A  business case for a CRM system must examine benefits and risks involved with implementing CRM and, conversely, not implementing CRM. Provided the benefits outweigh the costs and risks, the conclusion should be a compelling argument for implementation.

Chances are your organisation has a Business Case template or prescribed process so that decision-makers can more easily compare and prioritise business cases. If so, then use it but be sure to cover these key ingredients.

Answer the Why question

Why does this organisation need a CRM system now?

The answer to this question frames how the business case needs to be evaluated.

It may be that you need a CRM system to improve effectiveness and efficiency of your sales team or to automate some processes.  If so, the costs and benefits can be compared with other means to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

But if your existing system is about to expire or if it is a legacy system dependent on a single (possibly aging) person then evaluation will focus on the best method to mitigate a pending and significant disaster.

Similarly, if your competitors have implemented CRM and are starting to eat away at your market share, evaluation needs to focus on catching up and halting the downwards trend.

Fit with corporate strategy

For a CRM system to deliver optimal value, it must support the organisation’s strategy. It must enable the organisation to achieve competitive advantage.
If the strategic focus of the organisation is not aligned with a CRM system, you may not be ready for CRM and you should consider parking the business case. If it is aligned, the business case must show this clearly. Help the decision-makers join the dots and see how the CRM system gives legs to their strategy.

Consider the changes required

What changes will need to be made to the organisation, to business processes and to related systems?

By its nature, a fully-functional CRM system is cross-departmental and brings changes in the way people work and interact. Some work and hence jobs may be eliminated by automation and some new roles may be needed to analyse customers demographically, geographically and economically for greater insights or to identify and target loyal customers and proactively relate with them.

Very rarely will a CRM implementation be just an IT exercise.

Financials - costs, benefits and ROI

Make sure you include ALL the costs. The obvious costs are the license costs, the initial customisation and implementation cost and the on-going support costs. Consider also the on-going costs of enhancements and upgrades because you will want your system to stay up-to-date and take advantage of the new functionality and power that becomes available.

Remember to factor in the time required to implement and manage the system. Include your project team, staff involved in workshops to define the detailed system requirements, UAT (user acceptance testing), time out for training and on-going internal system support.

The benefits may be more challenging to quantify. You should discuss and agree on these with the key managers involved.

Quantify benefits from the following as applicable:

1. Increased revenue. Better managed customer relationships inevitably leads to more sales because existing customers stay and more prospective customers come on-board. In addition, your sales team will be equipped with faster access to the latest information about customers and have tools to help them plan their time and ensure all opportunities are systematically explored.  Your marketing will be more measureable and smarter and your marketing team more closely connected to your sales team.
2. Efficiency. Your CRM system will reduce data input time, eliminate double-entry of data, reduce costly errors and automate many of your processes.
   Regarding ROI calculations, you should use the same formula as is used for other business cases – so the business cases can be compared. But beware of overly-simplistic calculations. A CRM project should be evaluated over a reasonable time-frame (perhaps 5 years) so a discounted ROI will normally be required

Regarding ROI calculations, you should use the same formula as is used for other business cases – so the business cases can be compared. But beware of overly-simplistic calculations. A CRM project should be evaluated over a reasonable time-frame (perhaps 5 years) so a discounted ROI will normally be required.

List the "soft" benefits

Where a benefit cannot be quantified with any level of confidence, then it should be stated. Soft or intangible benefits may include:

1. Increased customer satisfaction
2. Ability to offer improved customer service and support
3. Less errors due to better system usability and error-detection
4. Increased user satisfaction and lower stress-levels
5. Faster information from improved/automated business processes
6. Better understanding of customer and trends
7. Better forecasting
8. Improved software vendor support and service

Show how the benefits will be measured

It is worthwhile at the business case stage to provide the metrics that will be used to measure the success of the CRM project. This adds credibility to the benefits and provides a valuable focus to the project when it is approved.

Some of the metrics will be existing and already monitored. Others can be easily measured as part of the CRM system implementation. For example system usage can be monitored and reported and elapsed time per sales opportunity or service case can be calculated by the system.

Outline the risks and show how they can be mitigated

It’s true – not all CRM projects are successful. Some CRM projects are embarked on without even a business case! 

