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The Importance of CRM Customer Relationship Management

One of the primary factors in the success of any company is the liaison it shares with its customers. CRM or Customer Relationship Management designates all features of interaction a company shares with its customer. This includes everything from sales to service.

CRM is basically a business strategy designed to accrue gains, generate revenue and cater to customer needs and satisfaction. With the e-media picking up pace, the manner in which companies approach their CRM strategies has greatly changed. This has even altered the consumer?s purchasing attitude. So these days CRM too has become a web based effort as most of the customer relationship is handled electronically.

The web based CRM service is more effective. Web-based CRM services mainly covers three areas of service- sales force automation, management of customer relationships and customer services and automated marketing.

A web-based CRM software is a web-based system used for contact management, marketing and sales support, project tracking and other tasks associated with CRM. This software enables teams and departments to share a central and fresh database. The software facilitates its users with an online contact manager and a project-tracking tool, either over the web or within the corporate intranet. With the aid of the CRM software you can view and manage contacts, customer?s record, hot leads, projects and left-out work, from anywhere and with any web-browser. Moreover unlike the intervening and needed to be testified upgrades of an enterprise software, the upgrades to the web based software do not affect the organization?s regular operations in any manner. Due to these features more and more companies are driven towards this web-based software.

Siebel Systems Inc., HydraNet and Push CRM are some eminent names in web-based software service. Lately SAP has also blessed the market with on-demand Customer Relationship Management solution. A web based CRM has many names out of which on-demand CRM is one.

These systems provide agents with the most up-to-date information on all customer service transactions. The software adds to the strategic value and business of the organization by automating sales, marketing and customer service. For instance the SAP product specializes in providing core sales-force automation features for managing customers, contacts and sales pipelines.

The software runs and keeps a complete track of your data after it is downloaded or purchased and then installed on your server or web-host. Usually the CRM software runs on all significant platforms such as Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Novell (6.5) and so forth. Since the software serves many purposes at the same time, it is quite expensive. However an incredible competition in the market has enabled the software seekers to exercise their choice to a certain extent.

In choosing a web-based CRM software it is important that the user should firstly analyze his or her budget or the budget of the organization. Secondly also check your organization?s partner ecosystems. A user-friendly hosted CRM system, an on premise version or the combo of both should follow this and finally try to go for software that can fit any type of user, any size company and in any industry.

Mansi Aggarwal recommends that you visit Web based CRM
for more information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mansi_Aggarwal

CRM Customer Relationship Management is one of the newest innovations in customer service today. CRM stands for customer relationship management and helps the management and customer service staffs cope with customer concerns and issues. CRM involves gathering a lot of data about the customer. The data is then used to facilitate customer service transactions by making the information needed to resolve the issue or concern readily available to those dealing with the customers. This results in more satisfied customers, a more profitable business and more resources available to the support staff. Furthermore, CRM Customer Relationship Management systems are a great help to the management in deciding on the future course of the company.

As mentioned, there is much data needed for the CRM system to work. These fields include the customer name, address, date of transactions, pending and finished transactions, issues and complaints, status of order, shipping and fulfillment dates, account information, demographic data and many more. This information is important in providing the customer the answer that he or she needs to resolve the issue without having to wait for a long time and without going to several departments. With just a few mouse clicks, a customer support representative for example can track the location of the customer?s package or order. This is infinitely better than the cumbersome process of tracking shipments previously. Furthermore, the customer service representative will also be able to see the previous concerns of the customer. This is a great help especially if the customer is calling about the same issue since he or she will not have to repeat the story all over again. This results in less time in resolving the issue, thus, higher productivity of the support staff.

CRM Customer Relationship Management systems are also important to the top management because it provides crucial data like customer satisfaction and efficiency of service by the frontline crews. A piece of customer relationship management software will also be able to generate the needed reports for product development or new concepts. Furthermore, this system will also be a great help for the top management in deciding the company?s future course of action, whether it involves phasing out one of the products on the shelves or making adjustments to one of the products sold.

