What is a CRM? Part 2

By Ben Ward, Applications Analyst, MCTS, MCP, MS

If you haven’t read What is a CRM? Part 1, I highly recommend reading it before proceeding.

Sales - Social Selling: A CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, can be used as a social selling tool. Microsoft partnered with InsideView to create Microsoft Insights, a social insight tool that directly integrates within Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide users with instant additional information regarding leads, contacts or accounts from directly within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This additional information is derived from Microsoft Insights scraping publicly accessible social and business profiles regarding leads and contacts and aggregating the data. Currently, Microsoft Insights is free for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

According to InsideView, Microsoft Insights can do the following:

1. Identify Your Buyer

• Instantly qualify prospects with high quality company data

• Expand on previous wins by looking for similar companies

• Identify decision makers in an account by functional area or title

2. Understand your buyer

• Save hours of research time with up-to-the-minute company news and social media buzz at your fingertips

• Increase your win rate by tailoring your pitch to immediate customer needs

3. Engage your buyer

• Start a conversation with a target buyer by noting mutual acquaintances, past employers you have in common or schools you both attended

• Get a warm introduction into an account by leveraging your professional network and those of your colleagues

Source: http://www.insideview.com/microsoft-insights/

Marketing - Big Data Repository: As mentioned on the first line of What is a CRM? Part 1, A CRM is simply a glorified database. This means if a CRM is implemented and used correctly, it can collect a vast amount of data in a short space of time. In a world where there are more mobile devices than people, more and more data is being collected in some form, and with big data comes big opportunity. There may not be a need right now for a full-time analyst at your company, but what about in the near future? An analyst is only as good as the data available. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have legacy data available for when the inevitable moment arrives when your business needs an analyst? As Arthur Conan Doyle once said “Data! data! data! I can’t make bricks without clay”.

About the author:
Ben has worked at Managed Solution for over two years and is currently working on CRM customization and administration, Microsoft SharePoint integration and customization as well as Business Intelligence analytics including SQL reporting. Ben is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Specialist and has six Dynamic CRM certifications.

Other Blog Posts by Ben Ward:

• What is a CRM? Part 2

• What is a CRM? Part 1

• Power BI to gather market insights