Your business case will eliminate or minimise the major reasons why CRM systems fail. Your planned CRM project will:

1. have high-level management buy-in
2. be clearly linked to organisational strategy
3. take into account the organisational changes required
4. allow for sufficient staff input into the project
5. be focussed on measurable outcomes

Yet there are other risks you may need to consider:

1. Rapidly changing business requirements. Ensure key stakeholders are engaged throughout the project and that the project is structured so as to accommodate changing requirements without major delay or budget overrun.
2. A change in key personnel. The project should not be critically dependent on a single person.
3. An under-performing CRM partner. Select CRM software supported by multiple CRM development companies. And select your CRM partner carefully.
4. User resistance to change. Ensure the system provides a “win” for users and that users are well trained and supported through the transition.

The Query

select en.Name, en.LogicalName, displayname.ObjectColumnName, displayname.Label, IsCustomEntity from 

entityview en
inner join LocalizedLabelLogicalView displayname
on en.EntityId = displayname.ObjectId
and displayname.ObjectColumnName = 'LocalizedName'
where IsCustomEntity = 1 -- remove this if you want to show the system entities as well
--and add the isActivity = 0 if you want to filter out the Activity entity
--if you want to remove like post album, filter, etc
--and en.Name not like '%msdyn%'
order by label

Result

After putting some light on the topic of Installing FieldOne, from Microsoft let me introduce you to some basic elements to narrow the question: Do you need to spend hours before you can use it?

Intro

Assuming not everyone has heard of FieldOne, from Microsoft or FieldOne Sky – What am I talking about? Reading yesterdays article from our new leader of Microsoft’s CRM Business Applications group – Jujhar Singh – you´ve already recognized it is something around field service capabilities within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

FieldOne Sky is a field service management solution build on top of the xRM Framework of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Leveraging the power of existing service capabilities and enhancing CRM with newly introduced entities as well as combining an intelligent scheduling service to calculate and optimize work orders, FieldOne Sky is an offer to all companies searching for a better scheduling and field service management.

For instance you can start with a manual scheduling in three different ways:

• Dragging unscheduled Work Orders from list view to Schedule Board
• Dragging unscheduled Work Orders from map view to Schedule Board
• Blocking out a slot on the Schedule Board directly and selecting unscheduled Work Order to schedule.

Once you feel familiar with that kind of scheduling, you probably want to use the Scheduling Assistant which you can launch either from a Work Orders view by selecting a Work Order and choose Scheduling Assistant from the Ribbon or inside an individual opened Work Order – e.g. in a typical customer service call scenario, where you created a new Work Order and now want to provide a fitting and optimal time slot for that customer.

But FieldOne, from Microsoft also allows a field service engineer to provide status updates using a mobile field service application based on Resco, re-scheduling himself or simply create follow-up Work Orders if needed.

And because of providing Field Service Management capabilities it also takes care of customer assets, engineer time sheets and invoicing and inventory management. So there´s a full packaged managed solution staying inside your CRM system once you´ve installed it. But let´s focus on some key elements first.

Schedule Board

One of the key areas and probably the most used interface after creating Work Orders or Work Order Schedules, is the newly introduced Schedule Board. This HTML5 based interface combines a closer look into all necessary data for dispatchers, managers or other by security role allowed users with the power of a list view, a digital map, a details tab and a GANTT view. Within this single UI presenting an overview of current status, planned and unplanned Work Orders – A dispatcher can perform typical actions like reassigning Work Orders, schedule unplanned Work Orders or taking a closer look on a digital map interface and provide driving directions to field service engineers while watching their team, their region or other information. The UI is controlled and configured by setting up views with filters using the well known concept of advanced find.

But as always – with high flexibility comes great responsibility – to train your users in arranging their daily life within that interface and make it work the way they want.

Empty Schedule Board?

As said earlier installing the solution is pretty easy, but if you open the Schedule Board the first time after installation you recognize an empty GANTT view after a short loading time. This is because of the need of several configuration steps, before being able to make use of the solution and all components. Without training or at least a checklist what needs to be done first, you probably end up in having a nice looking HTML5 Schedule Board.

But you can start playing around and look for configuration – as I did. And you will find the Map View Settings if you expand the Filter & Map View on the right. And I guess you´ll also find the general personal settings of the Schedule Board when you click on the familiar gear wheel icon – normally used for any kind of settings dialog.

Additional security

You will also recognized four newly installed Security Roles you can assign to your users and of course you can explore all the different privileges introduced by each security role, though you won´t find a best practice which role needs to be assigned to which user. Again – this is what I would call a business solution issue. It needs training or a kick-starter package by an Implementation Partner to help with these questions.

