It is time to shine up those sharing thoughts and come on over to the TechNet CRM WIKI and share what you know!
Information Shared, Information Gained
Paul Greenberg recently wrote up the details of the new CRMIdol contest and I must admit it is an interesting idea. He is on a mission to cut through the noise dominated by the handful of big players and give the up and coming startups, small businesses and entreprenuers, in the CRM space, the same attention.
BUT
the core problem does not go away which is getting users, administrators, developers, IT consultants, business owners and more to learn about the power of the technology that is available to them. Not only for them to learn about it, but for them to embrace it and then be agile enough to change and continue to learn with it.
As the world get's noisier and change faster, it becomes harder and harder to push oneself out of one's comfort zone and yet, there is so much out there to absorb, embrace and grow with that breaks boundries and improves the brains ability to solve world and personal issues.
As I watch a variety of companies use Excel for everything it was never meant to be for, I can't help cringing. I have the same reaction to Microsoft Access. I have been limited to Excel, as my only tool to keep track of my connections and it is just down right painful. I have also seen complex, multi-user systems dependent on Access and it just isn't right. (hold the Access fan mail please, heard it been there and don't want to be convinced otherwise)
We have a ton of organic growth stepping in to meet need, but what about a quality control around database structure or a solid, built for multi-user platform? Do these factors matter? Perhaps not in the short run, bling matters in the short run, but with a product that is the heart beat of a company (be it Customer Relationship Management software, Office Suites or even Practice Management) the most ideal is a product that meets the needs of today, the needs of tomorrow with long term vendor support and has the depth to support long term data accumulation.
People often ask me why I don't use WordPress. It is free for instance and it has a number of bells and whistles to support blogging, but free does not always mean long term. SixApart is hard to beat when it comes to the last six years of support, growth, agility and easy of use.
A few of the key questions I try to ask when thinking about the technology I depend on:
Needless to say I have mixed ideas on the right balance between OpenSource, Vendor Source, and overall quality. Particularly given that on any given data quality can change from one extreme to another in the world of technology.
Reuben kicks off with a great summary on when to use CRM Attachments vs SharePoint Document libraries
Mix in workflow and I am really looking forward to this presentation
Very interesting statistics kicks off the keynote this bright and sunny last day of Convergence #conv11
Mixed with the video from volunteer day.
Next Year Houston, Texas, March 18-21st - one of my old stomping grounds and a convention center worth spending some quality time in!
And now to Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite authors.
Trained professionals, the cream of the cream making complex decisions under high pressure based on the knowledge they retain. They consistently make mistakes
It is not totally acceptable to leave these souls by themselves and yet the process can also not be totally automated.
Points: Technology can help make the or an individuals decision making process transparent and technology can enhance this process
Incredible presentation which pulled me in so deeply I stopped writing
Ok I admit it, I did give the Speakers of the general sessions a hard time yesterday! I have high expectations when it comes to spending time at a conference because there are so many opportunities that even one hour of lost value hurts my soul.
Here is the thing: it is not all about me and with years and years of both Convergence and Microsoft Dynamics CRM experience it takes a bit more to teach me something new and to impress me.
And yet of the 20 hours a day that I spend awake and aware this week I am continually impressed and I am continually learning. So how can I really justify unhappiness over a little bit of prospect bling?
So Kirill, Bill and Steve I apologize for putting a bit of cold water on your fire. Connect, Discover and Exceed are much better mantras than Easy!
For success with Dynamics and Dynamics CRM is not always easy, lots of people do it the hard way, but it is worth it and it does offer discovery, excellence, growth and profit!
Complex Business Process Management in Dynamics CRM 2011
300 level - music to my ears after a day of a bit to much pitch ( yes, I can be over sensitive to this)
Processes (workflows), Dialogs, Plugins
The ability to honor business rules with technology designed to honor and optionally automate business rules.
Tie this to "take action" and you can walk right into branches of logic
Code? You don't necessarily need to write code (re-defining the term developer in CRM 2011) to get eXtended functionality
Custom XAML Workflows with visual studio workflow designer
Workflows or Dialogs? A nice little decision checklist. Including decisions like asynchronous or synchronous, started by user or automated - understood standardized process or quick result?
