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Improve Performance With Effective CRM

Today?s customer is not someone who merely decides to buy or not to buy. He is educated, well-informed, widely traveled, discerning and knows that he can always get it elsewhere at a price which he is more comfortable with. Gone are the days when a company rested happy if it sold a product or service to a customer.

Advertising and promotion were the only tools to inform, educate and attract new customers. Customization, break-neck competition amongst multiple-players, price wars and globalization ? all this and more have made marketing companies wary of not only wooing the new and potential customers but to retain them on a long term basis. Companies are spending significant amount of resources to track customer interactions and adding more value to the next.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is also referred to as customer management or relationship marketing. Some people associate CRM specifically with those software applications that are installed to support CRM within a business, but CRM is more than a mere software, it is a way some leading companies are conducting their business. If you have an opportunity to integrate the tools of the CRM software with that of ERP, you have in your hands, a magnificent and powerful tool to handle a large database of customers, the interactions, their present and future choices and vital data on customer preferences and trends. It is no wonder then that many leading companies are busy in CRM integration within their business processes.

When do you know that your company is ready for CRM integration? To put it simply, when you have a large customer base and you wish to undertake preventive measures to retain their loyalties and you feel that you have the adequate product lineup even for any product or service upgrade. Come to think of it, in most interactions, both the customer and the company are faceless. The customer representative is probably the only person who has seen his face and knows his preferences. If only the product development, marketing and sales personnel of your organization knew what he is like and could give a face to this unknown entity, how meaningful the interaction it would be! Similarly, if only the young man who bought your laptop knew that within the next year, this company is coming up with a far improved version of the laptop, how convenient it would be for the customer!

CRM integration with your existing ERP systems would focus on building a loyal customer base through the creation and development of individual customer relationships. It lends a face to your company. Likewise, it makes the customer appear more ?human?. When all staff in an organization can access a customer’s history, it allows them to deliver better personalized service to the customer. This opens up a meaningful communication channel, between the two, which can be utilized profitably to educate, inform and court a customer for product upgrade, cross-sell, addressing grievances ? otherwise maintain a personalized contact.

CRM integration most importantly can add tremendous competitive advantage in an otherwise fiercely competitive market environment. It can open up a Direct Marketing channel of communication which has been found effective the world over.

Daniel Travers owns and operates http://www.ERP-benefits.com
Benefits Of ERP

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3 Steps to Successful CRM For Both Big and Small Companies

Regardless of your company’s size and the requirements for your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution, the goal remains the same: learn more about your customers and leverage that knowledge into increased customer loyalty and improved sales.

However, too often companies jump into their CRM initiatives without the proper thought and planning. The result? A CRM system that does not meet critical organizational needs and fails to provide the proper insights into their customer base. Or perhaps worse–a CRM system that is not used at all. The key to success for your CRM implementation is not just the technology driving your solution, but in the strategy itself.

To achieve CRM success, there are 3 steps every company must follow before starting to consider CRM technology:

1. Establish a commitment to organizational change. If your company already understands why it is essential to improve customer loyalty and agrees that a CRM initiative is a high priority, congratulations! If not, you’ll need to do the legwork necessary to achieve consensus with all teams. Don’t be overwhelmed. Use this as an opportunity to put the pieces of your CRM puzzle together–discovering where customer touch points interact, what information is important to whom and why, and to identify what current business processes seem inefficient to those tasked with executing them. Once each team feels heard, and their grievances documented, they will likely agree that change is a good thing. Then you not only have much of the critical information you need for your next step, you also have the capital to return to these folks for their buy-off when your CRM strategy is completed. Your next step?