Custom Entities

Though FieldOne Sky (re)uses a couple of customized out-of-box entities like:

• resources
• price-lists
• territories
• account
• contact
• invoice
• systemuser

it also introduces some typical custom entities needed to close the gap between offering out-of-box CRM capabilities and Field Service Management capabilities. Some might recognize that the icons haven´t been updated yet in my environment – I bet this is subject to change soon as well.

Conclusion

So Do you need to spend hours before you can use it? The best answer I can provide you with is: Yes

It takes time if you´re not familiar with a Field Service Management solution to configure the basics. It needs a training – some best guidance – or at least a checklist of what needs to be configured (which by the way I´m going to cover in my next article) – but remember: Though the solution installation was made easy, it is a business solution closing some gaps or fulfilling requirements you´ve came up with to introduce a better Field Service Management and enhance customer service capabilities.

Note

For a typical presentation preparation with at least some daily scheduling scenarios a dispatcher can run into, an estimated duration of 2 business days is needed to setup and configure FieldOne, from Microsoft. Additionally you should calculate at least half a business day to prepare Resco and the mobile status feedback scenario or self-scheduling. Maybe we will see something like a “quick start” guidance with some demo data that can be installed to ensure a well configured system can be evaluated without training first. For now – ask your preferred Implementation Partner to help with.

Below is a new press release issued today from our partners at InsideSales.com that I wanted to share with our readership that features a quote from our President, Lisa Benson on how predictive data is a game changer for today’s sales teams.

If you have not heard about InsideSales.com for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I encourage you to watch our on-demand webcast featuring this product and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

InsideSales.com Delivers the Power of Predictive Sales Acceleration to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform

New, Exclusive Accelerate Offering Helps Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers Increase Sales Visibility, Productivity and Effectiveness

December 1, 2015– InsideSales.com announced that its cloud-based sales acceleration platform, Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, is now available. Accelerate provides key sales communications and lead prioritization features to help companies grow sales. In addition, the company announced that three future offerings are now available under an “early access” program: HD Forecast predictive sales forecasting, Pipeline predictive pipeline management, and Sales Advisor predictive opportunity scoring and prioritization.

Sales acceleration tools and technology are fueling what’s expected to be a $30 billion market by 2017. Now, with InsideSales.com Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, customers have a direct path to InsideSales.com’s platform – powered by its Neuralytics™ engine – and can use it to apply science to sales, removing the guess work of cold calls and accelerating the sales process.

“We value the opportunity to be a unique addition to the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem,” said Mick Hollison, chief marketing officer at InsideSales.com. “Our sales acceleration platform and scientific approach to improving sales can benefit Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers by helping them increase revenue by improving contact rates, generating more quality leads, better managing their sales pipeline, and closing more sales.”

InsideSales.com’s Neuralytics-driven platform uses big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to scientifically pinpoint sales patterns and provide continuously smarter recommendations to sales teams, increasing customer revenue growth by up to 30 percent. Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers, resellers and systems integrators can all benefit from this expanded offering.

“InsideSales.com’s sales acceleration technology is a great example of how the power of data and intelligence is changing the game in sales in a way that can have a positive impact on our customers’ success,” said Jujhar Singh, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “The new InsideSales.com Accelerate package for Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help users improve sales visibility, productivity and effectiveness in a way that delivers more immediate and meaningful results.”

This announcement comes during a period of great success for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which is coming off 45 quarters of high double-digit growth, having tripled net seats annually and doubled year over year revenue for their CRM online edition.

Customers who participated in early access for Accelerate are already giving rave reviews to the package.

“Using predictive data for sales success is no longer a question, it’s almost a requirement,” said Lisa Benson, President at Ledgeview Partners. “InsideSales.com’s proven track record for increasing sales leads, conversations and revenue made it easy for us to decide to weave it into our Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer offerings.”

InsideSales.com Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides powerful telecommunications features, including single-click dialing and automatic data capture. Accelerate also provides comprehensive email​ and website ​engagement with real-time alerts for sales reps. And the entire solution is powered by NeuralView, which prescriptively target sales efforts by likelihood to contact and close. Accelerate for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available through April 30, 2016, at the special introductory pricing of $125 per user per month.

The company is also making available under early access three offerings to help with the forecasting and pipeline management functions. HD Forecast and Pipeline deliver predictive pipelines and a precision forecast with insights and actions that mitigate deal risk. And Sales Advisor helps sales reps understand ​which opportunities will close to focus teams on the areas where they’ll have the most impact. Available under early access, these products are available at 50 percent off regular price through April 30, 2016.

