There’s a popular saying that has been made famous by many people including the cynical character, Dr. Kelso, on the TV show Scrubs: “nothing worth having comes easy”. However, I beg to differ.
About a month ago I started working as a Marketing Assistant for . On my third day here I was given the task to enter data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I had dabbled in the CRM world briefly when working in an Alumni Office while attending school. Nonetheless, my brief experience with their CRM software was nothing in depth.
Layout
So, here I am; a fresh, bright-eyed employee about to delve into for the first time. After logging in, the first thing I noticed was the standard user-friendly, functionality layout most blogs and social media sites have. If you have ever used Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn- whatever your social media site of choice may be, you will find the layout is surprisingly quite similar. It has a dashboard front and center with updated information, a top toolbar (brownie points for being in the “traditional” Microsoft form) and a side menu with additional categories and features. Finally, a familiar face!
Navigation
Seeing as the layout was extremely convenient, I could only expect navigating through Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be the same way. I scrolled down the menu and clicked “Contacts”, “Leads” and “Accounts” and saw how everything was organized and easy to find.
To view a more specific group of a category found in the side menu, hover over a category and on the left a little arrow pops out. Simply click that and a list of more specific options appears. In the example below, the user is trying to view a specific type of leads. To do this, the user hovers over “Activities” (circled in blue), clicks the arrow (circled in purple) and then selects the option they are looking for.
After fiddling around with the menu, I knew my task of entering new contacts and leads into CRM was only a few clicks away from being complete.
Data Entry
When filling out the new “Lead” sheet with company XYZ’s information, I realized every John and Jane Doe added to XYZ’s profile had their basic company information (i.e. address, phone number, industry) automatically filled in by CRM. It saved me about two minutes per person, which may not seem like a lot now, but if you’re adding 60+ people that’s at least an hour saved.
All in all, Microsoft Dynamics CRM saved me a lot of time, was quick to learn and simple to use. This “nothing” sure is something.
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By Altico Advisors,
