I just finished watching a Partner Session entitled a Technical Deep Dive of CRM Solution Accelerators. This session was focused on the 8 new releases of Microsoft CRM 4 Acelerators.
I think that the team has done a great job getting these out for release. The first releases are to partners and customers are slated for as early as the end of this week.
The Solution Accelerator demo videos are going to be posted on the PLC and Partnersource by the end of the week as well. There will also be additional collateral such as BDM and TDM decks, Whitepapers, etc on each solution accelerator from what i heard in the session.
It was funny because the sessions were so crowded that keeping a decent internet audio connection was quite horrible. I will keep you posted as i get to try these out for myself.
As a Microsoft CRM Consultant i get to interact with CRM clients on a regular basis, which i really enjoy. Spending adequate time with a client is needed to get an understanding of not only if CRM can work for a particular business, but is it the right fit for the organization.
I thought it would be helpful though to talk about some of the implemenatation quirks i have seen and hopefully it will help you along as well in your CRM project plan. Knowing some hurdles upfront will hopefully save alot of trouble down the implementation road.
First Thing is First….Processes!
The first thing to always look at is what issues are the clients facing? Why are they investigating CRM? It is funny that some “Consultants” do not even manage to ask this question sometimes and really get to what business processes that the client is looking to achieve. So what is needed here? Just an understanding of:
- Know What the customer is doing
- How they currently do it -> Detailed Explanation
- What processes the customer has in place to achieve operations - Manual? Automated?
- What users in the organization are needed to perform the work at hand.
Knowing these issues even at a high-level can mean the difference in user acceptance down the road.
Current Process Management
Take a hard look at how you are currently providing information to additional users in the organization. Do you have spreadsheets everywhere for tracking sales information, customer info and more?
Don’t underestimate goal-setting for the implementation!
Make sure that when you are performing an implementation that you have defined specific goals for your implementation. For example:
- What measurements does the company want to achieve?
- What processes are in place to achieve them currently?
- Does the company currently have any baseline measurements for these goals?
Do not just implement CRM in an organization without an idea of what the existing indicators are for matching at the end of implementation. If you do you could find that your customer will not believe that the application has valuable ROI for the organization. Especially if they don’t consider results of the system properly.
These results come in many, many ways:
- Cost reductions - whether it is a cost reduction for providing your services, repetitive tasks administrative tasks, or customer aquisition costs.
- Revenue Increases - Closed opportunities and quoting win rates.
- Others - customer retention rates, and lead capture and close rates.
Hand in hand with results is the fact that you have to make sure that your idea of success with your CRM implementation is in line with the industry average.
For example you wouldn’t expect 80% close rate for qualified sales opprtunities from CRM for an industry that typically averages 0.5%. Hindsight as well is never 20/20. 
Set Realistic and attainable Goals
Setting relevant goals will ensure that you stay within reasonable expectations of the CRM system that you have invested time and money in.
Know your Resource Limits!
How is your company staffed in IT. Do you have someone knowledgeable in CRM? Knowing these limitations will help. If you plan to do a simple installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with no customization your technical staff can most likely handle the setup.
However, CRM is not just an application so you will not see value add to the organization simply from this. To get the value add such as automation, sales stages, workflow design, and additional reporting it does pay to find a Partner that knows how to truly implement Microsoft CRM.
Underestimating implementation time can kill a project that is under development so you should have a good idea going in what the overall project cost is going to be.
Start Out Small and Simple
I really cannot stress this topic enough, do not initially do everything you want with your CRM Deployment. Phased approaches are the best way in my opinion to go in a CRM deployment.
Starting with a test group in your organization, a CRM committee, or just a handful of users is normally the best way to start. You have to not only master the basics first from a user interface standpoint, but your employees have to understand the application as well. Luckily Microsoft CRM’s interface is integrated into outlook so most users will get it really fast. I am sure that we are all familiar with the Garbage In, Garbage Out Rule. Remember, Walk… Crawl ………. Sprint!
Know when you shouldn’t Automate Processes
Ok. Now i know that this may sound anti-progressive, but honestly there are times when processes should not be automated in your organization. Although the capability is there it just doesn’t make sense.
With this in mind make sure that the relevant people in the organization are involved with reviewing and approving your existing processes. Lose the processes that are no longer needed or used. Make changes to the ones that need to be made, and add functionality only where it is needed for the first implementation phase.
Measure.. Measure… and Measure Again!
The last point really is taking the measurements to help with indicators of how CRM is doing in the organization. You shouldn’t stop reviewing this information and comparing it to your original baseline. Let this be an aid to provide how CRM is doing in your organization.
