• Expanded language support - Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is moving into international markets with multilingual capabilities for North American customers who have departments or teams with French, Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese language requirements.
• New Portal accelerators – These accelerators include Event Management, eService and Partner Relationship Management and allow organizations to extend their reach and extend the power of CRM to external constituents.
• New developer tools and resources - The service update provides new developer tools in the updated Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable the connection of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with other on-demand and on-premises applications and services such as Windows Azure.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration - A new built-in integration framework for Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables customers to easily connect the two systems to help provide business insight and improve user productivity across financials, supply chain, and sales and service. The integration is supported with both on-premises and cloud versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0.

 To help more Microsoft Dynamics GP users take advantage of the many benefits of integrating their ERP solution with Dynamics CRM, Microsoft is offering them a license for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at a promotional rate of $19 (U.S.) per user, per month now until June 30, 2010. More information about this offer can be found at http://crm.dynamics.com/CRMGPOffer.

Microsoft also announced that it is slated to expand the next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to 32 global markets in the second half of 2010.

To experience Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for yourself, take advantage of our 30-Day Free Software Trial!

According to Gartner, “Leaders demonstrate market-defining vision and the ability to execute against that vision through products, services, demonstrable sales figures, and solid new references for multiple geographies and vertical industries. Clients report that the vendors deliver a high level of value and return on their commitment. The development team has a clear vision of the implications of business rules, and the impact of social networking on customer service requirements. A characteristic of a leader is that clients look to the vendor for clues as to how to innovate in customer service.”

Once again, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has made it into the leaders quadrant with other top names in the industry, including salesforce.com, Oracle (Siebel), RightNow, and Pegasystems.  But what sets Dynamics CRM and these other solutions apart from their competition as industry leaders in customer service?

Gartner research indicates that:

Through 2011, 30% of organizations moving to a new platform will select a software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment for customer service functions. 

Through 2013, customer service strategies will be directed by the following four initiatives:

• Tying all service interaction channels together
• Integrating social CRM capabilities (by 2013, at least 35% of customer service centers will integrate some form of community/social capabilities as a part of the contact center solution)
• Analysis of the customer experience
• Business rules and knowledge will be applied in real time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the other CRM solutions in the leaders quadrant have strategies in place to address each of these initiatives and serve clients looking for a SaaS deployment for their customer service software: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is the full-featured SaaS alternative to Microsoft’s on-premise CRM solution.  Both Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on-premise) leverage “Accelerators” to extend the core product’s functionality at no additional cost to users. 

Read about the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Last week, Microsoft announced the upcoming release of the Customer Care Accelerator for Dynamics CRM. This new accelerator helps provide a consistent customer service experience by combining data elements from disparate applications such as mainframes, databases or Web sites for display in a single user interface. Gain quick and easy access to information, empower your agents to provide more efficient service, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator

With the Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 becomes a hub of business activity, letting users keep up to date on events happening across the organization. The Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator helps you drive user adoption by presenting CRM data to users in a way that is appealing and interactive, drawing them into the application and encouraging use.

Note: Currently this version of the Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator will only work with the On-Premise edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
 
Business Productivity Workflow Tools Accelerator

Looking for a way to add workflow step actions to better configure your workflow processes?  The Business Productivity Workflow Tools Accelerator give you these additional steps. Each custom action provides additional capabilities around string handling, mathematical functions and HTML hyperlink creation. Once this accelerator is installed, workflow designers within Microsoft Dynamics CRM have more flexibility in terms of the processes they can manage through workflows.

Note: Currently this version of the Business Productivity Workflow Tools Accelerator will only work with the On-Premise edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Business Data Auditing Accelerator

The Business Data Auditing Accelerator provides basic audit capabilities for organizations using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The accelerator takes a snapshot of a record whenever the relevant event occurs within the system such as Create, Update, Assign and Delete. Through workflow, auditing can be configured for any entity and any trigger event.

