Microsoft Dynamics 365 is your solution in using CRM.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a great way to run an organization as an ERP system. It adds a lot of values in connecting all units within the …
Microsoft Dynamics 365Formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Starting at $44 per month
View PricingOverview
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM providing sales, marketing, and service functionality. It is offered as SaaS and on-premise. Dynamics 365 is part of the larger Dynamics suite of business intelligence and ERP products.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Customer data management / contact management (68)8.787%
- Custom fields (65)8.383%
- Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail) (65)7.575%
- Workflow management (66)7.272%
Pricing
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.microsoft.com/en…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $44 per month
Features
Return to navigation
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly called Microsoft Dynamics) CRM is a CRM system providing sales, marketing, and service (help desk) functionality. It is offered in two flavors: Online (competing directly with Salesforce) and on-premise.
The Microsoft Dynamics family of business applications includes other related products for ERP and retail management.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Features
- Supported: Comprehensive Solution for Sales, Service & Marketing
- Supported: Productivity Through Seamless Integration with Office 365
- Supported: Analytics Through Seamless Integration with PowerBI
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Video
Find more opportunities and boost sales with Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Gamification
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integrations
- Act-On Software
- HubSpot Marketing Hub
- LeadLife
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing
- Adobe Campaign
- Aprimo
- eTrigue DemandCenter
- Astera ReportMiner
- Astera Centerprise
- LiveChat
- SAP CPQ
- SAP CLM, discontinued, duplicate
- SnapEngage
- Boingnet
- Devart Excel Add-ins
- GreenRope
- Cincom CPQ
- Axiom Software by Syntellis Performance Solutions
- ClientPoint
- QuoteWerks
- Oracle Marketing
- Syncfrog (unpubllished)
- Ektron Web Content Management System (Discontinued), part of Episerver
- Interactions Digital Roots
- Office 365
- PowerBI
- Yammer
- Microsoft Social Listening
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Competitors
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone |
| Supported Countries | global |
| Supported Languages | Over 40 languages |
Frequently Asked Questions
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM providing sales, marketing, and service functionality. It is offered as SaaS and on-premise. Dynamics 365 is part of the larger Dynamics suite of business intelligence and ERP products.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 starts at $44.
NetSuite ERP, Sage CRM, and Salesforce Sales Cloud are common alternatives for Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Reviewers rate Forecasting and Pipeline visualization highest, with a score of 9.1.
The most common users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(927)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(51-75 of 88)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
December 16, 2016
Our Nightmare with Microsoft Dynamics with CRM
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is being using to manage our customers.
- I can't think of anything.
- Microsoft Dynamics is littered with critical technical issues. We have been having continuous issues with data deleting itself without our consent or any forewarning. This has cost our company considerable time and money and loss of data.
- Their support is horrible. They are difficult to get hold off and you get thrown around many Microsoft departments and no one knows anything about Microsoft Dynamics specifically. From my experience I believe there are only 2-3 actual technical support operators in the Asia Pacific region and this is for Microsoft's flagship CRM product.
- There's also very little compatibility with other modern cloud platforms like Zendesk and MailChimp. The software is slow and it feels like it is normal operating system software working through a cloud connector rather than software written for the cloud.
August 12, 2016
Microsoft CRM. Good enough.
We used CRM to manage sales pipeline, focusing on accounts and prospects. Microsoft was as good as any other solution with ability to capture leads, qualify opportunities and weight them for reporting purposes. There was no need for higher priced solutions. Reporting out of the box is limited, but the data is easily extracted into your business intelligence tool of use. In our case, QlikView, which worked great.
- Track Opportunities
- Track accounts
- Track prospects
- Reporting
- Simpler views into opportunities for faster data entry would be good
August 11, 2016
As customisable as you need
We tried various CRM solutions, finally our R&D department selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We had some issues adding Jalali calendar to it, but eventually we did.
