In today’s ever-changing business world, efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has never been more critical in providing an exceptional customer service experience across teams.
Enter Microsoft Dynamics CRM – a powerful, innovative CRM solution that helps companies improve how they manage their interactions with customers, streamline sales operations, improve marketing efficiency, and more, all under a unified solution.
Read on to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM software solutions and where our senior-level Microsoft Dynamics consultants can fit in your organization.
What is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a complete Customer Relationship Management software suite created to enhance customer relationships and sales connections for end-users in any company. While MS Dynamics CRM was initially created as a CRM software solution, it has expanded in recent years as a comprehensive analytics platform propelled by intelligent CRM functions.
Microsoft CRM can increase an organization’s sales productivity, improve marketing effectiveness, manage core customer service processes, offer social insights, business information, and more efficient out-of-the-box functionality. Microsoft Dynamics CRM also provides complete mobile-enabled support for CRM operations on the go, allowing users to complete tasks and access information through CRM apps on their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
How Does Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Relate to Dynamics 365?
In November 2016, Microsoft rebranded its Dynamics suite, merging its CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions into a single product called Microsoft Dynamics 365.
All existing CRM and ERP software was combined into Dynamics 365, but Microsoft Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL can still be deployed as a standalone solution.
In the new Dynamics 365 suite of applications, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is Dynamics 365 for Sales, Microsoft Dynamics AX is Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, and Microsoft Dynamics NAV is Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Other minor functionalities were converted into smaller, modular software solutions so businesses can pick and choose which features they want and update their core offerings as needed over time.
What Does a CRM Software Solution Do?
Traditionally, businesses across industries have used manual solutions like spreadsheets, emails, address books, and other compartmentalized and paper-based CRM solutions to track customer data.
With these outdated CRM methods, employees sacked the functionality to discover and share the most up-to-date information across teams quickly and efficiently. And, with a lack of integration and automation capabilities, organizations could not develop automated marketing campaigns, pursue new sales leads, and provide customer service as efficiently and effectively as possible.
CRM programs automatically gather customer insights on current and potential consumers, including phone numbers, email addresses, company sites, social media posts, purchase histories, service tickets, and more.
After integrating the data from each disparate source into a unified platform, new-and-improved CRM solutions create consolidated profiles that can be shared with the right teams, ensuring all authorized users have access to the data they need, whenever and wherever they need it.
Understanding the Need for Modern CRM Functionality
Modern CRM systems connect with other business management tools, like document-sharing apps and online chats, to improve functionality, connection, and collaboration across the entire organization. They also typically offer embedded business intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to speed up critical administrative processes and provide better insights into customer data.
With advanced CRM solutions like MS Dynamics CRM, companies can gain greater insights into their most important marketing, sales, commerce, field service, and customer service operations and access data that plays a key role in improving, developing, and maintaining better customer relationships.
Here are some ways to use modern CRM capabilities to improve efficiency across teams:
Track opportunities through sales funnels for improved sales.
CRM tools assist sales and marketing teams in tracking lead-related sales data and insights across the organization. This way, they can stay organized, understand the progress of each lead in the sales process, and track which employees have worked on each opportunity.
Leverage sales tracking to gain real-time performance data.
MS Dynamics CRM allows organizations to integrate sales data into their CRM application for a quick and accurate view of business-critical sales data. With a real-time picture of your entire sales pipeline, l users are more aware of delays, bottlenecks, or secured deals in the sales process.
Plan the next steps with insight generation.
By leveraging AI and other integrated intelligence functionality, companies can identify their top sales priorities, shift their focus to the initiatives that matter most, and optimize time and effort across teams.
Leverage automation to optimize workflows.
Using intelligent task automation functionality, users can create sales quotes, collect customer feedback, and conduct email campaigns, allowing for more streamlined marketing, sales, and customer care initiatives and better engagement. And, by automating core workflows, companies can eliminate repetitive duties so that their internal teams can concentrate on high-impact initiatives that add more value.
Monitor customer interactions for a more significant impact.
To help companies better understand engagement across numerous client touchpoints, the MS Dynamics CRM solution incorporates tools that dig into consumer behavior and reveal opportunities for improvement.
Connect across many platforms for improved customer engagement.
Modern CRM systems enable companies to connect with consumers where they are through live chat, calls, emails, or other social interactions, fostering the trust and loyalty that keeps customers coming back.
Grow with flexibility and get a competitive advantage.
With Dynamics CRM functionality, the ever-changing demands of your company and the entire marketplace can be met with a scalable CRM solution built on a platform with solid security and protected integrations. This way, users can quickly launch new marketing and E-commerce efforts and respond more efficiently to customer needs and volatile market conditions.
Why Should You Implement a CRM Solution?
Implementing an intelligent CRM solution offers full insight into each client relationship as users create new CRM strategies and assess your options. Companies also need a solution that gathers data at each point of contact with the customer, processes it, and presents the insight in an easy-to-understand format for internal customer service, sales, and marketing teams.
