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Shifting Company Goals by Working with CRM Software

by Sherie Cavicchia on February 4, 2012

Customer relationship management (CRM) software was, until just a few years ago, presumed to be effective, and necessary, only for large businesses and corporations. It was assumed, in many sectors, that small to mid-size companies lacked the volume of customer interaction to necessitate a CRM system. This outmoded point-of-view, however, has changed, and industries have now realized that customer interactions must be appropriately managed regardless of a company’s size. Once they realized CRM software could also benefit their needs, small and mid-size businesses began to integrate CRM programs in droves. In this changing business landscape, CRM software developers have begun to create programs that are customized to the needs of smaller businesses.

Most small businesses come to the realization that while there are benefits to their size, there are also some disadvantages. The average small business doesn’t have the connections or the financial power to reach all their goals. However, big companies move slowly and often have lots of red tape that inhibits change, while small businesses have the benefit of being nimble and able to quickly take advantage of new ideas.

Keep in mind that traditional CRM still provided companies with great benefits. It provided a cost-effective method to mining data that could help the business improve it’s customer service in the future, as well as offer consistent customer service in the present.

Online CRM solutions have surged in popularity in recent years. This type of CRM not only provides solutions tailored to all business sizes, but it improves efficiency since employees can access the system no matter where they are. When a company chooses online CRM, they are opening a world of customer service possibilities that would not be feasible with conventional CRM technology. With the close client/customer service representative interaction created by online CRM, companies are free to utilize new and unique customer service methods. Online CRM programs, which lead to one-on-one client/customer service representative interaction, can ultimately increase a company’s client-retention rate. This is because the representative, via online CRM, has the ability to give each customer a truly personalized experience, thus increasing the customer’s devotion to the brand.

In the modern age, many companies turn to online productivity solutions in order to help their businesses run as smoothly as possible. Modern technology, such as smartphones, laptops, and tablet computers, have changed how employees work. People can now effectively conduct business from almost anywhere in the world. WIth email and other business networks already accessible anywhere, at any time, it serves to reason that online CRM solutions are a logical next step for the majority of companies. Undoubtedly, CRM programs are essential to customer service in all businesses, both large and small.

Whenever you search web based contact management software into Yahoo search, do you find the thing you need?

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Canadian Feds announce DTAPP to Fund Technology for Small and Medium Businesses

by Mike Kelland on November 21, 2011

The Canadian Industry Minister recently announced an exciting new program for Small and Medium Business (SMB) named the Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program (DTAPP). The Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program (DTAPP) delivers funds, as much as $99,999, meant for companies to build and implement systems that were designed to improve their power in the global market. The qualification specifications will be rather straightforward. To meet the criteria, your company will have to:

employ less than 500 people;

be a corporation, operate for a profit and be inside Canada;

be in growth mode;

present intentions to complete a project meant to implement digital technologies; and

be in a position to modify their current procedures, to optimize the benefit of taking on digital technologies on its productivity

This will be a brand new, $80M investment over 36 months from Industry Canada that\\\\\\\’s focused on producing digital technology intended for SMB\\\\\\\’s that will motivate additional differentiation in the industry. The mention from Industry Minister, The Honorable Christian Paradis, has been that \\\\\\\”Canadian firms invest at approximately 60 percent the rate of their U.S. counterparts on a per-worker basis.\\\\\\\”. The intention with the investment is to raise that substantially making Canadian businesses even more differentiated on the worldwide marketplace, whilst producing work and pushing Canadian innovation.

Filling out an application to receive financing from those types of agencies is often difficult and generally takes a amount of expertise in engineering related to it. Long before you\\\\\\\’ve gotten too seriously into the application process, make sure that you have the technology affiliate ready to aid on the application. You probably like to have a great concept of which technology you want to deploy. Having a engineering company by your side who knows the program, the prerequisites with its difficulties can be excellent. You may additionally wish to incorporate your accountants to understand any tax ramifications for instance qualification requirements with regard to SRED along with influences for every tax inducement programs your company is currently taking advantage of.

If you are looking at requesting the Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program (DTAPP) to get capital designed for technological innovation projects inside your small or medium company, we will support you! Tindr.co could be the execution engine and your software development and software outsourcing affiliate on the creation as well as execution for business-impacting technology. We will even work with you to get your application prepared as well as approved at no cost.

To learn more about the Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program and obtain assistance with your application, please see our software outsourcing services at Tindr.co. We are very excited about this new program and are looking forward to helping as many companies as possible with their applications.

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Integrating Mapping with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

May 27, 2011

Today latitude and longitude can be important in your daily use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 if you take the time to understand the impact and what it means for your CRM data but before we get to the CRM aspect it’s time for a quick update on GPS a…

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

February 22, 2011

Explore Microsoft Dynamics CRM Help boost sales, satisfaction, and service with CRM that works the way you do When it comes to customer relationship management (CRM), communication is key. The ideal CRM solution should streamline the way your people communicate with clients and collaborate with each other. The more comfortable they are with the tools, [...]

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Fiscal Settings and Goal Management

January 18, 2011

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 had the capability of defining the fiscal setting for an organization but there was a limitation that this could only be defined once and cannot be modified thereafter. Primarily the fiscal settings were used in CRM 4.0 to set salesperson quotas. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 the fiscal settings feature is revamped and it now provides user the capability of modifying fiscal settings multiple times. With deprecation of the Quotas in CRM 2011 Goal Management is one of the primary consumers for fiscal settings. This blog post explains how the fiscal periods for the organization can be set and how it interacts with the goal management.