The reports generated by CRM systems are also invaluable to your advertising and marketing planners, as they will be able to pinpoint which ideas works and which do not. Because of CRM systems, you will be able to release advertisements or plan marketing campaigns more in tune with your target market. This will also lead to more responses to your advertisement and a more effective marketing campaign.

Successful integration of a CRM Customer Relationship Management system in your company, however, might not be as easy as it seems. The following might give you an insight why CRM systems fail in some companies? Most companies fail to prepare for CRM systems. By this, I mean that most companies fail to integrate all the departments that need to share the information for it to be effective. Furthermore, CRM units scattered all over the company?s departments is often more effective than just making one big CRM department. This will ensure that each department will get the information and data that they need.

A CRM system will also help you a lot in expanding your business. As CRM systems are capable of handling enormous amounts of data, CRM systems will help you a lot in coping with the increased numbers of customers and data. With a CRM Customer Relationship Management system installed and properly utilized, you can be sure that all data is maximized and used to ensure that your business will be successful and your customers a lot more satisfied than before.

Steven Taylor is a Marketing Consultant to http://www.Retronix.com
– one of the most innovative and effective suppliers to the electronics & semiconductor industries. Services include BGA Rework
and De-Bug Services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_R_Taylor

Web Based CRM Guide 101

Mansi Aggarwal recommends that you visit Web based CRM
for more information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mansi_Aggarwal

Benefits of Online CRM

Online CRM

The benefits of using online CRM as opposed to fixed CRM software can be huge. Let’s look at some of the ways an online CRM system can help to increase sales and save you money at the same time.

Remote Access

Using online CRM allows you and your sales staff to access vital customer information remotely. This means that even if staff are out on the road and away from the office, they can access your systems and find new leads to work or access existing customers to contact.

This can save time and money and increase productivity as staff are no longer required to stop selling your business’s products and services in order to return to the office to get more information.

Secure Information

When you purchase in-house software, you will need to host it on a central computer system. Your staff will need to have their computers or notebooks networked to this system to access any information. When they’re away from the office, their access levels are zero.

Another downside to static software is that if your computer crashes, you risk losing any vital customer information that hasn’t been backed-up.

You don’t have any of these issues with online CRM. The information you and your staff need is available from anywhere using an internet connection. If you know you’ll be away from the office, then you’ll still be able to access all the data you need.

Sale Management

Understanding and tracking the success rate of marketing campaigns is vital. Advertising isn’t cheap, so you’ll want to know what kind of results you’re getting each time you spread your business’s message out into the public.

Online CRM software can help you to monitor, track and report on all the various results you achieve with each marketing campaign you send out.

You can also use your software to pre-qualify leads, follow up on inquiries and send out promotional offers to existing customers.

Customer Preferences

Learning your customer preferences goes far beyond just knowing what they wanted to buy. It should also include some of the products and services they’d potentially be interested in buying in the future.

Inputting data about your customer’s preferences into an online CRM system can help you to identify any product gaps you have in your existing ranges. It can also help you when it comes to choosing the right new or supplementary product lines to add to your business to increase profits.

For a free trial of SwiftCRM, a hosted CRM application focused on sales automation, please click through to the website.

For more information, visit http://swiftcrm.com/blog/online-crm
and learn to boost your sales easily.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Roger_Vetruba

How to Implement a CRM System

There is no doubt that in order to stay competitive companies have to invest in technology based solutions. When a small company has a limited number of buyers and suppliers, and the business is managed by one or two people, it is capable of delivering quality services. It is also able to keep its various business processes efficient enough. But for a company with several clearly identifiable departments, it is necessary to put extra efforts to keep productivity high. Naturally, in their pursuit of better performance companies at one point start to look at various technological solutions. Apart from accounting, which is by this time already fairly computerized, the question arise what is the next priority? Is it a Customer Relationship Management Solution?

What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM is about better understanding of customer?s behavior and needs, and developing and implementing business strategies and supporting technologies that close the gaps between an enterprise?s current and potential performance in customer acquisition, growth, and retention. Its center of attention is managing and optimizing customer life cycle and building proper relationship among company departments, sales forces, and customers which in turn helps increasing company productivity.

