Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Redtail CRM

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

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It is extremely well suited to client management in the insurance and financial services industries. I think it would not be nearly as useful in a retail setting as many of the features would be irrelevant.

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• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

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• Redtail CRM gives the capability to have a place to store all client-related documents in a readily accessible, yet secure, location.
• Redtail CRM has a feature to input notes and comments on particular clients in order to keep track of communications with and steps taken for those clients. Those notes can be easily accessed across the firm.
• Redtail CRM allows all email communications to be stored in a safe and secure manner as well as making those communications accessible on demand.

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• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

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• I would like to see the ability to push annuity business into Redtail like brokerage accounts.
• I would like to be able to attach documents to specific notes instead of just contacts in general.
• Those are the only two cons that I have.

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Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

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The platform is easy to use and train on. It is a one stop shop with all the information needed to maintain a clean client relationship. We recently had our scheduled audit done and Redtail was helpful in pulling the different reports we needed to produce for the audit

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I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

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Was good and still is good. Seems like when a company acquires another they try to squeeze out more profit and forget what made them successful in the first place. Reducing staff and support seems inevitable, even though the number of users has increased significantly over the past 10 years

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We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

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Generally speaking, Red Tail has been available whenever needed. there was a time period however where it was down and not available, giving 500 errors when trying to log in. They explained that it was due to upgrades they were making and it has virtually disappeared. Has now been available 99% of the time.

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Overall general performance is quite satisfactory. Some of the automation factors that other products have available are slowly migrating to Red Tail. When these add ons are available and fully implemented, it greatly increases the power and usability of the CRM. Occasionally there are products that will not intergrade due to the nature of how they are set up

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Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

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We use the HELP section of Redtail often. If it is taking you more than 5 minutes to figure out than go to the HELP desk. We have had only great experiences when reaching out for help. We also LOVED the Redtail University we attended.

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Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

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Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

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Quite honestly, I have visibility into a number of CRM systems and Redtail stands alone as the strongest contender. It has the most thorough and customizable interface of any I have encountered. There are few other tools that offer the unmatched flexibility and the depth that any business could stand to profit from.

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Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

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The biggest problem seems to have been with the email module. connection issues, sync issues, compliance updates, etc. The concept is great however there seems to be issues in getting it to work consistently. When it works, it works well. It seems that the frequency of downtime had been greatly reduced however.

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• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

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• Redtail makes it easy to log customer interactions for compliance related fields.
• With Redtail, you don't have to worry about losing information. Just pull up the customer's profile and make some notes on what is going on. You can never be too detailed in the advisor industry.
• The integration ability at Redtail really saves us heaps of time. You can feed information over from the custodian straight over to another 3rd party. API is game changing!

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