Microsoft CRM, cont.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is available in two editions: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Small Business Edition and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Professional Edition. Both provide organizations with a flexible and customizable platform that can be adapted to the way you and your employees work. Small Business Edition is intended for less than 75 users while the Professional Edition accommodates over 75 users. Other than faxing capabilities; which is only available in the Small Business Edition, both versions share the same features.

From Microsoft.com, here are some examples of the way CRM interacts with other Microsoft Office sofware:

"Outlook:...with the Microsoft Sales for Outlook client in Microsoft CRM 3.0, all customer information can be managed from Microsoft Outlook. Sales, lead information, marketing pitches-everything you need to stay connected with customers. And because this information can be available company-wide, all employees have the power to see client histories and respond effectively to questions and requests."

"Excel:...Excel works with Microsoft CRM 3.0 to give businesses a new way to understand the impact of changes in sales, pricing, clients, and contacts. Data about sales and other business activities is easily imported to Excel from Microsoft CRM 3.0, making it easy to run scenarios, reports, and graphs for all aspects of a business. And data can be imported into Excel in three ways: As a static table, a dynamic table, or a PivotTable dynamic view. With the latter two methods, Excel automatically updates data as it is changed within Microsoft CRM 3.0."

"Word and Microsoft Publisher:...use data from Microsoft CRM 3.0 to target customers for marketing and sales campaigns using Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Publisher. It's easy to select customers for a letter or marketing initiative-and personalized messages take only minutes with Publisher."

CRM and Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision)

CRM can be linked to Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) enabling even deeper and richer customer service transactions and reporting.

CRM comes with a built-in ticket tracking module that can be used by any company offering Technical and/or Customer Support. Fom Microsoft website: here are some of the possiblities offered by connecting CRM and Dynamics NAV:

Sales Leads Management

Opportunity management: converts leads to opportunities and tracks them throughout the sales cycle.

Sales process management: enables consistent tracking and closing of sales opportunities

Pipeline optimization: analytical tools provide salespeople with qualified leads and opportunities.

Quote generation: provides a full-featured product catalog that supports complex pricing levels, units of measure, and discounts.

Order management: converts quotes to orders that can be modified and saved until they are ready to be billed as invoices.

Sales force management: helps measure sales performance against quotas.

Sales literature: helps create, manage, and distribute sales material.

Direct e-mail: enables creation of customized e-mail messages to customers.

Customer Interaction Management

Case management: enables customer service requests to be created, assigned, and managed from a central location.

Automated routing and queuing: promotes easy processing of service requests through customizable workflow rules.

Auto-response e-mail: generates automatic responses to customer requests.

E-mail management: automatically records customer communications and associates e-mail messages with appropriate customer records.

Service scheduling: makes it easy to manage service resources and to better understand resource and equipment allocation, usage, and effectiveness.

Searchable knowledge base: provides a repository for the publishing of support articles and information.

Service contracts: creates, maintains, and updates service contracts automatically.

Customer Data Management

Marketing campaigns: enables campaign planning based on budgets and expenses, promotion codes, target products, marketing collateral, and more.

Customer and lead lists: allows existing customer information or imported contact information from various sources to be used to create targeted lists for specific campaigns.

Qualify lists: facilitates queries to customer lists, helping locate accounts that meet specific criteria.

Campaign templates: lets you create templates to use again in future campaigns.

Campaign execution tracking: enables lead conversion and cost and performance data analysis.

Marketing information tracking: helps quantify campaign success.

Faxing capabilities: lets you send and receive faxes from your desktop using the capabilities of Microsoft Small Business Server.

Microsoft's website has extensive information about both packages: learn more.

Back to Microsoft CRM, page 1.