In the past (very) few years, we have seen an explosion of smart devices, specifically smart phones and tablet-like devices such as iPads, the many android equivalents, and recently Microsoft’s Surface product.

Why have these devices received such rapid adoption by a wide range of users, from business people, young people and even the elderly? It is because they are easy to use, have fast responses, have excellent graphics quality and fill a need where a single device can supply music, video, communication, books (both audio and text), games, GPS mapping, and the list goes on almost endlessly.

My son-in-law is a primary school teacher. His school has recently required all year 5 and 6 students to have an iPad or equivalent device as part of their normal learning equipment. So it looks like smart devices are here to stay.

Every client I have dealings with is now either using a mobile solution as part of their CRM system or is asking what is required to get into this mobile area. More and more employees are asking their IT department to allow them to connect their personal mobile device to corporate systems.

So the question is, is a mobile solution easy or difficult? The answer can depend on whether you are looking from the end-user or IT perspective. We recently we rolled out the use of the CWR Mobile solution for our internal Microsoft Dynamics CRM system to our sales staff. This rollout took a matter of minutes for the CRM administrator once the background configuration was done (which took a few hours). For the user, it was simply downloading the app to their phone from the relevant mobile app store then connecting to our CRM system and they were away.

User feedback is already positive from the sales staff. They can now review their appointments, opportunity data, client data, etc., when on the road without the need to log into a computer. As the CWR solution allows data to be stored off-line, they don’t even need to have mobile coverage to do all these tasks. Synchronisation back to the CRM server happens automatically when mobile coverage is re-established.

What does it take for IT to get to this point? The most obvious need is for the CRM to be accessible outside the corporate IT domain. For Microsoft Dynamics CRM, this is done by deploying Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) which is the Microsoft-recommended approach to allowing secure access to your corporate CRM data. Then, depending on the solution chosen, it could be a few hours work to configure the solution to meet your particular business needs.

For Microsoft Dynamics CRM there are essentially two types of mobile solution: the free Microsoft mobile solution that is included out of the box, or a third party solution, of which there are quite a few. Professional Advantage chose to be a reseller and user of the CWR Mobile solution because it has excellent local support, it allows off-line capability, and configuration of the mobile solution uses very similar tools to that of native CRM configuration. It also allows JavaScript on mobile forms, so the business rules enforced in the corporate solution can be replicated in the mobile solution.

The Microsoft free solution is pretty basic but it will be suitable for some clients who only need to view data or have limited data entry needs for their mobile solution.

There are lots of resources on the internet already that explain the detail of how a mobile solution is configured and the benefits of each type of solution. My point is that if you (as an IT or business area manager) are not already considering a mobile solution you will soon be forced to by your staff!

So is a mobile solution easy for IT? Yes it is, if you choose the solution most suitable for your staff and it is easy to configure, like the CWR solution is.

Providing a mobile solution will almost certainly be widely adopted by staff which means you will be getting the most out of the investment made in your CRM system, and the business will benefit from staff using the system to its full capability rather than avoiding it as being “admin work when I should be out selling”.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

It is true that the Dynamics CRM data import tool is easy to use and quite functional. But the physical act of importing data is not what we are talking about here. The old adage of garbage-in-garbage-out applies equally well to a CRM system as any other.

Don’t even bother importing data into Dynamics CRM unless you are prepared to clean it beforehand. It is very difficult to clean data once it is in Dynamics CRM (or any other system for that matter). I have worked with clients who have simply dumped data into their new CRM system (despite recommendations to the contrary), only to regret it a few months later when they realise the negative impact on their business.

So what is clean data?

• Accurate – correct name, address, phone number, email address etc, with no duplicate records.
• Complete – the data represents the data sets for the whole of the business area that will use Dynamics CRM. For example, if you are importing accounts you should import at least a complete list of all current customers.
• Related – each data set in Dynamics CRM is related to other data in some way. For example, contacts have parent accounts. So your contacts for import should all be checked to ensure the parent account is in the account dataset you will import.

