Turning business process into business advantage for organizations everywhere

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Turning business process into business advantage for organizations everywhere

By Takeshi Numoto as written on blogs.microsoft.com
Today, we are taking the first step to bring our customers new, modern, enterprise-ready intelligent business apps with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource.
Technology is transforming our personal lives with apps and services that are simple and intuitive, and deliver helpful assistance to improve our lives.
In contrast the apps and services we use to drive business process are often difficult to use, try and deploy.  Some even make you pay extra for capabilities like visualization, workflow automation and predictive insights.
We imagine a better world for business users everywhere. One where you can track leads, automate field service, drive sales and improve operations using modern, mobile, enterprise-ready intelligent business apps from the cloud that are as easy to use as the consumer apps that help us all get rides, book rooms, listen to music and take actions to improve our health.

Helping customers transform with a new approach to business process

Available this fall, Microsoft Dynamics 365 evolves our current CRM and ERP cloud solutions into one cloud service with new purpose-built apps to help manage specific business functions, including: Financials, Field Service, Sales, Operations, Marketing, Project Service Automation and Customer Service.
Dynamics 365 apps are designed so they can be easily and independently deployed. That means you can start small and pay only for what you need. Yet they work together seamlessly so, as your business demands, you can grow into additional capabilities with ease. They include built-in insights, predictive intelligence and workflow optimization, all of which will be delivered through simple, easy-to-use, mobile experiences with offline capabilities.
Power BI and Cortana Intelligence will be natively embedded to help customers achieve their business goals with predictive insights, prescriptive advice and actionable next steps.
Deep integration between Dynamics 365 and Office 365 will connect the structured workflow of business apps with the unstructured work of collaboration and productivity.

Adapt and innovate in real-time with a common data model and extensible business application platform.  Dynamics 365 apps will:

Use a common data model, shared with Office 365, to simplify data management and integration across apps and business processes.

A place to find new apps and better ways to get things done

We are also introducing Microsoft AppSource – Microsoft’s new destination for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from Microsoft and our partners. At launch AppSource contains more than 200 business SaaS apps, add-ins and content packs, including exclusive new industry-specific business apps from:

Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.

We specialize in providing full Microsoft Solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.

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For More Information on Microsoft and other Cloud Solutions, Contact Us at 800-208-4037

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Infographic: Dynamics CRM for Memorial Day

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Wednesdays With Will: Customer Engagement

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
The sales world we once knew is disintegrating as the way your customers once bought has changed.  There’s no reason for concern though, just awareness.  In one of our earlier articles we discussed how marketing is driving sales as buying habits continue to evolve.  Your customers are doing more research prior to engaging with a sales person now than they ever have before.  This means, in most cases, the sales cycle has started before you are even aware of it.  This may be a shift for your sales team whom had become accustomed to being the driving force for initial customer engagement in the past.  They may have lost a great deal of power in what had been their traditional sales process.  But just like their customers, the sales person must evolve as well.
Businesses are investing more in their marketing departments today so they can keep ahead of their competition.  Since the sales cycle is now starting with customers doing their research, it makes sense to increase budgets for creating educational content about how your products or services can address a need.  You’ll also focus on “getting found” so that the great content you created can be consumed.  Though these are two important components for effective marketing, they can be very time consuming and are just the start.  Understanding how your customers are interacting with your content is crucial for guiding them down their purchasing journey.
One of the best ways an organization can set their marketing and sales departments up for success is providing them marketing automation tools.  Years ago, marketing automation almost exclusively dealt with direct mail or email marketing automation.  The rise of the social media channel added a new complexity and opportunity for how you are able to nurture a prospective customer into a client.  With it also came additional tasks and manual processes to take advantage of this new channel.
Using a Customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help simplify these processes and improve your marketing effectiveness.  Dynamics CRM lays the foundation for connecting your marketing, sales, and services team, providing them transparency, and ultimately a higher level of collaboration.  It also delivers your client a complete engagement experience from marketing to sales to services.  Though there is a lot that you can do with the native Dynamics CRM platform from a marketing perspective, sometimes you can use additional functionality.
To augment our marketing automation capabilities, Managed Solution leverages an add-on solution from one of Microsoft’s top marketing partners, ClickDimensions.  Our organization relies heavily on our marketing to drive new business leads to our sales team.  Email campaigns, creating forms for our webpages, creating web content, and designing nurture programs are just a few of the ways we use ClickDimensions to simplify our marketing efforts on a day to day basis.  Since it sits right inside Dynamics CRM it keeps everything in a single pane of glass which makes it much more intuitive than other email marketing and marketing automation systems.  If you are already using Dynamics CRM in your organization and are looking to enhance your marketing experience even further, I’d suggest looking at ClickDimensions.  Here’s a short video highlighting some of the latest features:
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As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
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Other articles by Will Marchesano:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Wins CUSTOMER Magazine Product of the Year Award