Our company made a plan to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM:
1. Our real process identification
2. Customizing CRM in the marketing department
3. Data migration in marketing department
4. Using CRM in parallel to our previous in-house software
5. Checking the results, and in case of a successful pilot period stoping the previous solution and extending CRM to use in our Project Implementation Department and in our Customer Care and Support Department.
Our company made a plan to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM:
1. Our real process identification
2. Customizing CRM in the marketing department
3. Data migration in marketing department
4. Using CRM in parallel to our previous in-house software
5. Checking the results, and in case of a successful pilot period stoping the previous solution and extending CRM to use in our Project Implementation Department and in our Customer Care and Support Department.
- It's dynamic and easy to customize
- It integrates with other organizational solutions
- There are free resources to solve issues and problems
- It work on both computers and mobile devices
- Jalali Calendar and support for RTL languages
- Kanban board to visually analyse work
August 02, 2016
MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Review
It is being used almost across the whole organization, but heavily used by Marketing and Sales departments to manage sales opportunities, submitting and managing resource requests, activities and customer accounts. Also used to manage vendors and sub contractors. Marketing uses the application to manage contacts and open leads, run reports against opportunities, leads and activities based on date or customers etc...
- Leads and campaigns management that allows to track lead statuses, methods of contact, roles, company profiles etc.
- Management of activities such as tasks, appointments, text messages, faxes, emails etc.
- Customer accounts and associated opportunities management, with customer information and its open and closed activities, ship to and bill to addresses.
- The fact that I'm using 2011 version. I believe 2013 and 2016 have better features. I would start with Dashboard reporting, currently 2011 doesn't have an interactive dashboard and it's not effective.
- Mobile is a big deal now. Most Sales folks are on the go, and they always like to access their CRM data on mobile. 2011 lacks that, probably 2016 has a better mobile framework.
- Out of the box integration with various ERP and PSA systems, in 2011 version they are absent.
July 22, 2016
MS Dynamics CRM - Customisable but clunky
Dynamics CRM is our organisation's CRM - we manage our sales pipeline and use it for reporting and sales forecasting, as well as day to day management of contacts, accounts and opportunities by the sales team.
- Dynamics CRM is hugely customisable - making it adaptable to even the most unique/bespoke sales pipeline
- The connection of different entities (e.g. accounts, opportunities) etc. is very straightforward, allowing for better attribution and reporting
- In built reporting is intuitive and takes advantage of most people's familiarity with MS Office
- The system is very slow, especially on the back end when it comes to making customisations
- Ability to automate business processes falls slightly short for more advanced needs - such as being able to perform actions based on lookup results
April 06, 2016
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Integrates Clients' Information, Communication, and Marketing for the Busy Business!
I currently work for a small business that deals in government contracts. At any given time our company is juggling 10-20 contracts with potential customers. While we are a small company, we found that Microsoft Dynamics CRM provided an interactive environment where we could organize all of our upcoming contract work and customer interaction/documentation.
- The tool allows my company to maintain detailed records of all current and potential customers.
- The tool works seamlessly with other Mircrosoft products, which helps when needing to inport/export documentation, such as Excel spreadsheets.
- Our company has Skype integrated with the tool, which allows us to search any given customer/client and contact them without switching from one piece of software to another.
- While we are a small business, we did need to provide a day's worth of training on the new tool. We did not expect the tutorials to be as complicated as they were, which resulted in looking elsewhere for instruction.
- Our company uses QuickBooks, and we were surprised to find that the software would not communicate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
- We find the product overall useful, but our employer would have a preferred a free trial period prior to his purchase. Upon further investigation, a free trial was found but never initially recommended by the sales representative.
March 09, 2016
Microsoft Dynamics CRM - great to use
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is used by a majority of our organization. Our ticket sales department utilizes it for contact management and pipeline tracking, while our corporate partnerships department uses it primarily for inventory management and contract building.
