What is CRM software about?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business philosophy involving identifying, understanding and better providing for your customers while building a relationship with each customer to improve customer satisfaction and maximise profits. It's about understanding, anticipating and responding to customers' needs.

Why Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a prime option?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that provides the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. With modules for sales, marketing, and customer service, Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers a fast, flexible, and affordable solution that drives consistent, measurable improvements in every business process, enabling closer relationships with customers and helping to achieve new levels of profitability.

Even for companies with the most complex of sales processes, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides easy-to-use features and capabilities to help improve the way sales and marketing organizations target new customers, manage marketing campaigns, and drive sales activities. Here's how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help your employees make better business decisions and get a clearer view of your customers.

How Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionally works?

Microsoft CRM provides a new and compelling value proposition for companies of all sizes . It delivers a complete CRM suite that leverages the full power and productivity of the Microsoft platform, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft SQL Server , and many other powerful technologies

Works the way you do

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the fastest and easiest way to add CRM capabilities to any organization that uses Microsoft Office system applications, including Microsoft Office Outlook. Because it was designed to partner with Office Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers lower training costs, broader user adoption, less application-switching, higher productivity, and a fast return on investment.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives your employees direct access to customer information through Office Outlook, enabling access to the information they need whether in the office or on the road. Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers:

*Tight integration with the Microsoft Office system and Office Outlook, allowing employees to easily pull information from Microsoft Dynamics CRM into Office system applications such as Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software and Microsoft Office Word word processing software. *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 helps enable field workers to get instant access to customer data from most popular portable devices including mobile phones with Web browsers, and laptops.

Works the way your business does

Microsoft Dynamics 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 Dynamics CRM to suit your needs and fit your business. Microsoft Dynamics CRM features several workflow innovations that speed use, including next-step suggestions and automatic task assignment. Microsoft Dynamics 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 responses.
*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 Dynamics CRM to your business workflow by adding custom objects and activities, designing custom views for different users, and building business logic into the CRM. This enables Microsoft Dynamics CRM to automate repetitive tasks, tells users next steps, sends e-mail messages, and raises alerts for open items—so 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 Office Excel for analysis or into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server for updating executive dashboards or collaborating on customer-related documents.

Works the way technology should
Microsoft Dynamics 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 with diagnostic tools that reduce setup time and help ensure a successful deployment of Microsoft Dynamics 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 Dynamics CRM integration with Microsoft Exchange and Office 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.

How Microsoft Dynamics CRM technologically works?
Microsoft CRM combines cutting-edge, service-oriented system design with a robust business and data platform. While we’ll review each of these layers in more detail, let’s cover the highlights of the Microsoft CRM 3.0 system architecture:

Foundation: Windows Server 2003. Windows server provides the highly available, scalable and secure architecture to build the application upon. At the foundation level, Windows Active directory manages all of the core system user authentication for CRM users. This provides your organization with single sign-on (SSO) across Windows, Outlook, CRM and SQL Server Reporting services- allowing your users to only have to enter their user/password one time in the morning.

Data Services: SQL Server 2000 + latest service packs, SQL Server 2005. SQL Server combines enterprise-level data management with amazing business intelligence for your organization. In addition, the Microsoft CRM data security layer – object access across roles and privileges is maintained at the core SQL Server layer.

Platform Services: This layer of the Microsoft CRM system design represents the entire set of server components that encompass the Microsoft CRM server architecture. Items like the core application security services and report generation engine within SQL Server, the native XML query engine within Microsoft CRM (called FetchXML), e-mail integration and routing across Exchange Server and native integration services with the CRM web services design and platform extensibility model.

Business Designer: Within the business designer layer of Microsoft CRM, your organization has access to intuitive, easy to use CRM customization and configuration tools that enable your business to adapt the Microsoft CRM server to meet your unique business needs. Items such as the System customization to model your organization settings (users, teams, products), form customization to modify the CRM look and feel and the Custom Entity designer to alter the CRM data model to meet your unique data requirements.

Application: Microsoft CRM delivers full-suite of core Sales, Services and Marketing functionality for your business, but also enables your organization to build entire new features and applications on the Microsoft CRM platform with ease. For instance, you can construct an event management system within Microsoft CRM using intuitive, easy to use customization tools found in the business designer, and not need to be a custom developer / programmer to implement your solution.

Presentation: Microsoft CRM can be accessed through a rich web interface in Internet Explorer or through a native Microsoft Outlook experience. In addition, Microsoft will release a revamped Mobile offering in CYQ12006 complete with Wireless synchronization so your mobile sales professionals will always be in synch with your customers.

How can Microsoft Dynamics CRM be licensed?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM comes in two editions. You can license to use stand-alone or integrate with your business system, or you can acquire it as part of your Microsoft Dynamics business management solution.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Small Business Edition
This edition is designed to run on the Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition, a complete single-server solution for small businesses that have limited IT staff and resources. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Small Business Edition is easy to deploy and maintain, and offers:

*New marketing automation modules for sales, marketing, and customer service that help a business track and record every customer contact.
*Advanced reporting services that help qualify leads, cross-sell products, and maximize sales opportunities without the need for expensive third-party reporting tools.
*Improved customization that enables any user to get the information he or she needs without any programming.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional
This edition is designed for large organizations that must support extensive sales and marketing staffs. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional builds on the power and ease of use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Small Business Edition and offers key features such as:
*Powerful data mining and business intelligence tools that help a business build smarter, more effective marketing campaigns. Reporting and analysis tools built on SQL Server Reporting Services that provide precise customer information.
*A single view of each customer based on every piece of information a company collects, all accessible by sales, marketing, and customer service divisions.

Both editions work the way a business works, integrating with the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client and other familiar Microsoft Office programs so employees operate within a comfortable environment.

Links:

www.microsoft.com/latam/dynamics/crm/

www.microsoft.com/dynamics/CRM/Default.mspx

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