TIDBITS on Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Working on Certification?

Are you working on getting certified in Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Richard Knudson has a great blog packed with resources in this area. Check out today's post on the reviewed and updated certification questions.

New Dynamics CRM Books

I have updated the books list on the left hand side of this column to include some of the new Dynamics CRM v4.0 books that are available.

Marc Wokenik and Damian Sinay stepped up and wrote the Dynamics CRM UNLEASHED book published by Sam's Publishing

and

Sonoma Partners (Mike Synder and Jim Steger) have updated their series with the release of the new version of Dynamics CRM 

Business Process

Microsoft Dynamics CRM easily competes with some of the larger players in the CRM space including the sales processes in SAP and SIEBEL, but did you know that it also replaces many an instance of ACT!, Maxmizier, Frontrange Goldmine, Salesforce.com, Onyx and more?

Why?

The number one reason is the inability for the above applications to really work tightly, on a long term and ongoing basis, with Microsoft Outlook. Even the most technologically adverse sales person or sales director that I know tends to "Do E-mail" and when Dynamics CRM is setup well the effort to create a new lead or add a note to an account is as hard as creating a new e-mail message.

For those who have not seen the product. Microsoft Dynamics CRM creates folders in outlook for each of the key items in the CRM system. For instance a folder for Accounts, a folder for Contacts and a folder for Leads. When a user clicks on that outlook folder (listed on the left of their screen with their Inbox folder and sent mail folder) they immediately see a list of accounts, contacts or leads.

If they click on a specific account up pops all the details.

For the smaller accounts who might not want to think about "Servers" you might want to take a look at the offerings surrounding CRMLIVE. The Rand Group can easily help you get started with CRMLIVE and if you are ready today we can submit you for the Early Program. CRMLIVE is Dynamics CRM v4.0 hosted by Microsoft in a competitive offering so small businesses do not have to worry about remote access, servers, computers and platform.

Relationship Management

I just read an Interesting article on the business of Relationship Management.  It is called Relationship Marketing: Business Blogs are the Key

Some thought points:

If you enter all this relationship data into Dynamics CRM, Can you "see" it? The Rand Group has a new offering through a great new partnership that offers a graphical look into your relationship network.

It use to be that sales and marekting people would "located their target market segments, presented their offer, and made the sales." A single step process, but as Wayne Hulbert points out "Relationship marketing looks at customers and clients over a longer term. It takes into account the lifetime value of a customer."

and if you are building lifetime business relationships for the good of all involved then having a tool (ok for some you can call it a crutch) to help remember key details can help you build more relationships and help more of those that you already know. Why? because as you gain more information you can quickly remember who that information might be valuable to and you can reach out and share it.

If you had a glimpse into my office you migth get an idea as to what I am thinking of. On my whiteboards are lists of every 2008 product offered in the application stack from Microsoft and there are some very innovative offerings that solve real problems. Now just think what I could do if I knew that one of my trusted business associates was paying hundreds of dollars a month on conference calling services? I could reach out and tickle his ear on the Microsoft Roundtable offering. A conferencing solution breakthrough.

Dynamics CRM v3.0 - Assigning and Reassigning

One of the interesting items about service is how each case is impacted by any given Account that owns it.

If you use CRM out of the box, the default relationship for ACCOUNT to CASE is cascade all. What this means is that if you ASSIGN an Account to a different owner, it will update all the associated cases with the new owner. Now this is probably not desired and as such you might want to make some changes.

The below screen is reached through

• SETTINGS,
• CUSTOMIZATION,
• CUSTOM ENTITIES,
• ACCOUNTS,
• RELATIONSHIPS,
• ACCOUNT to CASE

Don't forget to publish ;)

MS CRM Training Resources

When I started to work with MS Dynamics CRM 3.0 one of the resources I tapped into was the "What's New in CRM 3.0" manual. This 154 page manual is packed with great information and detailed explanations on many of the core 3.0 features.

