Freelance or Interim PMO & Project Manager

Nov172016 by adminNo Comments

MS Release Outlook Customer Manager

CRM, Home Page

Microsoft unveils a new, lightweight CRM for those not ready for Dynamics 365: Outlook Customer Manager New service targeted at small businesses building better customer relations Nov 14, 2016 Michael Morisy It's launched a new service and mobile app called Outlook Customer Manager that's available as a free add-on for those with an Office 365 Business Premium Plan, starting today for those in the First Release program and rolling out worldwide over the next few months. The app builds on Bookings, its customer scheduling app, and is designed to hit at the same small business segment. "Outlook Customer Manager gives you a complete view of your interactions with each customer, helps you track tasks and deals in progress, and surfaces timely reminders. You can stay on top of customer relationships right…

Jul132016 by adminNo Comments

ERP Implementation – The Traps.

CRM, Projects

Published on May 6, 2016 Vinay Bansal ERP implementations are littered with tales of lost millions and withdrawals after implementation. Many of the most experienced IT consultancies/ Software Providers have failed. So what are the secrets? What are the traps? This question could produce at least a book, and probably a sequel. Here are a few things the Software Provider is not going to tell you about. They are by no means the most important, but they are missed in many implementations. ERP Systems Most organisations do not understand the costs associated with an ERP system when they first commence the implementation. The benefits are usually well understood. The costs do not surface until well into the implementation - and why should the Software Provider talk to an organisation about the costs and…

Nov272015 by adminNo Comments

6 CRM predictions for 2016

CRM, Home Page, Strategy

So what will be the big trends in CRM in 2016? Here are six predictions. CRM software will become even more social. “In 2016, we'll see a lot more CRM providers adding new social media features, whether that be tracking customer interactions or suggesting new contacts,” says Marc Prosser, cofounder, Fit Small Business. “Nimble is out ahead on this, but expect others to add these features while their team (and others) devise new ways CRM can take advantage of social media.” Mobile CRM will become a must-have. In 2016, “we'll see CRM go mobile in a big way,” says Prosser. “So far, most mobile CRM apps have focused on providing a basic phone-ready version of the desktop version, usually without the full set of features.” Over the next 12 months,…

Nov232015 by adminNo Comments

Cloud Applications – Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

CRM, Home Page, Strategy

Very interesting reminder.... I’m just completing a project where all the telephony for the client I am working for has moved to a cloud service provider – every part of the service from ACD, SIP Proxy, SBC and the associated reporting tools and user management all reside there. It has been a very interesting project from both a technical and planning perspective, one of the biggest learns that I have taken away from it is the knowledge that even though a platform might sit in the cloud it is very important to consider the service that is being provided and what you, as the client needs to have in place to make it an overall success. Of course it’s possible to have Cloud Storage as a Service or Telephony as…

Nov222015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft Dynamics, the real ERP alternative to SAP

CRM, Home Page, Projects, Strategy

Last Thursday 19th of November, Microsoft gave at last more details about its new Microsoft Dynamics Ax and since them we can start giving more details about this new revolutionary ERP platform. Cloud based (but later alter mid 2016, also On-Premise), modern HTML5 interface based on Office 365 look and feel, Power BI, Real Time Analytics with On Memory Database Technology, Office 365 & CRM Integration, Machine Learning and much more. This new version present a huge leap in technology but maintaining the proven functionality that have helped thousand of companies along the world to optimise their processes and continue operating in a more challenging and more interconnected economic world. The objective of this post is to focus how Microsoft Dynamics compares to SAP. The other big player on the ERP…

Nov132015 by admin3 Comments

CRM activity Records

CRM, Home Page

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has different Activity entities, showing actions from the CRM users. ActivityPointer records are automatically created when an Activity record is created, enabling developer to retrieve different Activity types with one request. Activities are the actions users do in CRM, often tracking the interaction between users and customers. CRM has lots of different activities PhoneCall Task Letter Email Appointment Fax Custom Activities Tracking the activity of users/customers, records the time spent on CRM records. For cases, you can see activities associated with the case. Tracking activities allows different people to work a record with a full knowledge of the status of the case. Activity facts Activity is an entity in CRM, you can look at it in the custom solution The activity entity is non-editable. Activity schema name is…

Nov122015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft to open UK datacentre