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Wins CUSTOMER Magazine Product of the Year Award

By Tricia Morris as written on community.dynamics.com
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 is wasting no time in showing its strength in delivering intelligent customer engagement. We are pleased to announce that TMC, a global, integrated media company and publisher of CUSTOMER magazine, has named Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 a CUSTOMER Product of the Year Award winner.
As we continue to innovate with the customer in mind, we appreciate the recognition of the investments and steady progress we are making in this area. This is what our new leader of Dynamics CRM, Jujhar Singh, had to say about the award.
“Over the past few years, we have been focused on transforming our CRM offerings to leverage the full power of Microsoft – harnessing the strength of the intelligent cloud to help companies deliver amazing customer experiences across the breadth of sales, service, marketing and social engagements.
“We are honored by this Product of the Year award, which confirms both our momentum and the benefit to customers of a solution that delivers both increased productivity and the intelligence to drive more personalized, proactive and predictive service experiences.”
The 2016 CUSTOMER Product of the Year Award recognizes vendors that are advancing the call center, CRM and teleservices industries one solution at a time. The award highlights products which enable their clients to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers.
On behalf of TMC and CUSTOMER magazine, Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC had this to say about the award. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 has proven deserving of this elite status and I look forward to the continued innovation from Microsoft in customer service in 2016 and beyond."

For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691 or fill out the contact form below and an expert will contact you shortly.



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The new light-weight CRM App for Outlook

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The new light-weight CRM App for Outlook

What is it?

With no installation, no configuration, and no additional log-in steps, you can now quickly track your important customer emails directly within Outlook, whether on your PC or Mac running the desktop version of Outlook, or on the go through Outlook Web Access on your laptop or phone (Windows, Android, or iOS). You can even see relevant information from Dynamics CRM Online about the person who sent you the email, or pop open the full form directly from within our new CRM App for Outlook.
What’s the difference between the new CRM App for Outlook and the existing CRM for Outlook Add-in?
The new CRM App for Outlook is a light-weight app directed to accomplish a few specific tasks like tracking and converting emails as well as reviewing a few details about the specific contacts and leads from the email. Alternatively, the CRM for Outlook add-in is a full client for Dynamics CRM that allows you to have complete access to all of Dynamics CRM’s functionality, including dashboards and full grids, and even allows you to work offline.

How do I get the new CRM App for Outlook?

Note: The CRM App for Outlook is rolling out over the next few weeks to CRM Online organizations independently following the CRM 2016 release. If you don’t see the below options, your organization hasn’t yet received the feature. This app requires Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Online and Exchange Online.
Dynamics CRM Online users can easily add the app to their Outlook directly from within Dynamics CRM Online. Simply click on the gear icon and choose Apps for Dynamics CRM. Then choose Add app to Outlook under the CRM App for Outlook heading. The app will show up in the user’s Outlook interface when reading or composing emails anywhere they use Outlook.
Dynamics CRM Online administrators also have the ability to push the app to user’s Outlook interfaces through the newly added CRM App for Outlook settings page. To do this, simply navigate to Settings > CRM App for Outlook and click on the Add App for All Eligible Users button. Optionally, you can select individual users from the grid to add the app on an individual level. Use the auto-add feature to ensure all newly added eligible users automatically get the app added to their Outlook.
Keep in mind that for both cases, in order for users to be eligible to get the app, they will need to have their Exchange mailbox configured with Server-Side Synchronization for incoming emails as well as have the Use CRM App for Outlook user role privilege.

I’ve been using the preview version of the app, do I need to do anything?

Yes. With the release of Dynamics CRM 2016, the preview program for the CRM App for Outlook will end. Thank you for all of your valuable feedback. Once your CRM Online organization is upgraded to Dynamics CRM 2016, the older app that was available during the preview period will no longer connect to your Dynamics CRM service, and will be removed from the Office Store. You will need to manually remove the app and then follow the instructions listed above to get the new, fully-supported app.
To remove an app from Outlook, simply open Outlook Desktop and choose Manage Add-ins from the File menu, or from Outlook Web Access, choose the settings gear icon, then Manage add-ins. From there, choose Dynamics CRM and then choose the uninstall button to remove the app.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com

Wednesdays with Will: From Marketing to Smarketing Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Marketing