2. Define specific adjustments to operations. This seems like a tall order, but it is the logical next step towards building a solid strategy that your entire organization can get behind and evangelize. We suggest creating a matrix of all the problems identified in the first step and the solutions that were discussed. Use this matrix to compare the challenges across departments and identify potential operational changes that would solve these issues. Do not think about how technology can support these solutions, just concentrate on the operational changes necessary–who needs to know what and when, what workflow will share critical information between departments, and what critical customer-facing actions should occur at the completion of each task. TIP: The biggest factor to building a solid CRM strategy is developing a standardized sales process that is based on best practices, can be implemented across your sales organization, and integrates tightly with marketing and operations. Armed with this information, you are ready to:

3. Document your CRM Strategy. Your strategy should identify the specific business problems that need to be addressed (based on your information gathering and prioritization exercises from the first 2 steps), define objectives whose results can be measured (to demonstrate the ROI of your implementation), and outline solid insight into how CRM will impact the company, current operations, and your customers. To ensure organizational buy-off, boil down your CRM strategy into these critical points: How will CRM improve the lives of its users? How will it increase productivity? How will it impact sales? It is this strategy you then take back to the key stakeholders for final buy-off. It is this strategy that you will arm yourself with when researching and evaluating all possible CRM solutions available to you.

Understanding what business problems you need to solve and how they impact your operations–while demonstrating company support for this initiative–will ensure a successful implementation of your CRM solution. Not only will you better understand the trade-offs that you will need to make with the technology you choose, you will be able to better evaluate customization requirements and recommendations made by your CRM partner. The time you spend planning and documenting your strategy will be well worth the results!

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CRM History – The Evolution of Better Customer Service

There was a time when frequent flyer miles, loyalty award systems and credit card points were virtually unknown to businesses and consumers alike. CRM history shows that customer relationship management is the system that popularized consumer benefits such as this.

CRM history is indeed a brief one when it comes to the technological aspect of customer service. Although marketing campaigns and strategies go back a long way, most entrepreneurs used to rely on generic means to attract potential customers and gain loyal ones. Before the dawn of CRM, most companies were not ingenious when it came to having personalized customer relationships.

The Dawn of CRM

CRM emerged in the 1980’s and this early version was called database marketing. Database marketing wasn’t as intricate as the well-developed CRM of today. It mainly comprises of an organizations’ customer service staff interacting with a company’s clients. Although helpful, it wasn’t exactly a seamless process and information on the existing database tended to be unorganized, hard to track, update and retrieve.

The Rise of CRM

CRM history shows that the 90’s saw great improvement in terms of Customer Relationship Management. Companies began to see the benefits of offering perks to customers and potential ones in exchange for relevant customer information or for repeat purchases. Companies also began to regard customer service as a continuously evolving skill rather than a stagnant service to be picked up and used whenever necessary.

A Fully-developed CRM

Today, CRM has reached its full potential, allowing businesses to maximize their own potentials as well, to achieve superior customer service. More advanced tools are made available and innovation allows customization of software to fit a particular business or industry. Benefits enjoyed by customers such as bonus points and loyalty rewards are also advantageous to the companies that award these benefits: now they can easily track the behavior, spending history and patterns of their customers.

With CRM’s online capabilities, storage issues for huge databases can now be resolved, especially for big corporations. CRM software developers are now offering offsite storage of data and opening secure Internet mediums for staging CRM.

CRM is most useful for organizations whose success depend vastly on technology or customer service. That’s why a lot of CRM-based tools and software are utilized by credit card companies, the telecommunications industry and even the computer hardware and software sectors. From customer acquisition, to trouble shooting and encouraging customer loyalty, CRM will be a useful system to achieve these goals.

CRM history has indeed shown that something truly useful and effective can come a long way in such a short time. As long as businesses continue to thrive on effective management of customer relationships and as long as there are customers to satisfy, then CRM will also continue to develop and evolve to greater heights.

As shown by CRM history, customer relation management has indeed empowered consumers to choose the companies worth patronizing. CRM has made customer service a global interaction so consumers can now easily switch to better services if unsatisfied with current one.