CRM, Home Page, O365, SharePoint, Strategy

After a year of constant and often surprising announcements from Microsoft, the key news this time is that they are to open a UK data centre next year, hosting Azure and Office 365. The new UK-based datacentre is said to be opening from late 2016, though it sounds like the MoD will begin using it sooner than that. O365 and Azuze UK data centre coming 2016 At his keynote speech at the Future Decoded event in London yesterday, CEO Satya Nadella stated that customers in the UK would at last be able to store data within the country, allaying fears (even I not actual legal impediments) around governance and data protection. In addition to Microsoft Azure and Office 365, the UK datacentre will support Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online sometime afterwards. Microsoft…

Nov92015 by adminNo Comments

Data Loader Service: How to Use (Part 2 of 2)

CRM, Home Page

Data Loader Service: How to Use (Part 2 of 2) crmblog crmblog Microsoft MSFT 220,102 Points 4 3 4 Recent Achievements Blog Commentator III Blog Commentator II Blogs All-Star View Profile 13 Oct 2015 9:46 AM Comments 1 This blog post is the second in a two-part post about the Data Loader Service. The first post can be found here. This post details a quick walk-through of how to use the service and various features. Configuring Data Loader Service There are 2 steps that need to be completed before this service can be used. Step 1: Deploy the Data Loader runtime for a specific CRM organization Data Loader for every CRM organization needs to deploy a new runtime module to ensure data isolation across organizations and to stay closer to…

Nov92015 by adminNo Comments

Data Loader Service: Preview Feature for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (Part 1 of 2)

CRM, Home Page, Uncategorized

Data Loader Service: Preview Feature for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (Part 1 of 2) crmblog crmblog Microsoft MSFT 220,102 Points 4 3 4 Recent Achievements Blog Commentator III Blog Commentator II Blogs All-Star View Profile 8 Oct 2015 11:11 AM Comments 11 Customers are facing challenges with data migration scenario, where each customer/partner has to write custom code or use 3rd party tools to import large volume of data. To help alleviate this pain point, Microsoft Dynamics team has developed a cloud Data Loader service for Dynamics CRM Online. The key benefit of this service is the ability to move your data between flat files and CRM Online, and cut down on implementation costs. We’re pleased to announce preview of this service that will empower organizations to better manage their…

Nov62015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft empowers business transformation

CRM, Home Page, O365, SharePoint, Strategy

ATLANTA — March 16, 2015 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the availability of new products and services designed to enable people and organizations to put data to work, driving better results for business of all sizes. The announcements were made at Convergence 2015, Microsoft’s annual conference for its business customers. “Businesses are hungry to seize new opportunities using technologies like machine learning and predictive analytics,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Only when businesses create a culture that empowers everyone to have access to data and insight that drive action will they be positioned to truly transform.” Nadella demonstrated products and services built by Microsoft to empower industries, organizations and individuals to drive insight and action from their data. “Microsoft Azure IoT services combined with Windows 10…

Oct172015 by adminNo Comments

Three Ways You Can Recover From an ERP/CRM Failure

CRM, Home Page, Projects

Recovering from a failing project is an incredibly difficult process. It can require a change in project scope, a hard look at requirements, an introduction of new methodologies and clear project controls. In some extreme situations, the project team and consultants may need to be replaced. After a sobering, no holds barred assessment; the following actions must be taken. Re-examine the ERP Software. Determining if the ERP/CRM software was originally a good fit for the organization is the first step to recovery. The recovery team must determine if the project team evaluated the ERP/CRM options appropriately or chose specific software based on invalid assumptions. While the software is often the immediate culprit, often times it is merely a symptom of the real failure issues: failure to provide adequate change management…

Oct162015 by adminNo Comments

New Knowledge Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 release

CRM, Home Page

In Today’s world, the success of an organization is directly linked to the quality of customer service it provides. The only way to do customer-centricity right is to offer customers the right information. Knowledge management is considered as one of the most important pillar of customer service that helps organization give their customers the right data at the right time to solve their problems. As Bob Stutz mentioned in his blog post, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 comes with a new knowledge management solution. With this new solution, you can quickly turn customer feedback and issues into knowledge articles. Content authoring and update of knowledge articles is enabled in the interactive service hub. Here are the main features that come with the Knowledge Management offering in CRM 2016 release: Rich Content…

Oct82015 by adminNo Comments

Why it’s time to STOP “Adding Value”

CRM, Projects, Strategy

It’s probably the most commonly proposed response to price pressures and commoditisation: if we’re not prepared to cut our prices, we had better add more value for the customer. It’s a reasonable objective, but the sad truth is that most so-called “value-added” strategies simply add cost and complexity without making the offering any more desirable to the customer. In fact, they often have the opposite effect. (more…)

