There is a common misconception that CRM is just a tool to make life easier for Sales People, make information easier to find for Business Development staff, and of course loads of stats for the Marketing Department. I would have to agree that in most cases the drivers behind adopting a CRM solution do come from these areas.
But hold on a minute, what about everyone else?
What about those people out on site who are recording details about defects and snags on their projects?
How about the engineer who has been called out to service a piece of machinery?
Do these have seperate systems? Should they not all be part of a central CRM system?
Discuss!
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Office 365 - Get your free trials
What is Office 365?
It's anywhere access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars so you're always up-to-date. It's familiar Microsoft productivity applications your team already uses. It's business-class security and reliability. It’s IT control and efficiency delivered to fit your organization's unique needs. And it's an all in one pay-as-you-go service with an affordable price. But that’s just the beginning.
Get your free 30-day trial by clicking on the link below
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
Benefits of Office 365
Safe and secure
IT is in control
Return on investment
In the cloud, on premise, or both
We make it easy for you
Get your free 30-day trial by clicking on the link below
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
This trial invitation includes:
- 25 user licenses Microsoft Office 365 Trial (Plan E3)
What's included in every plan?
Office Professional Plus - Provide your employees with the familiar Office desktop apps and the Office Web Apps seamlessly connected to the cloud and with flexible pay-as-you-go, per-user licensing.
Exchange Online - Give your organization the power of Exchange email, calendar, and contacts with built-in functionality to help protect against viruses and spam. Your employees can access their mailboxes from virtually anywhere on PCs, the web, and mobile devices.
SharePoint Online - Help your employees create sites to manage and share important documents and insights with colleagues, customers, and partners; keep teams in sync; and manage important projects—all without the need to set up and run Microsoft SharePoint in your own data center.
Lync Online - Transform your organization with next-generation communications capabilities including presence, instant messaging (IM), audio/video calling, and rich online meetings with audio, video, and web conferencing.
KMS has configured a custom collection of Microsoft Online Services for you to try.
Review your customized collection here:
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
This trial invitation includes:
- 25 user licenses Microsoft Office 365 Trial (Plan E3)
Additional partner information:
davidb@kms-software.com
0207 939-0740
It's anywhere access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars so you're always up-to-date. It's familiar Microsoft productivity applications your team already uses. It's business-class security and reliability. It’s IT control and efficiency delivered to fit your organization's unique needs. And it's an all in one pay-as-you-go service with an affordable price. But that’s just the beginning.
Get your free 30-day trial by clicking on the link below
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
Benefits of Office 365
- Safe and secure
- IT is in control
- Return on investment
- In the cloud, on premise, or both
- We make it easy for you
Safe and secure
With Office 365 your data is safer, thanks to robust disaster recovery capabilities, globally-redundant backups, and extensive privacy features. And your users are highly protected against spam and viruses with filters.
- Office 365 safeguards your data with enterprise-grade reliability, continuous data back-ups, disaster recovery capabilities, globally-redundant data centers, and a strict privacy policy.
- Get the peace of mind that your services are available and highly protected 24/7 with an industry-leading, financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Microsoft Exchange Online with built-in Forefront Online Protection for Exchange email protection. Your users are highly protected from viruses, spam and phishing attacks with our multi-engine antivirus and multi-layered spam technologies.
Learn about Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security with Office 365, from developing more highly secure services with the Security Development Lifecycle to how we run our global data centers.
IT is in control
Office 365 provides easy-to-use, cloud-based management tools in a single location – and we’re available 24x7 to provide IT-level support.
- No more server patching, updating, or upgrading – Office 365 takes care of it.
- Give everyone access to the information they need while maintaining proper level of control of sensitive information.
- Take an interactive tour of the Office 365 administrator portal.
Return on investment
Office 365 brings together our industry leading Office 2010 applications with enterprise-grade cloud-based email, calendar, instant messaging, web conferencing and document sharing.
- Give your business access to the power of enterprise-grade productivity services for a predictable monthly cost and no upfront infrastructure investments.
