Michael Cross - Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant

What’s the best new feature of Microsoft CRM 4.0?

1. Improved workflow functionality
2. Built-in report designer
3. Additional entity relationship options (many-to-many, system-to-system, etc.)
4. Duplicate detection
5. Improved data import and migration functionality
6. Built-in mail merge templates

My vote goes to the several new options for entity relationships, including many-to-many, system-to-system, and self-referential.

These options go beyond the user and make Microsoft Dynamics CRM even more powerful as a platform for business growth.

What’s your favorite new feature? Why?

If you are serious about generating leads using the Internet, nurturing the leads until they are ready to buy, and then building relationships with your customers after the initial purchase, then e-mail marketing is an absolute must!

There are many inexpensive solutions available, but the one I like the most (so far) is AWeber.

Why? Well, like almost every other e-mail marketing service provider out there, AWeber’s e-mail marketing solution is easy to use, the company is serious about preventing and fighting spam, and it’s inexpensive (anywhere from $15 to $20 per month, depending on how far in advance you pay).

There are two key differentiators from other services:

1. AWeber provides the ability to e-mail RSS feeds so that it can be used on your blog to send e-mails of blog postings. Of the other of the popular services I have checked, only iContact (formerly IntelliContact) provides this capability, but at a much higher price.
2. AWeber charges by number of subscribers, rather than number of e-mails sent. The flat monthly fee allows for up to 10,000 subscribers in your database. Each additional 10,000 subscribers is $9.95 per month. This means that you can have unlimited campaigns, lists, follow up messages, broadcast newsletters, and message size.

Unfortunately, at this time, AWeber’s solution does not integrate with Microsoft CRM. Maybe I can convince them to develop this integration in the future.

Anyway, if you need the ability to build your list of prospects and customers, and to easily stay in touch with them via e-mail, then check out AWeber. I think you will be happy.

If you ever wonder whether open source software would be good for you (it’s free, isn’t it?), then I recommend you read this article on open source software.

The most illuminating part is the last two paragraphs on page 2:

“If you take this path, you become a software development firm, and that kind of company needs to be run differently than a traditional retailer,” says Dustin Roberston, vice president of marketing. “The to-do list for maintaining the site gets so jammed that if you don’t have developers to throw at it, the list just grows and grows.”

Backcountry has 25 developers and engineers on a staff of 260. And Jenkins admits that even open-source software has limitations that the best developers cannot overcome. In those cases, he’s perfectly happy to purchase old-fashioned licensed applications. “I’m not going to go the extra mile just to be the zealot,” he says.

Very interesting, isn’t it?

Now, if your company doesn’t have developers on staff, but you still want a CRM application that is flexible and can be customized with minimal programming, then check out Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The architecture of Microsoft CRM allows non-programmers to customize the application to meet your needs. Microsoft calls this “Affordable Adaptability” and this is one reason why I love Microsoft CRM (although I’ll be the first to tell you it’s not perfect).

An example is the fulfillment process that I created for a client.

This example should give you some idea of what can be done with Microsoft CRM when the standard functionality doesn’t meet your needs.

I wrote a case study on designing a fulfillment process using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and posted it on my companies blog. Check it out and let me know what you think. I would love to hear how other people have addressed similiar requirements.

In every Microsoft CRM implementation I have been involved in, there has been at least one item that I considered to be a risk (no surprises there).

The most common risk factors I’ve come across are:

• Availability of qualified resources
• Complexity of technical infrastructure and ensuring everything works
• Complexity of functional requirements and impact on customizations, particularly custom programming
• Third-party add-ons and utilities
• Data migration
• Systems integration

In the last project, two items ended up causing trouble.

The first was a third-party add-on that could not be installed correctly, or did not work 100% when it was installed. It took over two weeks and many hours of remote support sessions with the vendor, plus a patch to fix a bug, before it was working as expected.

The second was the technical infrastructure, particularly getting the outgoing e-mail to actually go out (solved by changing the SMTP settings), and getting the incoming e-mail to appear as activities in CRM (still a work in progress).

The lesson I learned? Identify as early as possible the risk factors and figure out how to mitigate those risks.

For example, don’t wait until the week before go live to install third-party add-ons, especially complex ones. Or if you think there is going to be a need for custom programming, then line up a programmer so they are ready when you need them.

Bottom line: Don’t sugarcoat the situation, and don’t make assumptions. Get into the details early and often, and you’ll be okay.

Do you think that different types of organizations (e.g., customers, prospects, vendors, etc.) or people (customers, prospects, service providers, etc.) should be tracked in different entities within Microsoft CRM 3.0?

For example, should you leave customers within the Account entity, and vendors within a custom entity? Why or why not?

One reason why you should do your best to keep organizations within the Account entity, and individuals within the Contact entity is so that you can take advantage of as much native functionality within CRM as possible.

For example, did you know that sending an e-mail only works with Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Users, and Queues? So if you create a custom entity with an nvarchar attribute in the format of e-mail, Microsoft CRM will not be able to use that entity or field to send an e-mail, either manually or via workflow.

Want to use the Case Management functionality to track cases for customers and other types of organizations tracked using custom entities? Sure, you can do that. What they don’t tell you is that you should not expect to be able to send automated e-mails to the organization shown in the lookup for the custom entity.

This is just one example of limitations of custom entities.

So when it comes to companies and people, be smart and stick with Accounts and Contacts.

Well, it’s here! I finally got my act together and put together this blog-based website.

Now that I’m rocking and rolling, I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences as a Microsoft Dynamics CRM consultant with you. And I really hope to hear from you, as well.

Since there are so many other sources of information regarding Microsoft CRM, I will do my best to make this a solution-oriented resource so that it is worth visiting.

Are you ready? Let’s go!