The CRM lives inside Outlook — the team barely feels they are using ‘another tool’.”
Sales Director Iberian Services Company
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