A new demo is available for the eService Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This demo is for the Online version but functionally it should be similar to the On-Premise version.

The first few minutes cover some technical stuff but the middle section of it does a pretty good job of showing the functional process flow. Toward the end it goes back into technical configuration.

http://www.democrmonline.com/eServiceOnline/

The eService Accelerator is pretty slick. Much like the Event Management Accelerator I did a walkthrough of recently, this is another great example of the potential of CRM as an xRM platform from which to optimize your business. The concept of xRM (Anything Relationship Management) looks beyond CRM as contact management software or a sales force automation database. Again, CRM can be used for those purposes but that’s like buying one of those huge RVs to drive around the block. Get out and explore!

Think more about all of the different types of people your business and its employees interact with and the processes that are used for those interactions. Could those processes be improved? How would your customers feel about your business if you offered them the option of submitting their own service cases online instead of calling? How would providing self-service capabilities affect your costs? Yes, CRM is software but success comes with the convergence of the software with your business.

Revised 10/14/09

In an interview with Brad Wilson, the General Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM at Microsoft, ChannelWeb mentioned version 5.0 would be out in the second half of 2010.

“Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) channel partners are about to get their first look at the next release of the vendor’s Dynamics CRM application, a product that’s targeted for release sometime in the second half of 2010″

“Dynamics CRM 5.0 will sport improvements in the user interface and data visualization features, enhanced sales and marketing capabilities, and tighter integration with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server collaboration platform, according to Wilson, who declined to disclose details.”

http://www.crn.com/software/218500733;jsessionid=KEB1TPSAPTOIWQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN

From what I remember new CRM version releases were supposed to be on a two year cycle. Version 4.0 was out in January of 2008 so this seems to have been pushed out a bit.

Wow, all kinds of new stuff coming out today for Dynamics CRM.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables users to access Dynamics CRM through a web browser on a mobile device such as a phone or PDA.

This is great for road warriors such as salespeople who need to access information about clients while traveling. You can use Mobile Express much like you use regular CRM. So you can get to Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and most other CRM entities right from your phone.

A couple of things worth noting.

Microsoft says Mobile Express works well for “occasional access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM” and over “High-speed networks”.  What this translates to is it’s great for quickly checking stuff like a phone number or quote but you wouldn’t want to do the majority of your daily CRM tasks with it. And since it’s web-based you must have internet access to use it because it doesn’t store data on the mobile device and therefore doesn’t synchronize data. But most mobile devices that have internet access usually always have connectivity so I don’t see this as a big deal. If you need offline access see my post about other mobile options for Dynamics CRM.

Here’s more detail and the download for Mobile Express.

In the next few weeks Microsoft plans to release three new Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These include the Social Networking Accelerator, the Partner Relationship Management Accelerator, and the Portal Integration Accelerator.

I’ve had several clients asking about Twitter integration so this is good timing. There are some existing methods for integrating Twitter with Dynamics CRM but they’re pretty basic. This Social Networking Accelerator looks like it has tighter integration and more functionality.

Here’s an online demo of the Social Networking Accelerator:
Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Here’s a portion of the detail released by Microsoft:

Social Networking Accelerator
The Social Networking Accelerator allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services. This accelerator delivers integration with Twitter; other networks will be introduced in future releases.

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator
The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator allows businesses to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners. It provides pre-built extensions to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM sales force automation functionality, including new data entities, workflow and reports. Using the PRM Accelerator, companies can jointly manage sales processes with their channel partners through a centralized Web portal, as well as extend this integration to automate additional business processes.

Portal Integration Accelerator
The Portal Integration Accelerator easily connects Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web experience. With this added capability, a business analyst can use point-and-click configuration — as opposed to Web development — to rapidly extend to the Internet any business process and drive costs out of everyday business interactions.

Microsoft has been releasing free add-ons for Dynamics CRM called Accelerators. The Accelerators enable you to quickly add new functionality to Dynamics CRM to handle common business activities. As you might expect, the Event Management Accelerator enables you to manage events right within Dynamics CRM.

This serves as a good example of what’s possible with Dynamics CRM. Many companies still think of CRM as contact management for storing customer names, phone numbers, and history. While it can be used for that there is so much more potential for it to be used as a business efficiency platform.

Microsoft has been pushing the idea of XRM which is “Anything Relationship Management”. Where CRM emphasized customers, XRM could be partners, distributors, physicians, and you name it. For XRM you still use Dynamics CRM. You just use it to do a lot more.

So back to Event Management. Coordinating events can be a costly and time consuming process. Because CRM doesn’t have event management built-in users partially use CRM along with other tools to manage the entire process . Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single fully integrated method of managing everything? This is exactly what the Event Management Accelerator enables you to do in Dynamics CRM.

The Accelerator provides a web-based process for enabling interested attendees to view information about the event and register for it online on a webpage that Dynamics CRM automatically creates. All of their registration data is captured and stored in CRM. So here’s a high level look at the process.

The Accelerator adds new functionality to the marketing campaign entity. You can create an event much in the same way you do a marketing campaign by adding planning tasks and activities. You can configure quite a bit including the date/time, duration, location, maximum capacity, and even sponsors.

Here’s the campaign event form to create an event in Dynamics CRM.

After you’re done setting up the event, CRM creates a campaign that you can use to contact target attendees. As an example you could do a mail merge and send a mass email invitation and registration link to all attendees. When they click on the link they will be taken to an events calendar page.  This webpage can be integrated with your website or be used independently. If there is more than one event they will be displayed on this page.

When they click “Register Now” on the Events Calendar page they are taken to the registration webpage form.  Once completed this registration data is transferred directly into Dynamics CRM.

After completing the form they are taken to a confirmation webpage that lets them know they’ll receive a confirmation email.

The registrant’s information is then added to the event campaign as a campaign response. When you open up the campaign response it displays a form with all of their details.

Overall, this is a pretty slick little add-on that should help your business manage events more efficiently. And since the people you’re inviting are probably existing or potential customers this accelerator will be another tool to make sure they have a good experience every time they deal with your company and its employees.

I’m back and am getting caught up a bit.

Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 970141) was released today July 2nd, 2009 and is available for download at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5101d801-976b-4c11-bdfc-000b970ef4a3

Update Rollup 5 contains a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes. For more information see Article ID 970141 at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=970141

While this update can be uninstalled, it is recommended that you do a full backup of CRM and assess it in your test environment before deploying it to your production system.