“Using predictive analytics has helped many of our customers accelerate sales and increase revenue by up to 30 percent,” said Martin Moran, general manager and senior vice president of InsideSales.com’s Europe, Middle East and Africa business.  “Now our sales acceleration platform offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers the opportunity to take advantage of these same benefits derived from taking a scientific approach to improving sales.”

These channel-ready offerings all support the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 release. With these tools, Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers will now be able to achieve the same kind of success that current InsideSales.com customers have experienced, including a 50 percent average increase in conversions and doubled forecast accuracy.

“Our company has always tapped into the latest technological advancements for success and it’s clear that, in today’s business environment, success is data driven,” said Mike Gillis, president and global chief operating officer, Business Solutions Group, Hitachi Solutions America. “Machine learning, predictive analytics and big data are now powerful and accessible tools vital to sales and no one is leading the charge on this front more than InsideSales.com.”

In their May 2015 report Predictive Analytics Are Transforming B2B Selling, Gartner analysts Tad Travis and Todd Berkowitz wrote, “Because they promise significant ROI from increased conversions and higher revenue and profitability, enterprises are adopting predictive solutions to improve sales effectiveness. Predictive (and, in some cases, prescriptive) analytics are being used with existing customers across the different stages of the sales funnel”

For more information on how your company can start using InsideSales.com on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, please visit www.insidesales.com/products/microsoft-dynamics.

About InsideSales.com

InsideSales.com offers the industry’s leading sales acceleration platform built on Neuralytics, a predictive and prescriptive self-learning engine that drives revenue growth by delivering an optimized experience for both salesperson and buyer. The platform fuels sales rep performance and provides buyer personalization with breakthrough innovations in predictive sales communications, gamification and hiring. InsideSales.com has received numerous accolades for its technology and has been named as one of the fastest growing companies by Inc. InsideSales.com enterprise customers include ADP, Microsoft, Groupon and Zenefits.

>> Learn more about InsideSales.com for Microsoft Dynamics CRM with this quick on-demand webcast.

The post InsideSales.com Delivers the Power of Predictive Sales Acceleration to Dynamics CRM appeared first on Ledgeview Partners.

In the world of surveys, research people know how essential it is to keep the response rates high and the drop out low. Actually, the average response rate for most online surveys, excluding internal surveys, is around 25%. This is a great percentage, especially when compared to telephone surveys, which usually have an average response rate of around 10%. Higher response rates are always the name of the game!

To achieve higher rates when surveying the general public, it’s important to find ways to motivate responders and keep them engaged during the sections of the survey. Nothing stimulates a responder to complete a survey more than the feeling that the questions are relevant to their lives and that they can proficiently express themselves with a properly designed and individualized survey structure.

Researchers know that developing dynamic survey questions can increase responder engagement by delivering questions customized to particular interests or characteristics. This creates an enjoyable and unique experience for each responder, which in turn results in a higher response rate.

PowerSurveyPlus, PowerObjects’ robust new surveying solution, can easily build dynamic surveys right from within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and send them directly to accounts, contacts or lead records. Using PowerSurveyPlus, users can add tags to survey questions and reference these tags when building expressions. Expressions show or hide predefined sections or questions based on a specific answer to a previous question.

In today’s blog, we will go through the process of creating dynamic surveys using PowerSurveyPlus in a hypothetical scenario.

Scenario:
Your company is hosting a training event. Lunch and beverages will be provided. You want to send a survey to your prospects in order to evaluate their interest in the event, ask about their preferences for possible topics to be covered, and survey their cuisine preference. You are planning to offer four different types of cuisine. Based on the responder’s preference, a specific menu will be displayed.

A Dynamic Survey in Action

On the first page of our survey, we ask only one question:

“Are you interested in Learning CRM?”

If the answer is No, the rest of the survey will not be displayed and the survey is considered 100% fulfilled.

If the answer is Yes, the rest of the questions will be displayed so that the responder can continue to answer them and complete the survey.

After the responder answers the questions, they click Next, and the second page of the survey will be displayed. The next set of questions will ask the responders to specify their cuisine preferences by selecting from a drop-down list of options.

As we did before, in the first window we will initially display only one question:

Based on the type of cuisine selected, the relevant food order menu will be displayed. For example, if Italian cuisine is selected, an Italian food menu will be presented, if Chinese cuisine is selected, a Chinese food menu will be presented, and so on and so forth for all the other cuisine options.

