The connector is a free tool that will integrate your systems allowing you to move pricing information along with customer information between your two solutions. Not only is the connector free, but it is extremely easy to customize based on how you do business.

Your employees will be able to improve customer satisfaction by having all information at their fingertips.  The customer will no longer be transferred from one customer representative to another in order to find out the progress of their order.

Sales employees can improve their sales by having an accurate count of the various products available and increase demand for those that have been sitting in inventory.  On the other hand, if your warehouse needs more supply, they will be able to see how many orders have been placed.  This will allow them to predict the demand and be prepared for any customer’s future orders.

In short, the Dynamics ERP and CRM Connector:

•   Is easy to install, use, and customize.

•   Increases sales, service, and customer satisfaction.

•   Supports your unique business processes.

•   Helps you realize more from your ERP and CRM systems.

Want more information about the Microsoft Dynamics ERP & Microsoft Dynamics CRM connector? Check out our webinar on Integrating your Dynamics ERP & Dynamics CRM.

MIG & Co. – MIG is a Professional Consulting Firm that specializes in the implementation of business management software solutions including Customer Relationship Management. We automate business processes to ensure our customers work efficiently. A New York City based Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner, primarily serving New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

by MIG & Co., New York Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

Integrate Your Solutions: Connector for Microsoft Dynamics ERP & Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Microsoft announced that in the second quarter of 2012, a service update to Microsoft CRM will add an array of new features and functionality, including Microsoft CRM Mobile a full range off native apps for smart phones and tablets. This means that the power of Microsoft CRM can now be used on your iPhone, iPad, or Blackberry device, just to names a few. Microsoft CRM will also be supported on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox browsers. This will give a consistent look and feel for Microsoft CRM across the multiple platforms that a user may utilize.

Microsoft CRM was already the most cost effective CRM Solution on the market. With these new enhancements, it is also the most powerful solution available. To see these new enhancements, or to find out more about how Microsoft CRM can help your business, contact Intellitec Solutions at 866-504-4357 for a free needs analysis and demo.

By Intellitec Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner serving Delaware

Microsoft CRM Mobile To Be Released Q2 2012 is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Social media connected with your CRM software can bring together the sales, marketing, and customer service departments. When these three areas work together, it creates a great concoction of customer satisfaction and more effective lead generation. Here are a few examples of when it especially comes in handy:

Let’s say your sales representative is working on converting an event attendee into an opportunity, but he/she didn’t attend the event and doesn’t have a good handle on what the attendee may have learned or taken away. The sales rep can quickly video chat with the marketing rep to see whether there are offers or if attendees received particular information that he/she can mention. This creates a streamlined sales call for the rep and increases the chances of success.

Let’s say the marketing manager is making plans for the next year, but needs input from a few of the sales reps to get a good handle on what’s working for them and what isn’t. The manager can do some research in CRM to see what type of leads were generated from certain sources. They can also IM or message a few sales reps to get their anecdotal feedback that’s valuable for creating an effective marketing plan.

Connecting social media with your CRM is definitely a way to stay connected with your customers, but it’s also another way to enhance relationships in the office. Take advantage of the technology we have available today to make your job as productive as possible and contact us if you have any questions about how Microsoft Dynamics® CRM works with social media components.

By Memie Whiteside with Cargas Systems, Pennsylvania Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

Building a Social Business with CRM Software is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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CRM for Associations is a new concept that’s taking hold within the NFP marketplace.  It’s CRM, but CRM that is tailored to meet the requirements and speak the language of today’s associations.  As a membership-based organization, you have members, events, campaigns, sponsors, and other sources of revenue.  Your challenge is to manage and interact with all of your constituencies and audiences more effectively.   A CRM for Associations solution helps you do that while also boosting revenue.

Most AMS systems are lacking in sales, marketing, and service automation.  They do just fine with operational management such as event registrations and dues management, but many of the sales and marketing features and functions they offer are either afterthoughts, bolt-ons, or poorly integrated into the overall AMS system.  They fall well short for organizations with more sophisticated requirements.

