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What’s new in
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 ?
Why I.B.I.S. for Microsoft
CRM?
Business moves at light speed today, requiring that
every company continuously reexamine direction,
strategies, suppliers, partners—literally every
variable and relationship that might lead to
complacency. The intensified search for competitive
advantage may mean that some of your best customers
pick up and leave without you ever knowing that
there was a problem. How well can you react to—and
even predict—ever-shifting customer needs and
competitor moves?
Infuse your organization with new levels of customer
intelligence using Microsoft Dynamics CRM version
4.0, an all-new customer relationship management
(CRM) system that gives every customer-facing
employee the information they need to truly impress
customers. With Microsoft CRM, you can create a
centralized repository of customer data that sits
neatly alongside Microsoft Office and Microsoft
Office Outlook—the applications your employees
probably use every day. From Outlook, employees
access Microsoft CRM sales, marketing, and customer
service modules to make sales decisions, market
products, solve problems, and get strategic views of
the business. It’s CRM that works—and works very
well—because it works the way your users already do,
works the way your business already does, and works
the way technology should.
Works the way you do
Microsoft CRM is quite simply the fastest and
easiest way to add CRM capabilities to any
organization that uses Microsoft Office or Outlook.
Because it was designed to partner with Outlook,
Microsoft CRM delivers lower training costs, broader
user adoption, less application-switching, higher
productivity, and an incredibly rapid return on
investment.
Microsoft CRM can give your employees direct access
to customer information through Microsoft Outlook or
Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), enabling access
to the information they need when they need it, in
the office or on the road. Microsoft CRM lets you
work the way you want to work with features such as:
• Tight integration with Microsoft Office and
Outlook, allowing employees to easily pull
information from Microsoft CRM into Office
applications such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
software and Word.
• Quick and easy access to your data through
context-sensitive information for populating forms
or taking next steps without changing screens.
• Customized workspaces that allow users to create,
save, and reuse favorite views of customer data
without the distraction of unneeded information.
• Service Calendar that allows service schedulers
and dispatchers to schedule activities by resource,
time, or service.
• Powerful reporting and analysis tools that make it
easy to identify opportunities and problems at a
glance.
• Great mobile support that allows field workers to
get instant access to customer data from any
personal digital assistant (PDA), laptop, or
browser.
Works the way your business does
Microsoft CRM not only slips right into your
employees’ lives without disruption, it also adapts
easily to your existing business workflow and
processes. You or your information technology (IT)
partner can quickly modify application forms, data
fields, and relationships and add new activities and
objects without writing a single line of code. This
makes it easy to tailor Microsoft CRM to suit your
needs and fit your business like a glove. You’ll
also find a number of elegant workflow innovations
that speed use, including next-step suggestions and
automatic task assignment. Microsoft CRM also
includes capabilities such as:
• A new marketing automation module that makes it
easy to build customer or lead lists, create
targeted marketing campaigns, track the progress of
those campaigns, and follow up on campaigns.
• Quick Campaign wizard that allows marketers and
salespeople to send out e-mail blasts to targeted
lists and track response.
• Service scheduling that allows you to centrally
manage all aspects of a service request, from
logging and dispatching to tracking and follow-up.
• Easy customization of Microsoft CRM to your
business workflow by adding custom objects and
activities, designing custom views for different
users, and building business logic into the CRM so
that Microsoft CRM automates repetitive tasks, tells
users next steps, sends e-mails, and raises alerts
for open items—nothing falls through the cracks,
giving your customers a better experience.
• Flexible reporting that enables managers to easily
see how your business is doing—CRM data can be
transferred into Microsoft Excel for analysis or
into Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server for updating
executive dashboards or collaborating on
customer-related documents.
Works the way technology should
Microsoft CRM works the way your IT staff wants it
to because it’s based on proven, industry-standard
Microsoft technology that’s easy to learn and work
with. You’ll enjoy a rapid, low-cost deployment; low
support costs; and easy scalability as your business
grows. IT-friendly features include:
• Easy to modify forms, data fields, and information
relationships so that users can get the customized
information they need.
• Streamlined installation diagnostic tools that
reduce setup time and help ensure a successful
deployment of Microsoft CRM.
• Fast data searches across large volumes of
customer data that help users find the information
they need.
