What is fun about selling Dynamics CRM?  

That answer is simple:  watching future users who have come into a demo with a preconceived notion of what a CRM has available from their days with other CRM packages and seeing them light up when the out of box functionality gives them what they truly need;   feeling the excitement that builds as users begin to understand Dynamics CRM capabilities and experiencing their enlightenment as they determine how they can use the tool to save time and money, improve efficiency and knowledge and most importantly increase revenue and reach more prospects and customers.

What is fun about using Dynamics CRM?

After years of struggling with slow and cumbersome tools for our CRM needs, our switch to Dynamics CRM made the task of managing customer relationships quick and easy.  The “track in CRM” email feature with the “set regarding” capability made tracking project communication simple.  And since we use Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite which has Outlook available whenever I’m online – The integration to Outlook allows for all the information I need to be at my disposal when I need it, which is usually “Right Now”.

What is fun about Customizing Dynamics CRM?

Well, I’ve been in the IT industry for over 20 years starting during the mainframe days and have seen quite a bit of change.  So to me, the Dynamics CRM/xRM platform is revolutionary.   Adding a new field, putting it on a form and getting it on a report has never been this simple and powerful.  On top of that, adding a whole new entity, relating it to an existing entity, and building maintenance forms…that has always been measured in days or weeks,   not minute or hours.  There are plenty of people exposing the capabilities of this platform, so I’m just going to sum it up with saying I’m beyond giddy over it.

What is fun about exploring the capabilities of Dynamics CRM?

Alright, exploring the capabilities of software has always been fun.  Stretching the boundaries of what can be done with a system and discussing how business problems can be solved with the tools and software we have is why I’m in this business.   However, what makes Dynamics CRM more enjoyable than other systems is that when we ask, “How can we solve a relationship based problem?”  we’re able to come up with a realistic solution.  Since most software has been written for the masses, it never meets the needs of everyone, but making it do so with Dynamics CRM is a pleasant experience.

How can you join in the fun?

Simple, go to one of the many sites that have information on Dynamics CRM  take a tour and view or better yet, give a call to a Dynamics CRM partner and start having some FUN!

By:  Bill Reckard of Meritide, a Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Minneapolis GP Partner

How To Have Fun Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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As a sales engineer and consultant at Meritide, Inc., I do not specifically own any contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and only have involvement with contacts and accounts and opportunities when needed.  There are some contacts, accounts, and opportunities that I would like to keep with me in my offline client or sync to my Outlook contacts or phone contacts that are not owned by me or even related to a project I may be  working on.

After working to try to filter my way through this,  I came up short and went looking for an alternative.  What we implemented was a new relationship called Followers.

This followers relationship is a many to many relationship between the entity and systems users.  For instance, I can add myself as a “Follower” to any contact and so can others in the company that may not be owners or have a role with the contact.  This follower capability lets me adjust my local data group for that entity to only include things where I have this relationship so only those contacts I am “following” will be synced.  I have created a view for “Contacts I am Following” and I’m looking for ways that this follower relationship could be used in workflows as a way to communicate information to users what have started following the entities they are related to.

I can always get to other contacts when I’m connected but this following capability has allowed me to keep a neat, tidy, and small list of contacts available within Outlook and on my phone.  Even though I don’t own the records, I only take with me the specific records I want for quick reference and can easily move contacts off and on the list by adding and removing myself from the follower relationship.

The only two drawbacks I have run into so far are:

1)      The lack of ability to set this role in workflows.  I would like to be able to have a workflow that is simply “Follow this contact” that would assign me as a follower in selected contacts from a find or list.  Right now I have to add this relationship one at a time.

2)      The lack of ability to group filter criteria across entities.  I would like to have my local data group or views include contacts I’m following and any contacts that I may own but I have not been able to do an ‘or’ grouping relationship to pull in records where owner is the current user ‘or’ owner is in the followers relationship.

As we move this ad-hoc following relationship to other entities it is our hope that we can provide it as an option for our own users and our CRM clients to address the use of CRM data by users who may not be directly involved in the process or ownership of Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities.