With a CRM system that is designed and built for associations, you can break out of the limitations imposed by traditional AMS.  A CRM solution offers many sales, marketing, and service best practices:

• Constructing your membership team more like a traditional sales team.
• Developing ongoing nurture marketing programs to capture new revenue.
• Establishing a measureable lead management process.
• Utilizing integrated case management to establish a high-end membership service program.

Where a CRM for Associations solution shines is in centralizing your sales, marketing, and service efforts for your membership.  You can manage the details of recruiting and retaining sponsors, donors, supporters, and members.  Plan and manage marketing campaigns of any size and complexity including direct mail and email marketing.  When a revenue opportunity is identified, you can track and manage it through the revenue capture process.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the foundation for our CRM for Associations offering.  We have taken the base functionality and customized it to meet the specific needs of membership-based organizations.  It retains all of the extensive features found in the base product but is extended and tailored to work for associations.   Here is just a brief list of its features:

• Access the system from within Microsoft Outlook or use it from a web-browser.
• Use the solution as a stand-alone application or as an integrated component to your current AMS solution.
• Create and automate marketing campaigns.
• Deliver personalized campaigns for specific members.
• Develop nurture email marketing campaigns for training, newsletters, and events.
• Track and report on marketing and revenue generation activities.
• Manage comprehensive buying and demographic profiles for all important constituencies.
• Provide top-flight service to members through integrated case management.
• Easily deploy the solution either on premise or “in the cloud”.

A CRM for Associations solution is a great alternative for any membership-based organization looking to grow its revenue. This new concept is being adopted by many leading organizations today and forms the foundation for better, more effective sales, marketing, and service management.  And the best part is that organizations are seeing improved success in generating non-dues revenue.  You can too.

Contact Steve Kane (skane@broadpoint.net and 301-634-2404) at BroadPoint Technologies, the mid-Atlantic’s largest Dynamics reseller, for more information on our CRM offerings.

by BroadPoint

CRM for Associations: A New Era in Member Engagement and Revenue Generation is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Firstly, on the question on what you should expect on email open rates in b2b for net new lists, I read a number of responses where the percentages seemed unusually high to me.  Jumping into the conversation, I discovered most of the open rates were from vendor reports.  Clearly, vendors were being very “optimistic” in what they stated as industry average open rates for email campaigns. 18, 25, 30% were numbers that were thrown out as “normal”.  So, being the good direct marketer that I am, I posted this:

“I have a campaign for a webinar we’re hosting w/ David Raab this Thursday. I pulled a brand new list out of NetProspex, a source of data known to be high quality. I pulled 1K names in b2b, marketing titles, biz/tech services and sent an email blast out inviting to a very high value asset, an analyst webinar. The email executed at 10:30AM EST today.  Click on this link to view the basic stats from the email campaign report
http://ity.vc/raabemail  We delivered a total of 763 – that excluded prior unsubs and bounces already in my database – sending to a total of 763.  This email was sent using SalesFUSION, our MA software. We monitor our IP on return path and have score of 97 today (95-97 on average).  4% open rate thusfar – will probably creep up to 6% by COB

The bounce rate was 17.9% and more than 75% of the hard bounce reason codes were “bad mailbox” I consider NP to be a very good data source and yet 18% of the list bounced.  Moral of the story is be cautious of what data vendors and email vendors claim because the reality is usually much more sobering. I deal with lots of our clients ticked off at 12% open rate because they got their hands on that constant contact report, which is very much irrelevant to real b2b open rates.”

So, what should we expect as normal on open rates and if the new normal is 4-10% open rates, will we need to acquire millions of names just to keep our lead flow going?

Marketing automation, email marketing, and marketing tools in CRM have literally exploded onto the scene in the last few years.  SalesFUSION has been an ISV for Microsoft CRM since 2009 and we have over 125 Dynamics users leveraging our marketing solution, integrated to Dynamics CRM.  Just a few years ago, many b2b marketers were perfectly content using low-cost email blasting tools to get their marketing messages out the door.  Just a few years ago (let’s go with 5-7), the inbox of the average manager in a company was much less cluttered than it is today.  Each day, many of the people we are trying to get to read our wonderfully crafted electronic prose, are buried in a sea of unsolicited information.  This is in large part due to several factors.  Firstly, most b2b buyers engage in product & service research on the web.  We want to engage with our prospects electronically and cheap email is the quickest path to do that.  To hammer  the point home, there are now several email blasting tools that live right inside of Dynamics.  Anyone with a Dynamics license and the permission to do so is now an amateur email marketer.  The end result of this is that inboxes are crowded and it’s getting harder and harder to get the attention of our target recipient.

