The Online version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a pretty nifty tool called Internet Lead Capture. This feature is really handy for companies who get lead emails from their website contact page. Below is a typical email from a website submission form:

From: administrator
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 5:49 PM
To: website_leads@yourcompany.com
Subject: New website lead

First Name:             Paul
Last Name:             Velgos
Company:               Hitachi
Business Phone:     (219) 561-7180
Email:                    pvelgos @ hitachiconsulting.com
Description:           Hi, I love Microsoft CRM

Whoever handles these frequently uses a manual process to manage them. Maybe they forward the email leads to other employees and hope the person does something with them. Or if they do track the leads they might copy and paste each line into a spreadsheet. For companies getting more than a handful of emails a day this gets to be a time consuming process and leads can fall through the cracks.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a method of automatically capturing the lead data from your website and also be able to easily track communication history and progress?  This is exactly what Internet Lead Capture does. No more copy and paste!

Internet Lead Capture is a wizard-based tool that enables you to create a website contact form, called a Landing Page, and add fields from CRM Online such as Name, Email, and Phone. When someone fills out and submits the form the information they enter gets converted into a Lead record within CRM Online and the data is automatically copied to the appropriate fields. Pretty slick.  Here’s how it works.

Selecting the Internet Lead Capture option loads the Get Started screen. In this area you can create new landing pages and view your leads. To create a new form click Create a new landing page.

This opens the Landing Pages window where you can create a lead capture page or a lead capture form. What’s the difference?

The lead capture page is hosted by Microsoft, offers a handful of color options and themes, and can be created by someone with zero technical knowledge.

The lead capture form gives you HTML code you can use to add the form to your existing website. This allows you to keep your website layout and appearance so the form looks totally seamless. 

In this example I’ll create a lead capture page by clicking the Create Page icon.

This opens the Create New Landing Page window. Here you can pick a name for your website address, page layout, and theme.

Clicking Next opens the Edit Lead Capture Page window. Here you can enter details about your company and also choose the fields you want to appear on the form. You can select from most fields that exist in the Leads entity. The default is Company Name and Last Name. I added First Name, Email, Business Phone, and Description. You can also choose which fields to make mandatory.  I chopped off some of the form because it’s a bit long but there are more options to add your company logo and privacy statement.

Then comes the Review and Confirm page that lets you see the final result and also go back to make any changes if needed. Clicking Finish brings up a page (not shown) that provides a summary and also the website address of your contact page.

When you enter the website address in your browser it displays your submission form. I filled out the form and submitted it.

When you go back to the Internet Lead Capture Get Started page there’s a link to View all leads. Here you can review the Leads and decide who to assign them to.

Once assigned they show up in the main Leads area of CRM Online. Here’s the Lead I submitted. Notice that the form data is copied to the correct fields. From here you can manage this Lead, store communication history, and determine if they’re a fit to do business with.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a lot of tools to automate processes. This is just another small feature that can add up to some serious productivity gains.

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.

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.

Microsoft is now hosting a free 60 trial version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM at http://www.hostedmicrosoftcrmtrial.com/signup1.aspx. It’s pretty nice in that it offers some guidance on how to use it and it’s fully functional. 

1. No Microsoft Outlook

2. Mixed Feelings on Trials

So in summary, the trial is great but it may not be enough to help you see how well Dynamics CRM fits your company.