CRM Software That Works The Way You Do

How often have you had to change the way you work to fit in with the latest software needs? It?s a nuisance and disruptive, and frequently breeds resentment against a software solution requiring employee cooperation to achieve the desired result. Training is difficult and the implementation frequently results in failure.

This is as true with CRM software (Customer Relationship Management) as it is with any other. Fortunately, Microsoft have come up with their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 package that works the way you do. The way your employees work and the way your business works. If your business currently uses Microsoft Office and Outlook then Microsoft CRM software will slip seamlessly into your existing systems without any changes at all to your standard procedures.

Information can be transferred from the Microsoft CRM software to other Microsoft applications, and the mobile support is an extremely useful tool, allowing customer information to be obtainable to employees in the field through a PDA, palm computer or laptop. Employees have access to all the customer data they require, when they require it, and specific preferred views of data can be saved and reused with the elimination of all unnecessary information.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 can easily be customized to suit your current documentation style and flow, and will fit the needs of your business perfectly without disruption. It will work the way your business does, but do it efficiently and effortlessly.

This easy integration into existing business practices overcomes one of the major reasons for CRM software implementation failures: resistance to change. It is difficult to persuade employees that time-proven methods have to be modified to suit new systems. They will resent the change, and rather than strive to succeed, and will find excuse for failure.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM software is not subject to these problems since it not only fits in ideally with employees existing work methods, but also is also simple to plan and implement. Because it employs proven Microsoft platforms, training requirements are easy to understand and the software will be well received due to its ability to be moulded round your existing procedures.

Users will like the Microsoft Dynamic CRM software package since it will make their life easier, not harder. They will find that tasks that were once considered chores, such as sending out multiple emails or carrying out customer analysis, are now easily automated giving them more time to use their skills where they are most needed.

The major pitfalls in CRM software implementation can be overcome through use of Microsoft Dynamics communities technical chat, blogs and webcasts which is a major reason why any company using Microsoft Office and Outlook should opt for Microsoft Dynamics CRM if it want to implement an automated customer relationships system.

Many industries, from the smallest to the largest, focus strongly on their processes and pride themselves in excellent consistent products. Not all place the same emphasis on the processes they use to track their customers and their requirements. By focussing on the customer, a company can make more money. By adopting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 software, all of the various processes and procedures involved in customer relationships, whether lead management, quote generation or management of a complete sales force, can finally be brought under the umbrella of a single software solution.

Integration is the name of the game and Microsoft Dynamics CRM software solutions provide it.

Syed Ali, is the lead CRM Analyst for a Toronto based company. His company, offers Microsoft CRM software Solutions www.crmsoftwareprovider.com Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email :asyed@cqsolutions.com

Web based CRM guide 101

One of the primary factors in the success of any company is the liaison it shares with its customers. CRM or Customer Relationship Management designates all features of interaction a company shares with its customer. This includes everything from sales to service.

CRM is basically a business strategy designed to accrue gains, generate revenue and cater to customer needs and satisfaction. With the e-media picking up pace, the manner in which companies approach their CRM strategies has greatly changed. This has even altered the consumer's purchasing attitude. So these days CRM too has become a web based effort as most of the customer relationship is handled electronically.

The web based CRM service is more effective. Web-based CRM services mainly covers three areas of service- sales force automation, management of customer relationships and customer services and automated marketing.

A web-based CRM software is a web-based system used for contact management, marketing and sales support, project tracking and other tasks associated with CRM. This software enables teams and departments to share a central and fresh database. The software facilitates its users with an online contact manager and a project-tracking tool, either over the web or within the corporate intranet. With the aid of the CRM software you can view and manage contacts, customer's record, hot leads, projects and left-out work, from anywhere and with any web-browser. Moreover unlike the intervening and needed to be testified upgrades of an enterprise software, the upgrades to the web based software do not affect the organization's regular operations in any manner. Due to these features more and more companies are driven towards this web-based software.

Siebel Systems Inc., HydraNet and Push CRM are some eminent names in web-based software service. Lately SAP has also blessed the market with on-demand Customer Relationship Management solution. A web based CRM has many names out of which on-demand CRM is one.

These systems provide agents with the most up-to-date information on all customer service transactions. The software adds to the strategic value and business of the organization by automating sales, marketing and customer service. For instance the SAP product specializes in providing core sales-force automation features for managing customers, contacts and sales pipelines.

The software runs and keeps a complete track of your data after it is downloaded or purchased and then installed on your server or web-host. Usually the CRM software runs on all significant platforms such as Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Novell (6.5) and so forth. Since the software serves many purposes at the same time, it is quite expensive. However an incredible competition in the market has enabled the software seekers to exercise their choice to a certain extent.

In choosing a web-based CRM software it is important that the user should firstly analyze his or her budget or the budget of the organization. Secondly also check your organization's partner ecosystems. A user-friendly hosted CRM system, an on premise version or the combo of both should follow this and finally try to go for software that can fit any type of user, any size company and in any industry.

Mansi gupta recommends that you visit Web based CRM for more information

Microsoft CRM Customization - processing in/out-going email messages

We would like to give you several situations, when you may need custom development and programming to improve Microsoft CRM functionality. This overview is for programmer, software developer, IT specialist, database administrator.