Customer Relationship Management has increasingly started to become an important business approach. Its goal is to return to one-to-one personal marketing. The idea is to create a customer centric marketing and sales approach based on cumulative vital information about a customer such as her previous purchasing trend, preference and needs.

By implementing a CRM solution a company may expect to

Increase the company?s ability to retain and acquire customers

Maximize customer life cycle

Personalize and improve customer service without increasing cost of service

In order to receive these benefits from a CRM system a company has to clearly understand its need. CRM is not a technological miracle that will bring dramatic change in company productivity. CRM is about sweeping change of mindset across the company and make it a customer-oriented enterprise. That?s why before installing a CRM system the company should understand what it wants to achieve. Does the company want to make selling process more efficient? Is it trying to target and acquire the right customer segment or the goal is to improve customer service?

CRM includes following customer related applications:

Sales Force Automation

Contact Management: Helps maintaining, tracking and managing customer information and contact histories for present customers.

Activity Management: A combination of calendar, task and scheduling management solution for sales people.

Communication Management: Uses for eMails and messaging management

Sales forecasting: Helps analyzing and projecting future sales goals and targets

Lead Management: Helps managing leads and potential business opportunity

Document Management: Helps creating, storing and managing documents

Pipeline Management: Uses for managing and analyzing sales pipeline

Product eCatalog: Necessary for accurate product specification and prices

Customer Service

Call Center Management Provides automated, end-to-end call routing and tracking Captures customer feedback information for performance measurement, quality control, and product development

Field Service Management Allocates, schedules, and dispatches people, parts and time Tracks materials, expenses, and time associated with service orders

Help Desk Management Solves a problem by searching the existing knowledge base Keeps logs of problem reports

Why a company needs to adopt a CRM solution?

A CRM solution is capable of providing real-time access to the stored data about a customer and related matters. Sales force by analyzing the data can create sales forecast, manage interaction with the customer more effectively, develop and manage sales pipeline. Support team thanks to the information available at their fingertips manages to give personalized customer care. According to Pareto principle 20 percent of customers are responsible for 80 percent of company profit. It is absolutely necessary to do everything possible to retain loyalty of these customers. Why retaining an existing customer is so important?

It takes in average 7 to 8 calls in order to close a deal with a new customer and only two to three in the case of an existing customer.

According to Boston Consulting Group cost of selling to an existing web customer is around 6 US$ and cost of acquiring a new web customer is around 34 US$

A five percent increase in expenses in keeping existing customers translates into 25 percent or more increase in profitability.

Other clear advantages of a CMR solution include its ability to:

Provide improved customer service

Increase revenues per customer

Manage sales efficiently

Sell products more effectively

Help sales staff close deals faster

Make call centers more efficient

Streamline marketing and sales processes

What should a company know before adopting a CRM solution?

As mentioned earlier CRM is not a panacea to company productivity improvement. In order to get maximum result, the company must clearly understand its requirement and then only adopt a CRM system. No matter how good the CRM solution the company chooses if the solution does not correspondent to the staff mindset i.e. if they don?t receive required training and don?t clearly understand the changes in business processes, the risk of good technology going bad is pretty high!

Often, senior management due to natural fear towards new technology does not get involved in the process of CRM implementation. This is a big mistake! If management does not take advantage of the CRM, it?s very likely that common staff will not take the system seriously too.

The present customer related information that is going to be integrated with the CRM system also should be carefully analyzed, consolidated, structured and cleaned up prior to adoption. Bad data are capable of creating a mess even in the best CRM solution.

How should a company adopt a CRM system?