Oct12015 by adminNo Comments

Students benefitting from individual secure, cloud-based document storage

CRM, Home Page, O365

When OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ West Kirby Grammar School wanted to upgrade and integrate its ageing systems to better support the faculty and high achieving student body, it turned to Microsoft. Using Office 365, Skype for Business unified communications, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 and powerful Window 8.1 tablets, the teaching and learning experience has been transformed with truly anywhere working. The school can confidently look to the future supported by a secure, cutting-edge platform that delivers unparalleled experience and the scope to develop and grow in line with the school’s success. As one of the top 50 performing schools in the UK, West Kirby Grammar School has a highly driven body of 150 staff and 1,200 students to equip and empower each day. What sets the school apart is…

Sep302015 by adminNo Comments

ExpressRoute for Office 365

CRM, Home Page, O365, Projects, Strategy

Announcing general availability of ExpressRoute for Office 365 Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 enables organizations to establish a private, managed network connection to Office 365 as an alternative to connecting over the Internet. This direct connection offers customers more predictable network performance, an SLA for guaranteed availability and additional data privacy. As more organizations depend on Office 365 for document collaboration and communications, they will come to depend more and more on the network connectivity they have between their users and Office 365. Today we’re pleased to announce that Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 is now generally available from these network operators: British Telecom Equinix Tata Communications TeleCity Group Verizon You can read about how Microsoft is using ExpressRoute for Office 365 in the Microsoft IT whitepaper, “Optimizing network performance…

Sep232015 by adminNo Comments

5 Business Benefits you can measure from new CRM/ERP systems

CRM, Home Page, Projects, Strategy

ERP-Capabilities Every organization has a different reason to implement a new ERP system. But the most successful ERP implementations are those that coincide with the desire to improve their tangible business benefits. Unfortunately, most organizations have trouble realizing the potential of their new ERP systems and most organizations fail to realize at least half of the business benefits that they expect. The good news? In general, most successful implementations deliver some common benefits. Below are five tangible business benefits that you can achieve with the right focus and expertise: Increased revenues. Top-line revenue growth is the name of the game in today’s relatively weak global economy. Unfortunately, too many organizations leverage ERP software to minimize costs and neglect to capitalize on the opportunities to increase revenue growth. Modules such as CRM…

Sep52015 by adminNo Comments

CRM update 1 – Define calculated fields

CRM, Home Page

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, calculated fields let you automate manual calculations used in your business processes. For example, a salesperson may want to know the weighted revenue for an opportunity which is based on the estimated revenue from an opportunity multiplied by the probability. Or, they want to automatically apply a discount, if an order is greater than £500. (more…)

Aug282015 by adminNo Comments

One Note Integration with Dynamics CRM 2015 Online Update 1

CRM, Home Page

In today’s world there would be very few who perhaps still use notepad or like application for taking notes. Majority use application like OneNote or EverNote to manage their notes. These application allow recording of rich data like pictures, videos etc within the application for later consumption. Recording notes traditionally in CRM has been through the Notes tab, that allows you to record multiple notes, but it has to be text. It supports file attachments though. In the latest CRM Online release, Dynamics CRM would now provide a seamless integration to OneNote, this means you can now from within CRM directly record notes into OneNote and easily access them from within CRM. Enabling this feature This feature is built upon the Sharepoint Integration framework and requires that you have Sharepoint…

Aug252015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft Gamifies CRM

CRM, Home Page, Strategy

Microsoft is integrating the sales gamification platform of its recent acquisition, Incent Games, into its customer relationship management (CRM) software. In other words, it’s turning its sales process into one big game, with the goal that making the work more fun will improve outcomes. But how well does this actually work? Gamification is the idea of applying game theory and mechanics in non-game settings. It plays on the psychology of games — the drive to compete and win, the behavior associated with certain small rewards like power ups — to make work tasks more enjoyable. Microsoft’s latest acquisition and integration applies game theory to the sales department. Lots of companies use contests to try to boost sales and revenues, but they’re often designed poorly, focusing on results rather than the…

Aug252015 by adminNo Comments

Big Data is not about analysis …

CRM, Home Page

Its about the question ... If you are clear about what you are trying to achieve then you can think about the questions to which you need answers. For example, if your strategy is to increase your customer base, questions that you will need answers to might include, ‘Who are currently our customers?’, ‘What are the demographics of our most valuable customers?’ and ‘What is the lifetime value of our customers?’. When you know the questions you need answered then it’s much easier to identify the data you need to access in order to answer those key questions. Together we could work out what your questions should be.