In fact Larry Lentz and I ran a study group that spent every Saturday for well over six months focusing on each chapter. We followed the manual page by page and did all of the exercises contained within it together as a group.

Despite this early work, and my further intense devotion and reading of the many other resources available (like all the certification manuals) and my certification, I am still learning things about MS Dynamics CRM.

A KEY distinguishing feature of the MS Dynamics CRM software. 

The depth that it offers and the "grow with me" model that it presents for businesses who truly want to automate their processes and move toward hard core technology best practices.

Do you have a Training Budget? Do you need one?

How do I calculate a training budget for staff?

It is a bit tough to judge a budget, when the variable is human. As in what
are the skill sets of your internal staff, how well do they use the tools
provide to them to get their jobs done, how much is invested in professional
development and do they get trained on all technology (or the software they use) as part of some of their other activities. For instance I often attend numerous Technology related sessions at some of the shows I attend, but staff I Would have to ask them to do this and then check in and ask for feedback when they came back from a show..

You also have staff that "get it" and staff that need more one on one
attention. Start with the problem (staff A, B, C need to get to level 1, 2,
3 etc) and then decide what it will take to meet this goal.

Side Thought

This also reminds me of this thought that often crosses my mind.. If you
pay a staff member in the 40,000 to 100,000/year dollar range to be effective
and productive, and add in benefits and company resource investment in those staff (administrative services etc.) how much are you investing in keeping those staff efficient and effective? Both in hardware, software and human training. It always amazes me to watch a 90,000 dollar employee watch the little hour glass go round on a Windows 2000, 3 year old machine..when in those extra couple of hours they could produce thousands of dollars of extra work, be a happier member of the team, be satisfied that they are well taken care of and not leave etc. etc.

CRM Synchronization, the offline client

Microsoft CRM Synchronization is fairly sophisticated and will offer you different functionality when you are offline versus when you are directly writing to the central database.

Key things for offline/online users to remember:

• Only changes synchronize back to the database. So when you go back online it is relatively fast.
• The first time you go offline you want to do it while you are in the office. A number of things are setup this first time and having high speed access is helpful.
• You want to setup your filters so you are not downloading ALL the company data. The local MSDE database is limited in size and should be kept to 2 GBs.
• Workflow rules do not run while offline (they are configured and reside on the server), BUT they will run when you go back online.
• Synchronize often. Synchronization does update the data in the centralized server.

Cloning Views

You have discovered Views! and the power of creating your own through settings. You jump into settings and you start configuring a bunch of new views, but you quickly realize that what you really want to be able to do is to copy an existing view, slightly modify it and then save it.

Guess what?

You are in the wrong place. In settings you can not clone or copy existing views! HOWEVER in Advanced Find you can not only create as many new views as you want, but you can also use an existing view to create a new view.  Believe me this saves a TON of time when you want to create the same view filtered on each person in your organization.

Additionally with all view configuration you can easily share views with just one or two people. For instances a sales manager and a specific sales person might share that sales persons pipeline report view. This does not have to be available to anyone else in the company. It can be a private view shared between two people.

If you have not discovered "Creating your Own Views" then you might be really frustrated! Ouch!  Realize that Views really are a very core reporting system for MS Dynamics CRM.  Oh and if you are daring or ready to think, I highly recommend you brush up on how to work with Excel Pivot Tables. They compliment the Views and give analytical options to an otherwise visual set of data.

Study: Lead to Account

Question: When converting a Lead to a Contact or Account, do Activities & History items convert over to the new entities as well?

Answer: Actually no and this is my understanding of why. Leads are generally "unvalidated" contacts who are not considered "prospects". The notes associated with a lead would be minor and would not be considered important to the end result. The same is true for activities. You might have a string of activities associated with a lead (like the 10 times you called them to validate they are real), but once you convert them to an Account (type Prospect) and a contact then a small summary might be added. Such as "Contact this person between 9-10am for best results".

I am not sure that I totally agree with this and can see people's want to convert all info on a lead into the Account/contact structure.