- Easy to learn and use
- Very searchable, can look for people/companies across many different variables
- No technical issues
- A little more personalization would be nice
- Easier to download reports
- Mobile sign in
October 05, 2015
How we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM
We are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage leads, opportunities and accounts.
- Integrates with Outlook. Therefore we can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Outlook to correspond with customers.
- Workflows make automation of tasks possible.
- The online version allows access to data from any browser on any device from anywhere.
- The windows app is very convenient for use on tablets and small devices.
- Certain UX features are lacking, like multi select lists.
We use Microsoft Dynamics CRM across the organization for Sales (opportunity management, inside sales lead gen), Marketing (lead gen, blog maintenance, event registration, outreach), Support and Education (event registration), Delivery/Sonsulting (project and resource management), support (customer portal and case management) It provides a 360 degree view of our clients' interactions with us.
- CRM allows me to track where in the project delivery process we are with our clients. Using business process flow we can understand what deliverables have been met and which remain. I can review how much time has been spent on projects and how much budget remains to proactively manage projects. Consultants track their status reports to CRM from Outlook so everyone on the team is aware of what is happening on the project.
- Marketing uses CRM to manage our corporate blog. Anyone in the organization can submit a blog idea or write a blog. But an approval process in CRM ensures that all blog posts are branded appropriately and are written to be consistent with corporate and marketing guidelines before being published.
- Managing our opportunities in CRM not only helps the sales team manage their pipeline and sales process but it gives our delivery team a heads up for resource planning. Delivery leadership can review pipeline at any time receives notice when deals are about to close so that they can proactively assess consultant skill sets and begin assigning resources.
- Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has some significant deficiencies that make it almost impossible for us to use. The connector integration with CRM doesn't work with our CRM deployment and basic things we'd expect to be able to do with MDM we just can't do. It's just not a good fit with CRM.
- There just isn't enough documentation or training out there related to MOBILITY for CRM. Everything we do with tablet and phone apps we learn by trial and error the hard way. It shouldn't be that hard to extend our CRM to our mobile platforms.
October 02, 2015
MSCRM Manager Review
We actually utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM in an unorthodox fashion. We have all the servers in our home office and we utilize business units as different offices across our client base. So we have different offices all on the same CRM system, but maintain curtaining with user roles and business units.
- I believe that it's a very robust system with tons of capability.
- I like the workflows.
- The advanced find tool allows users to do complicated queries.
- Because of its robust nature, it's not that intuitive. Novice users have struggled using it.
- The look is too bulky and clunky. There are too many windows and areas to store the same information.
- The Outlook add-in doesn't work great.
June 03, 2015
CRM great for reporting and analysis
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Reporting.
- Information Storage and Archiving.
- Client Tracking.
- Need to provide the ability to past screenshots into the body of an email rather than only add as an attachment.
- Speed of attaching documents.
- Space issues.
- Ability to search within in attachment rather than just in the subject or body of an email.
- Ability to add multiple contacts to the regarding of an email.
- The integration with Outlook is a HUGE plus in terms of user adoption, and if user adoption is not there, then any expense on a CRM is a waste of money.
- When implemented correctly, I've seen a minimum productivity improvement of 5%, very often much higher than that. This is primarily because it creates significantly streamlined communications, both internal and external to the company. What this means is fewer FTEs needed to do the same job!
- Ease of creating dashboards - A picture is worth a thousand words, and dashboards tell each user how they are performing on a continuous basis. When this clicks, you get a situation of all horses pulling in the same direction, and the results of this are terrific!
- Mid market manufacturing companies have invested heavily in streamlining operations and supply chain to drive down the unit production cost of the widgets they make. Unfortunately, they have not been able to do the same for Sales and Marketing, and Dynamics CRM is a tremendous tool in enforcing good sales process. When you have the discipline of following a good process, and have consistent Sales activity (both measurable from the CRM), you have a situation where the CRM becomes the best Sales Coach the company could ever have and not pay for!!!