How do you clean data?

There is no hard and fast way to clean data. But what works for me is to use MS Access as a tool to help me identify where there could be problems.

The first step is to organise the data you want to import into separate spreadsheets or worksheets within one spreadsheet. Then import each data set separately into its own table in MS Access. Each client’s data presents its own challenges, but generally I always do the following:

• Use group query to find duplicates in each data set. If, for example you import duplicate accounts, when you try to import contacts, the contacts which refer to those accounts will fail.
• Join parent and child data sets, and data with lookups to other data, e.g. account list and contact list to check all contact parents are in the account list, or opportunity customer in the opportunity data exists in the account table.
• Create a table for each option set field used in the data, then use query to join option values to the data set to ensure there is a matched value in the option set table. By default the Microsoft data load creates extra option set values if they don’t already exist in Dynamics CRM. This is normally a bad business practice.
• Export users from Dynamics CRM into a spreadsheet, import into a table in Access, then use query to join data to the user table to see that all record owners in the data match a user in the user table.

You will probably not be surprised to hear that I have never had a client who presented data for import that did not have a number of problems in more than one of the above areas.

If you have your ‘consultant’ hat on, make sure you do not fix the data for the client. The consultant should never take this responsibility as data is owned by and is the responsibility of, the client.

When the ‘fixed’ data is given to you, go through the above data checks again by freshly re-importing the data into the MS Access tables and re-running the queries you have saved for each check.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

The Professional Advantage framework represents a multi-component layer of non-business related logic that resides between the CRM SDK and the business logic. This layer was aptly given the title of ‘framework’ because it represents a structure for supporting a rapid implementation of a CRM development solution across multiple technologies and process models.

As previously mentioned, the framework represents a layer of non-business related logic that resides above the CRM SDK. This means that the maintenance requirement of any CRM product or customisation using the framework is minimal when new CRM versions are released to market. This is a key factor for clients to consider when investing in bespoke CRM development. Applications developed using the Professional Advantage framework provide a level of future proofing during an upgrade process that is not available for pure CRM customisation work.

The Professional Advantage framework comprises two aspects: a core application programming interface (API) library and a collection of framework adapters.

On its own, this core component is pretty powerful and it is this core component that provides a high level API layer to the CRM SDK. The core framework module may be used in both online (cloud) and on-premises environments. This core component, however, is process agnostic meaning that it is simply an API that may be consumed in any process. This core component may be used in CRM plug-ins, workflows, ASP.NET processes, WCF applications, Silverlight applications, Window Service applications, Console, Forms and WPF applications. Suffice to say that the core module is an API.

The framework adapters, as the name suggests, allows the framework core API to adapt and be consumed by a specific process type. An adapter provides all of the API capability in the core framework module as well as API capability and runtime context specific to that process type. For example, an ASP.NET framework adapter will provide CRM connectivity and authentication straight out of the core framework API as well as providing process ASP.NET runtime context and ASP.NET impersonation tools and much more.

The core framework and adapter design provides a componentised architecture where the implementer may use the core framework API on its own or with as many adapters as is required to implement a solution. Better yet, if the solution requires involvement of multiple processes, the developer’s code may exist in the one code Assembly/Module/file.

All of the technology capability is at the hands of the developers simply by creating a reference to the framework API and its respective adapters. All the developer need be concerned about is the business logic implementation. Best of all, this entire implementation may exist in a single class (file) simply by implementing each adapter interface. For the non-developer audience, this simply means you can have your code to run in a specific process by subscribing to it in your code with one line of code. The implementer need not know how the Windows service loads the code module, or how the AJAX.NET JavaScript call on the browser ended up running the code stub on the server because the Core API module and its adapters takes care of all underlying… framework!

Blog written by Chris Pennington, Consultant to PA. The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the writer. Content published here does not necessarily represent the views and opinions

 You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here or Upbeat here.