By:  Neil Otto of   Meritide,   Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Minneapolis GP Partner

How to Customize Dynamics CRM Software to Fit Your Needs as a User is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Today’s CRM systems now have more flexibility and extensibility that can be applied to other areas of the business. With rich workflow, document management, integration and customization capabilities, the CRM systems can be used to manage any relationship and not just that with the customer. The x in xRM refers to this type of use.
Instead of developing custom applications, spreadsheets or Access databases to manage relationships away from the sales cycle, you should consider looking at modern CRM software and see how it can be molded to manage any relationship that involves tracking communication, contracts, documents, meetings or timelines between one or more parties.

Where’s the Fit?

Examples of where this xRM can fit include:

• Recruiting where there is a large pool or you want to maintain a relationship with applicants over time. xRM can also help you automate this process and even help you attract better or more responsive applicants by tracking them closer and communicating with them better than their other prospects.
• Personnel Management if there is a need to track internal communications, meetings, and history or to manage internal requests. You may be able to extend or enhance your HR or build a better fit model for your HR needs.
• Vendor Management outside of your purchasing or ERP system. When you need more information about your vendors or you want to build relationships with them and track communication with them, you can use xRM to capture the relationship and not just the numbers and purchase orders.
• Legal Management related to patents, licensing bodies, OEM agreements, or any other legal relationship that depends on lots of communication, contact, recording of activity, or documentation.
• Event Management for organizations that plan their own events, training, trade shows or product demonstrations. xRM can provide functionality related to attendance, scheduling and coordinating of follow-up with attendees.

Instead of customizing your current systems or trying to fit this information into another system that was not designed for it, you may be able to start with an xRM framework and build your system based on the open entity model these systems offer.

Business Models Not Focused on Product Sales
xRM can also be used to fit the needs of business that don’t fall into the standard sales and marketing CRM models. xRM may be a good fit for organizations with the following business models:

• Professional Association – xRM can be used for membership management and member profile management.
• Government or Non-Profit Agency – if you are providing services to people, xRM can help you manage your offerings and track your communication and relationships.
• Shipping, Logistics or Services – if your business depends on providing services for manufacturers and distributors standard CRM and ERP models may not be a fit for your contact and relationship management. xRM may provide the flexibility you need to truly model and manage your relationships.

Of course you can still do CRM. You still need to manage your customer relationships. If you passed on CRM during the last wave of the market, now might be the time to reconsider. The cost of entry has declined, and the ability to integrate and customize has increased. You won’t be building a standalone system but you will be extending your existing ERP and other business applications.

If you have spent time adding CRM like capabilities to your ERP, Accounting, or Customer Services applications you may want to look at pulling them back out and implementing CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM/xRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is one example of a CRM system that is extensible to other models of use.
http://crm.dynamics.com/technology/crm-technology.aspx

Microsoft Dynamics is available as an on-premise solution or as an online/on demand applications
http://crm.dynamics.com/deployment/crm-deployment-types.aspx

Microsoft Dynamics offers standard Sales, Marketing, and Service modules
http://crm.dynamics.com/solutions/crm-solutions-overview.aspx

Microsoft Dynamics also offers Accelerators that can help you model the CRM/xRM to your business and extend the capabilities.
http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators

By:  Neil Otto of   Meritide,   Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Minneapolis GP Partner

xRM – Managing Relationships With Business Software is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Past topics have discussed using SharePoint and Reporting Services to target areas of your business where Access or Excel may be overused for data collection, reporting, and analytics. In addition, the concept of Microsoft xRM/CRM as a platform and technology was also discussed. Today’s discussion will focus on using the flexible xRM platform to replace hard to manage and maintain customized solutions that you may have developed in Filemaker Pro or Access.

Chances are your Filemaker Pro and Access applications were developed because there just wasn’t a module or application available to meet the business needs you had – so you set out with the tools you had to create a new application from scratch.  Over time you added more functionality to the point where what started as a simple application is hard to support, hard to customize, undocumented, and yet is a vital part of your business.

If this application is being used to manage entities like people, places, events, assets or other custom records, you can take advantage of the xRM platform to move this vital custom business application to a platform that is supported, portable, current, and best of all, specifically designed to help you manage information in a business process.
Because the application you build in xRM is built on a business application platform instead of a raw database/forms development tool, the entities you create will be understood and things like dates, people, emails and documents will inherit appropriate capabilities if you use them in your application.