- Business owners and managers must understand that it typically takes 6-12 months for the results to flow in. And it is often the case that when the bottlenecks in the Sales and Marketing processes are removed, other issues within the company get highlighted. Companies must be prepared for this, and the corresponding discomfort it creates. But it is all good, since we all want to work as efficiently as possible, and anything that brings inefficiencies to the surface is a good thing.
- Out of the box functionality from smart phones leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately there are affordable third party products that are really great at this.
- Complex marketing campaigns and implementing a digital marketing strategy unfortunately require third party offerings. I'm sure this will be addressed in the future, but for now, this is limited.
- While Microsoft has addressed the issue of access from multiple browsers, the desktop "experience" is really only replicated on the Surface tablet, which is why some people have purchased this tablet (in addition to their iPads) because it just makes sense for them to do so. Others object to having another asset in inventory, but that is what the tablet wars are about anyway.
- Dynamics CRM 2013 has the "Process" interface which has its pros and cons. Right now, the ability for developers to tweak the look and feel is limited, but it is expected that improvements in this aspect (giving developers more control) is imminent.
June 03, 2015
Changing how a b-school manages its relationships.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is being used by multiple departments with plans to expand its use within the next 12 months. It addresses data management, customer communication, and business processes.
- Daily workflow management.
- Cross communications - transparency of data among users.
- KPI dashboard reporting.
- Off the shelf it is limited. It requires heavy customization for the education model.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- CRM gives you access to all the customers throughout the company no matter which part of the world the office is located.
- I like the fact that I can create my own dashboard so I can see all the areas that are of importance to me.
- I also like the fact that you can see all the quotes going on within the company to make sure you are not competing against yourself.
- It is a bit cumbersome when qualifying a customer. Could use a few more selections like qualified but went to a distributor.
- When creating a new customer, the owner is not defaulted to who created it. It uses the default option and then gets emails out and has to be reassigned back to the person who created the customer.
- Creating reports could also be more user friendly.
March 18, 2015
Do you know what your customers want? Find out with one click through your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system!
My organization uses MS Dynamics CRM company-wide. It allows for all of our employees, regardless of department, to review and share account information about our customers and prospective customers. We heavily use cases as a helpdesk solution. We have also created several custom entities that tie into the account that are also heavily used by various divisions of the organization. Our CRM system allows users to access all information about an account in one place. There is no longer a need to make several phone calls to other divisions nor do users have to search through emails to find history regarding an account. All of the information is accessible within one system.
- End-User Usability. The system is very user-friendly. A novice user can easily find an account and review all the account information on one screen with links to contacts, cases, opportunities, etc that are associated with the account. All of the different entities are shown on the left-hand side of the screen. Searching for different records types within each entity is simple. New records can easily be created by users. Users can also create their own advanced finds (views). Users have the ability to set their own default start area along with the ability to set a default view for each entity. This is particularly helpful for users who rarely use the system and don't always remember which entity they need to access or which view to select. In the case of upper-management, who may only interested in viewing Dashboards, setting these user defaults is extremely helpful. Reports are easy to run and can have a variety of parameters to allow the user to customize the report data.
- Integration with Outlook. MS Dynamics CRM easily integrates with MS Outlook through a plug-in that is installed on the user's machine. Through this plug-in, a user can track emails, appointments, and tasks from Outlook to CRM through the click of a button. From that point forward, any changes made in either system are synced. In addition, if an email is tracked, any further responses or forwards of that email (inter-company) are also tracked in CRM. Users do have the ability to untrack any email at any point, which will stop any further responses or forwards from being tracked in CRM.
