Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Welcome to my Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog. If you do not already know, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Complete Customer Relationship Management Platform and as well as providing a customisable platform for Sales, Marketing and Customer Service also allows developers to extend its database and functionality for very specific business demands. The beauty of Dynamics CRM is in its ability to provide Custom Entity Relationships and Workflows within the scope of departmental structures and the organisations security model. Microsoft have made a big investment to ensure Dynamics CRM is the most user friendly and Business Conscience solution on the Market.  Dynamics CRM  provides integration into Microsoft Outlook and you can track all your customer emails and correspondence as Activities in CRM.

The interface have evolved to consider the repetitive tasks and actions of the users in relation to Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. Filtered Lists allow users to use query based
conditions for their lists.

An important feature to establish your Business Processes and ensure users complete all customer related tasks and actions according to your Business standards. A great way tool to Automate your business Tasks and prevent system misuse and ensure a streamline of Service.

As well as the Standard Vanilla CRM Entities to manage your businesses Sales, Marketing and Customer Service needs Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides an XRM Platform to allow your business to Manage Very Specific Business Actions whether it be Events Management, Projects etc.

A core feature of CRM is to provide intelligent reporting on business data to assist managers in decision making and help measure the performance of the staff. As well as being able to display SQL reports,Dynamics CRM provides ready to use out of the box Dashboards, Dynamics CRM allows Users and Developers to create Custom Report Dashboards that can be shared and automatically emailed to colleagues at regular intervals.

The Dynamics CRM Security model is an excellent tool to control access to your CRM features and business data among users, Departments and Business Units within the Organisation.

Integrating your CRM with 3rd Party systems such as Sage, Nav is a common requirement and allows you to prove your front office user with the ability of viewing back office transational data.

Microsoft has released the following Dynamics CRM Versions;

-Small Business Edition

-Professional Edition

-Enterprise Edition

An On Premise Installation of CRM is when a Company has a dedicated Application Server to host the CRM application. Depending on the Complexity and Scale of the Solution this requires a dedicated Windows Application and Database Server on the Company’s Network Domain. Another term associated with a ‘Hosted solution ‘is ‘Cloud Computing’ which involves the CRM Application being hosted remotely from a Data Centre, so the only way to access is through an internet connection. The benefits of a Hosted CRM Solution is less overheads in terms of initial costs for setting up CRM. There are no requirement to buy dedicated physical servers, or additional Operating system and Database software Licenses. A hosted Solution can be a rolling contract where pay as you use on a monthly or annual basis. This is convenient and has less risk for many small and mid-sized businesses and is a way of guaranteeing return on Investment. The disadvantages are there are some restrictions to some CRM Features and capabilities.