- Pay for just the services you need, and scale to meet new business requirements almost instantly. Learn more about Office 365 plans.
- Forecast IT expenditures more accurately with predictable, pay-as-you-go costs. Try the Cost Estimator to estimate the cost of various service plans and identify the best plan for your business needs.
In the cloud, on premise, or both
For larger businesses with even more advanced IT needs, Office 365 enables you to get the cloud on your terms with flexible deployment options. Migrate to Office 365 at your own pace or setup your deployment to meet specific compliance, security or operational needs.
- Take advantage of hybrid capabilities that let you put some users on Office 365 and keep others on-premises, maintaining a unified directory and seamless calendaring.
- Use advanced features like email archiving, multi-mailbox search, role-based access control, and legal hold to help your businesses stay in compliance.
- Automate email and document retention by setting up policies that help retain critical information while reducing the expense and risk associated with storing information beyond its useful life.
- Integrate line of business applications with Office 365 using Exchange Web Services and remote PowerShell.
Microsoft has helped enterprise businesses successfully move to the cloud
Microsoft Enterprise Solutions are built on a unified productivity platform that's not only cost-effective, but gives you the agility to respond as business needs evolve. Your users can use Microsoft tools and applications they're familiar with to work from virtually anywhere*. With the choice and flexibility of cloud computing, your business can deploy services on-premises, in the cloud, or a blend of both.
We make it easy for you
- An easy-to-use administration console lets your IT staff focus on user productivity, strategic planning and organization-wide deployment while Microsoft manages the risks and complexity of the backend.
- Count on 24/7 IT-level professional support from Microsoft to help ensure you maintain your IT promises to your users.
- Some Office 365 service plans provide always-current updates to Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online, so IT is always offering the latest productivity services to users.
- Don't have an IT team? Draw upon the Microsoft Partner ecosystem to find trained teams that can provide rapid Office 365 deployment, administration outsourcing, and integration with your existing IT infrastructure.
* Access from mobile devices requires Wi-Fi capability or depends on carrier network availability.
Get your free 30-day trial by clicking on the link below
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
This trial invitation includes:
- 25 user licenses Microsoft Office 365 Trial (Plan E3)
What's included in every plan?
Office Professional Plus - Provide your employees with the familiar Office desktop apps and the Office Web Apps seamlessly connected to the cloud and with flexible pay-as-you-go, per-user licensing.
Exchange Online - Give your organization the power of Exchange email, calendar, and contacts with built-in functionality to help protect against viruses and spam. Your employees can access their mailboxes from virtually anywhere on PCs, the web, and mobile devices.
SharePoint Online - Help your employees create sites to manage and share important documents and insights with colleagues, customers, and partners; keep teams in sync; and manage important projects—all without the need to set up and run Microsoft SharePoint in your own data center.
Lync Online - Transform your organization with next-generation communications capabilities including presence, instant messaging (IM), audio/video calling, and rich online meetings with audio, video, and web conferencing.
KMS has configured a custom collection of Microsoft Online Services for you to try.
Review your customized collection here:
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=24e38518-d79b-4a35-9503-65ec0cb54cbe&msppid=797260
This trial invitation includes:
- 25 user licenses Microsoft Office 365 Trial (Plan E3)
Additional partner information:
davidb@kms-software.com
0207 939-0740
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
CRM Customer and Partner Portal updates
Exciting news with regards to the portals within CRM, see this blog post to find out more about the updates. Portals can now be demonstrated without the need for an Internet connection within the demo vpc, as well as authenticating through AD rather than LiveID
http://www.shanmcarthur.net/crm/crm2011-articles/customer-portal-modifications
Enjoy!
http://www.shanmcarthur.net/crm/crm2011-articles/customer-portal-modifications
Enjoy!
Monday, 4 July 2011
Cloud Offering - Office 365 now available
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What is so good about CRM 2011?
Having been involved in CRM for 20 years (back in the early nineties the term CRM did not even exist!), I have seen some great changes in the CRM marketplace. So what has happened in the new release of Dynamics CRM 2011? Here is a quick overview. I will be having a look at each area over the next few posts
What is new in this release?
