Marketing and the Customer Journey with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys. What challenges do businesses face, and how can they overcome them?

Atteli May 26, 2025

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Marketing and the Customer Journey with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys. What challenges do businesses face, and how can they overcome them?

Marketing presents many challenges for today’s marketers – often they feel limited by the tools available and seek ways to optimize their work to operate more effectively. Commissioned by Microsoft, Forrester conducted a study, to identify the main challenges organizations face in marketing.

The study showed that implementing Customer Insights has a real financial impact. Among those surveyed, the return on investment (ROI) within the first six months reached an impressive 324%. This demonstrates that consolidating multiple tools into a single solution can lead to a threefold increase in efficiency within a relatively short time.

Key challenges faced by businesses

Data fragmentation

Data fragmentation Most respondents indicated a challenge with fragmented data – customer information is dispersed across different systems, and the lack of a central database prevents the integration of sales and financial data. This results in an incomplete and scattered customer view, making it difficult to make informed decisions and build a unified, data-rich customer profile. It also hinders personalized communication.

Incomplete customer view

Incomplete customer view Without integrated customer data, companies miss the full picture of customer behaviors and responses to various forms of communication. This makes it harder to tailor marketing efforts to customer expectations and often leads to uncoordinated campaigns. As a result, businesses struggle to match their actions with customer needs and preferred communication channels. Journey planning is based on fragmented data from different advertising and marketing tools, requiring manual management – which is inefficient and obstructs achieving desired outcomes.

One key consequence is ineffective content personalization – rather than delivering dynamic, relevant messaging, companies rely on generic communications that rarely match individual customer interests.

Outdated tools

Outdated tools Many businesses still rely on outdated tools that were once effective but no longer keep up with today’s rapidly changing market. This attachment to legacy solutions hinders the adoption of modern technologies and prevents alignment with evolving customer expectations. This was a key insight in the Forrester study commissioned by Microsoft.

What are organizations looking for today?

Consolidated data from multiple sources –companies aim to gain a true 360° customer view by integrating information from various systems into a unified platform with full interaction history.
Increased customer loyalty and campaign performance –organizations expect tools that support personalized communication and real-time responses to customer needs. With Customer Insights-Journeys, they can deliver personalized messages aligned with the actual interests and preferences of each customer.
Automation over manual processes – businesses want solutions that automate the design and management of customer journeys, freeing teams from manual, time-consuming tasks. Customer Insights-Journeys enables faster, more accurate communication, reducing operational burden.

What is Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys?

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Journeys is a relatively new and rapidly evolving product in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. It combines two previously independent tools into a comprehensive solution under the Customer Insights name.

The product includes two applications:

Customer Insights goes far beyond basic email marketing. It enables the creation of multi-channel customer journeys across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and other channels tailored to individual preferences. A key benefit is the integration between sales and marketing teams, which often operate in silos. With this integration, sales reps receive qualified leads exactly when they’re ready for follow-up, and sales activities are automatically assigned to the appropriate rep.

The solution improves data management and enables the creation of complete customer profiles, which can then be used in Journeys for personalized marketing campaigns.

Learn more about the marketing automation capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights..

Benefits of implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys

Real-time customer engagement – with journey triggers, organizations can automatically respond to customer actions in key moments using optimal channels like email, SMS, or push notifications.
Faster acquisition and loyalty building  – a real-time, end-to-end customer experience integrates all touchpoints, creating consistent interactions. Dynamic content confirms real understanding of the customer.
Deeper customer insight  – integration of data segments and customer profiles enables full use of customer knowledge captured in Customer Insights Data.
Flexibility and scalability – the system is easy to tailor and integrate with the tools your organization already uses.
Event management independence  – manage offline and online events from planning, logistics, and team coordination to participant registration, online streaming, marketing communications, follow-up, and satisfaction surveys - all within one platform.
Performance analytics  – multi-level reporting of campaign performance, including customer journeys, channels, and content (email, SMS).

What sets Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys apart?

The biggest advantage is real-time access to data – this marketing tool pulls directly from the Dataverse, Microsoft’s central CRM data repository. This eliminates reliance on scattered sources like local files or independent mailing lists.

It also features a centralized marketing consent registry, which stores and updates permissions in real time, ensuring compliance with customer preferences. Customer Insights integrates natively with Microsoft Teams, allowing seamless organization of online events like webinars and livestreams using your existing Teams licenses – no extra setup required.

The role of Customer Insights - Journeys in modern business

This tool effectively addresses critical data challenges by eliminating the fragmentation of customer information across systems. Businesses gain a unified environment where all customer data is consolidated in one place. This eliminates data gaps and enables personalized communication based on real preferences and interaction history. Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics replace outdated tools – automating data processing, predicting future customer needs, and supporting segmentation, process creation, email content generation, and image tagging.

Get started with Customer Insights - Journeys today

This solution revolves around collecting and analyzing customer data to better understand their needs and expectations. By automating processes and integrating with various communication channels, businesses can create personalized experiences that boost customer loyalty and satisfaction.

With precise targeting and flexible content customization, Customer Insights – Journeys allows companies to run real-time marketing campaigns, build stronger customer relationships, and increase the efficiency of both marketing and sales activities.

If you’re ready to take the next step, see what CRM can do for your marketing.

You’ll see results sooner than you think.