1. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile” (New Cloud Based Mobile CRM Service Subscription) 2. Cross Browser Support (IE, Safari, . . . → Read More: Next Service Update: CRM Anywhere in Q2 2012]]> Earlier this month, Microsoft released information on what will be included in the next CRM Online Service Update (Q2 2012) and I was excited to find out about the following 10 new features/enhancements.  I am especially looking forward to Mobile and Cross Browser Support.

1. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile” (New Cloud Based Mobile CRM Service Subscription)
2. Cross Browser Support (IE, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome)
3. Rapid View Forms (Load forms quickly)
4. Enhanced Activity Feed (“like”, “unlike”, improved filtering)
5. Industry Solution Templates (Vertical solutions)
6. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (Improved Performance)
7. Business Intelligence (BI) Insights with Power View (Excel workbooks)
8. Certifications (Industry Compliancy)
9. Portal Framework Enhancements (Enhanced Customer and Partner Portal)
10. Custom Workflow Activities in CRM Online (Custom Workflow: .NET Development)

Here’s a short summary of these features.  For more thorough descriptions on the upcoming service update, you can take a look at the “Release Preview Guide Q2 2012 Service Update“.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile

Microsoft will provide a cross-platform native mobile client for Windows Phone 7.5, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices.  At starting price of $30/user/month, organizations will be able to subscribe to any number of users.  Each licensed mobile user will be allowed to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM from up to three different mobile devices.  It will also offer an offline mode so that users can access the CRM data offline.

Cross Browser Support

The Q2 2012 Service Update will also include cross browser support for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application.  Users will be able to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM from browers such as Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 6+, Chrome, 13+, and Safari 5.1.1+.

Rapid View Forms

To allow fast loading of data, Microsoft will add Rapid View Forms capability so that users can quickly view the CRM data.  The rapid view form is a read-only form that will be introduced in entity form and users will be able to edit data shown in this form by clicking a edit button.

Enhanced Activity Feed

Existing Activity Feed from November 2011 Service Update will be further enhanced to provide additional functionalities (“Like”, “Unlike”, and improved filtering capabilities) and simplifed access to relevant feeds.

Industry Solution Templates

Microsoft will make available Industry solution templates for CRM including data model, pre-configured dashboards, workflow processes, and samle data.  Industry Solutions will include Life Annuity Insurance Sales, Non-Profit, Health Plan Sales, and Wealth Management.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 will be made available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise so that users can take advantage of SQL Server 2012 performance and reliability.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online data centers already have Microsoft SQL Server 2012 deployed.

Business Intelligence (BI) Insights with Power View

A set of Microsoft Excel workbooks with pre-defined PowerPivot models and Power View Report templates will be made available for On-Premise customers.  The four templates will include Product Sales Analysis, Sales Pipeline Analysis, Customer Care Trends, and Customer Demographics Analysis.  Future service updates will expand teh reach of Power View to CRM Online customers.

Certifications

Microsoft Data Centers will be compliant with an number of certifications including ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, and Sarbanes-Oxley.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Services will be compliant with a number of certifications including Safe Harbor, ISO 27001, SSAE 16 SOCI (Type II), Data Processing Agreement (DPA), EU Model Clauses, and Business Associates Agreement – enables a company to be Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) compliant.

Portal Framework Enhancements

The Service Update will include enhancements to the portal framework that powers customer and partner portals connecting to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online/On-Premise.  The enhancement will allow portals to use Microsoft Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) for authentication so that organizations can use various standards-based identity providers such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and ADFS 2.0 for portals that require authenticated sign-on security.

Custom Workflow Activities in CRM Online

With Q2 Service Update, developers will be able to build custom .NET workflow activity assemblies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.  This will ensure parity in the developer experience between Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and On-Premise.

In the previous article, I bundled CRM Solutions . . . → Read More: SMB CRM: Which CRM Solution is right for your organization? (Part 2 of 3)]]> There are many factors that can influence a CRM solution scope for an organization.  Factors may include meeting specific timeline, budget, business requirements, user/department preferences, available resources and technologies, and others.  Thus there’s always going to be some tradeoffs and negotiations in scope/feature, cost, and/or timeline in successfully implementing a CRM solution.

In the previous article, I bundled CRM Solutions into one of the three groups: Basic, Standalone, and Integrated.  In this posting, I will talk about an approach you can take in choosing the “right” CRM Solution for an organization.