The best option is to adopt a CRM system phase by phase. The company needs to identify the areas where the return on investment would be highest and adopt CRM technology there. Another good approach is to automate one of the key departments with inexpensive CRM solution and if the project becomes successful adopt a cross-company CRM solution

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of ( http://www.rusbiz.com
). Companies can optimize and handle some of their vital business processes such as supply chain management with the features available on http://ezine.rusbiz.com
.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nowshade_Kabir

Microsoft Dynamics AX-GP-NAV-CRM: Trends & International Recommendations

Microsoft Dynamics project ? or formerly referred as Project Green should unify and modulate all Microsoft Business Solutions ERP applications: Microsoft Great Plains/Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Navision (former Attain) Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft (Navision) Axapta/Microsoft Dynamics AX. The challenge of unification probably will result in quality change for the unified interface, such as Web/Business portal/Microsoft Outlook & MS Office integration, Deployment of new technologies, such as Microsoft Sharepoint with workflow automation. Plus the development platform for Microsoft Dynamics products should shift from proprietary tools, such as Microsoft Dexterity, C/SIDE, MorphX (no confirmation for Axapta yet ? but we guess it should follow) to C# and VB.Net with VisualStudio. In this small article we will try to orient IT managers in Microsoft Business Solutions MRP products selection for international and regional markets.

? Microsoft Dynamics GP. The regional markets for Great Plains 9.0 and following Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 version will narrow: United States, United Kingdom, Canada: both English and French speaking, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other English speaking countries in Asia, Africa and Worldwide, plus Spanish Speaking Latin America. Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 will not be available for Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland ? the last version localized for these European countries will be 9.0 ? June 2006

? Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Currently Navision has very good presence in Europe, including East Europe: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia. Microsoft also localized Navision for new markets, where it just moved in: Brazil for example ? it was interesting development in Brazil ? first Microsoft probed Solomon, then Microsoft Great Plains 7.5 and in 2004 replaced it with localized Navision

? Microsoft Dynamics AX. Microsoft Axapta, opposite to Navision or Great Plains where market shares are gained/divided and competition is based on renovations and product improvements, Axapta has great potential yet to be deployed, coming from its modern and very futuristic system design and architecture. Being targeted to upper mid-market and corporate clients Axapta shows very good progress on emerging markets: in Russia for example the number of Axapta installation is similar and comparable with the number of Navision installations. Plus, in 2005 large number of Microsoft Business Solutions gold certified partners rushed into Axapta consulting arena ? this is seen in the USA, UK, Australia and continental Europe. In Brazil currently MBS in local Portuguese Axapta launching mode ? localized for Brazilian tax code

? Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Is planned as front CRM solution for the majority of Microsoft Dynamics ERP system: integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP is available for GP 7.5, 8.0, 9.0 and CRM 1.2 and 3.0, Microsoft Navision ? through third party integrations, Axapta integration is planned. Microsoft has Microsoft CRM as worldwide product, so you should not have any doubts regarding your regional market.

? Competition. Oracle is on the way with Oracle Fusion project, aiming on Oracle Financials/Applications/E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards and potentially Siebel integration. SAP with the purchase of new mid and small market ERP: SAP Business One and Mendocino ? for SAP R/3 is catching up

Please do not hesitate to call or email us: USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com
http://www.greatplains.com.mx
http://www.enterlogix.com.br
) – Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally. We are serving USA Nationwide: CA, IL, NY, FL, AZ, CO, TX, WI, WA, MI, MA, MO, LA, NM, MN, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Washington, Baltimore, New Orleans, Austin, Kansas City.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Karasev

Getting The Right CRM Software Package

Learning how to use a complex software package is usually a daunting task, and trying to learn all the ins and outs within the time limits of a free trial is even harder. Not only do you need to find out how the CRM software package works, but you need also to learn if you can apply it to the specific needs of your business.

For the inexperienced person, choosing the best Customer Relationship Management system can be a difficult. Does your business need an on demand solution, meaning a hosted, accessible over the Internet platform, or can your organization use a real run-on-Windows application.

The basic acronyms CRM (Customer Relations Management), ERP (Enterprise resource planning, integrating all data and processes of an organization into a unified system), SFA (Sales Force Automation, automated, time saving systems that help the sales people) can be intimidating, but you should know them. A simple Google search will usually tell you what the acronym means.

To make the best of it, you should stick to a few simple rules that can show you what systems are worth looking into and what packages should be avoided. Having these pointers will let you quickly find a system that will work for you.

First, you should make sure the product can be customized to fit your needs. There are many systems out there but most likely none of them will work for your business right out of the box.