Microsoft CRM, the CRM application from Microsoft Business Solutions utilizes almost all the recent Microsoft technologies: .Net (it is actually written in C#.Net with HTML and Javascript at the web client side plus has Microsoft CRM SDK with C# and partially VB.Net samples), Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange 2003/2000 and others. Now to give you brief review from the workflow and messages - you can send email directly from Account, Contact or Lead and it will be processed by Microsoft CRM-Exchange connector. This email will have GUID in the message header. When addressee answers the email - it will be processed by the connector - it will recognize the GUID and will find the original activity and will attach this email as closed activity to the original object: contact, account or lead. This is very nice feature, but in the real world you may have these situations:

1. CRM user will not use CRM interface and will send email from his/her Outlook. Addressee will receive and respond and these emails will not be handled by Microsoft CRM-Exchange connector. They will not have GUID and connector has no idea on what to do with them.

2. Imagine, that you have Account Best Corporation, with contact person John john@bestcorporation.com. Now new person in Best Corporation, Susan sends you message from susan@bestcorporation.com - and her email will not be connected to your Best Corporation account, because this email doesn't have GUID and it also doesn't have matching email in the contact person. So - it is probably nice to catch emails by domain name as well, say - all the emails, coming from www.bestcorporation.com should be attached to Best Corporation account.

3. Now - your sales rep initiated the first email to the client from Microsoft CRM and got response, transferred back into CRM account. Then he occasionally replied on the reply from outlook - this reply, having GUID will be replied back and not transferred into MS CRM, because MS Exchange connector "thinks" that this message was already replied by the first reply.

4. To decrease the possibility that users will use outlook to send new messages and answer the messages from there - you would probably like the idea to delete them from MS Exchange database when they are transferred to the CRM. In this case they will not be seen in MS Outlook (We are not talking about Microsoft CRM Outlook client, where you actually see CRM data and objects)

If you are programmer or software developer - you can actually program these advancements and we'll give you the direction.

This technique is COM+ applications, registered as Microsoft Exchange sinks or handlers. You can use VisualStudio.Net, but you will not have debugging available, because these applications will work as event handlers. Microsoft Exchange allows you to alter it's logic in the events, exposed for custom handling. Incoming emails should be handled, when ONSYNCSAVE Microsoft Exchange Database event is fired before the commitment. You use Microsoft CRM SDK to create the email activity. You should use direct SQL update to flag the activity as closed (however not recommended by Microsoft - but Microsoft CRM SDK doesn't have the method to close the activity - so you really don't have an option from SDK side). Outgoing emails should be handled with so-called transport events firing, which is more complex and less documented part of Microsoft Exchange SDK.

Happy customizing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization partner, based in Chicago, California, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, New York, Georgia and Florida, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Great Plains Dexterity, SQL, C# and VB.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

akarasev@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft CRM USA Nationwide Remote Support

 

Remember old good days when your company probably had Great Plains Dynamics? If you are in San Francisco Bay Area you had local Great Plains Software partner consulting company, who served you basically coming onsite and charging you four hours minimum, even if the problem deserved 5-min fix? This was at the end of 20th century and remote support technologies were not very advanced Citrix was making good progress and taking market over from Symantec PCAnywhere. Today, when Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix are remote support standards and IT department uses them to host application server for nation-wide and world-wide users, you should probably be thinking of getting remote support for your ERP and CRM systems. In this small article well take a look at Microsoft CRM remote support, customization, reporting, implementation and integration.

• Why Microsoft CRM Remote Support? Microsoft CRM market niche is still narrow and MS CRM consulting companies do not have enough clientele in their respected locals markets: Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York even in these hypermarkets. In order to survive Microsoft CRM VAR went to nationwide and even international markets to get clients base.

• Technology-driven consulting companies. Microsoft CRM has web and MS Outlook clients and so by its nature it is web application. When you are considering hosting your web site you typically do not care where hosting company is located you consider price and quality. Microsoft CRM could be hosted with .Net hosting companies and implementation could be done remotely with web-session-based training.

• Customization. Today, even if Microsoft Business Solutions has open technology Microsoft CRM SDK the complexity of the specific tasks (messaging through Lotus Notes Domino, generic MAPI, advanced MS CRM Exchange connector) requires precision programming, which should be outsourced to nationwide development centers. As our experience indicates clients are demanding the expertise, not just cheap generic developers. Whoever comes for the cheap price they usually get poor results.

• Large Business ERP. Microsoft CRM proved its market strength and ability to automate large publicly traded corporation. It sits in Microsoft SQL Server and uses all the spectrum of Microsoft technologies: .Net, Active Directories, MS Exchange, Full-Text Search, Crystal Reports Enterprise. We are confident in Microsoft CRM ability to automate Aerospace & Defense, Pharmaceutical, Supply Chain Management, Medical & Hospitals, Distribution & Logistics, Oil & Gas, Wholesale & Retail, Education, Non-for-profit

• Integration. Microsoft CRM has standard integration tool with Microsoft Great Plains, Navision and Axapta integrations are on the way. However you can integrate Microsoft CRM with heterogeneous databases, such as Oracle, DB2, Lotus Notes Domino, Sybase, Pervasive SQL or Ctree/Faircomm.

• Web-Sessions and Skype training. Web Seminars are normal these days and you should be OK with the idea of remote web training. This will allow you to get the best expertise with moderate price.

You can always have us help you, give us a call: 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is consultant and CTO in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) Microsoft Business Solutions partner, serving clients in Illinois, New York, California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Minnesota, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, Russia. He is Microsoft Great Plains certified master, Great Plains Dexterity, Microsoft CRM SDK C#.Net, Crystal Repots developer.

help@albaspectrum.com