Wednesdays with Will: From Marketing to Smarketing Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
As a Chief Marketing Officer, VP of Marketing, or Director of Marketing you are always looking for new, exciting, and most importantly, efficient ways to build your company’s brand awareness and cultivate new business leads. The little time you have between creating and managing email campaigns, improving your SEO, scheduling webcasts, organizing live events, and countless other tasks, you sometimes wonder if all your efforts are having the effect you desire. What if there was a way to not only gauge the impact you are having but simplify most if not all of these facets to marketing?
Based on the challenges I identified above, you may think I currently work in one of these roles. The truth of the matter is that I work closely with the individuals in my organization that comprise our marketing department, or as they call it, Smarketing. You may now be wondering, “what the heck is ‘smarketing’?”. I’m glad you ask. We define it as marketing smarter and by that we mean, “how can Marketing make the biggest business impact requiring the least amount of time and resources?”. To accomplish this our marketing team leverages a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
Many of you have most likely heard the term CRM or are currently using one today. In the past, this technology was usually associated with the sales team of your organization. There are many manufacturers out there that offer this platform with Salesforce being probably the most recognizable. But how does it relate to marketing and making your life easier? As you may have noticed, the way people buy today is not the same way they bought 10-15 years ago. Today, the average buyer is at least 57% through the decision making process before they engage a salesperson. The role of an effective marketing team may be more apparent now than ever.
Most organizations have been able to adjust to the shift by the way they communicate and engage with their prospects and clients. In doing so, many are using multiple disparate systems for different tasks such as creating and managing campaigns, nurturing leads, managing clients, tracking appointments and opportunities, taking notes and creating follow-ups/alerts, gathering analytics, etc. Each workload serves a purpose but also consumes a lot of time and, in some cases, money. Luckily there is a streamlined and centralized way of accomplishing these goals with ease of use and management. We have found Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be more than up for the task.
Using Social Engagements in Dynamics CRM, you are able to get insight as to what people are looking for by what is trending on multiple social network sites. That information is gathered and displayed in an easy to understand dashboard. This can be useful for determining the message or communication to your target audience in your next campaign. Once a lead has been captured you can then assign it to a designated nurture path. Lead scoring allows you to determine when a lead has “graduated” from one nurture path and is ready for the next stage. Campaigns can be created and managed directly through Dynamics CRM allowing you to track the cost for running different campaign types as well as analyzing how successful each were. This is a great tool for determining the effectiveness of a campaign as well as how to reallocate your spend more dynamically. If you work in a team setting, the built in approval workflow will help with developing your campaigns. What better way to keep everyone on the same page than a staged process?

 

 

Remember, every business is different as well as their needs and requirements. If you’d like to determine if Microsoft Dynamics CRM can solve your challenges let’s discuss. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…

 

About the author:

Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
Other articles by Will Marchesano:
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.

Wednesdays with Will: Making Your Business Intelligent by William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist

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Wednesdays with Will: Making Your Business Intelligent

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
You are a Business Owner or Operations Manager who is always looking for a way to improve efficiencies in your organization. Recently you heard about Office 365 and were wondering if it would be the right fit for you and your employees. There are a few reasons why you are considering it. You realize your 5 year old email server has seen better days. It hasn’t been functioning as it should and is possibly costing you business because employees are not able to send and receive email communications internally and externally as they should. You also realize that the version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc...) is not the same throughout your organization so additional time is needed by employees to change formatting when sharing and opening documents. This costs the company time and causes frustration for your employees. Your workforce is becoming more mobile and some of your employees work remotely from the office. Last but not least, you are looking for an easier way to collaborate on the latest version of documents and spreadsheets. For these reasons and possibly more, you decided it was time to look for a way to improve your situation.
Microsoft Office 365 is typically considered because it is a versatile solution that can address these individual scenarios or all of them. This means you can just use the parts you need such as Exchange (Email, Contacts, Calendaring), Office Pro Plus (the current version of Office Suite), Skype for Business (IM, Presence, Video Conferencing), SharePoint (Intranet Portal, Document Storage) or more. It doesn’t require additional hardware and you can add each piece of the solution as needed. This allows you to easily operationalize your costs while providing your employees the latest tools to be successful in their job. Under this model, Microsoft is now able to revise and improve the product more frequently at no additional cost. This also improves user experience and adoption because the changes now are much more subtle and less drastic to a complete version change.
Microsoft recently extended its Office 365 Platform to include Dynamics CRM. If you are not familiar with Dynamics CRM or what a CRM is in general, let me tell you why you’ll want to know. The most basic description for a CRM is that it’s a business intelligence tool that can be leveraged by your Sales, Marketing, Services, and Management teams improving customer engagement and customer experience. This will help your organization generate more business and improve client satisfaction. The analytics gathered will also allow you to maneuver more fluidly with the changes in the businesses you work with as well as the current environment. Over the next few weeks I will be taking a deeper dive into:
Hopefully you enjoyed my article and if you’d like to read more you can follow me here. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…

About the author:

Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
Other articles by Will Marchesano:
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.