Building the Dynamic Survey using the PowerSurveyPlus Add-on

Now that you’ve seen a dynamic survey in action, let’s see how easy it is to build this survey through CRM using the PowerSurveyPlus add-on (read here how to import and use PowerSurveyPlus).

After creating and saving the new survey in CRM, a button labeled DESIGN will appear on the ribbon in the add-on, allowing us to use the survey designer with drag-and-drop functionality to build our survey.

After creating the survey pages and adding the relevant sections and questions to them, we will use the appropriate tags needed to build the expressions and branching in the survey.

Expressions are the key to the show/hide functionality in PowerSurveyPlus that we use to create dynamic surveys. Every page, section, or question can have expressions associated to it. An expression references a previous question on the survey by using the tag “Question Tag Name” and uses the answer provided to build the dynamic logic. An expression can only reference tags that appear before it on the survey. Let’s see how this all works!

For the first page of our survey, we will create a simple question, “Interested in Learning?” A radio button will display two options: Yes or No. We will use expressions to determine that if Yes is selected, the rest of the survey will be delivered, and if No is selected, the survey will end.

The logic for the first question on the first page is:

We need to add all of the questions to the first page, initially set the questions to invisible (do this by unchecking the Visible Check Box), and then set it so that the questions are visible if Yes is selected.

1. Select the Expression tab, located vertically on the left side of the window. Here we will build the expression: If “Interested in Learning” equals Yes, set the question visible.

2. Select Interested in Learning as the Question Tag from the drop-down options.

3. Select Equal Sign “=” as the Condition.

4. Set the Response as Yes.

5. Set the Question as Visible.

6. Click Save.

Repeat the same steps for the other questions on the first page. Similarly, for the second page, we will show/hide specified sections.

First, we will create our first question, “Please tell us your favorite Cuisine,” that will be connected with a drop-down list displaying several cuisine options. We will tag this as “Favorite Cuisine”. Now, we will create a different section for each cuisine option and then use the question tag to check in our expressions the cuisine that the responder chooses. Based on that selection, we will change the status of the relevant section to Visible.

In the Menu section we created, we will add all the questions and initially we will set these sections to invisible (uncheck the Visible Check Box). You can access the Settings Window for each section and question by clicking the gear button on the right side of the section or question name.

Next, in the same Settings Window, follow the listed steps:

1. Select the Expression tab, located vertically on the left side of the window, and build the expression: If “Favorite Cuisine” equals “Italian Cuisine” set the section as Visible.

2. Select Favorite Cuisine as the Question Tag from drop-down options.

3. Select Equal Sign “=” as the Condition.

4. Set the response to Italian Cuisine.

5. Set the section to Visible.

6. Click Save.

Repeat the steps for the other food order menu options.

Want to see these features in action? Download PowerSurveyPlus and begin your free 30 day trial today! And keep checking our website and blog for more updates and features coming soon for PowerSurveyPlus!

Thanks for stopping by our blog today! And as always, happy CRM’ing!

One of my customers asked me why can’t she edit multiple Tasks (bulk edit) in Advanced Find results grid, while it is certainly possible in any other Tasks grid.

I was not aware of the this limitation and tested it myself. It seems that the Edit command is disabled for all Activity types in Advanced Find results grid when trying bulk edit.

What is the purpose of this limitation? Don’t really know, but here a quick workaround:

Instead of searching for Tasks (or any other type of Activity), select Activities as the Advanced Find query entity and add a condition on the Activity Type column to match the required type.

For some reason, bulk edit is enabled for this query results.

The downside of this workaround is that this query is limited to the general Activity attributes. If you need to query a custom Task attribute, you can save the query as a personal view, access it in any Tasks grid and bulk edit away.

While consumers are increasingly engaging with banks through mobile devices, that doesn’t mean the job of the teller is dying – far from it. Bank tellers are instead evolving into a role that is quickly adapting to better serve customers’ new expectations and demands: the universal banker.

People enter brick-and-mortar bank locations because they need one-on-one interaction to answer a question, resolve an issue, or get educated on something specific. Those customers don’t want to sit around waiting, and they don’t want to be shuffled across departments. They want to walk into the bank, speak to the nearest representative, and have that representative handle their needs.

And that’s where the universal banker comes in. Customers are used to getting lightning-fast answers from a Google search on a smartphone – they expect from a bank rep the same in-depth knowledge, and speed in getting that knowledge, that the Internet delivers.