To make sure a system can be customized, look for companies that sell multiple editions of their product, this usually means they have tailored their products to other customers and that they will be willing to meet your needs, and make the product work for you.

Also, you should look for a road map for the product. Having a road map usually indicates that the company believes in their product and that they are here to stay. You want a product that stays in the market as you grow and grows with you.

A product that is usable for you entire company is desirable, paying for a fully hosted CRM you should make sure that it is backed by a Service Level Agreement as well.

Getting the right CRM software package is no easy task, but if you use the above rules as you research the field you should be able to find a system that works for you and your organization.

Kim writes stuff about CRM software over at crmsystem.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kim_Baker

Microsoft CRM Implementation & Customization: MS CRM Fax Gateway

With this small article we are continuing Microsoft Business Solutions CRM customization, development, modification, setup and implementation discussion.

Microsoft CRM at this moment doesn?t have advanced fax automation ? you can register the fact of fax receiving or sending, but it is not sufficient for your daily work with your clients. User should be able to send and receive faxes in her/his work environment ? it is in MS CRM

Fax software automation market is very mature and we don?t have to re-invite the bicycle here. All we have to do is ? integrate one of the reliable solutions into Microsoft CRM. Let?s look at the technical aspects of the integration:

? Modification should be based on the standard event Fax Activity logic alteration. Standard CRM version allows in- or out-going fax info saving into SQL database. Alternative form should have additional parameters for fax delivering

? Immediately after the moment of fax saving into CRM database, Albaspectrum MS CRM Universal Fax Connector takes over the logic, more precisely its fax sending portion of the logic, realized as MS CRM Post-Callout, registered for Fax Activity addition and update. At the moment of new fax activity creation, our module considers attached documents as subject to be transferred to the addressee.

? Depending on the fax application/extension you use, call parameters are transferred to the appropriate plug-in, which in turn communicates with fax application.

? Fax sending might be done through specialized systems or direct hardware control via MS FAX API.

? Initially we plan to support GFI FaxMaker and Captaris RightFax via their printing & integration system with email servers MS Exchange and Lotus Domino

? Documents, delivered or received through fax extension could be integrated into MS SharePoint via our proposed product Albaspectrum MS CRM Document Gateway. This allows you to revise and versionize document with automatic fax delivery to the addressees involved

? For incoming faxes we suggest capturing via special handlers on the MTA (MS Exchange or Lotus Domino) level ? their task is to take over fax transfer and saving it for the addressee in CRM and Fax Activity creation in MS CRM

? This approach provides seamless incoming and outgoing fax document workflow in MS CRM.

Happy programming, implementation, customization and modification! If you want us to do the job ? call use 1-630-961-5918, 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Oracle, Navision, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Florida, New York, Canada, Australia, UK, Russia, Europe and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com
), he is Oracle, Unix, Microsoft CRM SDK, Navision, C#, VB.Net, SQL developer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Karasev

Use Voice Messaging With CRM

Voice messaging software provides many options to sales agents. These software solutions are an example of CTI, or Computer Telephony Integration. They provide telephone automation for sales, customer support, and marketing programs within an organization’s Customer Relationship Management, or CRM.

Customer Relationship Management captures, contains, and retrieves the important information on leads, contacts, and clients. A CRM may be implemented with a major investment by the company to purchase or design software and hardware to support the processes of managing all the jobs associated with inside sales, or a host company may provide the software and hardware for the organization to use. The companies that provide the hosted CRM sometimes offer voice messaging solutions through their same company.

The voice messaging software creates voice broadcast initiatives from the contact lists within the CRM. Voice broadcasting is where a series of calls are made from a selected list and a prerecorded message is automatically played. Those listening to these messages generally have the option to press a button to be removed from the list or to speak to a live agent. Good voice messaging systems will allow these messages to be any length and allow these messages to be recorded from anywhere.

Different messages may be played if the call goes to voicemail versus whether or not the lead is contacted. Both of these messages can be prerecorded in the sales agents own voice and catered to whether it is a voicemail or a live-call scenario. Additionally multiple numbers may be called simultaneously for one contact. Whatever number answers first is where the voice message will be broadcasted to.