I am going to elaborate on Value and Pareto’s Principle (the 80/20 rule) concepts and how applying these two concepts can be beneficial for an organization in getting a handle on their CRM solution scope and approach.

Value of product/service is defined by weighing the benefit(s) and the cost associated in obtaining that product/service.  Thus when one assesses the “Value” of one of these CRM Solutions, they need to weigh the benefits these CRM solutions can bring to an organization and the cost associated to acquire them.  It should be noted that the value is subjective, since not all benefits are easily quantifiable, and often is based on individuals’ perception; however, using a value criteria can help an organization to focus on what’s important (not all important features may be necessary right away) and assist them in selecting the right set of CRM features for their organization at a point in time.  Following are couple of high level questions that should be addressed by an organization pursuing to implement one of the three CRM solutions:

• What specific benefits does an organization want to realize out of the CRM solution?
• How much can an organization afford or budget for the CRM solution?

Secondly, we can apply Pareto’s Principle (80/20 rule) to application solution usage.  Pareto’s Principle states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  In CRM application usage, one can say that 80% of CRM usage will come from 20% of the CRM features/requirements.  In other words, implementing the top 20% of the most frequently used features will make up the 80% of the CRM application usage by the users.   This is not to say that an organization should only implement the top 20% of the most frequently used features and not the rest.  In addition to the most frequently used features, there will be other important specific features/requirements that will need to be implemented for a given organization based on their business needs.  Thus careful analysis and planning of business requirements and CRM features are required to scope out the right CRM solution whether it’s Basic, Standalone, or Integrated CRM solution.  The point is that an organization can realize CRM solution benefits even if they do not implement all of their business requirements and features of CRM to realize productivity benefits of the CRM solution.

When an organization takes the approach of looking at their CRM scope from the value perspective and pick and choose the features/requirements that are important and/or will be frequently used by the users of the system (80/20), they will be able to create a CRM solution that’s useful and cost effective for the organization.

SMB CRM: Basic, Standalone, or Integrated CRM Solution?  (Part 1 of 3)
SMB CRM: Which CRM Solution is right for your organization? (Part 2 of 3)
SMB CRM: Implementing Successful CRM Project (Part 3 of 3)

Before you get yourself into knee deep in implementation, you need to ask yourself “What type of CRM solution is right for my organization from budget and scope standpoint?” This is non-vertical specific question thus it . . . → Read More: SMB CRM: Basic, Standalone, or Integrated CRM Solution? (Part 1 of 3)]]> So, you’ve finally decided on Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution for your Small and Medium-sized Business (SMB) organization and now you need to implement it.

Before you get yourself into knee deep in implementation, you need to ask yourself “What type of CRM solution is right for my organization from budget and scope standpoint?” This is non-vertical specific question thus it applies to all organizations that wishes to implement a CRM solution.

• What does your organization want to accomplish with CRM? What is your scope?
• Who are the users?
• What is your budget? How much are you willing to or can spend at this time?

Growing number of SMB businesses want to implement CRM solution for their organization; however, many of them are reluctant to spend lot of money implementing the CRM solution, at least not in the beginning, when they have not experienced the benefits of CRM first hand.  Thus in order for SMB businesses to engage in CRM application deployments, they need a path, a roadmap, or CRM implementation options that allows them to start with basic, minimal cost, CRM solution and then build up to comprehensive CRM solution.

In this posting, at a high level, I will group most common CRM scopes into three categories, describe what they are, and touch on key benefits of these solutions in the context of simplifying scope management and managing key stakeholders expectations.

Three types of CRM solutions are Basic CRM, Standalone CRM, and Integrated CRM. The Basic CRM, Standalone CRM, and Integrated CRM solutions categorization provides high-level grouping of CRM solution capabilities that helps organization to align their CRM strategy with available budget and scope.Grouping CRM solution as Basic, Standalone, or Integrated helps organization translate CRM implementation complexities and effort into basic/minimal, (intermediate/complex)/intermediate, and complex/high, respectively. This allows them to get a better handle on what they need to focus on to deliver a CRM solution that makes sense for their organization based on their budget and available resources.

