From scheduling tasks to how you interpret reports, here's our unofficial A-Z list to demonstrate how the breadth and flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can meet the requirements of any sized organisation.
A - Activities & Feeds
Tasks, phone calls and other activities are tracked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a complete record of all communications in one place.
Users are prompted to follow up on any process including sales opportunities, quotes, contacts, accounts, projects, events and campaigns from activities triggered by workflow driven rules or scheduled manually.
With CRM activity feeds users can micro-blog on any record to post updates and notifications which are shared with other users. Like social networks, individual CRM records can be followed with feeds rolled up in a personalised user display.
B - Business Intelligence
Real-time CRM dashboards create insight across all teams including sales, service, support and marketing. Individual and team dashboards are easily adapted to show analytics, charts and lists so performance is quickly assessed and action points understood.
Data is collected across the organisation to present information in a single, easy to visualise format that improves the speed and quality of decision-making.
C - Cloud Technology
In addition to the option of an on-premise installation, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be deployed in the cloud removing the need to invest in hardware or purchase software.
Data is hosted directly by Microsoft for just GBP 29.50 per user each month. This covers full CRM functions including customised entities, workflows and reports + 5GB of data storage.
D - Dialogs
Microsoft CRM dialogs are call scripts that help customer-facing staff process routine tasks by prompting them to ask questions and collect information.
Dialogs can be used by sales and service teams to help qualify new opportunities, carry out telemarketing, complete customer surveys and resolve complaints.
With step by step guidance, dialogs enforce consistency by helping users reach a conclusion in line with proven methodology and company rules.
E - Email Marketing
Mailing lists can be created to carry out email marketing campaigns from CRM.
By using an e-marketing package that's integrated with Microsoft CRM like dotMailer email templates can be quickly designed using drag and drop tools and personalised with CRM data and dynamic content to maximise relevance.
With data checking and spam restricting controls, messages and email lists are filter transmitted to increase delivery rates. Recipient actions are tracked and fed back to CRM when messages are opened, clicked, shared and replied to.
With email data in CRM the best prospects can be identified to make increasingly personalised messages based on each contact's known interests and preferences.
F - Forecasts & Sales Pipeline Management
CRM tracks opportunities through each milestone of a selling cycle so the status of the sales pipeline can instantly be assessed.
Supporting dashboards provide actual vs estimated pipeline analysis and predicative sales forecast assessment.
By highlighting bottlenecks and assessing what quotes are most likely to close CRM alerts managers to potential problem areas to help ensures that sales and cash-flow targets are achieved. Learn More
G - Goals
Microsoft Dynamics goals measure progress against key performance indicators using data stored in any CRM field.
For example, goals can be applied to measure the number of qualified opportunities per month, campaign lead generation, sales staff revenue targets, average support cases outstanding and the number of completed sales calls per week.
CRM goals can be distributed across teams, split between primary and sub goals and have rules applied that roll-up in progress actions so meaningful assessment can be made.
H - Help
The Microsoft CRM Resource Centre is free to all users for easy access to CRM help, training resources, videos and community forums to exchange ideas and gain advice.
I - Integration
To create a single source of information Microsoft CRM integrates with other data sources including websites, e-marketing solutions, accounts systems and other back-office databases.
With automated flows of data to and from CRM, users see the full picture in a single interface.
By integrating CRM with key systems, processes are joined up and double handling is removed. For example, sales teams can send completed CRM opportunities to accounts for order processing and marketing teams can assign qualified campaign leads to sales.
J - Jump Selector
Open any CRM record from a list view and a jump selector enables users to switch to other records in the list from the same window.
By clicking the pick-list other records can be opened. Individual items can be selected, or click the up and down arrows to move through records individually.
The jump selector can be used to browse contacts, sales opportunities, outstanding support cases, marketing leads, accounts and other CRM records.
K - Knowledge-base
For answers to recurring questions and problems, Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables knowledge-base articles to be posted. These are designed to retain experience and reduce processing costs by sharing proven solutions to frequently encountered issues throughout an organisation.
Posts can be added so teams are able to reference FAQs, user guides, solution summaries and price lists helping them resolve issues faster and improve service quality.
L - Leads
Microsoft CRM lead records reflect the prospects you're working on that need to be qualified, or have already been disqualified.
Leads can include completed web forms, prospects from your latest event, a purchased data list or recent phone enquiries.
The marketing source from where each enquiry originates is tracked to help determine which lead generation activities are proving most effective so informed decisions can be made on where to invest sales and marketing budgets.
M - Marketing Campaigns
Marketing activities can be tracked in CRM through campaigns that co-ordinate all the processes, tasks and parties involved. For an exhibition this could include:
- Monitoring event costs vs budget
- Coordinating processes to organise event handouts, stand signage and other materials
- Sending emails to communicate your presence at the exhibition to existing customers and prospects
- Tracking responses and see which people have registered an interest in attending
- Sending reminder emails
- Identify which people attended and send a personalised message thanking them for attendance with a special offer
- Routing exhibition leads to a sales team and track subsequent actions to assess the actual event return
Microsoft Dynamics CRM adapts to handle each campaign step from list building to ROI assessment and everything in between to understand the success of each exercise and repeat successes.
N - Navigating
With Microsoft Office style menu ribbons and toolbars Dynamics CRM immediately feels familiar to navigate.
Through a similar interface that many are already confident using, Microsoft CRM is readily accessible to new users to keep training time, and costs, to a minimum.
O - Outlook Client
By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can access all CRM records and perform key processes in Outlook as well as through a web browser.