Gain an insight on CRM history
and the latest on customer relationship management news
and CRM pitfalls
. Visit http://www.CRM-Software-Guide.com
today.

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Open Source CRM For Small Business

Today, small and mid-size business owners are using open source CRM software to help streamline their business processes with the expectation of generating more sales opportunities. Open source CRM solutions should be able to manage existing customers, facilitate prospecting, generate online sales leads, launch and track marketing campaigns, analyze customer needs and preferences, integrate with existing applications and provide secure access to company data from any computer with an Internet connection and a browser.

Here are a few keys to selecting the right CRM solution:

• Ensure the CRM software you choose has the ability to capture all relevant customer and sales related information. At a minimum, your CRM solution must be able to easily record all interactions with your customers. One of the major benefits of CRM software is in its ability to help collect, store and share data to all appropriate areas in your business — in real-time.

• Before you deploy a CRM tool you must first understand your existing sales and marketing workflow. Your CRM tool must be able to integrate with your existing processes or your sales and marketing team will not use it.

• It is imperative to understand the level of customization you will require. Do you have the required technical skills on staff to implement modifications? Does the CRM tool provide an API (application programming Interface) for extending the platform? Will custom changes prevent future upgrade options? Answering these questions in advance will save you time and money later.

• Determine if the CRM tool can integrate with applications used by your staff. For example, you must know whether the CRM tool can share or exchange data with your email client (e.g. Outlook or Thunderbird). You must also know if the CRM tool provides an easy to use import or export function for data mining and other sales analysis functions.

• Determine the level of support you will require. Most open source providers make their money on service and support rather than software sales. Therefore, you should investigate the various levels of support provided by the open source vendor.

• Research the level and quality of third party extensions. Quite often companies are able to find free or low cost extensions and avoid the expense of internal development. Third party extensions can add needed functionality and save your business time and money. For example, third party payment modules have become a necessary component for accepting electronic payment at the point of sale.

While there are many open source CRM products to choose from here are my top six:

1. SugarCRM
2. vtiger CRM
3. SplendidCRM
4. CentricCRM
5. XRMS CRM
6. ZOHO CRM

Be sure to test drive multiple open source CRM tools before deciding which open source CRM application to deploy.

Ricky Bracken is President & CEO of SaleManager Merchant Services. SaleManager provides enterprise class payment solutions to small and mid-size businesses. SaleManager payment solutions include a Payment Gateway Service
, Mobile Payment Solutions, POS Terminals, Retail & Restaurant payment solutions
, Certified Shopping Carts and CRM payment modules.

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CRM Software Selection – The Basics

Any business who sells products or services would do well to use a Customer Relationship Manager, or CRM, especially for a business that sells remotely. Additionally, a CRM is an important efficiency enhancing solution for any organization that uses a call center. The purpose of a Customer Relationship Manager is to organize and track all of the processes and data associated with each lead and client.

A CRM automatically fulfills many of the responsibilities a sales agent would have to perform. The many software solutions designed to compliment the data and task management of a CRM increases the versatility of it dynamically. With supporting computer telephony integration software, a Customer Relationship Manager can instantly capture leads from web forms filled out and submitted by interested contacts via the company’s website. Coupled with a telephone auto dialer, a CRM will upload its list of leads and route those calls through to the best available sales rep for each call. A CRM can even quickly send templated email messages or leave prerecorded voice messages to the lead that the sales rep is contacting with only a single mouse click by the agent.

By acquiring the services of an outside company, Customer Relationship Managers can be provided for remote sales operations without the capital investment into software design or hardware purchase. Instead, all of the necessary components of the CRM are hosted by the providing company. These Customer Relationship Managers are referred to as hosted CRMs or online CRMs.

