We Blog CRM

Meritide, a Minnesota-based IT consulting firm, announced last week that they expanded their full-service Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions practice. Meritide provides strategy, integration, design, and implementation services to upper mid-market companies, and with their expanded Microsoft Dynamics CRM products, will provide clients with insight into sales, marketing, and service activities.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is highly flexible and customizable, and is distributed entirely through a partner system (which allows for even greater personalization). It offers tight integration with Microsoft Office applications—which helps reduce training time—and one Meritide customer, Emprimus, was especially taken with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online tool.

Emprimus offers solutions protecting against intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI), and does most of their marketing through trade shows, large presentations, and industry associations. Emprimus’s President and CEO, Gale Nording, said the Dynamics CRM Online application was extremely helpful for streamlining the sales cycle, but declined to give specific details.

Meritide also implements BMC solutions, but the company’s president, Patrick Irestone, noted that Microsoft Dynamics deployments have increased with customers’ demand for cost-effective solutions. Microsoft recently reduced the base prices of their CRM solutions (and are offering 6 months free to Salesforce.com and Oracle users), and given the satisfaction of Meritide’s customers, business will only get better for Dyanamics.

With the technical preview of Office 2010 several months ago, Microsoft announced a web-based companion to the suite, Office Web Applications, which some predict will be the “Google Apps Killer.” Last week, Microsoft released a partial preview of the online package to beta testers and invited guests. Web Apps features extensions of PowerPoint, Excel, and Word (and eventually OneNote), will be hosted in Windows Live SkyDrive and Microsoft SharePoint, and has received positive feedback thus far.

SkyDrive is a free, online storage space of 25GB available to any users of Windows Live (of which there are about 500 million), and will store Web Apps content created by Live users. SkyDrive is not intended for enterprise users, so businesses interested in Web Apps need SharePoint—storage that will soon be integrated with the MS Cloud, Azure—or Office volume licensing.

Like Google Apps, Web Apps doesn’t require any desktop applications—users without the desktop Office suite can still view content. However, as it stands, Web Apps seems best thought of as a supplement to the desktop platform. One of the biggest issues is that Web Apps’ Word only allows for document viewing, not editing. In addition, Web Apps doesn’t allow for web site building, and it only facilitates simple composition within PowerPoint and Excel. The official version of Web Apps will permit editing within Word, but some of the other editing inabilities will remain and only be available through the desktop version.

Since the preview’s release, reviews have been favorable. Given Microsoft’s aim to create seamless interaction between OS, browser, and mobile, it is notable that a preview of the SharePoint mobile integration was well received. Also, many testers were pleased to see Web Apps function capably outside of Internet Explorer. For users looking for light web-based CRM, perhaps the biggest boon is Web Apps’ similarity to its desktop counterpart. The bells and whistles aren’t all there, but there’s no learning curve for those already accustomed to Office Suite apps. We’ll have to wait for kinks in the test version to be fixed before judging whether Web Apps is indeed the Google Apps “killer,” but for now, it is a formidable opponent.

Not even two weeks into September and Microsoft Dynamics has announced specialty accelerators for its CRM platform—there will soon be Education, Insurance, and Non-Profit templates—as well as a social networking accelerator.

Using xRM, the new development platform for relationship-tracking applications, three new mission-centered Microsoft CRM templates were created: the Education and Insurance models are catered to those industries, as is a Non-Profit model that is also intended to increase the efficiency of membership workflow within member-driven coalitions.

Another feather in the Microsoft CRM cap is the Twitter Accelerator, which is a medium for business professionals to monitor and analyze their customers’ conversations on social networking sites. Integrating Twitter, the accelerator offers a dashboard for real-time status updates. Additional social networks are to be introduced in future releases, but for now Microsoft CRM aims to boost users’ sales databases by connecting with micro-bloggers, thereby getting a handle on both customer insights and the people driving conversation.

Dunbar Armored, an armored car company headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, has selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 for its sales teams. Dunbar will use the CRM technology to integrate data that is generated in its 80 branches across the US. Microsoft scored over competing CRM systems on the basis of its role-based CRM capabilities.

The Microsoft offering will work alongside Dunbar’s existing systems that store customer information. The deployment of Microsoft will enable Dunbar to eliminate manual processes and working with spread sheets for obtaining information on prospects and customers. Planning and reporting scenarios, such as consolidation and budgeting, are offered through integration with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server.

South African company i5 has been named the first global winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the category, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The award is to be presented at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas, in July.

According to i5 CEO Glen Ansell , the award is the culmination of the company’s determination and sharp focus on the Microsoft technology stack, and specifically, Dynamics CRM. “Having recognised the viability and relevance of Microsoft’s CRM package soon after the inception of i5 in 2004, our company took a strategic decision to become the South African market leader in this aspect of Microsoft’s technology solutions,” he says.

Inetium, a Microsoft partners, has announced that it will be conducting an Accelerated Deployment Program for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers. The program will help businesses to start quickly and effectively with the Dynamics online CRM.

Headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, Inetium provides technology consulting services to organizations of all size throughout the United States. Inetium officials say the their company is committed to increasing people and organizational productivity by providing IT planning services, customer relationship management, business productivity, IT infrastructure, Web strategies and real estate technology products.

Dovarri has announced today the signing of a three year contract with its newest client, the Houston Texans. The Texans, Houston’s National Football League (NFL) franchise, will retain Dovarri to provide Sales Force Automation and Customer Relationship Management (SFA/CRM) services through Orizon, Dovarri’s recently released software.

Orizon, Enterprise SFA/CRM software built entirely on the Microsoft Windows SharePoint platform, integrates with the Texans’ proprietary database, which is also built on the SharePoint platform. Orizon manages the sales process and aligns sales procedures within their sales team.

Frontpages Web Hosting Network has added Microsof Dynamics CRM 4.0 to its roster of hosted offerings. The company is a recent Microsoft Gold Partner and is latest offering will give customers an integrated on-demand CRM solution. The pricing is $99 for small business solutions, $495 per month for corporate and $4,595 per month for enterprise offerings.

Frontpage specializes in offering Microsoft-developed products such as SharePoint, Exchange, Project, PerformancePoint, Office Communications Server and SQL, along with dedicated server hosting.

American of Martinsville, a Virginia-based contract furniture manufacturer, will be deploying Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. American of Martinsville has a major presence in the furniture segment consisting of hospitality and health care markets.

American of Martinsville will use Microsoft Dynamics AX to automate its quoting process, project management and customer communications. Microsoft Dynamics CRM modules implemented by the company include project management, quote management and customer communications.

The company chose Microsoft CRM after evaluating products from Sage, SYSPRO, SAP AG, and Infor.

DVD distributor Magna Pacific has decided to discontinue its use of Sybiz software and implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV as it feels that the old CRM application does not scale well. The company’s administration manager, Sarah Dowling said “In the warehouse, staff would frequently make errors while picking and packing orders. These errors could result in inappropriate product sent to customers so there was a great need for improved accuracy.”

The company tested products from Sage, Innicom, and Sybiz’s Evolution before selecting Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Microsoft Dynamics won the day on the strength of its scalability, custom features, and the extent of functionality offered by it.