You also know that there’s going to be a grind tomorrow, because the sponsors are expecting a breakdown of the attendees with analysis of how those individuals fit the sponsors’ aims. Since next year’s sponsorship depends on demonstrating the value of the event, it’s a must-do task, and you’ll be working in a spreadsheet. Yes, it really is going to be a grind.

Such things can no longer be left to spreadsheets, especially when those members probably exist in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, when your performance shows up in a finance system, and when advanced marketing is what sets the truly professional association apart from its peers.

As an end-to-end solution for professional associations, not for profits, event organisers and government bodies, UpBeat from Professional Advantage brings together a full, 360-degree view of everyone the organisation interacts with.

Constituents are the lifeblood of the sector, whether they’re attending your event, donating to an important fundraising drive or renewing a membership.

For example, look at a quite simple capability, such as UpBeat’s instant access to your top-twenty or bottom-twenty members. The business decision that matters is whether marketing should focus on the most active or least active members. However, you can only make that decision if you know who they are.

We also understand that UpBeat’s customers don’t want a long, slow implementation that creates a demanding, stand-alone system. UpBeat is integrated into Microsoft Dynamics CRM , and works natively within other Microsoft products such as Outlook, to give the not for profit and profession association straightforward access to a full view of their members, wherever they need it.

And with a good profile of the members, and non-members, that attended your event, you’ll not only be able to demonstrate your value to your sponsors, you’ll also have a much better chance of crafting your next event to be a success!

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Upbeat here.

Our team of CRM developers have looked into this requirement and have built a tool to help import additional members into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Marketing Lists, using Microsoft Excel.  Using our import tool, users can simply import accounts, contacts or leads as members of an existing CRM 2011 marketing list.

Before we go too much further we are not talking about simply uploading data into CRM from Excel.  It is important that we keep the structure of the marketing list the same but simply append additional records.  This tool has come in handy during data migration and also for everyday use.  Imagine we want to email a number of contacts in our marketing database and we have used the Advanced Find feature to filter through a number of contacts in our CRM database.  Our search has returned 5000 contacts but we would like to extend our offer to a maximum of 3000 contacts.  The user can simply export the results from Advanced Find into Excel using standard CRM functionality, cull the list down to 3000 and using the import tool, bring those 3000 contacts back into a Marketing list ready to be emailed.

Using our scenario the process needs to be:

a)      Run an Advanced Find query to identify new customers added in the past 12 months

b)      Export the Advanced Find results to Excel, (this provides an opportunity to manually cleanse the data – which is otherwise too difficult to achieve via a general advanced find query)

c)       Re-import the Advanced Find results back into the MS-CRM marketing list

The key when re-importing the data is to ensure the contact’s unique identifier is preserved.  This way when the contact information is re-imported to the marketing list the associated contact record is also updated with any future activities resulting from the use of that marketing list.

Professional Advantage has built a nifty little tool to sync these activities together and using Excel as the front end driver to manipulate the data and re-import it.

To find out more how this work, do not hesitate to contact Professional Advantage at www.pa.com.au.

Blog written by Chris Pennington, Consultant to PA.  The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the writer.  Content published here does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Professional Advantage Pty Ltd.

With so many ways to communicate or be heard, membership-based organisations need to be constantly reviewing their use of technology and ensure it maximises their communication abilities. But this doesn’t simply mean the CEO starts tweeting. To be effective, a membership organisation needs to have a co-ordinated communications strategy. This in turn requires the systems and infrastructure to support this strategy to be in place.

It’s been suggested that a message needs to be communicated six times before the audience will hear and accept it. We also know that different people respond to different forms of communication. Some prefer to hear a message, others to read it. The use of images or video also plays a vital role in delivering a message. Hence, getting a message through can often require a sustained campaign across a varied channel.