These hosted Customer Relationship Management tools often provide a very high level of customization within their programs, in addition to having an outside firm that can specifically develop software solutions for a particular business’ or organization’s needs. This includes options such as “drag and drop” functionality. This is a common software function, when applied to CRMs, allows CRM users to individually customize their CRM to their specific business model. The users can add new layouts and fields, customize size, color, and placement of fields, and do so at either the company or sales rep level. Data can be dragged and dropped in whatever position the sales agents want on the screen.

A hosted CRM provides remote sales businesses the tools needed to effectively use all prime business time by reducing wasted time and making the tasks associated with sales easier to accomplish. It is a worthwhile investment even for very small operations, and scales to be productive for much large businesses as well.

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.

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The power and versatility of telephony software allows inside sales companies to increase their calls, contacts, impressions, faxes, emails, and callbacks. All of this serves to increase conversions and revenue. Telephony software solutions are available to complete the myriad of tasks that call centers or remote sales organizations need to accomplish. The software that manages all of the processes that need to occur for a remote sales professional to meet the needs of their clients and their employer is Customer Relationship Management software.

Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM, serves as a database for the storage of an organization’s information. A CRM calendars private and company events and tasks. It automatically captures information on new leads and incoming calls, and a CRM manages customer accounts through the entire sales process.

CRMs can be integrated with other computer telephony integration (CTI) software solutions. Perhaps the most important piece of software to use alongside Customer Relationship Management would be a telephone dialer.

Dialers automatically call through a list of leads, or a similar list of phone numbers pulled from the CRM. A dialer then patches that call through to a live sales agent. Several different dialers exist, from the speedy but sometimes unreliable ratio dialer to the effective and methodical power dialer. No matter what dialer is being used, they all become more effective when they are allowed to pull info from, and up load data too, the CRM.

CRM can also integrate other telephony business solutions with their own database and the dialers they empower. Voice messaging software allows sales reps to leave prerecorded, relevant voice messages on the voicemail of leads they attempt to contact. The CRM will automatically leave the message while the sales rep may move on to take another call. Alternatively these messages can be broadcasted by the CRM. The dialer will call through the list of contacts and automatically play the prerecorded message, freeing the sales rep to receive inbound calls or dial through a separate list. Generally, at any time the contact listening to the message may choose to speak to a live agent.

Email messaging is another example of a CTI solution. Pre-composed email templates may be selected and sent by the CRM during a conversation by a sales agent. These messages can automatically pull information to be included within the email, such as the contacts name or business. Instantly the lead can receive additional information promised to them by the sales agent.

Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

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CRM web based solution is an easy and cost effective way to maintain a healthy relationship with your customer on the Internet. It is the latest trend in modern business organizations. With the wide use of the Internet, business organizations have become more reliant on web based CRM services.

Customer relationship management, abbreviated CRM, is a comprehensive business strategy planned to maximize profitability, revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction. However, CRM business strategies mainly focus on customer satisfaction only. With the coming of CRM web based solutions, the entrepreneurs are able to offer support to the customer through the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Depending on the needs, CRM web based solutions can be availed by any type of businesses. For example, specialized CRM web based solutions are available for client profiles, frequently ordered items, automatic replenishment systems, one-click ordering, and market basket analysis. Mostly, CRM web based solutions are built after systematically understanding the needs and demands.

In a CRM web based solution, the Web is used as the platform. The software is generally installed on a single server. Hence, a user from any remote location can access the facilities of the CRM web based solutions through the Internet. Any slight change in the software of the main server will be reflected throughout the system. CRM web based solutions are cost effective and easy to maintain. Apart from these, CRM web based solutions also provide accessibility through wireless devices such as PDAs and WAP-enabled mobile phones. Thus, CRM web based solutions overrun all the downsides of their counterpart, client-server CRM solutions.

In the past, CRM Web-based solutions were used mainly by medium sized business organizations. But in recent year, almost all small and big business organizations have started using the facilities of CRM Web-based solutions.

CRM Solutions
provides detailed information on CRM Solutions, CRM Business Solutions, CRM Call Center Solutions, CRM Software Solutions and more. CRM Solutions is affiliated with Live Customer Support
.