Getting Insight with CRM

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is an important first step in equipping bank reps with the information they need to quickly, and effectively, serve customers. Ignify’s CRM for Banks solution is specifically tailored to banking institutions’ customer service processes, and provides a valuable tool for productive, efficient customer service management.

CRM for Banks contains a comprehensive customer database that stores all bank customers in a central, standardized repository. Reps can simply type in a customer’s name in the search bar, and immediately be directed to the customer’s CRM record.

The CRM record provides a detailed outline of the customer’s engagement with the bank, allowing reps to instantly view the customer’s account transaction history, past interactions with bank reps, and specific bank preferences. A bank rep can use this information to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that would best match the customer’s preferences and history, and can share this with the customer during their discussion.

The customer records also show multiple accounts that a customer belongs to. For instance, if a customer’s company and personal account are both with the same bank, that bank can see the customer’s activities on both accounts. There’s no need to toggle between different systems; CRM for Banks keeps customer information in one user-friendly place.

CRM for Banks’s customer record provides important customer information (contact details, etc.), and includes a history of the customer’s previous interaction with the bank (such as if they called in with questions, if they had any issues, etc.).

Access Information Quickly with the Knowledge Base

The quicker a customer gets what they need, the better. Giving bank reps the ability to quickly search and locate collateral that helps the customer is an effective way to speed up issue resolution.

CRM for Bank’s Knowledge Base is a consolidated database of all documentation, whether it’s in the form of marketing collateral, step-by-step guides, or answers to frequently asked questions. Bank reps can search for articles using keywords, or search by article category, and then select the article that is most helpful. Bank reps have the ability to upload and share links to articles in the database, making collaboration easier.

The CRM for Banks Knowledge Base provides banks a consolidated repository of documentation, allowing bank reps to find the articles that will help them better assist customers with questions, or requests for more information.

By keeping the customer experience at the forefront of customer service initiatives, banks will more smoothly transition into the digital era of banking without losing the personal touch of the brick-and-mortar location. For more information on how CRM for Banks can strengthen your customer service processes, please email banks@ignify.com.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Marketing Coordinator at Ignify. Ignify is winner/finalist of the Worldwide Microsoft Partner Award in 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010, and offers eCommerce, ERP, CRM, Order Management and POS solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics line of products. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for seven years in a row by Inc. Magazine and Deloitte in the FAST 500 from 2008 to 2013.

by Ignify

The post The Universal Banker: Using CRM for Banks to Provide the Outstanding Service Customers Demand appeared first on CRM Software Blog.

If you wanted to access your CRM from the javascript using web services, the only option until CRM 2016 was to wrap your script as a webresource. That way script is hosted in the same domain as CRM and “rides” authenticated session of your browser. External pages were no go because of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) issues.

CRM 2016 has CORS enabled so now you can create awesome things like single-page applications (SPA) that securely talk to CRM. I thought of putting some cool code together but, as usual, Jim “That’s Mr SDK for you” Daly was the first off the blocks with an SPA sample for CRM.

The most tedious part is authentication but now it’s an absolute breeze with the release of ADAL for javascript. Kilolines of code are now reduced to (simplified version, of course):

  window.config = {
      tenant: "contoso.onmicrosoft.com",
      clientId: "ef46083a-abba-dead-beef-4aafd81a93f5",
      postLogoutRedirectUri: "http://contoso.com/crmspa.html",
      endpoints: { orgUri: "https://contoso.crm.dynamics.com" },
      cacheLocation: 'localStorage', 
  };
  var ac = new AuthenticationContext(config);
  ac.login();
  ac.acquireToken(config.endpoints.orgUri, talkToCRM);

Detailed documentation is available, of course, from the Jim’s team. If you’re thinking of reusing your old code, that’s a no go, unfortunately, as CORS is only supported for Web API and not SOAP or OData v2.

If you haven’t completely hopped on the social media marketing train – you should probably get on it.  Whether your company is B2B or B2C, social media is gaining an increasing amount of relevance in today’s marketing world, and research suggests that it will only increase in prevalence as this wide world grows and develops.  With this marketing platform growing and changing the way marketers reach new clients and customers, more and more time and resources are being invested into social media marketing.  Today’s marketers need a tool to monitor all of their social media activity in one place.  They need a way to monitor and filter new prospects and reach out to them when the time is right.  They need a way to keep tabs on competitors who are also running social media campaigns. And the list goes on.