Improved Microsoft Office interface
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 introduces a new Office 2010 contextual ribbon for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM browser clients and for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook. The new ribbon delivers a consistent, familiar navigation and user experience that helps you better integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with your Office 2010 environment.
Advanced user personalization
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 lets you configure a workspace that is personalized to meet your unique role and information needs. Personalizing a workspace means that you can set the default pane and tab that display when you open Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You also have control over what links appear in the workplace view, how many records appear in lists, how numbers and dates display, and the language for your user interface. Combine this personalization with the new dashboard feature to create a personalized dashboard for your default view.
Role-based forms and views
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 displays forms and views based on user roles. This role-tailored design ensures that the business professionals in your organization have fast access to the relevant information they need. Role-based forms and views also prevent users from viewing data that they are not authorized to view.
Inline data visualization
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can quickly create and share inline charts with drill-down intelligence. Using these charts, you can visually navigate data and uncover new insights that contribute to your organization's success. View the charts you create from the main list of records or from the list of associated records for an individual record. Share your charts with other users or teams in the organization. Import charts created by other users into your records.
Dashboards
Dashboards are a powerful feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Use a dashboard to see at a glance all the important information you need to make key business decisions every day. Assemble and present information from several places in Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a quickly-read format. This means that you do not have to search multiple areas for the information you want. Dashboards are easy to create, and are easy to revise as your changing business needs require.
Better Office Outlook experience
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 improves the integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM into Microsoft Office Outlook with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook. It takes full advantage of native Outlook functionality, such as previews and conditional formatting, and presents Microsoft Dynamics CRM areas as sub-folders in Outlook mail folders. With a few exceptions, these Microsoft Dynamics CRM areas in Outlook include all of the same functionality as the browser clients.
Contextual document management
If your organization uses Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can easily manage documents that are related to records within a particular entity. Using Windows SharePoint as your document depository, the seamless interface in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows you to quickly add and edit documents that are associated with a particular record. When you set up document management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM creates the structure on your Windows SharePoint site that works with the entities and records that you want for document management.
Goal management
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 gives you the ability to define key performance and business health indicators. This way you can track and measure results against your organization's goals or metrics. Easily and quickly define goals for a campaign or fiscal period. Combine smaller goals, such as for specific teams or territories, into the overall goals for your organization. Create a rollup of all the goals into the actuals that show how you are tracking.
Interactive process dialogs
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 expands its workflow capability by adding interactive dialogs. Dialogs present a consistent message to your customers. Also, dialogs collect and process information by using step-by-step scripts to direct users through every process. At one level, you can use dialogs to guide customer interactions and internal processes. At another level, you can increase dialog performance and versatility by incorporating workflow logic. This logic invokes automated tasks by using the responses a customer or user makes during the dialog script.
Cloud development
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is at the leading edge of Cloud computing. Developers can take advantage of the Windows Azure platform to develop and deploy custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online by using powerful tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, developers can also incorporate Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) into their cloud solutions. Cloud development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a powerful tool for customizing your Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution for optimal performance and business results.
Solution management
Solutions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are a new way to save customizations and share them with other users. You can create a solution or import a solution created by a developer outside your organization. It is easy to share a solution with other users. A managed solution can be edited only by specific users. An unmanaged solution can be edited by any user with an appropriate user role. A solution can have version numbering, relationships with entities and other components, and security features based on user roles.
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is your online solutions catalog. These solutions help you accelerate and extend your Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation. Quickly discover and apply industry-specific applications and extensions from Microsoft and its partners. Then, Marketplace distributes your solution directly to you. Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Find your solution directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Summary
The new and enhanced features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offer new levels of user productivity and collaboration. These features help you meet your specific business needs with a low total cost of ownership. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers familiar, intelligent, and connected experiences to increase the productivity and effectiveness of people inside and outside your organization.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 unlocks new opportunities and provides a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premise deployments.
What is new in this release?
