Based on their research, Gartner analysts revealed their Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011 at their Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in October. In order to qualify as a strategic technology, the trend or item must have the potential to significantly impact organizations over the next three years and will be major factors in long-term planning, programs, and initiatives.
Of the Top 10 Strategic Technologies, 6 are attainable through Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:
Cloud Computing – The on-demand deployment of CRM 2011, embodies everything an organization could want in a cloud solution. Dynamics CRM Online combines the full feature set of the on-premise deployment with the flexibility, ease of implementation, and cost effectiveness of a hosted solution. When CRM 2011 (formerly known as CRM 5) launches in January, it will be available for the amazingly low rate of $34 per user per month for the first year of service.
Mobile Applications and Media Tablets – Through Microsoft Mobile Express, users can have all the functionality of CRM virtually anytime, anywhere, enabling your teams to stay connected to the tools and information they need and support their customers wherever they are through a Web browser on a mobile device. Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is installed on the server, not on the mobile device, so you can support all of the smartphones and mobile devices in your organization with a single solution, streamlining updates and maintenance.
Social Communications and Collaboration – CRM 2011 features a much anticipated contextual integration with SharePoint 2010, which enables better collaboration across your organization and promotes social interaction through the use of wikis and blogs. The Outlook Social Connector in CRM 2011 allows you to instantly see the activities, photos, status updates, and connections of an individual by simply clicking on an Outlook item, such as that individual’s email address. In addition, by using social media widgets and CRM Web Resources, you can create a customized social activity dashboard within CRM 2011 that allows you to track relevant conversations without ever leaving the product.
Next Generation Analytics – The combined power of CRM 2011’s reporting and dashboarding capabilities and SharePoint 2010’s collaboration tools enable you to not only provide personalized, real-time business data to decision makers, but can also assist you in predictive analysis anytime, anywhere.
Social Analytics – As with all customer, prospect, and vendor interactions, social interactions can be tracked and analyzed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. CRM 2011 will build off of the foundation for social analytics it laid in version 4.0 with the Social Networking Accelerator which integrates directly with Twitter. Further social networking integrations are forthcoming.
Context-Aware Computing – CRM 2011 takes a step into a world of context-aware computing with contextual menus based on the role-tailored user experience of the solution, as well as logical navigation paths to enhance the user experience. Additionally, the Help menu in CRM 2011 is contextually aware, bringing up information relevant to the screen it was pressed on, so the user does not need to search on the item they are looking for assistance with.
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