How CRM Software Helps in Account Management

The increase in competition in all business fields positioned customers at the top most point. Customer Relationship Management or CRM practices have thus became mandatory for all business enterprises today to satisfy their customers. Companies use standard and customized CRM software tools to enhance their customer relationship management activities. All these software programs are capable for automating each and every business processes from customer tracking to business undertakings, including account management practices.

Account management as the name implies is the storing, sharing and reviewing of all business accounts. Account management practices are so important to the business enterprises that they act as the chief resource for all customer and company related information. The introduction of CRM software solutions and sales force automation (SFA) practices made account management including data collection and data integration easy. These software programs eliminated traditional account management activities that need lot of paper works and manual labor.

The account management CRM software programs are capable of maintaining complete history of various accounts. They automatically track all small and large interaction of accounts such as customer contacts, money transformations, partnership programs, employee payment etc. Account management activities through CRM software solutions help the companies to store account and customer information in a centralized database connected to different data processing devices. These account management application software programs are capable of providing timely reviews and analytics about the financial health of an organization.

CRM account management software programs track each customer interacting with the company. These software programs store all customer information like customer name, customer visits, contact information, number of visits, visiting intervals, how much money spend on products/services etc in appropriate CRM databases. Timely these data are retrieved and integrated to find good customers. This CRM account management software feature helps organizations to design and develop suitable marketing and service plans for each customer. The built-in communication devices of the account management software help in marketing of products/services through direct marketing, e-mail and phone.

The standard features of modern account management systems include single database having links to all data resources of the organization, multiple modularity for receiving all data, capability to cope with any data format like work, excel sheet, images, graphs etc, adaptability to any operating system, web-linked communication devices for fast data tracking and recovery, the capacity to work both online and offline, and the capacity to carry out multiple functions like contact management, product management, lead routing , custom reporting , partner tracking and sales forecasting.

Customer relationship management software assisted account management guides employees to effectively provide appropriate services to their customers. Account management software enables the sales professionals to schedule and track activities related to accounts, tracing the delivery and to launch innovative business opportunities. The sales force automation and effective communication also help employees, especially sales representatives, to easily coordinate different activities. The company management can also monitor and regulate their employees more effectively. CRM software solutions also ensure flexibility of business in changing climates.

The other advantages of account management through CRM software include -time and working capital saving, elimination of manual data entry and paper works, timely warnings about inadequate data and deadlines, proper organization of data, easy data tracking and sharing, elimination of duplicate data entry and false data entry, helps in designing customer service plans, better trouble shooting and above all less mental pressure on company management and workers.

This article has been provided by eSalesTrack.com , a US based provider of on-demand CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and other application software such as Sales Force Automation. To learn more about CRM visit CRM Articles.

CRM vs SFA - What's the Difference?

I've recently had a lot of questions about the difference between CRM and SFA and which one is right for your company. "CRM" is so broadly used these days it's really hard to completely wrap your head around it.

Let's start with a couple of basic definitions:

CRM - Customer Relationship Management is about finding, getting, and retaining customer relationships.

SFA - Sales Force Automation is about managing and supporting sales reps. Generally consists of contact management, opportunity management, and pipeline management.

CRM is more centered around the customer and consists of modules to handle tracking customer support issues, order tracking and datawarehousing. Customer focus can be used to describe most parts of a CRM system. Some examples of data collected by CRM systems include:

1) Campaign tracking

2) Purchase history

3) Shipping history

4) Account data

5) Sales data

SFA is more centered around making sales, sales people, improving close rates and managing the day-to-day of getting sales done. SFA is included in CRM in a lot of cases and since SFA usually handles much of the same data collection that a CRM system would, it makes sense to purchase a CRM system rather than a standalone SFA solution.

Companies like Siebel or Salesforce.com offer excellent hosted CRM solutions with feature-rich functionality well within your budget (starting around $65/user/month).

For more information about CRM, visit: http://crm.blogs.com/crm/what_is_crm/

David Cowgill is the founder of the CRM Blog web site. http://crm.blogs.com

Microsoft Dynamics GP/NAV/CRM implementation in South East Asia ? highlights

In this small article we will give you highlights on Microsoft Dynamics family of products implementation, customization, user training in South East Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines as well as in China and Taiwan.

Microsoft renamed its ERPs: Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, Solomon and MS CRM and now new names start with Microsoft Dynamics: Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  In this small article we will give you highlights on Microsoft Dynamics family of products implementation, customization, user training in South East Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines as well as in China and Taiwan.