Additional advantages to using xRM over Access or Filemaker Pro include:

•  Native communication capabilities for emailing and sharing information.
•  Built in workflow engine to help you design business process using your custom entity data.
•  Integration with your Outlook tool bar to allow easy access to the application with a consistent Outlook look and feel.
•  Web based interface for access from anywhere without a client install.
•  Metadata framework that provides addition of fields, labels, forms, etc as a business administrator and does not require a developer or DBA.
•  A starting package of entities that you can modify including contacts, articles, activities and many more.
•  Define relationships between entities that will automatically update the application appropriately without significant rework.
•  Robust reporting and searching capabilities without requiring custom development to implement them.

Be sure to keep this new capability in mind before you decide to invest in additional functionality or new database projects with FileMaker Pro or Access.  Contact your partner of choice for more information on getting started.

By:  Neil Otto of   Meritide,   Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Minneapolis GP Partner

Is xRM Your Next Move From Access Or Filemaker? is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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In most cases, it’s not until you’ve –
a. Dumped too much money
b. Invested too much time
c. Or experienced too many emotional breakdowns
– that you’re forced to make a change and get on the right path. 

 You have to ‘hit rock bottom’ as they say.

I hope this article encourages you to get on the right path before hitting rock bottom.

 My goal  is to help you identify the warning signs before it’s too late.  I’ll also give you actions you can take to get yourself out of CRM hell or avoid it when possible.

Let me tell you a little bit more about just what to expect from CRM Hell; hopefully you’ll pick up a few warning signs so you can identify the descent before it’s too late.

CRM Hell is a place exploding with bloated databases.  These databases may contain thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of contacts or “records.” When you’re in CRM Hell, you aren’t sure whether the contacts you have even work at the companies they’re associated with or even if the company still exists.

CRM Hell is filled with duplicate data due to alternate spellings or abbreviated company names.  In CRM Hell there are mounds of inaccurate or indecipherable notes worthless to anyone except the person who entered it…two years ago.

In CRM Hell there is a wonderful little demon whose only job – and this is definitely a full time job – is to continually shovel money into a fire pit.  This is your money, the money your business has lost from the hours and hours wasted by your employees as they re-enter data into multiple systems and manually generate reports over, and over and over.

And worst of all, CRM Hell is filled with unattended, extremely qualified prospects – decision makers “dying” to purchase your product or service.  To top it off, once you finally do stumble across a ripe, highly qualified prospect, they are sitting across the table from your competitor, pen in hand, happily signing their business away to someone who can’t serve them as well as you can.

It’s rough, isn’t it?

Some of you may notice this starting to happen in your business, or maybe you’re in the depths already.  It’s important to know that you’re not alone.  There is a solution and it’s never too late to get turned around.

 There are 4 “sure-fire” ways to secure your spot in CRM Hell.  Let’s look at what those are and how you can avoid them.  I’ll even explain how to pull yourself back onto the right path if you’ve already started making the descent.

Here are the 4 ways to secure your spot in CRM Hell and what you can do about it:

1. You’ve outgrown your current CRM but haven’t made a change

This is one of the most common reasons you’re being sent straight to CRM hell.  A very common story is you started out small and invested in a basic CRM system.  You bought it to track activities and manage your sales data.  As you added sales, marketing and service people, you implemented policies and procedures (right?) but they were quickly forgotten.  There is also a lack of integration between sales, marketing and service.  If this sounds like you, it’s time to consider a new CRM.

Solution:
Consider getting crm consulting and an enterprise-class CRM like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which can be deployed either Online or On-Premise. Ask your CRM consultant which is best for your business.

2. Your current CRM doesn’t go out of its way to promote user adoption.

First of all, nothing beats good solid training for employees new to any piece of software. However, having a CRM system that integrates with the applications they use on a regular basis, such as Outlook, Word and Excel, dramatically improves user adoption.

Employees often avoid new software because:
- They feel overwhelmed
- The software is not intuitive and doesn’t work the way your business does
- They think it requires too much technical knowledge
- They don’t see how it directly helps them do their job

Solution:
Don’t skimp on training. You need to have reference materials that are easily accessible, along with ongoing training and readily available support. You’d be amazed how far the resource library built into a system like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can go when paired with a 90 minute refresher and Q&A every 3 months or so.

All of this can be provided by a Microsoft CRM partner and it’s one of the main reasons it improves ROI to work with a partner.