And this is where Microsoft Social Engagement comes in.  If you’re asking the question “What is Microsoft Social Engagement?” – click that link to read a blog we wrote on Microsoft Social Engagement and some of its exciting, fundamental features.  Once you’re done with that (or if you’ve been with me the whole time here) read below to hear about the best new features and functionalities Microsoft just rolled out in the November update to Social Engagement and how they could benefit your company.

Before November, you could not proactively publish a post from within Microsoft Social Engagement – you could only respond to others’ posts.  Now, however, within the Social Center, you can pull out the “Publish” tab and type up a post from a variety of accounts (depending on what accounts you have already linked to Social Engagement) and publish it to either Facebook or Twitter.  Originally, there was a whisper about being able to add media to these posts such as pictures, videos, etc.; however, that functionality is yet to be seen.

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, this update points to the direction that Microsoft is heading with its investment in Microsoft Social Engagement, which is allowing you to do more things in one place.  Instead of having to toggle from one window to look at what people are saying in Social Engagement to another window with your Twitter or Facebook account open, you can simply publish straight from Microsoft Social Engagement.  This simple change can also serve as a simple time saver for social-media-conscious marketers.

Dynamics CRM already allows the ability to link a post to Dynamics CRM to create a record as either a lead or case.  This functionality is beneficial to monitor leads and cases that come in through the various social media platforms supported in MSE.  With the most recent update, Microsoft has taken it a step farther.  Now, you can filter posts from social media based on if there is already a linked record in CRM matching the post or the author of the post.

Being able to filter posts to determine what has been linked to CRM and what hasn’t is huge for smart marketing practice.  Viewing posts that are already linked to records in CRM will give you insight into how long the author of this post has been in your records, how often they post about your relevant topic, and if they are a viable prospect.  Viewing posts that do not have any record in CRM will give you insight into an ocean of posts written by people who are not in your records.  These are fresh new prospects that are essentially untouched by you and your organization.  This ability to filter posts based on their link to CRM offers a way to get additional valuable views of the authors of relevant topics on your monitored social media platforms with minimal effort from the user.

In addition to proactive publishing and CRM record filtering, Microsoft has rolled out a few more minor updates and changes to MSE that are worth noting:

1. Social Center now only shows posts from the last 14 days.– This change was put in place in an effort to speed up the loading process for streams within Social Center. However, you can still load posts from up to the past month in Analytics.
   
2. Widgets and pages in MSE will now load faster.– Thanks to some migrations and upgrades to critical performance pieces, MSE will now load quicker than before.
   
3. Turkish is now available. – This addition may be more significant to some users than others, but gathering posts from social media, the UI of MSE, and sentiment calculation will all support the Turkish language.
   
4. MSE now uses Microsoft Translator (API) for better language detection. – Simply put, Microsoft Translator (API) will provide better language detection for all languages supported by Bing.

Why does this matter for my business/me?

If you haven’t completely hopped on the social media marketing train – now is a great time to get started.

Whether your company is B2B or B2C, social media is gaining an increasing amount of relevance in today’s marketing world.  And social marketing is changing the way the Marketing Department reaches new clients and customers.  Today’s marketers need a tool to listen to all social channels in one place, understand the trends, connect with customers and prospects in relevant ways, and know the results that their investment is generating.  They need a way to keep tabs on competitors who are also running social media campaigns. And the list goes on.

And this is where Microsoft Social Engagement comes in.  If you’re asking the question “What is Microsoft Social Engagement?” – click that link to read a blog we wrote on Microsoft Social Engagement and some of its exciting, fundamental features.  Once you’re done with that (or if you’ve been with me the whole time here) read below to hear about the best new features and functionalities Microsoft just rolled out in the November update to Social Engagement and how they could benefit your company.

Before November, you could not proactively publish a post from within Microsoft Social Engagement – you could only respond to others’ posts.  Now, however, within the Social Center, you can pull out the “Publish” tab and type up a post from a variety of accounts (depending on what accounts you have already linked to Social Engagement) and publish it to either Facebook or Twitter.  Originally, there was a whisper about being able to add media to these posts such as pictures, videos, etc.; however, that functionality is yet to be seen.

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, this update points to the direction that Microsoft is heading with its investment in Microsoft Social Engagement, which is allowing you to do more things in one place.  Historically, the tool was called "Social Listening" because it was only for monitoring social channels.  About a year ago, Microsoft renamed it to "Social Engagement" and added options to respond to posts.  Now they are expanding the solution to not just respond, put to pro-actively post new content. 