Sales Performance International (SPI) Accelerator

The Sales Performance International (SPI) Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is for customers who have invested in or are looking to invest in the SPI Solution Selling® sales methodology and would like to leverage this investment through Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This accelerator provides advice and guidance for customers on their options for managing Solution Selling® through Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Customers and partners have two options when integrating Solution Selling® into their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system:

• Basic Edition: Provides a Solution Selling® template which can be downloaded at no cost. 
• Professional Edition: Provides a more fully-featured application. Note: There is a charge for this solution.

Download the Sales Performance International Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM whitepaper.

To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM, please contact Socius.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators: Part 1
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators: Part 2
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators: Part 3

eService Accelerator

The eService accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides customer self-service capabilities (via a web portal) as a configurable out-of-the-box offering.  The web self-service portal exposes the following CRM functions to customers:

• Customer authentication into the portal and workflows to manage the setup of a contact as a web self-service customer.
• Customer profile updates to contact details; this capability is configurable allowing organizations to choose which attributes of the profile they want to expose to the customer portal such as name, contact details and communications preferences.
• The ability to view, create, edit and close service cases. There are two permission levels available to web portal customers:
  • Account-Level: these customers can view and modify all cases raised against the account they are associated with.
  • Contact-Level: these customers can only view and modify service cases that they themselves have raised.
• Online service scheduling allowing customers to search for convenient times and then book service appointments with the organization.
• Search against the Microsoft Dynamics CRM knowledge base (KB) using keywords. Once the appropriate KB article has been located the customer can then email that article to themselves or others.

The accelerator can either be used within the customer’s own web portal or they can use the pre-built portal solution provided by Microsoft in the ASP.NET 2.0 Small Business Starter Kit.

Analytics Accelerator

This is release 2 of 3 for the Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  This release incorporates some bug fixes to the existing dashboards for SQL Server 2005.  It also introduces a set of dashboards for SQL Server 2008.  The following future releases are going through final testing and packaging and will be available soon:

• R3 delivers more advanced SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) capabilities as well as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server scorecards

Many customers and partners will be familiar with Analytics Foundation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 which was a business intelligence feature pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.  Analytics Foundation for Dynamics CRM 3.0 included Dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a suite of new reports.  Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (R2) expands on this and is designed to support a range of business intelligence “maturity” levels for customers and partners. T he Analytics Accelerator has been built to cater for differing business intelligence skill-sets and experience levels.

Enterprise Search Accelerator

This is Release 1 of 2 of the Enterprise Search Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  The Enterprise Search Accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals.  By combining these two technologies, users from different areas of the business will be able to:

• View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through MOSS.
• Launch a MOSS search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

The Enterprise Search Accelerator provides one enterprise portal that users can search and view important customer information and documents from several sources within the organization.  Additionally, the technology, Business Data Catalog (BDC) and techniques used with this accelerator can be employed to surface data from other lines of business applications to further enrich the MOSS portal.

The BDC makes it easy for people to connect to, find and act on information stored in structured line-of-business systems (such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM) by using a declarative framework to securely integrate them into search results.  With the BDC, customers and partners can configure actionable audience-specific portals, dashboards and mash-up interfaces for this data without writing any code.

Release 1 (this release) includes key documentation on how to deploy MOSS Enterprise Search connecting to Microsoft Dynamics CRM on the standard Microsoft Virtual PC demonstration image.  Release 2 will provide additional documentation and tools to allow you to customize your enterprise search solution for different customer and partner requirements.

To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM, please contact us!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators: Part 1
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators: Part 2

CRM Notifications Accelerator

Through the CRM notifications accelerator, users are able to subscribe to the CRM “business events” that are significant to them, e.g. a salesperson is interested in new leads and opportunities assigned to them whereas a customer service representative is interested in new service cases assigned to them. Once the user has subscribed (each user manages their subscription profile) to the types of events that are important to them they can elect how they want these event notifications to be delivered. Notifications are delivered via a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and can be consumed with many desktop tools including Microsoft Outlook 2007 or the standard newsfeed Windows Vista® gadget.