The following customer journey stages are enhanced by implementing an intuitive CRM system:
- Engage the appropriate clients. Identify, analyze, and pull in the correct leads and convert them into customers through predictive insights and data-driven consumer behavior trends.
- Improve interactions with consumers. Understand each customer’s history, habits, buying trends, and other critical details, allowing for the best service possible.
- Monitor developments along the customer journey. Identify a consumer’s position in your sales lifecycle to focus on opportunities and ideas that optimize engagement and productivity.
- Boosting group productivity. Concentrate on the most important tasks by working more productively, improving visibility, and optimizing core business processes.
How Can an Intelligent CRM Solution Help You?
Companies of all sizes can benefit from Dynamics CRM.
While Dynamics 365 CRM can help small businesses automate business processes and enable employees to focus on favored activities, it also helps larger companies simplify and enhance their most complex customer engagements and provide more value across the board.
Here’s a look at how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution can benefit business teams:
Marketing Team
By delivering tailored marketing strategies that appeal to your target audience, companies can create multichannel marketing campaigns, nurture sales-ready leads with focused buyer experiences, and synchronize teams through automated planning and tracking tools.
With Dynamics CRM solutions, users can prioritize what matters most to their business by gaining better insights into brand identity and market conditions through personalized dashboards and advanced data analysis. They’ll also be able to reply quickly and make better business decisions by leveraging targeted and automated CRM processes.
Sales Team
Encourage sellers to fully understand customer needs by engaging with them more personally to win more deals in the long run.
By outlining business-specific sales strategies, companies can withstand change across their company and industry, build successful plans for new sales pipelines, and find best-fit customer groups.
With AI capabilities that track current and past leading indicators, users can manage customer relationships from beginning to end and create automated workflows that improve overall sales execution. These workflows and contextual prompts offer a custom experience that aligns with the buyer’s journey from anywhere, at any time.
Creating a smarter selling strategy with integrated insights helps curate relationships, boost sales performance, improve productivity, and enhance innovation through a modern and flexible platform.
Field Service Team
Implement the Internet of Things (IoT) into your daily operations to encourage agents to curate a better in-person customer experience. This integration allows users to identify problems more quickly, provide technicians with just a few clicks, and streamline work orders across the board. By streamlining scheduling and inventory management, companies can improve efficiency and deliver a more customized service experience while reducing costs.
With real-time technician location tracking functions, appointment reminders, and intelligent contract, quote, and scheduling information, customers can remain connected to field agents and cultivate trust through transparent communication.
Customer Service Team
Companies can use service bots to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience for customers by enabling customer service teams to provide value and boost engagement with every interaction.
Customer service agents that provide personalized services can cross-sell or upsell by leveraging important, contextual data from various business areas across the entire organization.
They can also optimize resource allocation and utilization based on feedback, surveys, and social listening, making tracking current service trends easier and staying ahead of the competition.
Thanks to intelligent and guided service delivery across all channels, customers can interact with agents, quickly address issues, and create a more personalized experience across the board.
Project Service Automation Team
With Dynamics CRM solutions, organizations can leverage embedded planning and analytics tools to improve customer-focused delivery models and enhance profitability across teams. Users can also plan for changes in demand, identify resource capacity, and forecast project profitability by utilizing powerful project planning tools and intuitive dashboards that give users greater insight into costs and revenues.
The Dynamics CRM platform also allows service professionals to use insights in their own workflows, optimize resource allocation, and assess utilization with real-time dashboards. Teams that leverage these insights are more likely to optimize critical internal processes, maintain compliance, and increase output across their entire project team.
Product Offerings
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available in two categories:
CRM Online
CRM Online is a cloud and subscription-based CRM service in which all back-end processes, like setups, application servers, deployments, databases, licensing, and more, are managed on existing Microsoft servers.
Subscription-based models are typically preferred for businesses that may not be interested in managing all the technicalities of a complete CRM implementation. With the CRM Cloud service, companies can set up their system in just a few days and access it on the web whenever and wherever they need it.
CRM On-Premise
Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premise service installs CRM applications and databases on existing business servers and offers a more specialized and comprehensive version of the service.
With this, users can manage their databases, modifications, deployments, backups, licenses, and other hardware and network configurations in the same place. On-premise implementation is typically preferred by enterprises looking for a customized CRM solution, providing better integration and customization options.
Both products offer comparable functions from a functional perspective; however, their implementations can vary.
What Versions Are Available?
The original Dynamics CRM solution has been discontinued, so new clients will purchase Dynamics 365 Version 9.0 to access up-to-date CRM capabilities.
Dynamics CRM is still available for current clients who have not yet updated their software to the most recent version, but Microsoft no longer supports it.
How We Can Help
Whether you’re looking for a robust CRM solution to track customer interactions, additional support implementing a new solution to optimize sales processes, or just an extra hand getting started on your Microsoft Dynamics journey, Surety Systems can help.
Our senior-level, US-based Microsoft Dynamics consultants have the functional skills and years of experience to help you successfully implement your Dynamics solution and achieve seamless functionality across your entire organization.
Contact Us
Are you ready to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM or where our team of expert Dynamics consultants can fit in your organization?
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