Improved Microsoft Office interface
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 introduces a new Office 2010 contextual ribbon for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM browser clients and for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook. The new ribbon delivers a consistent, familiar navigation and user experience that helps you better integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with your Office 2010 environment.
Advanced user personalization
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 lets you configure a workspace that is personalized to meet your unique role and information needs. Personalizing a workspace means that you can set the default pane and tab that display when you open Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You also have control over what links appear in the workplace view, how many records appear in lists, how numbers and dates display, and the language for your user interface. Combine this personalization with the new dashboard feature to create a personalized dashboard for your default view.
Role-based forms and views
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 displays forms and views based on user roles. This role-tailored design ensures that the business professionals in your organization have fast access to the relevant information they need. Role-based forms and views also prevent users from viewing data that they are not authorized to view.
Inline data visualization
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can quickly create and share inline charts with drill-down intelligence. Using these charts, you can visually navigate data and uncover new insights that contribute to your organization's success. View the charts you create from the main list of records or from the list of associated records for an individual record. Share your charts with other users or teams in the organization. Import charts created by other users into your records.
Dashboards
Dashboards are a powerful feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Use a dashboard to see at a glance all the important information you need to make key business decisions every day. Assemble and present information from several places in Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a quickly-read format. This means that you do not have to search multiple areas for the information you want. Dashboards are easy to create, and are easy to revise as your changing business needs require.
Better Office Outlook experience
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 improves the integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM into Microsoft Office Outlook with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook. It takes full advantage of native Outlook functionality, such as previews and conditional formatting, and presents Microsoft Dynamics CRM areas as sub-folders in Outlook mail folders. With a few exceptions, these Microsoft Dynamics CRM areas in Outlook include all of the same functionality as the browser clients.
Contextual document management
If your organization uses Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can easily manage documents that are related to records within a particular entity. Using Windows SharePoint as your document depository, the seamless interface in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows you to quickly add and edit documents that are associated with a particular record. When you set up document management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM creates the structure on your Windows SharePoint site that works with the entities and records that you want for document management.
Goal management
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 gives you the ability to define key performance and business health indicators. This way you can track and measure results against your organization's goals or metrics. Easily and quickly define goals for a campaign or fiscal period. Combine smaller goals, such as for specific teams or territories, into the overall goals for your organization. Create a rollup of all the goals into the actuals that show how you are tracking.
Interactive process dialogs
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 expands its workflow capability by adding interactive dialogs. Dialogs present a consistent message to your customers. Also, dialogs collect and process information by using step-by-step scripts to direct users through every process. At one level, you can use dialogs to guide customer interactions and internal processes. At another level, you can increase dialog performance and versatility by incorporating workflow logic. This logic invokes automated tasks by using the responses a customer or user makes during the dialog script.
Cloud development
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is at the leading edge of Cloud computing. Developers can take advantage of the Windows Azure platform to develop and deploy custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online by using powerful tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, developers can also incorporate Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) into their cloud solutions. Cloud development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a powerful tool for customizing your Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution for optimal performance and business results.
Solution management
Solutions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are a new way to save customizations and share them with other users. You can create a solution or import a solution created by a developer outside your organization. It is easy to share a solution with other users. A managed solution can be edited only by specific users. An unmanaged solution can be edited by any user with an appropriate user role. A solution can have version numbering, relationships with entities and other components, and security features based on user roles.
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is your online solutions catalog. These solutions help you accelerate and extend your Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation. Quickly discover and apply industry-specific applications and extensions from Microsoft and its partners. Then, Marketplace distributes your solution directly to you. Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Find your solution directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Summary
The new and enhanced features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offer new levels of user productivity and collaboration. These features help you meet your specific business needs with a low total cost of ownership. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers familiar, intelligent, and connected experiences to increase the productivity and effectiveness of people inside and outside your organization.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 unlocks new opportunities and provides a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premise deployments.
Dynamics CRM 2011 Online - Offer extended
Yes its true, the £22.75 per user per month offer has been extended till 31st December 2011
Fantastic News!
Click here to find out more http://crm.dynamics.com/en-gb/home
Fantastic News!
