Have you made your New Year’s Resolution around Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Well it is that time of year again to set New Year’s Resolutions for all of us. According to USA.gov the top New Year’s Resolutions are:
- Drink Less Alcohol
- Eat Healthy Food
- Get a Better Education
- Get a Better Job
- Get Fit
- Lose Weight
- Manage Debt
- Manage Stress
- Quit Smoking
- Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
- Save Money
- Take a Trip
- Volunteer to Help Others
Not sure if CRM can help with drinking less or eating healthy but let’s focus on the ones it can. That would be “Save Money and Manage Stress”. These two are about Making More Money and Organizing Your Workday. So how can CRM help with that?
Make More Money with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Most people who work at organizations want to help their companies make more money which in-turn will allow the individual to Make More Money. CRM has many powerful tools to help users of the system do this in a very short amount of time and very little effort. Some of the recent tools with CRM like the integration with social networks and the integration with Outlook allow users of the system to make more money by not wasting time and being better informed.
I read a good article recently by Maurice Saint titled “CRM Is About Doing More Business – And Making More Money”. Some of the key ideas he mentioned is:
• CRM provides you with customer insight and a real-time information pipeline, which allows for accurate and timely forecasting. This allows you to build and focus on high-profit, sustainable customer relationships.
• CRM also provides your staff with customer intelligence and best practices to increase their likelihood of successful transactions.
• Other commonly-cited CRM benefits include increased customer acquisition, retention, loyalty, and profitability.
CRM is like anything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. From my experience over the last ten plus years, those who utilize CRM the most are the ones that tend to be the best performers at a company (nothing scientific but seems to be that way). So get your arms around it and start making more money with CRM today.
Organize Your Workday with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Operational efficiencies allow users of CRM to be the most effective in their jobs/roles. By having documented processes and then automating those in CRM, an organization can find a great way to empower users to organize their workday more efficiently. Process Dialogs in CRM allow for users to have a graphical view of a process. This will walk a user through a series of questions/statements to help guide the conversation with customers/clients. This is an under-utilized but effective tool that users should take advantage of immediately. Dialogs utilizes the same powerful Workflow engine that comes “out of the box” with Microsoft CRM. They are simple to create. Give it a try and let me know. Check out this video which will give you more details.
Other powerful tools in CRM to organize your workday range from “Out of the Box” SharePoint and Outlook integration. With SharePoint a user can store documents directly and contextually on SharePoint without ever leaving the CRM User Interface. With Outlook integration the user can integrate email, calendar, contacts and tasks with a click of a button. The usability of the CRM client through Outlook is easy to use and will allow anyone to better organize their workday life in one centralized place. You can read more about all the features of the CRM Outlook client here. Many more tools exist in CRM to organize your day which will help lower your stress like activity tracking and dashboards (one screen views of KPIs).
So make it your New Year’s “Work” Resolution to utilize CRM more in your day-to-day life. This will allow you to start reaping the benefits of Making More Money and Organizing your Workday better. Let me know your thoughts about CRM and/your best New Year’s Resolutions.