- Customization. From a developer's standpoint, most customizations are fairly simple. A new entity can be created for users in less than a day. Web resources can be created and can be very powerful on entity forms, as well as other places. There are several different types of Web Resources that can be created such as javascript, html, and css. Processes (workflows and dialogs) can be created that can be run on-demand or that can be triggered by an event, such as new record creation or field change. New users are easy to setup. Out-of-the-box, there are several security roles already created. These roles can be customized and you can also easily create your own. The system can be used right out-of-the-box and customizations can be done later as needs are realized.
- Third Party Managed Solutions. It is very easy to install managed solutions into MS Dynamics CRM. There is even a marketplace available where you can search for these solutions. They are also very easy to uninstall if you decide it does not suit your needs. Some of these solutions are free and some cost money. Regardless of cost, which is defined by the creator of the solution and not by Microsoft, the availability of these solutions are a definite strength because as a developer, you do not have to reinvent the wheel. In addition, if you create a managed solution that you feel will benefit others, you can add it to the marketplace and share with other developers.
- Marketing Module. The marketing module in CRM is lacking. As-is, it is very difficult to use the marketing entities for regular campaigns as it just lacks the power and functionality that other marketing programs have. There are marketing programs that can be purchased that will either run through the CRM system or that will run outside of the CRM system but can sync data. In my experience, I have worked with both of these scenarios. I work with one CRM organization that uses an installed managed solution for marketing and I work with another CRM organization that syncs with an external marketing program. I prefer the installed managed solution as the program is accessed from within CRM.
- Third Party Managed Solutions. While I listed this as a strength, it is also a weakness. When selecting third party managed solutions, it is important to research and ask questions. With the on-premise version that I use, I control my updates (rollups). When using the online version, updates are automatic. Make sure that the vendor who created the managed solution will keep their solution updates inline with Microsoft's updates. If not, your managed solution could stop working after an update. With some third party managed solutions, updates to the solution are not automatic either.
- Data Import. The data import in MS Dynamics CRM 2011 is much better than the data import from the previous 4.0 version however, it is still not robust enough to handle all scenarios. There is also supposed to be an easy way to export data to Excel, make changes, and then re-import the data with the changes however, you must do this quickly because any change to a record within CRM before the re-import will cause failures. It is also somewhat cumbersome at times when setting up the field mappings during the import. I have found that it is easier to use an external ETL program to import data into CRM. Usually with these programs you can write formulas and create mappings for option sets much easier than you can using the native data import within CRM.
- Mobility. In my opinion, the out-of-the-box mobile capability for the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 version is worthless. Without spending extra money for a third party solution, you are not able to run javascript on forms and the actual mobile form setup is very limited.
March 10, 2015
Nice tool with a few minor errors
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- User Friendly for a call center platform.
- Integration with Outlook helps tremendously.
- Ability to customize views to your needs is a big plus.
- Ability for detailed reporting is still an issue to me.
- Interface is not friendly when outlook is not used, which makes it difficult to use.
- Checkpoints for errors need to be adjusted and more robust so the errors are minimized.
February 10, 2015
Global Imprementation of Opportunity & Contact Management
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is being used across our global organization to manage contacts and opportunities. As a seller-doer business a large majority of our staff require access to client contact information, especially between international borders. Dynamics CRM helps us manage those relationships in addition to managing our risk in pursuing projects that would potentially put our company at risk of conflict of interest.
- Customization - Dynamics CRM gives you enough, but supports using out of the box (OOB) functionality as much as possible
- Outlook Integration
February 06, 2015
Dynamics CRM
We use Microsoft Dynamics CRM both as a Salesforce automation tool as well as a XRM platform to meet internal challenges. It's a flexible enough tool that allows our business analyst (non-programmers) to rapidly prototype through configuration and vastly extendible for our developers to enhance the platform to meet more advanced business cases/needs. The 2013/2015 updates have vastly improved the user experience bringing much richer UI and business configu
- Built on MSFT stack so development is simple to pick up for any .NET developers
- Different deployment options (on-premise, cloud) fits vastly different business(and legal) needs across all industries and business sizes.
