Plan and prepare for Microsoft Cloud for Retail in 2022 release wave 2
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 documentation. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
Important
The 2022 release wave 2 plan covers all new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2022 to March 2023. In this article, you'll find the product overview and what's new and planned for Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
Overview
Microsoft Cloud for Retail empowers retailers with industry-specific solutions to accelerate innovation for sustainable growth by bringing together trusted cloud capabilities from Microsoft and our partners. These capabilities help retailers maximize their data's value, provide a delightful and engaging shopping experience for their shoppers, and empower store associates to be productive and customer savvy. These capabilities also enable retailers to build an optimized, real-time, and sustainable supply chain. Microsoft Cloud for Retail is supported with retail industry-specific data models, APIs, and an ecosystem of partners to build retail-specific scenarios.
International availability of Microsoft Cloud for Retail can be explored through the Industry Cloud availability report.
Updates to Microsoft Cloud for Retail 2022 release wave 2
Investment areas
Elevate the shopping experience
Most retailers analyze only a fraction of the data that’s available. In today’s highly competitive retail landscape, personalization has become the standard. More than ever, leveraging all your data is critical to understanding your customers.
Microsoft Cloud for Retail includes real-time personalization, intelligent stores, unified commerce, digital advertising solutions, and seamless customer service. Real-time personalization helps drive conversion by enabling personalized recommendations and search results. Unified commerce helps increase engagement and drive conversions across channels. Digital advertising solutions drive growth, acquire new customers, and increase lifetime value. Seamless customer service uses intelligent and automated customer service tools to extend personalized services.
Empower store associates
Retail is a people business, and over the last couple of years, retail employees, especially frontline workers, have shouldered much of the change you’ve seen and experienced, with minimal training and astonishing grace. Retailers must focus on real-time store communications and collaboration to increase productivity and put empowered associates on a level playing field with deeply informed customers.
Microsoft Cloud for Retail provides modern communication, helps streamline work, and ensures that retailers maintain an engaged, inclusive workplace. The solution would enable store associates and managers to have real-time store communications, improve store compliance by managing store activities better, and provide a delightful shopping experience for customers. The features enable the retail store team to gain insights into their flow of work to help improve store efficiency. Retailers can use data from multiple systems to empower store employees with a 360-degree view of customers to provide a personalized experience. Integration with Microsoft Teams empowers store employees to manage virtual or in-store appointments with customers and experts.
Maximize the value of your data
Customer touchpoints aren’t linked to each other—systems and data are siloed and disconnected. Microsoft Cloud for Retail uses data models to bring multiple systems and applications together and unifies disparate data sources to establish a singular, in-depth profile of each shopper.
Microsoft Cloud for Retail uses retail data models to unify disparate data sources and connecting data silos for:
- Industry specificity: Include industry-specific semantics.
- Interoperability: Ingest, enrich, and unify data, enabling faster time to value.
- Faster innovation: Extend the value of the platform with additional solutions, analytics, and predictions.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Microsoft Cloud for Retail below:
For application administrators
User-impacting features to the user experience enabled automatically
User-impacting features should be reviewed by application administrators. This facilitates release change management and enables successful onboarding of new capabilities released to market. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users, automatically" in the release plan.
Features that must be enabled by application administrators
This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users by admins, makers, or analysts" in the release plan.