Microsoft has launched the new Dynamics site. Currently, the site only gives information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics Communities. The new micro-site is a great idea and allows information about the Microsoft Dynamics products to be viewed and distributed in a cleaner more organized way.
The site contains a community feature that allows you to sign up and create an account to network and collaborate on the uses of CRM. The community also has events, articles, forums and blogs that can be used as an educational tool on how to use CRM more efficiently.
Click here to visit the site and sign up for your free account.
Improve customer service and marketing with CRM. For some reason customer relationship management or CRM software is sometimes confused with sales force automation (SFA) software which specifically focuses on sales management and pipeline reporting. This concept that CRM is just for sales is a misconception. Therefore, when evaluating a solution that can help your organization with marketing management and customer service don’t dwell on the sales portion and dismiss the solution.
For pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device manufacturers there are few direct customers and sales force software really isn’t needed. These companies could use the marketing and customer service features of CRM.
As always, Convergence offers a lot of exciting news. There were two important Microsoft CRM announcements.
The big news with SharePoint centered on integration and business intelligence. As SharePoint experts we knew this, but it was nice to Microsoft discussing it and Convergence attendees definitely seemed interested.
The focus for Microsoft Great Plains (Dynamics GP) was on upgrading. Microsoft has released a number of new versions of Dynamics GP over the last few years and clients have gotten behind. I definitely would encourage everyone to upgrade to GP 10. The two or three version upgrades are difficult. GP 10 also offers some excellent reporting improvements.
I will continue to post more information and insight as it happens.
Convergence 2008 in Orlando has started.
Cornerstone Solutions and one of clients were recently featured in a Microsoft CRM case study. We helped our client take over 250 Microsoft Dynamics CRM users live. We created over 20 custom objects, but limited custom code. Sales, Marketing and Service were all utilized to the fullest extent.
It is great to see our client.... (and us) gain some recognition with Microsoft.
Click here to read the entire case study.