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Installing a good CRM software package is the cornerstone of any customer relationship management program. Without good software, gathering and storing the multitude of details gained about a customer from each interaction would be very difficult.

Small business CRM systems has gone ahead in leaps bounds in recent years, with several top quality packages now available to choose from. Prior to beginning the search for good CRM software technology however, there are a few basic features you should seek in a potential CRM package:

CRM Web Based Solutions

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Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

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IT Department Skills to Support Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft CRM

Microsoft Great Plains as ERP and Microsoft CRM as Client Relation Management system is very robust combination and could serve midsize to large corporation as Business System. Being VP IT or IT Director you need to foresee the positions to have in your IT department to do internal MS Great Plains and MS CRM support.

Let us give you the directions, based on our research and consulting practice.

Microsoft SQL Server Specialist ? we specially do not name this position as MS SQL DBA, because both Great Plains and MS CRM are not very complex from the database administration side, they do not use indexes optimization, referential integrity, probably do not require complex transaction log backup/recovery scenarios. On the other hand this position requires Great Plains and Microsoft CRM tables structure analysis and some primary Great Plains data fixing skills via SQL queries, described in MBS Customer source techknowledge database. The best candidate should have some accounting background – to be able to address ongoing issues to MBS technical support.

Network Administrator with good Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory skills . Microsoft CRM uses all the newest Microsoft technologies, and Exchange is a workhorse here. In order to install and upgrade MS CRM this guy needs to understand the under-laying Microsoft technology. In the best case – she/he should know Exchange security structure and probably program Exchange handlers, due to the fact that CRM/Exchange connector is not a perfect tool yet.

C# or VB.Net programmer with excellent SQL Skills ? if you are midsize or large company – you should have this position – you will need web publishing and MS CRM customization and its support. Currently Microsoft CRM SDK has C# examples – so C# programmer would be the best fit, it may have more VB code in the future, so the C# – VB balance maybe restored.

Crystal Reports Designer/Programmer – Crystal Reports is the best tool available on the market to address both Great Plains and MS CRM reporting needs. This position maybe merged with one of the above.

These people should be probably cross-trained in both Great Plains, Microsoft CRM, Crystal Reports, SQL and C# programming, so you do not depend on the unique skills of one person. In our opinion, which is based on our long term consulting practice – these skills will allow you to keep the cost of IT support reasonably low and avoid paying high consulting price to your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner.

Happy hiring and training! But in any case you need to select Microsoft Business Solutions Partner/Var/Reseller to be your official representative. This is how MBS has its channel working – it assures that Microsoft Business Solutions products are properly implemented. If you want us to be your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner – give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains implementation and customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com
), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

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Microsoft Dynamics ERP: GP, AX, NAV, CRM – Which One to Select

Being in MRP implementation, customization, integration, data migration/conversion business for many years, we would like to give you some orientation, in the case if you are on the way of ERP selection for your company. In this small article we will be talking about Microsoft Business Solutions ERP brands only, you can check our future publication to get similar orientation on Oracle and SAP ERP products.

? ?Legacy? vs. ?Modern? ERP. It might not be the focusing question, however we?d like you to look at the ERP products from this perspective: Java/EJB Sun Microsystems conception is less then 10 years old, and now Microsoft .Net/C# construction is in the process of getting market from Java. Similar time test should be given to ERP system ? if the system has legacy architecture ? it might be candidate for replacement or be seriously re-written/renovated.

? International aspect. If you think your company is and always be focusing on the US market and will do business with local folks only ? this paragraph might be skipped. For the rest of us ? and we are in this cohort ? we should watch closes Microsoft Business Solutions international policies. When Great Plains Software and Navision Software were independent software vendor and being forming their international policies completely independently from one another ? both had intentions to expand to all the world markets: USA, Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, South and Central America. Now, when Microsoft sells all former GPS and Navision ERP products ? it can choose one product over the other to promote on the regional market ? simply due to the fact that it has to invest into ERP localization.