A tool like UpBeat, which is based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, is an excellent foundation for tracking and managing communications with members. By capturing and maintaining a record of interactions the CRM system becomes an effective database of knowledge. This foundational system gives organisations a platform from which they can build a communication plan with their members. Without such a central database, the varied forms of communication can get lost, overlap or be ignored.

We know that technology is constantly changing and the ability to take advantage of this change is what often marks the difference for organisations that want to get ahead. Technology improvements are often incremental. But it is only by investing in core systems and keeping them up to date that incremental improvements can be leveraged.

Keeping in touch with members across a variety of communications channels is vital. With more and more information being produced and consumed across the planet, organisations must take advantage of technology to meet the demands of their membership ranks. If not, the organisation risks their message being drowned out or marginalised.

Blog written by Chris Pennington, Consultant to PA. The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the writer. Content published here does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Professional Advantage Pty Ltd.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Upbeat and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is, as the name suggests, a system that records information about your customers. Without customers, a business dies, hence the CRM should be the most valuable system in the business.

SharePoint is a very versatile tool. It is easy to use, intuitive, and can be easily tailored. It is a convenient tool to use in many situations. For example, the document management capabilities of SharePoint are certainly more extensive that those of most CRM systems.

Many organisations will happily operate both SharePoint and CRM. Typically, each tool begins its life within the organisation with distinct objectives. They co-exist quite happily for some time.

However to work effectively, an organisation needs to be clear about the strategic use of each tool. In my view, data integrity is crucial and there is a difference between where data is stored and where it is accessed. As soon as source data is housed separately in either system the integrity is lost.

How does this occur? Well typically it’s not unusual that each tool develops a super-user or champion and they really help push the use of the tool along. However, a problem arises when SharePoint is used to solve a customer-centric need – without reference to CRM. It may be that SharePoint can do the task and the convenience of using SharePoint is appealing. However, if it is not integrated or linked back to the CRM, the strategy of maintaining a centralised view of the customer is lost.

Now the problem exists that the customer relationship management system no longer maintains a 360 degree view of the customer. A user needs to use two systems to build a complete picture.

Where appropriate, a better approach would be to designate the CRM as the master source of customer information and if necessary use tools like SharePoint to surface that information.

It may mean that convenience or ease-of-use is not optimised, but the principal of data integrity is preserved. If delivering consistently superior customer service is key to business growth then the strategy of maintaining a centralised view of customer data should win out over convenience.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Microsoft SharePoint here.

Blog written by Chris Pennington, Consultant to PA. The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the writer. Content published here does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Professional Advantage Pty Ltd.

Professional Advantage works with a wide range of companies that are seeking to improve the way their business works by utilising technology. Having worked with over 1,000 clients since its establishment, Professional Advantage assists clients to boost revenue and profits, manage and reduce costs, gain efficiencies and utilise business information. Professional Advantage has over 250 employees in offices across Australia, the UK and the US.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has become a core tool at Professional Advantage, integrated across client services, marketing and the sales departments. The foundation of Professional Advantage’s business is its relationship with its clients. The client experience should be seamless across all interactions that occur with all these parts of the business. From the first contact with the marketing team, to interacting with the sales team and finally becoming a client and building a relationship with their account manager and client services, all client and prospect experiences and information needs to be accessible to Professional Advantage staff.

In particular, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is extensively used by Professional Advantage’s account management team. They use the system to keep track of all correspondence, conversations and to identify what has been delivered to each client. The data guides them when identifying future requirements, product life cycles and upgrades, and areas where extra value could be added. It’s also used to manage the company’s biggest asset – the annual maintenance contracts.

Michael Foertsch, Professional Advantage Customer Service Manager notes, “Account managers use the data to manage their sales opportunities and it helps me to manage the pipeline. We keep a complete life history of the client within Microsoft Dynamics CRM so we know why and when they started working with us. This allows any account manager to pick up an account and know what has been done in the past.”

“Our customers rightly expect that we know their business and by keeping a centralised system that tracks this information we can deliver a connected customer experience through any area of our business.”

