Item: Microsoft Dynamics 365
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

Pros and Cons

Pros

Integration with other Microsoft products - especially Outlook and SharePoint. User adoption is key and allowing users to access the CRM within Outlook was a huge advantage and ease of use feature.
Customization to fit your business model - customization of existing entities and creating new ones is extremely simplified and I love that I can customize an area I'm in without having to go to the settings/admin area first. Creating new fields on the fly, adjusting pick lists, etc - all so easy.
In CRM 2013, I love the built in sales process that guides our users from initial lead to closed deal. You can customize your sales stages and what's required at each stage to make it simple to use. No more backtracking to find details from the qualified stage when you're in the proposal stage - users can be required to complete certain elements before moving onto the next.

Cons

Setting Goals - This is one area that is a little more complicated than others to set up and use properly. Especially if you have large sales teams or several regional areas that you're tracking. The functionality is there - just takes some upfront thinking and patience when setting up.
Reports - the out of the box reports are helpful, but creating custom reports is cumbersome and often requires outside reporting software to get the end results you want. Would be great if you could just export the dashboards you create as a formatted report.

Return on Investment

Organizational awareness and forecasting. Before using Dynamics, we had little insight on the opportunities that were on the table - especially what sales stage they were at, expected revenue and close date, etc.
Business efficiency - with simple workflows, we were able to automate simple tasks that were either time consuming or all together forgotten by users to ensure consistent processes throughout the sales cycle.

We've been able to integrate 3rd party software as well such as marketing automation and really maximize the value of our CRM. The integration with Outlook is key and although other products have options, utilizing the native MS product can't be beat. We continue to grow our usage and insight into business, processes, and growth. There are still areas we continue to develop within CRM that are improving our business.

Likelihood to Recommend

The product has many great features that offer ease of use, business insight and marketing management that can't be found in many others. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 10 is that it's behind Salesforce in 3rd party applications. Depending on what your business needs to do - there are many vendors putting development resources into Salesforce integration over Dynamics integration - however we're seeing that gap shrink quickly and expect that Dynamics will soon be equal playing ground.

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Dynamics CRM - a product that actually gets used by the sales team!

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