Dynamics 365 - it's not just for the sales team - CRM Software Blog

When a company implements a CRM system such as Dynamics CRM, the first users are usually the sales team. This is logical as historically, CRM systems have focused on helping salespeople to track their leads and opportunities, and give sales managers better insight into the performance of the sales team. But with more modern CRM systems there is no reason not to extend CRM out to more members of the organization. Dynamics 365 offers both built-in functions as well as extensive customization tools to achieve these goals. Let's spend some time looking at ways that your team can use CRM.

Marketing

Your company's marketing department has the responsibility of identifying and reaching out to your prospective clients. Dynamics 365 includes native marketing functionality for managing marketing campaigns, including trade shows and marketing lists. Marketing campaigns are useful for tracking the activities and costs associated with trade shows, online marketing campaigns, and other marketing efforts as

If the built-in marketing functions of Dynamics CRM don't meet your needs, consider ClickDimensions. ClickDimensions is a complete marketing automation system built inside of Microsoft Dynamics 365. Among its many features are email marketing, web forms and SMS integration, Surveys, and Campaign automation. Adding ClickDimensions to Dynamics 365 supercharges the marketing functions of Dynamics 365 and makes gathering information about prospects and leads painless.

Customer Service

Customer Service teams are usually the third group to start using Dynamics 365. With built-in entities to create cases as well as an integrated knowledgebase, Customer support becomes another quick win for Dynamics 365. Cases can be created in numerous ways - from Social media posts, emails or telephone calls. Once a case is created the cases can be added to queues and worked on by service teams. Business Process Flows can be created to manage the steps required to successfully complete the cases to client's satisfaction. Finally, once the case has been completed use the free Voice of the Customer add-on to survey your customers on their satisfaction.

IT

IT professionals manage to keep all of the multiple technology systems running without a hitch so that their fellow employees can focus on getting their work done. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can aid in achieving this goal in several ways - Cases can be used to manage internal support tickets, so that when the Wifi is not working in the conference room or Office 365 needs to be rolled out to a new team, the progress towards closing these cases can be managed from a single system. Custom entities can be created to track IT assets. Support contracts with vendors can be tracked to ensure that they are renewed on time. Custom Dashboards can be built so that IT can show off its ability to achieve its goals.

Project Managers

The teams that manage new product introductions, construction, and other projects all need a tool to manage the many tasks and deadlines. In 2016 Microsoft added Project Service as a complete solution within Dynamics CRM. Project Services add much of the familiar interface and functions of Microsoft Project including Gantt charts to lay out the timeline and tasks to completing a project. However, Dynamics CRM Project Services adds integration of projects with opportunities so that your project can be part of a sale. Using Project Service integrated with Dynamics CRM gives you a single source to manage and view the status of your projects.

Human Resources

The human resource department is responsible for hiring the best people for available jobs. They also need to interact with corporate headhunters to source the best candidate for contract positions. Along with these responsibilities come myriads of data collection responsibilities including government documentation, education and certification verification, and other compliance needs. Dynamics 365 can be used to collect this information. Employees and contractors can be added to CRM as contacts with an Employee Relationship Type. Custom entities can be created to track the hiring process along with custom Business Process Flows to track the most important information needed at each stage. Degrees, Certifications, and continuing education can be tracked and documented, and dashboards can be built to remind your HR team about important upcoming re-certification deadlines.

Purchasing

While salespeople love CRM systems because they track the most important interactions with customers, most companies never think about the opposite side of their business, the purchasing, and logistics department. A solid relationship with your vendors can help provide stable pricing and quality service; all factors that lead to business success. Dynamics 365 can be used to track these relationships using the Contact and Account entities. Outlook can be used to track email, appointments, and tasks, so you have a complete communications history with your vendors. The built-in product catalog can be customized to track the various vendors from whom you purchase the products. And custom entities can be created to track projects such as vendor sourcing and new product development.

Administration and management

Once you have all of your departments using CRM, your organization will finally have developed an integrated database with all of your internal and external interactions. Using this data store with analysis tools such as Power BI management finally has visibility to what is going on with all of the different departments within their organization. With this insight, better decisions can be made which result in greater customer satisfaction, better employee morale, and in the end, higher profits.

Wrapping it up

These are just a few of the ways that you can engage your entire organization in using a CRM such as Microsoft Dynamics 365. When everyone uses Dynamics 365 to track their relationships, projects, and activities, you will have a central information store which will allow your company to be agiler to meet challenges and opportunities that present themselves.

To find out more about how Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be integrated into your business model, contact us, enCloud9 a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Silver Partner!