Microsoft CRM – Top Five Features
I’ve been wallowing in Dynamics CRM from Microsoft lately as we continue to build up our CRM service line at Technoligence. I continue to be impressed with what Microsoft has done with CRM and the flexibility they built in to the underlying platform. Beyond putting together a first class CRM solution for the core use-cases of standard sales and services processes they have taken a further step and exposed their underlying application foundation allowing fast, powerful customization and extension.
I expect to put together a few blog posts on CRM over the next few weeks and wanted to start with an overview and some pointers to great material out on the web for anyone not yet familiar with Dynamics CRM in general. Down the road I’ll probably drill into accelerators, custom reporting capabilities, and custom business solutions built on Dynamics CRM as a platform in more detail.
I’d be interested to hear what others are doing with custom solutions on top of CRM lately. Business frustrated with some of the limitations of ACT or SalesForce have been migrating lately and hearing the good, the bad and the ugly of these migrations would be great.
History
Microsoft release a humble initial version of CRM in early 2003. At that point it was targeted at small businesses and didn’t extend too much farther than account and contact management. One important feature from a business productivity perspective was the early integration with Outlook, which has only improved over time and continues to be a strength of the solution.
By 2005 Microsoft made some significant upgrades to the overall solution in the 3.0 release. It was then that CRM was moved under the Dynamics line of business products. Support for hosted CRM was also as significant addition in that timeframe and was offered through the partner channel.
In 2008, the 4.0 version of CRM was introduced. The significant improvements to both the feature set and underlying platform continued pushing Dynamics CRM into serious contention as a best of breed solution at the small business level and has started it knocking on the door of medium/large businesses as a possible solution.
Feature Highlights – My Top Five
Outlook Integration
As you might expect, a key feature that Microsoft has done really well is integration with Outlook. In addition to Outlook exposing the CRM interface, in either an online or online/offline synched configuration, a toolbar is provided that integrates the account management, activity initiation and communication tracking capabilities of CRM into your Outlook workflow.
Incoming emails/threads can be tracked in connection to contacts, accounts, opportunities, etc. Contacts are integrated into your Outlook contact list, but only to the degree you wish, with the ability to filter to subsets such as "My Contacts" or more complicated queries involving any contact field.
Dynamic Custom Reporting
In addition to standard canned reports, this video gives a great overview of the add-hoc and custom reporting functionality available in CRM. User configurable custom reporting is very flexible and relatively easy to use.
In advanced configurations the CRM reporting capabilities can be extended through integration with SQL Server Analytics and/or Microsoft Performance Point to get even more power in reporting and analysis.
Customization and Extensibility
The capabilities for customization of CRM are designed to provide flexibility at the user, business administrator and developer levels. Many typical customizations of views, fields, workflows, etc. are designed to be accomplished by non-developer power users/administrators. Further developer levels of customization are fully supported and typically are portable between installations and through upgrades.
If you can stand to click through 11 pages, this introduction to the various customization capabilities of CRM is a good overview.
Workflow
Imagine a marketing event generates a contact lead. As a follow, up you might want to send a custom email the next day and follow up a week later with a phone call by one of your account reps. This kind of dynamic workflow can be configured right in CRM. Further custom workflow activities can be added on to CRM to provide access to complex custom actions. More background on workflow is available here.
Accelerators
One of my favorite and one of the most interesting aspects of CRM customization available now are the "Accelerator" packages. Posted on Microsoft Codeplex with full source code, the Accelerators are fully supported custom add-on solutions for CRM. Advanced Analytics, Notifications, and Enterprise Search configuration are among the eight accelerators currently available. We’ve begun deploying these internally and for our customers with great success. You can find them all at: http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators
What other highlights have I missed here? Anyone else doing interesting things with CRM right now?
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