- Limited out of the box reporting capabilities, most enterprise companies will require custom reports and/or additional reporting/BI products
February 01, 2015
Why Try Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
We use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage clients, prospects and referral resources. We also use it to create a pipeline and track wins. The marketing department is a heavy user of the product, but management across the organization also uses it. Prior to implementing CRM, we had no insights regarding existing relationships and pursuits between offices. Now everyone across the firm can see what relationships exist, the status of those relationships and if we are currently pursuing an opportunity with an account.
- Effectively track relationships firm-wide.
- Manage the sales pipeline.
- Track mailings and event registration and attendence
- Enable more than one relationship owner so that relationships are more easily seen without having to update and look in "Who knows who"
- We've experienced a lot of bugs in the Outlook version of CRM. When we use the web version this isn't an issue.
- Make "Advanced Finds" easier to pull - these can get complicated.
February 01, 2015
You'd be way better off with Salesforce...
We are no longer using Microsoft Dynamics CRM within our company. We migrated to Salesforce approximately three months ago.
In all honesty, we had a very poor experience using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and while we've deduced that big part of our problem was the initial partner implementation of our production organization.
In an effort to raise the total implementation costs, the partner we used (who was recommended by a Microsoft rep) put so many unnecessary developments into our organization that it was pretty much unusable, required major rebuilds upon every upgrade/update, and caused so many SQL server timeout errors that our users refused to work in it anymore.
When confronted with the issue, all parties involved (Microsoft support, the implementation partner, and support teams from software integrated into our Dynamics org) passed the blame. The issues were never their fault, and we were sent in circles trying to deal with the issues in our Dynamics org.
- Integration with other Microsoft products/software
- Single sign-on capabilities
- The improvements made between MS Dynamics 2011 and MS Dynamics 2013
- They need to build their upgrades/updates in a way that doesn't break all the custom development currently deployed in a production org. We had to basically rebuild a huge chunk of our custom development with every update, and major software upgrades required a complete and total system overhaul. All of this meant major partner costs every year, that were caused by no fault of ours.
- Microsoft support needs to accept and acknowledge when the issue is their fault, and provide options for fixing it. After a 8 month fight with Microsoft support, we finally got to a support engineer that acknowledged the issues we were having, and provided band-aid solution after band-aid solution. The entire situation created a massive domino effect. One problem got fixed, and three more showed up/started happening.
January 30, 2015
I've used salesforce as well... still prefer MSCRM.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
MSCRM is being used by all departments. Sales and Marketing most heavily, but even merchandising uses it to do research for product development endeavors. The 2 main problems it tackled for us is 1) allowed us to store and use demographic elements about our clients to create a strategic marketing and communcation approach that was relevant to them and 2) allowed us to pull back in the transactional metrics in a unique way. We used the transactional data to create new KPIs which became loyalty measures and identified gaps and opportunities in client spend. These metrics became a huge tool for us to market specifically, to win business we didn't have, to understand why we didn't have it and to move the needle in key product categories.
- Super easy to customize without being "IT". As a tech savvy marketer- I was able to guide my team through the implementation tons of changes as needed to improve our processes.
- Workflows! While there is a learning curve- the workflow functionality within CRM is incredible- a very efficient way to auto populate data, create notifications, etc. Endless possibilities with no IT involvement required.
- Easy data migration from your other systems using scribe, and reasonably simple to import from other sources as well.
- Integration to MS OUtlook. Client communcations can become part of the permanent relationship record with no added keystrokes or hassle.
- My experience is limited to CRM 4- I believe most of the "gaps" I would identify are addressed in the newer versions.
- Native integration of a "proper" email tool would be great. I recently was involved in implementing an Exact Target plug-in within it, and it worked "ok" however if a true subscription based email platform was just part of the package for proactive marketing and client nurture/communications that would be incredible.