Event Management Accelerator

Manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for events with the Event Management Accelerator, which focuses on three areas of event management, namely: 

1. Event Planning – logistics around an event such as:
   • Booking the venue
   • Presenters
   • Catering
   • Presentation content preparation
      
2. Event Attendance – all aspects around managing the attendees such as:
   • Inviting the target audience via phone, fax, letter and email
   • Managing registrations via phone, letter, fax, email and web
   • Tracking all people who actually attended the event
      
3. Event Review – Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports that measure the effectiveness of the event:
   • How many people attended the event?
   • What was the revenue impact of the event?

A core component of the event management accelerator is the web registration portal that customers and partners can deploy to allow web registration for their events and track these registrations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  The solution also consists of a plugin to manage registration counts and waitlists.

Sales Forecasting Accelerator

The sales forecasting accelerator extends and enriches the out-of-the-box sales forecasting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Principally, sales users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can review their individual sales pipeline and quickly classify opportunities as committed, excluded or upside. Sales managers can monitor and track sales targets, budgets and performance against these forecasts for specific time periods (e.g. months and quarters).

New Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 reports that summarize sales performance for the organization as a whole or for individual salespeople serve as a foundation for the sales forecasting accelerator.

Request Socius’ assistance in implementing any of the CRM Accelerators.

This post discusses the newest 3 Accelerators in greater detail.  Additional posts detailing the rest will soon follow.

Social Networking Accelerator

The Social Networking Accelerator allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services.  This accelerator delivers integration with Twitter; other networks will be introduced in future releases.  The Social Networking Accelerator can be viewed online at http://crm.dynamics.com.

Download the CRM and Social Networking White Paper
 
Portal Integration Accelerator

The Portal Integration Accelerator easily connects Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web experience.  This release builds on the eService portal engine and expands to allow customers to configure and expose any CRM entity to an external facing portal.  With this added capability, a business analyst can use point-and-click configuration — as opposed to Web development — to rapidly extend to the Internet any business process and drive costs out of everyday business interactions.

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator

The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator allows businesses to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners.  It provides pre-built extensions to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM sales force automation functionality, including new data entities, workflow and reports.  Using the PRM Accelerator, companies can jointly manage sales processes with their channel partners through a centralized Web portal, as well as extend this integration to automate additional business processes. 

Contact Socius, a Microsoft Dynamics Partner, to see how we can assist you with CRM Accelerators for your Microsoft Dynamics CRM software.

• Have difficulty sharing, using, and exploring customer data?
• Maintain multiple inconsistent data sources?
• Struggle with inaccurate sales, marketing and service reports?

If so, then you may be interested to know how Microsoft Dynamics CRM addresses each of these issues through its complimentary Analytics Accelerator. 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has many “out-of-the-box” business intelligence capabilities that enhance your ability to glean and comb through relevant customer data to help you make smarter business development decisions.  However, despite this array of features, Ohio Microsoft Dynamics CRM software users were still left looking for ways to:

• Plan with greater clarity and insight
• Gather, monitor, and report on performance with ease
• Analyze data and act strategically

As a result, Microsoft has released a series of Accelerators, which are complimentary, downloadable add-ons to Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 4.0, one of which is the Analytics Accelerator which provides analytical tools for each department working in CRM.

The Analytics Accelerator helps:

Marketing

1. Drive campaign ROI
2. Increase response rates
3. Improve marketing agility

Sales

1. Develop accurate forecasts
2. Achieve revenue goals
3. Increase close rates

Service

1. Increase customer satisfaction
2. Reduce customer service costs
3. Drive revenue through customer service channels

To see more of the CRM Dashboards enabled by the Analytics Accelerator, check out this presentation made to our Ohio CRM software users at our Aspire conference in October.

In addition to the Analytics Accelerator, Microsoft has developed and released 12 accelerators that enhance Microsoft Dynamics CRM capabilities to optimize everything from sales methodology to social networking. 

Learn more about and download CRM Accelerators here.