This is some information that i got and thought i would repost from the Microsoft Dynamics Team Site. Very Handy!
Announcing the sixth update to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK. You can download it here or read it online at the CRM Developer Center.
What’s New in this Release?
Updates include:
- E-mail Provider documentation – Have you wanted to know about creating a custom e-mail provider? This all new section gives you the basics!
- Customization file reference – This newly completed section describes the details you need when working with the form and saved query sections of the customization file.
- Updated Plug-in sample code – We have rewritten the sample plug-ins to use Dynamic Entity. For more information, refer to these blog posts.
- Using CRM URLs and the PrependOrgName function – This topic talks about constructing URLs for different deployment types. The PrependOrgName function helps you create the correct URL for on-premise deployments.
- New sample code – As always, we’ve added more sample code.
- Check the Release History table for a complete list of updates and additions to this release.
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) is for developers, system customizers, and report writers.
It contains all new information about creating plug-ins, working with custom workflow activities, using the new Web services, using new data management features, and much more.This SDK contains information for developers writing server side code, custom business logic, integration modules, workflow assemblies, and more. It provides an architectural overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the entity model, security model, and Web services. Sample code and walkthroughs guide you through the new features.
The SDK also contains information for developers customizing the Web client or Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, including scripting, integration of custom Web pages, sample code, and a detailed user interface style guide.
Look for regular updates to this SDK. Future releases will include the ISV Guide.
All companies will have to decide on the following question. “Is CRM worth the Cost to implement in my organization?” If you are a CRM Consultant i am sure that you have heard this as well multiple times.
Many times in a CRM deployment customers find that post-implementation benefit measurements and value added to an organization may be hard to properly evaluate without defining key indicators upfront. This can sometimes seem like a daunting task and goes beyond simply the Cost of Ownership, the one-time and ongoing costs including support.
On the other hand benefits gained have to be weighed from a newly implemented system. These benefits happen in a variety of ways but mainly come in the form of enhancements of revenue, margin, cost reductions, productivity, increased service, customer loyalty, defined business processes or other intangibles. Only by measuring these can an organization truly know the impact that CRM has made in their organization.
The cost of implementing CRM may seem outrageous to a business owner without understanding the benefits the company will achieve. For this discovery should be done in the organization to see how the business currently functions and areas of improvement through the use of a CRM deployment.
Without CRM each rep maintains their own information about their accounts, in multiple different formats as well with no standard structure. Sales reps own this information and not the company. Without a CRM system there is also no opportunity for sharing or leveraging a database of the centralized customer information from the whole organization. Also, what happens typically when a sales rep leaves an organization? Where does this information end up? It is important that information is protected and secured properly.
It is amazing to me that some companies do not consider customer and prospect information as a valuable asset to the organization. Gartner reports that only 10-15% of companies realize the value of their customer base. Most companies never fully utilize the ability for tailored selling to help improve the profitability of unprofitable customers in their organization.
Does the organization also know how many sales they are loosing now? Chances are if you are like the average company it is in the range of 6-8% and even higher depending on the tracking and sales management system in place currently.
So what is 6-8% of the annual sales worth to a company? Finding this out is important as well. If your company is at $25M in sales revenue the average could be as high as $1.5M -$2M.
I know what my answer is! CRM is a must for most organizations and not used for only contact management. To get the best return on investment for CRM you have to dig deeper than the typical installation. If you only use CRM only for it’s contact management features you are not going to see the return on investment that you had hoped for.
Today, Microsoft released to partners its revised vison and statement of direction for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Within the contents include an executive summary that mentions the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics labeled V.Next which is targeted release is around late 2009 to early 2010.
The statement of direction mentions the Roadmap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and the strategic review of mobility options for Microsoft CRM. Microsoft has also formed an alliance with TenDigits as well to help provide mobility solutions to the platform.
There is a mention as well of the Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, and finally more information about the CRM Accelerators that will be a new range of add-on solutions which are being developed as showcases to broaden the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The document also contains a detailed description about each accelerator and screenshots of a few ones such as e-service, and the analytics accelerator. AWESOME! If you are a partner you must see these value adds for your client base!
Also in the document Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is mentioned and the planned releases it will undergo as well in the short term and on the development move to the “V.Next” Platform. Which is defined in the document as a Best-Of-Breed Business Solution Platform. I completely agree and i posted a previous article as well last month entitled “CRM 4 - Ultimate business platform?”
The complete document is available to Microsoft Dynamics Partners to download at the following link.