So what do Basic CRM, Standalone CRM, and Integrated CRM solutions look like? Before we dive into details, keep in mind that this is general category guidelines and that one organizations’ Basic, Standalone, or Integrated CRM solution classification may be different in scope compared to another organizations’ classification since their business requirements and needs will be more than likely different; however, nevertheless they should all be able to identify their solution in one of these categories. The goal of grouping CRM solution into three categories is to provide simplification to the way an organization can manage its CRM deployment and expectations.

Basic CRM Solution

Basic CRM solution would be your out-of-the-box/cloud CRM implementation primary around Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunities, and Case entities with configuration being limited to UI layout (forms, fields, and/or views) using built-in UI configuration tool to edit necessary fields/attributes for one’s organization usage. There may be some workflows but they would be simple logic that does not involve extensive business processes. In Basic CRM implementation, there should not be any custom coding. It would be an exception if there’s a need for custom coding and it will need to be simple coding effort. You maximize your solution utilizing default settings/capabilities of CRM. Furthermore, in this solution, you may focus on only one component of the CRM modules like Sales to further limit your scope. Pre-built 3rd party Add-ons can also be added in Basic CRM solution, if they do not involve extensive setup and are cost effective.

Basic CRM also includes simple data migration of your Leads, Accounts, and Contacts into the CRM application. Condition of simple data migration is that the data is already cleansed with no duplicates and are single source for each of the entities. Having data in the system will improve user adoption since user will not have to enter all the data manually to start using the application.  Reporting is limited to out-of-the-box reports and simple reports using built-in reporting tools like Report Wizard.

Basic End User CRM training should be included to train the end users on how to navigate and use the CRM application.

Basic CRM solution allows organization to implement CRM solution in shortest time with minimal cost and start experiencing some of the benefits of CRM solution such as consolidated customer information and time savings in tracking or looking up customer information. Since it is basic out-of-the-box/cloud solution, it provides basic functionalities but powerful enough to make a difference to the organization both from productivity and in increasing revenue.

Basic CRM solution can also be used as pilot system for the organization to test out the concept of CRM and then leverage that experience to build out more comprehensive CRM solution.

Standalone CRM solution

Standalone CRM solution will be superset of Basic CRM and will involve implementing more complex business processes and rules via custom workflows, custom views/forms, custom jscripting/programming, custom reporting, add-ons, etc. to automate the organizations’ Sales, Marketing, and/or Service operations such as sending automated emails or notifications based on actions taken or prefilling fields or executing other processes based on business logics. Data Migration may involve multiple sources and require data cleansing/de-duplication effort.  In Standalone CRM implementation, you will spend more time in gathering business process requirements, designing solution, and implementing the solution than you would have done in Basic CRM implementation since your scope of work will be significantly more and complex.

Implementing more/complex business rules and standardizing processes within CRM system will help users become more efficient in their work and allow an organization to better understand the needs of their customers. Standardizing processes and maximizing CRM capabilities will allow an organization to be able to not only gather and maintain customer information but also allow them to analyze those data to uncover trends and information that may be key to winning more businesses or in improving customer services.

For an organization with the Standalone CRM solution, full End User CRM training will be required to train its users on how to properly use the CRM application.  In addition, Administrator CRM training will be needed if the organization will be self-maintaining the CRM application.

Integrated CRM Solution

Integrated CRM solution includes scope of Standalone CRM solution and integrating the CRM application with one or more external systems, such as backend ERP applications, home grown custom applications, websites, etc., to share data between these systems. Systems Integration can be done by either custom programming or by using Commercially available Off-The-Shelf (COTS) middleware applications.

Organizations that integrate CRM solution with their legacy applications are interested in automating processes and maximizing operational efficiency so that their employees can spend more time in marketing, selling, and/or servicing their customers rather than doing administrative work. Integrated CRM solution will also eliminate duplicate data entry, data synchronization issues, provide near real-time data synchronization with other system and CRM solution and save users from doing mundane administrative work.

For an organization with the Integrated CRM solution, full End User CRM training will be required to train its users how to properly use the CRM application.  In addition, Administrator CRM training will be needed if the organization will be self-maintaining the CRM application.

In the next series, Part 2 of 3, “SMB CRM Implementation: Which CRM Solution is right for you?” I will elaborate on choosing the right CRM solution from 3 solutions mentioned above.  Cheers!

SMB CRM: Basic, Standalone, or Integrated CRM Solution? (Part 1 of 3)

SMB CRM: Which CRM Solution is right for you? (Part 2 of 3)

SMB CRM: Implementing Successful CRM Project (Part 3 of 3)