Category: CRM

CRM 2016 SMS Marketing

What can the new SMS (Short Message Service) Marketing feature in CRM 2016 do for your company? The new SMS feature allows your marketing department/marketing staff to become truly mobile. It allows your marketing department to step into the modern era. Marketers within your company can now create powerful SMS marketing campaigns. They will be able to integrate this feature into the already existing multichannel campaigns running within your establishment. Dynamics CRM 2016’s new SMS feature will support both outbound and inbound SMS marketing in select markets.

February 3, 2016

Professional Services Using CRM

In the past, professional services technology systems were closely tied to ERP systems, sometimes baked right in, sometimes as a third party product. The common practice was to utilize the ERP’s architecture, database and financial modules to create a full-featured financial project management system that could produce very granular financial metrics. I recently wrote about an evolution taking place whereby professional services technology applications can now work using CRM systems, and the advantages/disadvantages of doing professional services in ERP or CRM based technology.

January 21, 2016

Correcting a Duplicate User in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

It was the perfect storm that unfurled to cause this commotion that had us spinning our wheels for a while. A User left the company and had been deactivated in CRM (we’ll call this record User1). Due to policy (I’m guessing policy, as I have heard the practice is not recommended) the user Account was deleted in Active Directory (AD). Well, lo and behold, this User decided to return to the company within a few months of leaving. When the Administrator attempted to reactivate the User within CRM, they were unable to because the User was no longer in AD; the User was added again in CRM (the new User record will be User2). After this the User was once again set up within AD, but any attempt to log into CRM failed.

January 20, 2016

2016 – What to Watch for as the Cloud Impacts Your Technology Partner’s Value

This is going to be about how the cloud is automating much of what IT did, (networks, maintaining emails, managed services) and how your technology partner will be giving you much higher value services instead.

Remember when you owned your own servers, connected your users via a network software and had some IT staff (or some outside IT firm) tell you when something was wrong, something needed to be updated or something was down?

January 18, 2016

How to Utilize Dynamics CRM: Five Tricks for a New Salesperson

Joining a new company is always exciting: new people, new opportunities, and new systems to learn.I have the opportunity to learn Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a new CRM software that we sell, and because of my entrepreneurial background, to see it through two lenses: one of a user trying to learn a new system and one as a salesperson utilizing a new tool to sell more efficiently.

January 8, 2016

How to Set Work Hours for Dynamics CRM Users

The most overlooked setting during CRM user setup are the work hours. Setting up the work hours for a user/facility/equipment record has always been an afterthought (at least for me). Then again, this setting becomes more relevant and important to setup when you are scheduling resources., This is especially true in setting up the service module or as part of any project management/field service module where appointments are being setup for tasks. For those who may not know where this setting exists, it can be found by navigating to ;Settings->Security->Users.' Open any user record, and in the navigation for the user record, you can find the “WORK HOURS” navigation tile. You can access the resources work hours by navigating to ;Settings->Business Management -> Facilities/Equipment.' The resource entity still uses the old CRM form layout so the work hour navigation can be accessed from within the form.

December 18, 2015

How to Set Default Parameters in SSRS Reports Based on CRM Roles

I enjoy working with SSRS reports and learning new things to help me build out reports that meet our clients’ needs. When a client comes to me with an interesting way they want something displayed or a request for a feature that is unknown to me, I jump at the chance to do it. I love a new challenge and it acts as a learning experience as well. A recent request came to me that required a little creativity on my part. It was to modify the default value of certain report parameters based on the security role the User had in CRM.

December 14, 2015

How to increase profits and sales using CRM

Many times business executives get caught up in the details and miss the big picture. How do I increase sales, profits, and productivity? The answer might be right on your computer. Using Dynamics CRM, many options are available to easily and quickly increase your company's bottom line. Catching the attention of the Executive or Business owners in how to achieve better sales and profits and make more money is sometimes easier said then done. CRM is a company wide tool using technology to support a business strategy to improve, analyze and automate company sales, customer services, and marketing by combining them to improve the sales and profits of the company.

December 4, 2015

CRM = Create, Reach out, Money

Business today requires fast, accurate action, not reaction. Many of the features available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help facilitate those goals and lead to overall success in your business. This is more imperative than ever in today's instant gratification world. Dynamics CRM has multiple features to help accomplish this….fast!

December 2, 2015

How to track projects using CRM

Before I present the options and the different ways to track projects in CRM, let’s look at the different aspects of project management that would be needed in any organization.

Resource Scheduling

Project planning &tracking

Time & Expense entry

November 24, 2015