• Easy to use step-by-step Microsoft Exchange
Connector Deployment Wizard that simplifies
Microsoft CRM integration with Microsoft Exchange
and Outlook.
• Simple and fast connectivity to external data
sources that gives users access to relevant
information.
• Advanced management and notification tools that
are centralized and give the IT staff the right
information to manage a CRM system.
What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 also known as “Titan” has
been released! Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 business
software is a complete customer relationship
management (CRM) solution that provides the
capabilities that organizations need to gain and
retain competitive advantage in today's business
world.
Microsoft relies on customers to guide product
evolution. To this end, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
team spent significant time listening to customers
and observing how they use CRM. The results of this
research have helped us bring our customers
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Here's a quick look at
the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM features.
Greater support for global business
Many companies require the ability to work in
multiple languages and currencies whether globally
or within their own geographical area. The Microsoft
Dynamics CRM 4.0 client provides improved support
for multiple languages and currencies, making
multinational deployments for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
much easier.
Flexible hosting scenarios with multi-tenant
installations
Many CRM scenarios require an organization to
support multiple groups of CRM software users while
keeping their data distinct. For example, a hosting
company may have multiple customers using Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, or a company with an affiliate model
might require each affiliate to keep their data
separate from the others. Because Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0 supports multiple instances of the product
installed on the same physical hardware, multiple
customers or business organizations can have their
own distinct Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation.
This not only makes it easier to manage those
customers, it makes better use of server hardware
and improves overall operations costs. With
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, which is built on a
multi-tenant architecture, organizations can run
multiple distinct instances of Microsoft Dynamics
CRM on a single server.
Improved availability, performance, and scalability
Businesses want their CRM data accessible 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
includes significant enhancements to availability,
performance, and scalability to ensure that your CRM
data is available when it's needed, without
interruption.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 supports clustering for
solution components, including Microsoft Exchange
Server, CRM Web Services, and load balancing. The
e-mail router has received several performance and
scalability enhancements, including parallel
processing of inboxes and better support for
enterprise deployment scenarios. Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0 also has better performance in Wide Area
Network (WAN) environments, transferring only the
data that needs to be transferred over slow
connections. With support for SQL Server mirroring,
an additional copy of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
database is maintained, so that in case of database
failure, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system can
switch databases automatically and with minimal
disruption.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has brilliant new
features and functionality:
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Outlook Client Enhancements:
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Tracking token in the subject line…gone! And still
tracks emails.
• Configuration Wizard
• Office UI enhancements
• Outlook Diagnostics Tool
• Mail Merge enhancements
• Sync Performance enhancements
• Outlook sync: phone calls, letters, faxes
• Bulk Tracking of e-mails and contacts
• Users of Microsoft Office OneNote can now take
notes created in OneNote and assign them to
Microsoft Dynamics CRM users with a single click.
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New Reporting and Configuration Features:
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New Integration Architecture
• New
Security Options for Reports
• All 3.0 reports upgrade to new security model
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End user reporting wizard
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Multiple Entity fields available on views and
Advanced Find
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Support for many to many relationships and one to
one relationships
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Expanded support for configuration against
system entities
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New Workflow Features:
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Workflow toolset part of web based
application User Interface (UI).
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Personal Workflows (i.e. end users can
create workflows).
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Richer Workflows - more events, entities,
relationships, flow control, records, dynamic
expressions and processes
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Contextual visibility. Drill down from entities to
the actual workflow.
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Workflow data available for reporting,
advanced find, and export to excel
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Leveraging Windows Workflow Foundation
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Why I.B.I.S. for Microsoft
CRM?
I.B.I.S. has been on the leading edge of Microsoft
CRM since its inception. I.B.I.S. participates in
Alpha and Beta testing with Microsoft to ensure that
clients' needs are being met and heard. Our vast
experience with the application provides you with added insight on how to most
effectively leverage the application for your
organization.
We offer two deployment options, so you can choose
what's best for your business: Microsoft Dynamics
CRM on-premise or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live
(recently re-branded to Online
click here for more
information), a
hosted solution.
Mapping the application to your
business needs is I.B.I.S.’s number one goal in
delivering successful CRM implementations.
Download the CRM Success White
Paper Here |