- Calculated metrics such as Key Performance Indicators, ratios, etc.. are not as simple as I'd like within the tool Can be done, but requires IT skills (Script, codes, etc). I'd love a method to do that as just a marketing guru. For example- If your transactional system can push in a total transaction count for the last 12 months for a customer, and a total revenue or margin for that customer- and possibly you just want to generate an "average Monthly" metric or an "average Transactional" metric to place into a KPI report. That can be done- by an IT sort of professional- but not by me. That's a simple example- but if you develop any sophisticated KPI metrics that you want CRM to calculate- the "power user" will not likely be able to execute those calculations without significant support from programmers. I've used such KPIs for campaign targeting and marketing cadence planning.
January 27, 2015
Accidental Administrator loves CRM
CRM is used across 75% of our organization to manage and track interactions with our clients. CRM is our source of truth for client communications and interactions allowing all users to know what is happening in the care and maintenance of our clients needs. We track leads all the way through sales into clients and subsequent sales to existing clients with processes througout the system. Utilizing the many features built into CRM as well as custominzing the system to meet the needs or our company.
- Workflows for automating processes that were once manual.
- Giving a full and comprehensive view of where the client is at any particular time.
- Allowing our users to collaborate on clients giving the best service possible.
- Highly customizable to meet the needs of our specific industry and company.
- The need for javascript to do some form control work. This does get better in 2013 and above.
- Global search is missing in 2011. This does come into play in 2013 and above.
- Sharepoint addin for document repository is slow to load and could use some changes to make it more stable.
- Ability to copy records is missing for most entities.
- Administrative management of user created/changed settings, views, charts and dashboards is missing.
- Activities that you can complete throughout a workflow could be increased. For example the ability to do recursive workflows.
- The ability to add dialogs and workflows to the ribbon should be easier. The coding necessary now does not make it practical for super user type administrators.
January 27, 2015
Dynamics CRM Good For Entry-Level CRM
CRM is utilized for multiple purposes throughout the organization:
- For sales, CRM is used for contact management and sales forecasting.
- For marketing, we have recently installed Marketo. The integration with MS-CRM has been difficult. Nothing talks well with Microsoft products anymore. I can especially attest to this as a web designer. Most basic fields translate over to Marketo, however, custom data fields are an issue. We also use CRM marketing lists for events and campaigns. Basic campaign tracking as well.
- Easy to enter new contacts.
- Easy to export to Microsoft products like Word, Excel, etc.
- Easy lookups to create lists.
- Overall easy adoption because of Microsoft UI.
- Overall openness to developers.
- Integration with 3rd party products like Marketo.
- Remove that email token everybody hates.
January 27, 2015
Raving Fan for Microsoft Dynamics
Our CRM system is currently used by our inside and outside sales teams only. Long term we will rollout to our engineering team and our service team.
Used to streamline sales process---handling of leads and opportunities. Used to manage our interaction with accounts and contacts. We also use the goal function and ClickDimensions for marketing automation.
Used to streamline sales process---handling of leads and opportunities. Used to manage our interaction with accounts and contacts. We also use the goal function and ClickDimensions for marketing automation.
- Incredibly intuitive to use. I was hired without any prior knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics and had a custom system Implemented and trained to our sales team in just over 3 months. That is incredible.
- Readily available training materials----just google your question and you'll find support from all corners of the internet.
- The dashboards are very easy to create and customize.
- Sometimes there are too many ways to skin a cat----this has lead to confusion from our sales team at points. IE...multiple ways to get to the same place within CRM.
- I find the Outlook version to be "glitchy". We get crashes or disconnects fairly often. Easy to fix but nonetheless it's annoying. I tend to use the IE version exclusively.
December 09, 2014
Dynamics CRM Review
- It is highly customizable to fit any business need including adding custom entities and attributes, reports and business logic.
- With the latest version, it now works on all browsers and with tablets and cell phones.
- The interface is user friendly.
- Can't think of any.