By avoiding the need for Outlook users to open a second application, or learn new software to carry out everyday functions, Microsoft CRM for Outlook:
- Automatically tracks Outlook sent emails in CRM
- Creates new CRM records from received emails
- Tracks received emails with associated contacts, sales opportunities, campaigns, cases and any other process
- Automatically displays headline detail stored in CRM on all records linked to an email including contact information
- Applies native Outlook functions to CRM data including contextual formatting to highlight priority items in list views
- Shows CRM dashboards in Outlook lists
- Synchronises contacts and tasks between CRM and Outlook
- Enables CRM offline working
P - Productivity
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is all about helping users achieve more during their working day - even if they have fewer resources and increasing time pressures.
Here are just some of the ways how Microsoft CRM helps users be more productive:
- Places complete relationship detail in one place so customer requests can quickly be dealt with and new opportunities identified
- Automates work-flows that remove time consuming, repetitive processes
- Time saving navigation that reduces clicks and simplifies the process to find information
- Real-time dashboards and reports enable data to be quickly accessed, interpreted and acted upon
- Adapts to individual user preferences, job roles and processes to keep CRM displays and functions relevant to each situation.
Q - Queues
Outstanding items can be placed into queues so individuals and teams are prompted to action the next sequential task.
For example, new cases can be added to a support team queue and qualified marketing leads can be posted to a sales queue.
Queued items are ranked according to defined rules which can include the time added and any other criteria that determine where each action is placed. In addition to the date added, priority levels can also be determined by a customer status setting, an account service level agreement, projected lead value or by any other rule that uses CRM data.
R - Recently Visited Items
The Microsoft Dynamics recently visited pane links to activities, accounts, emails and other CRM items that a user has accessed.
Frequently accessed items can be pinned to the list and CRM views can also be saved so users can quickly open their favourite records and recent displays.
S - Support & Service Management
Service requests and support issues are managed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM as cases so unresolved items are clearly visible.
Each case contains details of the issue as well as follow up dates, resolution steps, associated activities and any other related detail.
Including support history, process automation and case escalation Microsoft CRM gives service teams extended tools to deliver consistent service, reduce processing costs and strengthen customer retention.
Multiple cases are logged on each contact and account so a complete support history can easily be accessed.
Service and support metrics are instantly available through CRM dashboards that summarise outstanding issues and enable trends to be identified including recurring problems, average case open times and case volumes.
T - Templates
CRM templates apply a consistent format to processes and minimise duplicated activity.
Email templates are an obvious example enabling users to send routine messages that are personalised with CRM data. Email templates can include order receipts, payment requests, renewal quotes, joining instructions and booking confirmations.
MS Word and report templates can also be created for support agreements, contracts, quotes and sales order forms that are automatically personalised with CRM data.
CRM templates can also be applied to other areas to shortcut processes. This can include marketing templates for recurring campaigns like newsletters, security profiles where specific team members are assigned the same user privileges or knowledge base templates that ensure new articles are posted in a consistent format.
U - Uptime
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscribers have the reassurance of Microsoft's commitment to a 99.9% up-time service level agreement that is financially backed.
V - Views
Personalised and role-based CRM views can be created to display data in a format to suit individual user preferences.
CRM searches can be saved to set the criteria for views including field columns and sort order with other preferences set to control how many records appear in lists, how numbers and dates display and even what language is used.
User-defined views can be set for any CRM record type including contacts, activities and accounts with defaults applied to automatically show this format.
Individual views can be further customised with embedded dashboard charts that provide a graphic summary of list data.
W - Workflows
To minimise manual processes Microsoft Dynamics CRM triggers workflows that automatically carry out actions in line with the rules set.
This can involve automatically sending an email, scheduling an activity, updating a CRM field or escalating a case.
Workflow rules reflect your process methodology to shortcut repetitive manual steps and apply consistent actions to routine tasks and events.
As one of the most significant functions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for helping organisations improve their process efficiency, workflows can be set to:
- Automatically notify a sales manager when a new order form is created
- Email an alert to a support manager if a case is at risk of breaching a service level agreement
- Automatically send a series a emails over several weeks when a prospect is trialing a product
- Create an alert when a new quote is saved if the account is on credit hold or if the quote value exceeds the agreed limit
- Automatically score campaign leads based on qualification rules that can include location, job role or a prospect's actions through your website. A further step can be set to automatically route high scoring leads to a sales team for immediate action with the remainder left for continued nurturing.
- Schedule a follow up activity on all accounts that are due for renewal next month
X - xRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM adapts to manage any process or relationship that's important to your business.
This is often described as xRM where 'x' is your unique variable.
xRM customisation can reflect diverse relationships and processes like: projects, products, applications, events, enquiries, property, training courses, loans, contracts, agreements, productions, vehicles, equipment, jobs, results, members, candidates, medical records and many more...
Y - Your Preferences
Microsoft CRM adapts to individual preferences and enhances the user experiences with flexible options that include:
- Choice of access - via web browser, in Outlook or by mobile
- Work online or offline and sync up your changes
- Customising the CRM workspace with contextual help, embedded dashboards, personalised views and custom options that include default displays
- Removing some CRM functions to streamline the interface. For example, users who work in a service team can hide marketing and sales functions.
Z - Zero In
CRM dashboards report across all key metrics throughout an organisation. From these views users can drill-down from individual charts to zero in on supporting data to identify patterns, analyse performance and make informed, timely decisions.
This isn't an exhaustive list and many more points could be added to further illustrate how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be deployed to improve individual and business performance. To learn more please contact us, or join one of our free webinars for a live demonstration.
Preact are an independent CRM consultancy based in the UK providing pre-sales and implementation expertise including Microsoft CRM quick start options, user training and CRM support to help new and existing users.
By Warren Butler
Image: blueskiessmiling77
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