? Microsoft Dynamics GP – Great Plains. Great Plains Software pioneered in the earlier 1990th with its graphical and DB platform independent product for Mac and Windows: Great Plains Dynamics. The shell was written on C programming language and was named Great Plains Dexterity. Currently with Microsoft Dynamics project initiative ? Microsoft renovated Dexterity ? it supports now COM object calls and so XML web services, but it is not pure .net application/shell ? Microsoft is investing in web interfaces for Microsoft Dynamics GP ? Microsoft Business Portal for GP is very good example. Microsoft Dynamics GP incorporated all the best technologies from Microsoft Office to .Net, but its design was done more then 10 years ago. Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 is available in English, Latim Americal Spanish and Canadian French, plus German, Dutch and French/France versions will be available for version 9.0 only ? they will not be supported for future version of Dynamics GP.

? Microsoft Dynamics NAV ? Microsoft Navision – Navision Attain. Navision Software was established in 1994 and since then it gained European ERP mid-size and portion of USA market, especially for light manufacturing. Navision success should be attributed to Denmark software development market miracle of earlier 1990th. Navision went even further into graphical and DB platform independence ? it designed its own database platform ? C/SIDE ? Navision separated SQL coding from the database itself. Currently MBS promotes Navision on MS SQL Server platform and its database independence is losing its actuality. Navision was localized by MBS to the majority of East European, South American and other emerging markets ? if you are in Europe, South America, Asia and looking for supported reliable solution on your regional market ? you should look at Navision first.

? Microsoft Dynamics AX ? Axapta. Axapta was the newest ERP designed by Navision Software prior to its acquisition by Microsoft. The architecture is dated at the end of 20th century. Axapta needed some time for Microsoft to get upper mid-market ground ? traditionally occupied by SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards. Currently Microsoft is localizing Axapta to Brazilian market ? due in April 2006. Very good chances are in East and Continental Europe, including UK. In 2005 US Microsoft Business Solutions regional and nation-wide VARs invested into Axapta consulting practice ? training and certifying consultants, marketing campaign, etc. Very good chances for Axapta for US mid-market and and upper mid-market clientele and prospects

? Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 or simply Microsoft CRM 3.0 is promoted by Microsoft Worldwide. So, do not question it from the international perspective ? you will have integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP, Navision (through third party integration), Axapta ? in progress, plus with IBM Lotus Notes Domino ? via Alba Spectrum Lotus Notes integration.

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, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

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Microsoft CRM Implementation: Employee Time & Billing – Notes for Consultant

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 1.2 and now 3.0 could be considered as extremely flexible platform, suitable for small, mid-size and corporate businesses, it is easily customizable via C# or VB.Net in MS VisualStudio, however you can deploy MS CRM as is for sophisticated task, such employee timecards, consultant billable hours tracking, contract management, etc. Assuming that you as business owner have IT department or even Microsoft savvy consultant ? you are ready to launch employee timelog process right away, without annoying customization and custom reporting.

? Procedure. MS CRM is flexible in the sense that you can create and attach activity to virtually any object ? Account, Contact, Lead, Quote, Order, Invoice, etc. If you have your consultants do just that ? it will help (all the documents and info will be in CRM), however it would be no structure and you would be spending your time digging CRM in the search of historical information. Remember Lotus Notes Domino? Where you could also keep attaching and expanding lists and tree-like structure? You need the procedure and the procedure will help you structurize the data in MS CRM

? Structure. The structure, deployed for employee time management should be like this. Customer (Account) should have Contracts. Each Contract should have contract lines (where you can allocate the budget per line), then each line should have Cases (when you fulfill the contract ? you assign your consultants to the cases, such as install software, fix bugs, replace old server with the new one, etc.). And finally, consultants should log cases, such as appointments (if the date and time is known) and tasks (if the date and time is now known, however you know the deadline)