Firstly, the baseline numbers that I assert are as follows for open rates

• Net new list – acquired and emailed for the first time – 4-8% open, 10-20% bounce
• House list – has received emails in the past and not bounced nor have they unsubscribed – 7-15%

The numbers will increase or decrease based on subject line, the tool being used, content, time of day, day of week…etc.

The open rates of campaigns will be lower than you expect…but there are things we can do to improve our chances of getting someone’s attention.

1. Using subject swaps – this is one of the older retail email marketing tricks of the trade.  You take an email – and pre-set 3-5 variations of the email (variance in subject line only) and schedule 1 email on one day/time, and then each subsequent email goes out to the group who didn’t open the last.  You vary times/days and make minor tweaks to the subject line.  This is easily accomplished, without the need to know CRM workflow, in solutions like SalesFUSION using a drip designer.  The results?  You can set your watch to doubling the open rate.
2. Personalized subject lines – not well received in retail/consumer emails but tends to be OK in b2b.  I have experimented with this and see an average increase of 1-3% in open rates.
3. Trigger-based emails - These are emails that trigger to an individual within a certain time period after an activity has occurred.  Examples are:  Lead fills out form – auto-enroll in multi-step email campaign; Lead visits website, enroll in multi-step email campaign.  Triggers work and have extremely high open rates at 30-45%.  Trigger emails are also known as nurture-based emails and are one of the main drivers for b2b marketers to invest in marketing automation solutions like SalesFUSION.  Some vendors that live inside of Dynamics will require advanced knowledge of workflow for this so be cautious as 90% of marketers have no skills or interest in learning Dynamics Workflow!
4. Content linking – Once someone has an interaction or opens or clicks on a certain type of content – string together a sequence of emails that offer complementary content to the last piece of content accessed.
5. A/B Testing – as marketers, we should always be testing and measuring.  Using A/B testing on subject lines is a great way to increase overall open rates.  Test a sample of between 500-1000 before sending a blast and use the subject that had a higher open rate.
6. Sales-person based campaigns – SalesFUSION, with its integration to Dynamics, can auto-personalized emails so that they appear to be coming from the sales rep who owns the lead or contact in CRM.  Seeing the email coming from a person rather than an alias will increase open rates.

In short, anybody with rudimentary blasting skills can pepper a database with sales messaging but that will likely not be enough in an age where the average business professional receives 1000 marketing messages per day.  If you want to get someone’s attention, the six tips listed above are a great start.

by SalesFUSION, ISV Partner

The Challenge of Open Rates in b2b Email Marketing is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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If you’re not familiar with Dynamics CRM’s new social capabilities, you can learn more about them in my post, “Sneak Peek: Microsoft Plans Exciting Updates for Dynamics CRM.”

Similar to last time, the tips that follow have been collected through a combination of my own experience managing Intelligent Technologies, Inc.’s. social media profiles as well as two articles on the subject, “Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement” by Newslab and the Mashable article, “21 Rules for Social Media Engagement.”

Here are three more great ideas for improving your company’s social media engagement:

• Listen to the conversations that are occurring about your company online so that you can respond to them and address areas of contentment and pain points when they arise.
• Involve your followers in a conversation by asking them questions. Just make sure that you have a reason for asking the question beyond just wanting to get people talking. If you pose a question that is completely irrelevant to your business, it may get people confused, panicked or cause them to stop following you altogether.
• Social media profiles can be a great place to show the human side of your business. This is especially true for Facebook, because in a lot of ways it is the most casual of all social networks. This makes it the ideal place to share information about your company that people would be interested in, but would not normally be available on your website or other profiles. For example, if your company sells something very technical such as machinery or specialized software, your Facebook profile may be a good place to display the story behind the product. More specifically, you could give a brief history of your company, share a little something about the key employees with whom your customers and prospects interact with on a daily basis or give a behind-the-scenes look at the latest event you hosted, complete with pictures.