This new feature reduces some of the toggling from one window to look at what people are saying in Social Engagement to another window with your Twitter or Facebook account open.  Now marketing users can simply publish straight from Microsoft Social Engagement.  Research fairly conclusively shows that requiring employees to work with multiple applications hurts both performance and employee morale, and this simple change can be a big step forward for marketers who already have to cram 12 hours of work into an 8 hour day!

Inside sales teams use Dynamics CRM to track lists of sales leads (as leads) and customer service teams use Dynamics CRM to track customer issues (as cases).  A few versions ago, Microsoft added the ability to dynamically generate new leads and cases in CRM based on social posts - with just a few clicks.  With the most recent update, Microsoft has taken it a step further.  Now, marketing, inside sales and customer care teams can filter posts from social media based on if there is already a linked record in CRM matching the post or the author of the post.

Being able to filter posts to determine what has and hasn't been linked to CRM has a huge impact for CMOs who are more accountable than ever for proving the ROI of their team's effots.  Viewing posts that are already linked to records in CRM provides insight into how long the author of this post has been in your records, how often they post about relevant topics, and if they are a viable prospect.  Viewing posts that do not have any record in CRM delivers instant insight into an ocean of posts written by people who are not in your records.  These are fresh new prospects that are essentially untouched by you and your organization - and can then be converted into leads for follow-up by Sales Reps.  With minimal effort from the user, this ability to filter posts based links to CRM, delivers significant new social media monitoring and response value to the marketing department.

In addition to proactive publishing and CRM record filtering, Microsoft has rolled out a few more minor updates and changes to MSE that are worth noting:

1. Social Center now only shows posts from the last 14 days.– This change was put in place in an effort to speed up the loading process for streams within Social Center. However, you can still load posts from up to the past month in Analytics.
   
2. Widgets and pages in MSE will now load faster.– Thanks to upgrades to critical performance components, MSE will now load quicker than before.
   
3. Turkish is now available. – This addition may be more significant to some users than others, but gathering posts from social media, the UI of MSE, and sentiment calculation will all support the Turkish language.
   
4. MSE now uses Microsoft Translator (API) for better language detection. – Simply put, the Microsoft Translator API will provide better language detection for all languages supported by Bing.

Why does this matter for my business/me?

We have been hearing a lot about Agile Methodology for project implementation. But, we also need to see if it is the right choice for Dynamics world. Agile in short says “Do not wait till end, rather let’s see the deliverable in pieces”. Well, that’s justified too. Clients here get to see their baby at regular intervals. Each delivery sprint can go in a controlled manner from End-to-End delivery cycle like the complete projects does, excluding the deployment phase, which happens at the end of the last Sprint of the project.

We at CloudFronts practice Agile for all the project implementation. In fact, our PSM solution is getting redesigned to suit the needs of such Agile project implementation. This is done in order to help project managers keep the data intact in CRM and do not scatter it in multiple excel files. Right from Project creation to Resource allocation to Gantt Charts to Time sheet’s we keep all of it inside CRM so that the PM is in pace of the project and all is in single place.

Agile generally demands clear requirements for the project to be implemented. Keeping this in mind the project moves through Sprints. The following image illustrates “Where does Sprints come into picture”.

We too follow the standard practise dictated by Agile:

1. Daily stand up meeting
2. Iteration planning
3. Unit testing
4. Release planning
5. Burndown/team-based estimation
6. Coding standards
7. Continuous integration
8. Automated builds

The project planning is done in MS Project in Sprinted approach. Though MS Project is not the ideal tool to do Agile Planning but taking the advantage of its flexibility that allows us to do it.

 
We have the following documents in place for each Sprint and the Sprints coming ahead:

1. Daily Agile task allocation Sheet: This is an Excel sheet where we allocate the tasks to the team during the daily stand up meeting and mark the Pending tasks that are incomplete.
2. Sprint Document: This contains the following 4 things:
   1. Achievable
   2. Backlog
   3. Completed
   4. Other Remarks

   All the incomplete tasks from previous sprint are move to next sprints Backlog section.
   This also then becomes the part of the current sprint.

There are multiple benefits of following Agile:

1. Development process gets streamlined and simplified.
2. Higher rate of customer satisfaction.
3. Reduces risk.
4. Improves project Visibility.
5. Success rate for project goes higher by 70%
6. Reduces the cost of development.

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