The time that these voice messages will be broadcasted is also customizable. This allows a sales team to ensure voice messages will be sent out at the best times of day to contact their leads. The CRM voice message pairing can identify the time zones different contacts live in and call numbers from the same contact list at different times based on their geographic location.

Voice messaging software also enhances inbound calling. These features start with the option for listeners of broadcasted messages to press a number to talk to a live agent. Similarly automatic messages can be set up as the default answer to toll free numbers, such as help lines. Answers to the most common questions can be recorded and the option to contact a live agent is presented also.

If an inbound call is not able to be answered by a sales agent voice message software provides a solution for that caller. He or she may then choose to leave a voice mail his or her self, which will be transferred to the first available agent for them to listen and respond to.

Voice messaging enhances many of the primary functions of Customer Relationship Management. It allows sales reps and contacts to get in contact with each other quickly and efficiently.

David Harlow is an SEO consultant for InsideSales.com
As a firm believer that people should know the facts, Harlow’s blog Inside Sales Adventures
seeks to inform new comers to the industry about important terminology in insides sales, as well as to give tips on what to look for when shopping for industry software.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Harlow

CRM – Processes And Approaches

The recruitment of a customer is one thing; the retention of that same customer is another. To regain a customer lost through poor service, product, or account management is, yet, another thing. In general terms, how we treat a customer is very much tied to how profitable that customer is for us in the long term. Insofar as this concerns the connectivity between vendors and their clients, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the strategic business and manufacturing practice today that can make or break the loyalty of a customer.

Most CRM in modern manufacturing businesses, large and small, is handled by dedicated software applications, or is a part of larger enterprise resource planning software systems (ERP). When a company does decide that it wants to implement a CRM strategy, it usually takes its direction based upon a conceptual need in customer relations-either general relationship operational management or production/sales force automation . In either case, there are several specific approaches to CRM that are specific to the type of customer served and their needs as customers. Here are two of the dozens of approaches to CRM in manufacturing:

1) Operational Management : Depending upon the size of the manufacturer, front office people may know the companies they service, and their contact people there, very, very well. If they are astute at CRM, then it’s certain that they do indeed know their customers beyond the basics. Operational CRM supports front office activities including sales generation and orders, customer service (including contact history), certification document processing, and database maintenance. In short: these are the relationship operations of the business relative to its customers, and vice-versa. Whether the same person in the manufacturing sales/service operation interacts with the same person in the customer office over time, or different employees service the customer in each interaction, the customer information dossier is always and instantly retrievable, giving a more personal impression.

2) Production and Sales Force Automation : Unlike retail operations, where there is more often an indirect route between company purchasing activities and customer activities (i.e., purchasing is a factor strictly of forecasting), job shop and make-to-order manufacturing is driven by the direct sales order. Close tracking processes from sales order generation to work order creation, production, purchasing, quality, and shipping enhances the ability to respond to customer inquiries about status, engineering changes, and delivery. A robust CRM module in an ERP system should be able to bring all areas of manufacturing operations together in real time data analysis in order to answer customer questions. To automate these CRM processes means to automatically and routinely communicate with customers, hopefully in a proactive modality that anticipates questions and addresses status before it is even asked.

Again, there are several applications of CRM practice; however, some (such as campaign management and analytical CRM) are more closely aligned with marketing than with manufacturing front office and floor operations. No matter the application, the ultimate objectives for CRM are still to gather, store, and disseminate the most comprehensive, detailed, and easily accessible database of new and long-term customer information. With this, manufacturers can maximize their ability to know their customers, while at the same time formulating marketing approaches taking advantage that relationship. This is the best purpose and use of CRM data, and developing the manufacturer’s knowledge in areas such as identifying customer segments, improving product offerings (by better knowing customer needs), and delivering quality goods on time, will enhance strategic bottomline profits through customer retention.

And, as we all know, it’s much cheaper to retain a loyal customer than it is to regain them once they are lost because of bad service or products.

http://globalshopsolutions.com/

Dusty Alexander is the President of Global Shop Solutions. Global Shop Solutions is the largest privately held ERP software company in the United States.