How to configure the fiscal settings for organization

Fiscal settings can be configured by navigating to Settings-> Business Management -> Fiscal Year Settings. The following dialogue provides the options for setting values for fiscal start date, fiscal period type and various display formats. Note that as opposed to CRM 4.0 where the fiscal settings were absent in an organization until set, CRM 2011 defaults fiscal period to quarterly starting January 1. Also the various input options for the fiscal settings are now context dependent which prevents user from entering conflicting values.

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Fig: CRM 2011 Fiscal setting dialogue with defaulted values

Following are the various fields required for organization fiscal settings:

  • Start Date: When the fiscal year is going to start from. This date typically would mark the start of the financial year in sales organization.
  • Fiscal Period Template: What is the fiscal period type? Possible options are Annually, Semiannually, Quarterly, Monthly, 4- Week period. Once the start date and period type is defined the system can calculate the start and end dates of fiscal periods for various fiscal years.

Fiscal Display options help user to define the display format for various fiscal settings. For example consider the following monthly fiscal settings with Start Date as April 10. Note that we have selected the “Name Based on” value to “End Date” and “Fiscal Period” drop down has the options specific to Monthly fiscal period template.

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Fig: Fiscal dialogue having Monthly fiscal period starting 10th April.

Goals and Fiscal settings

Fiscal periods are tied closely to goal management. Sales people usually have the quarterly sales targets, Customer service representatives need to achieve their goals for the case resolutions and so on. When the new Goal form is launched, Goal is defaulted to the current fiscal period automatically. Because for current fiscal period there are fixed start and end dates, the goal start and end dates are also displayed in read only mode.

For example if we have the monthly fiscal settings are per the fig above and user clicks new goal form, following fiscal values are defaulted on goal form (on 31 Dec 2010)

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Fig: New goal form defaulting dates to current fiscal period.

FiscalPeriod: December (Based on fiscal period display value “Month Name”)

FiscalYear: FY2011(Based on Prefix:FY, YearFormat:YYYY, NameBasedOn:EndDate(on 31 Dec 2010))

From (Goal Start Date): 12/10/2010 (Based on 4/10/2010 fiscal start date)

To (Goal End Date): 1/9/2010 (Based on Goal Start Date above and monthly fiscal period type)

Updating Fiscal settings for organization

Fiscal settings in MSCRM 2011 can be updated multiple times by using the same fiscal dialogue shown above and hence provides the supports for scenarios arising from mergers/acquisitions , partnership changes, financial restructuring etc. There can be goals existing in the CRM system which are already using the old fiscal settings. To better handle situations arising from fiscal changes which can lead to data inconsistency, MSCRM goal management offers the notification and realignment mechanism. For following examples consider the goal created with fiscal settings for the current (default) fiscal period. FiscalPeriod: December, FiscalYear: FY2011, From (Goal Start Date): 12/10/2010, To (Goal End Date): 1/9/2010.

Case 1: Fiscal period template remains same but the start dates changes:

CRM system administrator moves the fiscal start date ahead by 5 days i.e. from 4/10/2010 to 4/15/2010. In this case the fiscal period template remains the same but the start date has changed. Data in the goal record still retains the old values for all fiscal and date fields. When this goal record is opened the following warning message is displayed on the goal form to notify the fiscal settings change and provides user the option to realign.

Message: “The fiscal settings of your organization have changed since the time this goal was changed. You might want to realign to the new fiscal settings. ”

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Fig: Fiscal change warning when the fiscal start date is changed.

Note that the “Align with Fiscal Period” ribbon button is now enabled for this goal record. Clicking this updates the new start and end dates for the goal which is now according to the current (new) fiscal settings. Realignment is optional for the goal manager based on the business need. Note that even after realignment goal fiscal period and year still remain same as there is only the change in the date. Also the warning message is now gone.

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Fig: Goal form after the realigning the fiscal period.

Case 2: Fiscal period template changes:

CRM system administrator changes the fiscal period type from monthly to quarterly (3 months). In this case also the existing data is retained as is and there is a warning message on the goal.

Message: “The fiscal settings of your organization have changed since the time this goal was changed. You might want to realign to the new fiscal settings. ”

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The goal manager on seeing this warning can either choose to switch to the new quarterly fiscal settings by changing the fiscal period to quarterly as shown in the above figure. Else he can convert this goal into the custom period goal by clicking on the “Goal Period Type” radio button and can retain the goal start and end date and also get rid of the fiscal change warning.

Fiscal settings upgrade

If the fiscal settings are configured for an organization in CRM 4.0 these are retained in CRM 2011 as is, otherwise the fiscal settings are defaulted to quarterly with January 1 as the start date. Additionally the existing CRM 4.0 quotas are also upgraded to CRM 2011 but the new quotas cannot be created as these are deprecated in favor of goal management.

Thanks,

Hemant Gaur

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Microsoft revela detalles de su proyecto CRM Live

July 18, 2006

Microsoft confirmó que la solución Microsoft Dynamics CRM sigue creciendo en todos los segmentos, regiones geográficas e industrias, y que ha añadido a más de 50.000 nuevos usuarios en el último trimestre. Por este motivo, no extrañó que el gigante informático desplegara una nueva oferta de software como servicio denominada Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live. Los [...]

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