? Scenario. Customer ABC has ERP Implementation contract. This contract has two lines: Software Installation (24 hours budget) and User Training (40 hours budget). You activate contract, open two cases for Installation: SQL Installation and Client installation. You assign SQL case to John and Client case to Bill. You book John for Monday onsite visit (appointment, from 8am till 4pm) to install SQL, for bill you create task ? install clients for Nancy and Marilyn (you ask Bill to stop by next week, but you leave him to schedule and decide on the date). When John finishes installation, he opens MS CRM, appointment (either web or outlook client), goes to the appointment->action->close appointment (action Close Applintment->Completed) and 8 hours are logged toward SQL Installation case. When finally you close the case ? you decide on the number of billable hours (you will be shown the actual and budgeted time).

? Reporting. You will probably need two reports: consultant/employee time, were you should be able to see budgeted, actual, written off time ? here you evaluate consultant performance. The second report is Project status.

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Great Plains Integration Example – Importing MS CRM Hours to GP Service Invoice

Microsoft Dynamics GP customization tools selection changed with the introduction of eConnect. If you are on version 9.0 or higher (current GP version is 10.0 – August 2008), we recommend you to deploy eConnect in GP integration routines programming. In this small publication we would like to orient you in Microsoft CRM consulting hours capturing and moving them into Great Plains SOP invoice for billing out to your customers. This example allows MBS consulting practice to build their time billing and accounting systems virtually for free, as Microsoft Dynamics certified partners at this time enjoy GP and Microsoft CRM licenses for free

1. Service Activity in MS CRM. You can schedule, assign your CRM users and resources, associate with Account, Contract, Contract Line or even case. In our example we have case, created on contract line level as future Service Invoice in GP

2. Account contract and contract lines. In MS CRM you budget your time and assign hours (more precisely minutely) rates on the contract line level. Then you invoice contract to enable creating case, associated with contract line and toward this case your consultants log their time in the form of tasks.

3. Closing the cases and transferring them to your custom time log table. First of all, you should know that in MS CRM database you should not create custom objects, such as table, view, stored procedure. Instead you should create new database and place your custom objects there. Having time log table, you should create nightly SQL job, which will move closed cases and their tasks into time log table and mark these cases as transferred

4. Creating Service Invoices in GP. This job is done by eConnect application. You scan time log table, and create SOP Invoice with non-inventory item lines simply by placing consultant name as item number and description as task title. Finally, when your eConnect routine creates Sales Invoice for the case, you should mark case as integrated in your time log table

5. Dexterity nature of GP tables and fields. Great Plains Dexterity places some limitations on the length of GP SOP invoice line records. Please, read about the field descriptions in GP tables in Tools->Resource Description->Tables

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum http://www.albaspectrum.com

help@albaspectrum.com
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Great Plains USA and Canada nationwide. Local service in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Diego.

Please visit our information portal Pegas Planet: http://www.pegasplanet.com

If you need custom programming for GP, we are happy to help you with Dexterity, eConnect, VBA/Modifier, SQL Stored Procedures, Crystal Reports. We also provide instant support to new and existing clients via web sessions for the customers in CA, IL, WI, NY, FL, IN, MI, TX, GA, NE, NM, AI, NC, SC, OR, WA, DC, DE, PA, VI, AZ, LA

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CRM-Toolkit.com

CRM, Customer Service

Improve Performance With Effective CRM

3 Steps to Successful CRM For Both Big and Small Companies

CRM History – The Evolution of Better Customer Service

IT Department Skills to Support Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft CRM

Microsoft Dynamics ERP: GP, AX, NAV, CRM – Which One to Select

Microsoft CRM Implementation: Employee Time & Billing – Notes for Consultant

Great Plains Integration Example – Importing MS CRM Hours to GP Service Invoice

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