Transforming Industry

48 49 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Changing the story with tech Professional services marketing firm Mercer- MacKay Digital Storytelling (MMS) needed a solution to extend its reach beyond face- to-face client meetings. When her company reached capacity for the in-person sessions it could conduct, MMS founder Gail Mercer- MacKay began to consider the possibility of creating a software solution. However, a custom solution similar to those her business’s competitors were launching would cost millions and take many months the business did not have. MMS asked Cognizant’s New Signature division to help future-proof the business through a tech-intensive approach. New Signature set out to develop the company’s vision at a fraction of the cost of custom solutions, using Microsoft Dynamics 365. The company was able to exchange its siloed marketing apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing, and launch its daXai customer portal based on these solutions combined with Microsoft Power Apps. Having previously worked in sales for a Microsoft partner, Mercer-MacKay recalls: “I was fascinated by the ways in which technology could transform a business—how it could make organizations more resilient and agile so that they can quickly respond to any new situation, whether a market condition or a pandemic. And that fascination is what underlies the great stories that sell technology. She believes that Microsoft’s technologies are making technology markets more accessible for female business owners who have the vision to solve business problems. “Dynamics 365 is an incredible platform to help women entrepreneurs quickly bring business solutions to life.” With the annual Microsoft awards submission deadline less than three months away, Mercer-MacKay needed the solution to be live in time for her customers to take advantage of her vision. New Signature built a custom portal called daXai on Microsoft Azure, using Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing along with Microsoft Power Apps. The outcome of the project has been positive, with MMS experiencing savings on licensing fees and gaining efficiency by consolidating with the Dynamics 365 platform. Several high-value projects and 300 new customers later, MMS is enjoying profitable new opportunities even as it lays the groundwork for more innovation. Suzanne Huber, Marketing Manager at MMS, says: “One big benefit is that we now can better organize the data we need to communicate with our customers. The segmenting is very powerful; contacts coming in through the portal mesh with our customer information in Dynamics 365.” She adds: “We benefit from the interoperability between the Dynamics 365 solutions, which helps us create dynamic marketing lists that automatically populate from the configurations we’ve created between those solutions.” Read the full case study >