Copyright 2007 – Global Shop Solutions. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and give the author name credit.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dusty_Alexander

Microsoft CRM Integration & Customization: SharePoint Document Gateway

MS CRM is very close to document workflow automation, including Microsoft Office documents: Words, Excel, etc. The document workflow was perfectly automated about 10 years ago in Lotus Notes Domino. In this small article we describe the solution based on MS CRM integration with MS SharePoint.

Microsoft CRM is new player on CRM applications market and it is gaining its market share. Having different paradigm in its design (it stakes on Microsoft OS and technologies and completely disregards alternative platform, such as UNIX, Linux, Oracle, etc. based). Microsoft CRM market is very diversified: from small (5 users) to large (several hundred MS CRM User licenses) and it serves variety of industries: Transportation, Logistics, Lawyers, Pension Funds, High-Tech, and many others. Deploying technologies, like Windows Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2003/2000, SQL Server, Crystal Reports Enterprise, Biztalk, Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Great Plains and Navision in close future – makes CRM a beloved system for Microsoft oriented IT departments.

Let’s go right to the topic.

Major issue with storing documents in MS CRM in the form of attachments to Activity is inability to work on these attached files in cooperation with other colleagues, who do not have to use CRM. When several service people serve requests from the same client this is required. Currently you can use alternative way when you store office documents in the folders of your file system and when modifying document, you save it and reattach to CRM. This is inconvenient, because first it requires all your editing users to have CRM licenses, which delays CRM implementation.

We seem increasing popularity of document storage systems, like Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle Files, etc. Such systems, being implemented gives you time savings, related to documents revisions and versioning, approval cycles and workflows, web access through web-portals systems and the like.

The target of our product is Microsoft SharePoint integration with MS CRM for document storage. Let’s take a look at the high level technical realization details:

?Main modification from the MS CRM side is standard system behavior change when you open attachment in Activity. Standard unmodified CRM suggests you to store documents in the file system. Modified version sores document in SharePoint Document Library (the required library is subject for setup by MS CRM system administrator) or keep it in MS CRM as is (for documents of minor importance). From the moment of saving the document in SharePoint Document Library it is not stored in MS CRM ? CRM will now store only the link/reference to the document. Also you are given the ability to open and modify the document at the place of opening, which speeds up MS CRM user performance substantially.

?Table, storing the links to the documents sits in separate database and doesn’t deal with MS CRM tables (you know that you are banned to do structure changes in MS CRM db)

?Document saving into MS SharePoint process occurs in MS CRM and with its assistance ? SharePoint bridge, which does addition and update for the existing document into destination Document Library with MS SharePoint Web Services calls

?Upon the addition into Document Library, MS CRM ? SharePoint bridge registers the document in the special table for the future data extraction or notification mechanism registration

?Then, interested users can work with the documents just using MS Office 2003 or other programs/editing tools, assuming these tools have access to MS SharePoint

?Feedback is provided by MS SharePoint Event Handler component. This is special handler, inspecting document change status, transferred from MS CRM to document storage (SharePoint), and report Activity owner on the changes with home page notifications (User home page in MS CRM). User in turn can review the history of the document editing – who, when and where is the change

?Opening Activity, where document is “attached”, and in fact placed into MS SharePoint Document Library, and pressing opening button, MS CRM user gets live version of the data

?This approach allows you seamless work with MS CRM document in the whole informational space of your company

?Additional enhancements to this product might be document library management directly from MS CRM (web interface – meaning remotely), administrative interface for MS Sharepoint documents revision, ability to create reports on the document storage status, rights/access management (Author, Reader, Contributor etc) from MS CRM, portal pages integration into MS CRM to name a few.

Happy programming, implementation, customization and modification! If you want us to do the job ? call use 1-630-961-5918, 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Boris Makushkin is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Oracle, Navision, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Florida, New York, Canada, Australia, UK, Russia, Europe and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com
), he is Oracle, Unix, Microsoft CRM SDK, Navision, C#, VB.Net, SQL developer.

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