How To Download Free Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

As a Microsoft Dynamics CRM user, I am always looking for ways to use it in new ways to make my life easier.  I just found out that Microsoft has been releasing FREE Accelerators for CRM – which are cool little downloads that add new functionality to Dynamics CRM.  (Kind of like my favorite iPhone apps – downloads that make my life easier. Except those are not from Microsoft  and I am probably not even supposed to admit I use one....).  And did I mention they are free – love that! There are currently 13 accelerators available and I included a brief description of all of them below.

NEW Social Networking - allows you to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites. This first release delivers integration with Twitter; other networks will be introduced in future releases.

NEW Portal Integration - allow customers to configure and expose any CRM entity to an external facing portal

NEW Partner Relationship Management - distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners.

Notifications - allows CRM users to subscribe to “business events” that are important to them (for example, a salesperson is interested in new leads and opportunities assigned to them). Notification received by RSS feed which can send you email notification.

Event Management - gives organizations the ability to manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for events (especially event planning, event attendance and event review). There is a pretty nice  review of Dynamics CRM Event Management accelerator at this blog.

Extended Sales Forecasting - enriches the out-of-the-box sales forecasting capabilities. Sales users can review their individual sales pipeline and quickly classify opportunities as committed, excluded or upside. Sales managers can monitor and track sales targets, budgets and performance against these forecasts for specific time periods (e.g. months and quarters).

eService - provides customer self-service capabilities (via a web portal) as a configurable out-of-the-box offering.

Analytics R2 - includes Dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and a suite of new reports.

Enterprise Search R1 - The enterprise search accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals.

Business Productivity Newsfeed - lets users keep up to date on events happening across the organization.

Business Productivity Workflow Tools - Once this accelerator is installed workflow designers within Microsoft Dynamics CRM have more flexibility in terms of the processes they can manage through workflows.

Business Data Auditing - provides basic audit capabilities (for example can be set up to take a snapshot of a record whenever the relevant event occurs within the system such as Create, Update, Assign and Delete).

Sales Performance International (SPI) Sales Methodology - for customers who have invested in or are looking to invest in the SPI Solution Selling® sales methodology and would like to leverage this investment through Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

I read through many of the reviews and several of them are getting great reviews.   If anyone is using these Accelerators already please leave a comment and tell me about your experience. There are a few that I hope our company will download right away!

And when you are thinking of better ways to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM remember that it now integrates with Microsoft Dynamics GP financial software! (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Adapter For Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Available October 1, 2009)

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner