Telia simplifies processes, streamlines POS, and improves customer experience with Dynamics 365

Adapting to a changing landscape 

Telia’s telecommunication services are nearly ubiquitous in Sweden. In a country of 10.2 million people, 6.1 million subscribed to Telia’s mobile services in 2019. The company also operates elsewhere in northern Europe, providing hardware in addition to mobile, fixed-line, broadband, and television services, with a total of 17 million mobile subscribers. Telia has 60 stores across Sweden, and it also distributes products through many resellers. 

The company used to compete with other phone service operators, but technology companies were increasingly joining the field. To hone its competitive edge, Telia wanted to update and simplify its IT landscape. Employees had to use up to 40 different applications to accomplish daily tasks, which could be slow and cumbersome. So, the company looked for a way to reduce its overall number of applications.

Telia also wanted to update its point-of-sale (POS) systems. These had a large impact on the staff and customer experience at nearly 600 POS terminals across its stores in Sweden. The company looked for a mobile-friendly, scalable, easy-to-use solution and decided it could achieve its multiple objectives by connecting Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications with existing SAP systems. “We saw the opportunity to make a tech change as the regional market was changing,” says Andreas Ström, Product Owner at Telia. “We could help staff check out customers with their products faster and improve the overall shopping experience.”   

Increasing customer comfort, staff agility, and overall sales

To improve the sales and buying experience, Telia consolidated several POS systems by adopting Dynamics 365 Commerce. The company added Microsoft Power BI so that store managers and other employees could quickly gain insights from sales data visualized in reports. Telia was drawn to both Commerce and Power BI because they were intuitive, easy to learn, and flexible to run. In a scenario unique for retail, Telia now runs its POS fully in the cloud. 

In the early stages, Telia IT staff collaborated with and received support from Microsoft FastTrack for Dynamics 365 experts to customize the POS solution with extensions. “We worked closely with the FastTrack team members, who helped us add the extensions and explained why we needed them,” says Peo Jacobson, Technical Project Manager working on behalf of Telia at UnitedHours. “We found their help and cooperation incredibly valuable in moving the project forward.” 

Telia knows that buying a phone can be complex. So, it trains its staff to walk customers through devices’ use, service, pricing, and many other factors. But with multiple complicated systems that staff had to navigate, it took months for staff to get fully up to speed. Since moving to Commerce, however, Telia no longer needs to provide intensive, ongoing training on its POS system. “Our legacy POS only had order lines and rows,” says Ström. “In Dynamics 365 Commerce, staff have a well-designed UI with product information, images, specifications, related products, and all of the business rules within the system.” 

Staff also face the challenge of sharing all the phone-shopping minutiae with customers from the other side of the counter. Customers often need details that staff have to get from store computers and write down on paper. To offer shoppers a better experience, including the option for self-service, Telia is rolling out Dynamics 365 Commerce on other devices within its stores. To start, stores will set up 10-inch tablets where customers can get additional information on their own about pricing and hardware.  

Next, Telia stores will add a companion screen on a 22-inch device to give sales staff and customers a kiosk to view together. They can browse in-store products, find real-time availability and shipping times for other products, view prices, review offerings, and add items to a cart. Customers can hold the items in their cart and then pay at the POS terminal once they’re ready to check out. “It’s like an omnichannel within the channel,” says Ström. “By using Dynamics 365 Commerce, we make shopping easier, and the customer confidently gets to a quicker decision on what to buy.” 

The companion screen application also draws on data within SAP and Dynamics 365 to show customers products that are related to what they’re interested in. For example, the application might show an offer for mobile phone insurance. “It’s a great reminder for the sales personnel on our wide range of products and also an eye opener for the customer,” says Ström. “We plan to drive up sales with easy access to this advanced functionality in Dynamics 365 Commerce.”

Streamlining resource management 

To further minimize its systems, Telia adopted Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance to manage product information. With Supply Chain Management, the company gained more business control and the ability to tightly track inventory, increasing its confidence about which products are available to customers. Staff used to perform each step of a purchase order manually, but now Telia uses Dynamics 365 Finance to automatically create purchase orders and send them to SAP.

“We had some inventory discrepancy issues due to product data in many different places,” says Ström. “With Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, we improved inventory process efficiencies and reduced costs related to inventory discrepancies by several million Krona.”

Overall, Telia has made service and selling easier for staff, drastically decreasing its 40 disparate applications. Staff also find and pull up information in half the time that it used to take, providing customers with important details more quickly. 

“By using Dynamics 365, we’ve reduced our total number of systems by half, and we anticipate cutting parts of our customer service time in half,” says Ström. “Most customers want to be done faster, and all of them want to leave the store feeling confident that they made the right decision. We’re delivering on both better than ever before by accessing reliable data quickly that staff and customers can trust.”

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