 As you continue to enjoy the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics 2011 we hope that you’ll find these tips to be helpful.  If you have questions or other ideas you’d like to share, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Or, if you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you manage and build relationships with your customers, we’d love to talk to you. Contact us today!

By: Laura Heinbockel, Intelligent Technologies, Inc., a Microsoft Silver ERP Partner in North Carolina

How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011′s New Social Features (Part 2) is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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• The Social Customer- You first need to know your social customer and what they’re looking for in a social business relationship. Social customers consume information in a different way. They expect you to be present and active when they need you. They also expect you to listen and engage with them online if they reach out to you. Social customers are savvier than customers you’ve worked with previously. They know how to find the information they need and ultimately know what they’re looking for. So in a nutshell, you need to be ready for when the social customer comes to you. At this time, if you’ve done things right, that social customer turns into a valuable and loyal asset to your customer base.
• The Social Employee- Similar to your social customers, social employees expect social media interaction in the workplace as it’s a more effective way to do business. They get to the information they need to do their job right and have access to the right resources at any given time. It’s important to understand this type of employee and appreciate them for the productivity they offer your company. Instead of viewing social media as a time waster or hitch in your company, it’s time to embrace its collaboration and sales generating powers. Don’t push these social employees away, pick their brain and learn from the work habits they bring to your organization.

If you haven’t taken the shift to social CRM, there’s a good chance you will be soon. If you have any questions about making this change at your organization, don’t hesitate to contact us at Sikich.

By Jim Drumm with Sikich, Chicago IL Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner serving IL and MO

Social Collaboration Tool Adoption for Your Business is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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What follows below is a list of general tips and tricks companies can use to improve their social media engagement. They’ve been collected through my own experience managing Intelligent Technologies, Inc. social media profiles as well as two articles on the subject, “Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement” by Newslab and the Mashable article, “21 Rules for Social Media Engagement.” So, if you’re looking for further reading on the subject after you’ve finished this blog, each of these would be a  good place to start.

3 ways to increase your business’ social media engagement:

• Use your social media profiles as an opportunity to become a resource for your followers. By that I mean, avoid just pushing out canned messages on your social media profiles. Instead devote some of your posts to making sure that your followers understand that there is the human behind these accounts to whom they can go and ask questions.
• Once you begin receiving questions from your followers, make sure that you answer them in a timely manner and that you have a clear pipeline set up for handling these interactions .This is particularly important if your business is technical in nature and the person who regularly checks your social media accounts may not have the specific knowledge needed to handle your clients’ or prospects’ questions themselves.  Make sure they know to whom they should forward these inquiries and that those individuals understand how they need to be handled.
• Give back, reciprocate and acknowledge the useful contributions of your followers. This can be achieved by re-tweeting a message if you’re using twitter, or posting the message you find interesting to your own Facebook wall or LinkedIn status updates with a mention of where it came from. Furthermore, this may seem counterintuitive, but asking for re-tweets when posting on twitter can actually be an effective method of increasing engagement. Research shows that when you add “please RT” to the end of the message 51% of followers will do so.

As you begin to enjoy the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and explore its capabilities we hope that these tips will help you make the most of its social media features.  And, stay tuned to next month’s blog posts where we’ll share even more great social media tips.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you manage and build relationships with your customers, we’d love to talk to you. Contact Intelligent Technologies today!

by Intelligent Technologies, Inc

How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011′s New Social Features (Part 1) is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM preserves one of nature’s most precious commodities: trees.  It does so by providing alternatives to the traditional business application paper by-products such as training manuals and memos.  For instance, instead of shipping large quantities of paper training manuals to users, CRM has the same information embedded within the system.  The always useful “Help” feature in Dynamics CRM is its own comprehensive training manual. Additionally, Dynamics CRM has the added benefit of being a resourceful search tool.  If you’re more of a visual learner, you should look into the Dynamics CRM 2011 ‘Getting Started’ videos that show you step-by-step how to get moving in the right direction.