Special Handling: such as a gold customer status that alerts user on access to step it up
Dialogs: Queries, Assigns, child dialogs, tracking, using a wizard to populate data as opposed to depending on a User's memory to fill in fields
This session keeps getting side tracked by SQL read needs and performance #conv11 Talking about Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
Microsoft Dynamics CRM going to a six month upgrade schedule
Looks like developers have options with MS CRM 2011 as code can be used to extend - a little peek at CRM and the cloud and then there is Azure ;)
50% of this room are new attendees to Convergence #conv11
Proves how valuable this show has become to users committed to growing and maximizing the value from their MS CRM investment
Wow - I didn't realize that the number of Dynamics CRM users is now up to 1.7 million users. Last year I was impressed at 1.1 million and that was just a short 11 months ago
Glad to be at #CRMUG DayONE! General session is well versed and not too sales oriented.
Nice job Bill! Love the paper versus plastic comment when talking about the huge number of choices. People love and hate choice
As a firm believer in sharing technical nuances, field tips and general best practice experiences I was thrilled to be nominated and approved as a member of the CRMUG Board of Advisors
If you have not visited their website for a while, check it out
and
If you are looking for advanced training (developer, infrastructure, user and more) tap into all the new that is happening with the CRMUG Academy
AND
if you are in Southern New England keep an eye on your local CRMUG Subgroup www.snecrmug.org for upcoming face to face meetings.
"Oh, it is just a richly built custom .NET application"
The best part (s) of the Dynamics xRM platform
1) Developers don’t ever have to “line up fields on a form”
2) DBAs are not needed to build the database, although a few database indexes are good to have (if wanted) DBAs are still needed!
3) Users can design their own forms (ok this is only in xRM 2011) and not step on other people’s preferences – In v4.0 the CRM trained BA can do it, no developer necessary.
4) Users can come up with their own views, dump the data to Excel, save it as a report and be glorified heroes to their boss. In fact they can export to a Dynamic Excel Pivot chart (that when the boss opens it, shows the bosses secure data in all sorts of cool graphs)
5) In 2011 – Users can create their own charts on the fly, charts have built in drill down (IS doesn’t have to write as many SSRS Reports!)
6) Programmers can focus on the fun stuff like Silverlight interfaces ((not the stuff they have developed 100 times before))
7) The bling – doesn’t take a year to develop
8) Users get new features every 6 weeks and over 500+ new features every 1-2 years from Microsoft (if the extensions are written in the supported framework, it is an upgrade – not an expensive rewrite or a risky set of custom reactive patches that over a number of years gets painful to support)
9) To solve a user problem, to fix a bug or to figure out what is up is usually a phone call away. With 1 million other users you are not always the first one to find it and with Tier 1, 2, 3 support not to mention the blogs and books and a crazy wild community ... well nice to have community.
10) Integration to Google Maps, GeoData or Bing Maps takes less than a week to complete.
11) Popping any other web application (with a link) from the menu can take less than an hour to enable, add role security ok a day or two
12) There are hundreds of Apps that you can buy to plug in. iPad interface, Advanced Marketing, Hoovers integration, BI and OLAP analysis, mobility,
13) You still need .NET developers! Integration, extensions, cool stuff, new things in .NET and SQL and more! not redundant done it 100 times before like authentication code, Form Field line up, etc.
Ok, ok there are some change requirements (believe it or not I am not 100% CRM Kool-Aid (maybe 80%;))
1) Experienced .NET developers have to change process to fit within working with another .NET development team that is external (Microsoft Dev team)
2) The team writing the framework is not perfect and do make mistakes
3) The efficiencies to Microsoft Dynamics xRM have to be learned via training, reading and experience. (the first two are the least painful) particularly if you skip them.
4) The first project never lives up to the expectation of a more efficient turn around particularly when the people trying to hit this expectation do not get the time to get training, or think they can train themselves, (field feedback and connection with the MS Developers helps a lot)
5) Business users also need to realize they get the cool stuff but it comes with other features that don't necessarily just turn off if they don't like that way of doing it.
6) Infrastructure matters: Supporting CRM infrastructure requires expanded network administrator skills and it helps to have DBA input and involvement
7) You can screw it up (but then what else is new)
8) When people screw it up, they blame it on xRM/CRM instead of on all the factors
9) CRM is not an ERP or financial application framework, sometimes the DynamicsAX Framework is a better choice particularly when it comes to crazy tax codes that you don’t want to be the one keeping current.