Tag: CRM

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

Back-office vs. Front-office Pros and Cons; Four Points to Think about When Implementing a Professional Services Solution

Back in the day when computers first became common in businesses, accounting was the first part of the business that became “computerized”. Many reasons caused this, but as time passed and computational complexity increased, these first accounting systems morphed into “Enterprise Resource Systems” (ERP) that allowed businesses to build on top of these first accounting systems in order to automate their other functional areas. Inventory, Sales Order Processing, Purchasing, Service Management, Manufacturing and Professional Services functions were added as modular pieces of functionality that used the core accounting system as its base. ERP systems proliferated and became the automation standard for businesses to scale, become more efficient and glean visibility into complex costing and other financial metrics.

December 22, 2015

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

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

Modification to Bulk Update the Parent Account: MSFT Dynamics CRM

No one enjoys opening up each record, one at a time, to update a field with the same value in your company’s CRM. This is why the bulk edit feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is such a great tool, especially if the field you need to update is a Lookup field. This ends up saving a bunch of clicks and ultimately, time. One thing I never really noticed though, is that while most fields can be edited there is one on the Account that stood alone. The Parent Account. Since I hadn’t had a need to ever update this field en masse myself it wasn’t until a client wanted to change the Parent Account on multiple records that I realized CRM has the lookup link grayed out. Meaning, Read More »

November 20, 2015