Moreover, Dynamics CRM will significantly reduce the number of printed reports that you’ll need.  Typically, reports are generated to provide a visual representation of the data in ways that the structured application normally couldn’t do.  Typical database applications are limited in the number of relationships that can be displayed.  That is why reports have been a staple for companies over the past few decades. 

 Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications allow its users to create relationships between the different areas of your company’s database.  In CRM, you can utilize the Advanced Find tool.  This tool will make it much easier for users to create their own, reusable reports that meet their company’s specific requirements.  Dynamics CRM and Excel are well-integrated, allowing your staff to easily store data that can be manipulated in Excel.

 Another option for reporting in Dynamics CRM is user defined dashboards.  Dashboards let the user view important data in charts and graphs to suit their specific needs.  These dashboards provide a quick overview of key performance indicators, saving you from printing out and reviewing several related reports.  Again, less printing means less paper.

 With there now being so many eco-friendly ways to do reporting, the need for static, printed reports has significantly decreased.  This is just one more way Dynamics CRM is helping our environment.  Contact Steve Kane at 301-634-2404 or skane@broadpoint.net to find out how BroadPoint Technologies, with extensive experience implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, can help your organization reap all the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including being more friendly to the environment.

by BroadPoint Technologies, Virginia/Maryland/DC Microsoft CRM Partner

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 When deciding which of the two approaches to proceed with, it’s important to understand the terminology and pros and cons of each strategy. Below, I’ve laid out the pros and cons of the traditional options and the unique strategy behind the xRM platform.

 Pros:

• Solution will promote business process reengineering
• No customization makes for easier upgrade path
• Timeline and budget won’t fluctuate dramatically due to xRM being out of the box

 Cons:

• Requires modification of business processes in order to meet your desired goals
• Significant initial software investment, in addition to software maintenance costs
• If the out of the box functionality doesn’t meet the evolving needs, organizations are faced with product maintenance and expensive customization to meet the requirements

 COTS solutions work well  for departmental applications like accounting, human resources etc. Yet, their use and effectiveness can diminish as it is spread across your entire company apparatus. Enterprise applications that utilize COTS typically will require organizations to adjust their business processes to meet the confines of the solution. Purchasing a solution with complex capabilities that your company won’t utilize will just increase your financial cost in both the near and long term.

 Additionally, if the out of the box functionality isn’t up to par for your organization, you’ll have a product that will require ongoing maintenance and expensive customization. This can significantly increase the project budget and/or limit the organization’s strategic initiatives.

 Custom Development:

Companies that identify their unique characteristics often see the value in custom development.  It’s meant to foster the organization’s strategic advantage and conform to the business processes, not vice versa as is required with COTS.

 In theory, custom development will align your strategic objectives with your newfound technological capabilities. Unfortunately, the unpredictable nature of the timeline and budget, limited upgrade path, and reliance on specific programmers creates a level of uncertainty that few organizations are willing to undertake. Custom development has proven to be such a painful process for so many organizations that the word ’custom’ has become a four letter word.

 Microsoft xRM:

Microsoft xRM is not a product; rather it is a strategy or concept. The ‘x’ denotes that you can utilize this strategy to develop anything-any relationship, process or data element. xRM is an application platform that offers the best of both worlds between commercial off the shelf solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM and custom development. The xRM platform provides core business features, security, authentication, business process modeling and business intelligence based on both on-premise and in the cloud offerings. This platform is an excellent foundation for organizations to facilitate business their way without the risk and cost of custom development. Organizations realize the benefits of an out of the box portfolio toolkit that can be supported by non-technical staff and maintained through a consistent upgrade path. xRM provides low upfront costs, low maintenance and ultimately a more strategic solution to drive the business.

 Contact Steve Kane at 301-634-2404 or skane@broadpoint.net to find out how BroadPoint Technologies, the mid-Atlantic’s largest Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner, can help you determine the best solution for your organization.

 by BroadPoint Technologies, Virginia, Maryland, DC  Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

xRM: Your Guidebook to Finding the Right CRM Solution is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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