3. Your current CRM is painfully slow, leaving it unused by the majority of your staff

There are a lot of reasons your CRM can be slow. Often it’s due to limited IT resources or a bloated database (usually goes hand in hand with #1.)  You may also be using the system in a way it wasn’t intended; for example have you ever tried connecting to ACT! remotely? Yeah, it’s not fun, and in that case I wouldn’t expect your employees to invest too much time entering quality notes either.

Solution:
This is similar to #1 in that it’s probably time for a new CRM.  However, if you’re lacking IT resources, consider a hosted solution or “cloud” solution.  Hosted and cloud solutions mean that someone else maintains and provides the resources to host your CRM software. You often lease the software on a per-user, monthly basis. Online solutions are a great fit for companies with limited internal IT staff or if you’d like to avoid the large capital expenses associated with an on-premise CRM solution.

Consider a CRM online partner to help in your decision. Also check out www.democrmonline.com to learn about Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

4. Your current CRM Rrequires your employees to re-enter data and manually create reports.

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Microsoft Excel is NOT a CRM, nor is it a supplement for one.  And if you’re using Excel or Access to manage customer data along with a CRM that doesn’t directly integrate with Excel, I feel your pain.

Maybe you’re not using Excel or Access, but your employees continually pull data from various silos of information and manually input it into another system to manually create the same report they ran last month and the month before.  Not only does this waste COUNTLESS hours of your employees’ time but you seriously risk a plague of duplication and misinformation within your CRM.

Solution:
If you want to streamline your business processes and help your team generate more revenue, you know better than anyone what your employee’s highest and best uses are, and I bet for 99% of them it’s not doing data entry.  You need a CRM that “plays well with others.”

Invest in a CRM that can be a foundation for the rest of your business.  If you already have a document management system, or you’re looking at one in the future, get a CRM that supports integration.

Looking at upgrading your ERP?  Get a CRM that integrates with it.
Consider investing in a suite of products by the same company, such as Microsoft SharePoint for document management, Microsoft dynamics GP for accounting, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for sales, marketing and service automation.  You don’t need to get them all at the same time but consider what you’ll need in the future and invest in systems that fit into your future plans.

In conclusion

Okay so that may have been a little dark, but I hope you can see that with the right system, proper training and tight integration, you can get a tremendous return on investment from your CRM system.  You’ll be able to quickly pull the reports you need in order to make good decisions.

Your employees can automate their time-consuming tasks (and eliminate the redundant ones) and focus on driving new business and keeping your customers happy.  And who knows, maybe your employees will actually thank you for a good CRM as opposed to whining about it all the time, but I’m not making any promises.

If you’re looking for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant or if you want to learn more about what your return on investment could be from a properly implemented CRM system, check out the Microsoft crm consulting section of our website at www.meritide.com.

By:  Jeff Snyder of   Meritide,   Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and Minneapolis GP Partner

4 Reasons You’re Going Straight To “CRM Hell” And How To Get Back On The Right Path is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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The key to the online offering is that it is ready to go.  No hardware needed and no software installs necessary.   Contact a Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner and you’re ready to get started  It really is that simple with the Online offering.   Once signed up, you add your users, have them download the Outlook connector utility and they are ready to go as well.  
Do you have data to convert?   Not a problem.   Where is the data coming from? Spreadsheets,  ACT, Goldmine, SalesForce.com, some other system - all of this data can be easily converted.  Dynamics CRM has a robust data import tool that allows the data to be pulled in from a CSV and mapped to the new fields.   If you are having trouble pulling data from your current CRM there are plenty of import tools options like Scribe Software’s converters.

Most people have done some customizations in the past systems to meet their business needs.  Dynamics CRM Online is easily customizable in the online version.  All you need is a little training (available from a partner or online) and permission as a system customizer.  New fields are added to the system and forms quickly and easily,  new entities (think Vendor, Affiliates, Trade Shows, etc) can be added and related to the existing entities (Accounts, Leads, etc) in multiple ways.  All of this is available with the standard CRM online toolset.  No special coding is necessary.

Another great aspect of the Online version is the ease of upgrades.  Since it is online,  Microsoft takes care of upgrades automatically.   For example, in November users of the online version were upgrade to the newest release.  All of their customizations remained intact and no additional work was needed by the clients to receive the latest features.

Microsoft is offering CRM online trials for you. If you’d like CRM consulting ,  Contact your partner of choice for more information on getting started.

By:  Bill Reckard of   Meritide,   Minnesota Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online – Quick And Easy is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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