• English Language.  Considering such country as Philippines, where English is commonly used in business documentation, Microsoft Dynamics GP, or former Microsoft Great Plains/eEnterprise is a good choice.  At the same time Microsoft Dynamics NAV or former Microsoft Navision is also excellent option.  The situation is similar to what we have on the US ERP market, when Navision vs. Great Plains selection is based on the functionality comparison between GP and NAV.
• Chinese Language.  Microsoft Dynamics GP doesn?t support Unicode characters in its native interface ? Microsoft Dexterity (former Great Plains Software Dexterity).  If you are looking at the Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Portal ? you are free to customize it and have it support Chinese.  There is special utility, which allows you to intercept Chinese characters and enter them in Great Plains fat client/Dexterity forms.  The functionality is very popular among Chinese food distributors in the USA ? Chicago and Houston areas
• Taxes.  Both Great Plains and Navision support both tax systems: Sale Tax based and VAT (Value Added Tax)
• Manufacturing.  This is where you should compare two systems: Great Plains and Navision manufacturing module/granule.  Great Plains Manufacturing is good choice for Discrete Manufacturing type, if you have process manufacturing ? you should verify functionality and third party add-ons features.
• Localization.  If the conditions of your local country require localization (tax and language specifics ? very good example would be India), you should check with Microsoft Business Solutions in your country on the positioning of Microsoft ERPs.  In general, when localization requires non-English/Spanish/French Canadian language ? Navision is the recommended and usually localized.  Axapta also is very adaptable and localizable and you will see Axapta as the option in the majority of cases.
• Non-Microsoft ERPs.  In some cases and we know real life stories/examples international company, having Microsoft Great Plains implemented in the headquarters in the USA, decided to implement SAP Business One for its overseas manufacturing facility.
• Software Licenses Sale only.  In South East Asia we see very strong IT departments and IT consulting market.  When company is required to implement Microsoft Dynamics ? it can do it in-house and all you need is software licenses sale.
• Local ERP Solutions.  On the local markets, especially where government regulation takes place you can find local or regional ERP vendors.  There are pluses and minuses of such systems: plus would be government reporting side.  Minuses are from the control side ? international company should have ERP reasonably controllable and the option to rely on local specialists only is risky.

You can always have us help you with the implementation & customization.  Call us in US: 1-866-528-0577, internationally: 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) ? Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials, SAP Business One  and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing.
We serve international clients Worldwide.

Microsoft CRM Programming Techniques overview for developer

 Microsoft CRM is the CRM answer from Microsoft and it will have all the Microsoft Business Solutions muscles behind.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we customize Microsoft CRM read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Microsoft CRM SDK this is software development kit with C# and partly VB.net examples it is supported by Microsoft Business Solutions technical support. It is all web services based calls, if you are C# .NET developer you are excellently positioned to do this type of customizations. This is the preferred customization scenarios and this should be easily upgradeable customization.

2. Legacy SQL Data integration. This is also easy and safe. If you have SQL database, sitting on the same or linked SQL Server you can create ASPX .Net application and simply integrate it into CRM. You can place it on the navigation bar or menu in isv.config please refer to MS CRM SDK

3. Legacy ASP integration this is somewhat more sophisticated. You have to deploy HTTP handler to be a middle party between CRM which is .Net based and ASP which is legacy IIS. The trick is you have to have INI file with security settings to penetrate into MS CRM with proper credentials, calling web service.

4. Microsoft Exchange Programming. Microsoft CRM has Exchange connector which moves CRM incoming email to MS if it has GUID in its subject. You can alter this logic (for instance - move email to CRM if it doesnt have GUID but it is from the sender who is contact or account in MS CRM). Refer to MS Exchange SDK onsyncsave event handling. Then simply apply some MS CRM SDK programming

5. Direct SQL touch in #4 above I described you the scenario with MS Exchange handlers this would be ideal world if MS CRM SDK does the job. But in real world this is not always true you have to do direct flags correction in CRM database (like making Activity closed, moving email attachments/octet streams, etc). This is not supported by MBS technical support but you can rescue to this technique if you have to make job done.

6. MS CRM Customization tool you can feel free to use this this is rather end-user tool and we dont describe it here read the manual. Weve described above the options to use when this tool doesnt do the job

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 company, based in Chicago, California, Colorado, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.akarasev@albaspectrum.com