The users guide for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 (on premise) has been updated and is now available from Microsoft in both word and pdf formats in the Microsoft download center. Here is the link below
This is the first article in my implementation management series for CRM consultants, developers, enthusiasts, and basically anyone else that will take the time to read it. I am not too choosy and i hope that they will provide help.
As many have seen that the biggest issue with a CRM deployment of any size simply comes down to user acceptance. In some cases user acceptance is really an easy task to accomplish, although rare it is still possible. Visits and meetings at a clients location and getting face time is great if the client can spare it. This is a great way to outline issues that stand in the way of deployment or user acceptance and help develop a strong internal team onsite to report issues.
Alot of the time issues come up when you are back in your office or away from the client site. Communication is always vital to understanding what the client needs. Clients also need the feeling that you are accomplishing the work at hand that you have discussed and like to see progress being made as their issues are resolved.
Here is one easy way that i have found to provide quick development management at a clients location. This is normally implemented after the initial deployment phase is over. Tie in a bug tracking system into your clients Microsoft CRM deployment. Any one will do and trust me there are plenty out there.
After you have chosen your bug tracking system of choice implement it on a webserver and then make sure it is available for use outside your general network. Secure it of course with an SSL Cert of choice, and you have created an easy bug tracking portal.
Next modify the sitemap at the clients location for Microsoft CRM and add a button that says “Report a Bug”, etc and create a page with an iframe back to your bugtracking system inhouse. This way onsite you can have your users have the ability to log issues that they have within Microsoft CRM itself.
There is also case management that you could do within Microsoft CRM itself and create workflows that facilitate tracking the support requests and cases and any contracts that a client may have, etc.
The biggest thing is that you have a system in place. You can use the built in customer service module in CRM as well to track these cases and to not only create new requests.
I chose a bugrtracking option because i wanted the customer to not only be able to do the above, but so that they would be able to login at anytime to my bugtracking system and view the outstanding requests that exist on their location, be able to upgrade priorities, and also remove issues if they have been resolved as well.
Although i didn’t get the opportunity to attend WPC 2008 in Houston this year i have already seen articles released and hearing feedback from additional consultants that are also sharing this great information about the latest add-on modules for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
Barry Givens and Reuben Krippner have apparently displayed the latest enhancements that the CRM 4 development team have been cooking up.
In no particular order here they are:
1.) Analytics Foundation:This includes sales, marketing and service dashboards and a range of additional scorecard information from SSRS, and PerformancePoint Server. I know that dashboarding has been a large request out of box to compete with that other CRM provider.
2.) Business Productivity: MSSP, Business Auditing, sales process and common workflow patterns such as incident management.
3.) Enterprise Search: Integration with Sharepoint business data catalog. Audience specific SharePoint Portals with CRM data. One central place to find content!
4.) Notifications : Newsfeeds relevant to employee job roles, Vista gadgets and unified communications in general.
5.) Sales Methodologies : Support for sales methodologies for (TAS) Target Account selling, (SPI) solution and strategic selling that is consistent in your organizations CRM Deployment.
6.) Extended Sales Forecasting: Enhanced pipeline, budgeting, report forecasting features.
7.) Event Management : Campaign management functionality for online management of events through online calendar and online event registration portal.
8.) eService: Customer support portal. Customers can submit their own cases, perform knowledge-base searches, prioritize cases and allow editing of the customers profile.
This is the latest release about the Accelerators and they are planned to be released over the next few months so keep your eyes out for them. I know that i will!
If you have seen this problem happen in the installation process you are not alone. Sometimes this happens during the microsoft crm 3 to 4 upgrade of the crm client.
Something that will aid in this situation is Microsoft’s Internet Facing Deployment Tool. I have had clients mention that they cannot configure Microsoft CRM 4 Outlook client and that they receive the “configuration wizard cannot connect to the Microsoft CRM server” Error message, and it becomes pretty frustrating.
With the Microsoft CRM IFD tool you can easily fix this problem . The tool comes in handy for troubleshooting the errors with the AD SDK Root domain and IFD SDK Root Domain location in the database which seems to cause this issue for the most part. There is more information about the IFD tool below at the following Microsoft Support website.
During the process of upgrading the Microsoft CRM 3 outlook client to Microsoft CRM 4 i noticed issues with leftover dropdown CRM menu in my outlook client. I thought it was strange and i wasn’t for sure if anyone else as well had seen this. The fix is very simple, but i thought i would blog about it just in case other people run into this as well.
To remove the extra leftover CRM toolbar options you can go into outlook click tools-> commands -> menu bar. From here you can select the options to delete from the menu to remove the leftover components.
Simple enough, kind of aggrivating the upgrade didn’t remove it on the client, but here is a simple fix.