Click here to find out more http://crm.dynamics.com/en-gb/home
Do we really need CRM?
Now, more than ever, we need to keep hold of our existing 
customers, as well as nurture any new prospects. We need to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum and that we are not wasting money and resource chasing the wrong type of business. We need to understand who our customers are and what our prospects really need. CRM will help us do all of these things and more.
customers, as well as nurture any new prospects. We need to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum and that we are not wasting money and resource chasing the wrong type of business. We need to understand who our customers are and what our prospects really need. CRM will help us do all of these things and more.Gone are the days of “letterbox pricing”, where tenders and enquiries were dropping through the door at a relentless pace. Pricing for work is getting harder, with more and more companies being squeezed by ever shrinking margins. Companies are now considering how they should best approach their tendering processes; which ones are quick wins; which ones require the least resource; how many they can actually price in time; and which ones will give the best return. So in fact they end up turning down the opportunity to tender for some work!
In p
arallel with this, sales, business development and marketing staff are being pushed to bring in more and more enquiries to ensure they meet targets and secure a full order book year on year. Amidst all this activity, administration tasks often take a secondary role, so customer service staff are not being provided with all the necessary details about contracts and orders. They can’t present a coordinated approach when dealing with customers’ issues. At present all staff involved in pre-tender work, namely sales, business development and marketing, are all running around like headless chickens trying to get as many new chances to bid for work as possible. They are gathering frightening amounts of information about new schemes, project plans, enquiries and opportunities, companies they are dealing with, people they know and have met. In some cases staff have resorted to storing this information on spreadsheets, and have created beautiful, yet complex reports and analysis. In some cases companies have purchased systems to allow them to keep track of some of these details, but most of these systems fall short
and only cater for Customers and Contacts. Tendering staff also have their own way of working. Some still use pen and paper, spreadsheets are commonly used, some use complex estimating systems, allowing detailed bids to be put together. Now all of these approaches are fine, except, they are pricing on work as it comes in, and are not forewarned of potential work by their sales and business development colleagues, unless of course they participate in weekly tendering meetings used, in most cases, to pass information between the two departments. Thus valuable time and resources are being wasted.
It makes sense for a company to unite its marketing and pre-tender processes, its tendering processes and after-sales care, to create some “joined-up thinking” and ensure that the right hand knows what the left hand wants and needs, and vice-versa. This presents better service to prospective and existing customers, and enables staff to work more efficiently.
How are we able to get these sets of staff in harmony? How can sales and business development generate and track ever increasing numbers of projects in the knowledge that their estimators aren’t going to “black ball” the bids as soon as they come in? How can estimators be alerted to future possible workload and balance their resources accordingly? How can we ensure that both the “project finding” and “project pricing” elements come together and work together? How can Marketing gather enough information to make decisions about their marketing spend for the coming year, and how can we ensure that the customer service staff are not left dealing with issues and problems without the tools to back them up.
So CRM is the answer?
Staff are performing under immense pressure and ever increasing targets. They all have their peculiarities in terms of how they work. However, there is an awful lot of “common” information, which, when shared through a CRM solution, would save an awful lot of time and money. Wh
y is it that when an opportunity is passed from sales/business development to the contracts staff they basically start from scratch again, entering their own information into their own systems. Is this not common information, which in most cases is captured electronically? Is there not a lot of valuable sales and business development information which does not get passed over and is therefore lost as part of the bid/contract process? This information could be shared by the entire company!Sales and Business development use CRM to continually track individual opportunities to the point of order, as well as maintain relationships with key players within the companies they deal with. A centrally held database also allows a common view of all their customers and prospects, as well as other parties involved in the decision making process; Customer Service staff have access to information across the board, thus providing a unified approach to how they deal with customers and their issues; Marketing can run marketing campaigns from within the system, analysing response rates and their campaign effectiveness; estimators are kept informed of upcoming tenders and future workload. With a common database everyone within the company can see instantly the latest “state-of-play” of their projects, clients, tenders etc...
A win-win situation all round, with savings in time and resources and increased customer satisfaction and retention.
And that’s why you need CRM!