You can download the full case study here  and see a video demonstration of sales process management using Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

Professional Advantage works with companies looking to gain business improvements through the use of technology. Since its beginning, the company has worked with over 1,000 clients to improve revenue and profits, manage and reduce costs, improve efficiencies and achieve more with the information they have. Professional Advantage has over 250 employees in offices across Australia, the UK and the US.

Taking marketing to the next step

When Professional Advantage implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the system quickly became a well-entrenched tool. No one could imagine the business without it and the company is continually looking for new ways of using the data to improve customer and prospect relationships, reduce the cost of sales and increase profitability.

The answer to this search arrived in 2011 when the marketing team was introduced to ClickDimensions, an automation solution that sits on top of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to support email, web and social marketing initiatives. The software offers a way of easily issuing and managing electronic direct mail pieces, digital communications and invitations. It contains exceptional web tracking functionality, allowing marketers to monitor the behaviour arising from their communications. One of the most appealing aspects of the software however, is the fact that the cloud-based solution required on average just 15 minutes to install.

Given the speed of deployment, Professional Advantage’s marketing department decided to conduct a software trial. Marketing Manager Craig Panigiris says, “One benefit of cloud based solutions is that there is no extensive implementation. With ClickDimensions it was simply a matter of connecting the software up to our Microsoft CRM database and allowing data to flow into it. It mitigates a lot of the risk of deployment.”

The first test was simple. ClickDimensions code was added to some of Professional Advantage’s highest trafficked website pages, allowing the software to track visitor behaviour. Immediately reports began to provide information such as which pages were most frequently visited, how long visitors spent on each page and where they travelled to next. “Some of the data was very revealing,” Panigiris says. “It allowed us to really get a feel for what visitors were looking for.”

The tests so impressed the marketing department that ClickDimensions has since been rolled out across all areas of Professional Advantage’s Australian operation. In the US office a ClickDimensions trial was recently concluded and the software is about to be adopted as a permanent marketing tool. It’s a similar story in the UK office.

Turning prospects into leads

Today Professional Advantage uses ClickDimensions to manage events, marketing emails, social marketing initiatives, newsletters and subscriptions. Reports show coordinators how successful their campaigns are – including information such as how many people opened an email or how many clicked on a link.

Web tracking shows what visitors are searching for and alerts staff to any sudden rise of interest in a topic. “It allows us to be proactive in terms of producing content to drive greater engagement with prospects,” Panigiris notes.

The system is also used to build profiles of prospects visiting the company’s website, regardless of whether the person is known to the company. ClickDimensions tracks where and when they visit, what they are looking for and how long they spend there. If or when the prospect eventually provides their name and contact data, past behaviours are matched to the name and added to the CRM system. As the profile builds ClickDimensions automatically applies a lead score that allows marketing staff to identify how engaged the prospect is likely to be.

The software has also become integral to event management. Panigiris says, “We’ve automated the entire registration process, from collecting data about who was invited and who has registered, to sending confirmation emails and recording the registration as a campaign response in our CRM.” It’s saving the company time and the automation is ensuring greater accuracy in the data.

Within the next 12 months Panigiris is keen to take on additional functionality including automated client surveys and a drip nurturing program. He is enthusiastic about the software and believes the potential to improve marketing results will only increase over time.

“ClickDimensions is a dynamic company. Their products are always evolving but because theirs is a cloud based solution, we don’t have to worry about trying to install software to a server. Any upgrade is managed on their side, within their system.”

For Professional Advantage, the combination of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ClickDimensions has provided the missing piece of the marketing/sales puzzle. ClickDimensions bridges the gap between initial expression of interest and a hot-to-trot prospect. It allows marketing to actively manage relationships, educating and guiding leads through the early stages so that sales staff can focus their efforts on the prospects of greatest potential benefit. In doing so it is improving relationships, reducing costs, increasing profitability and helping marketing to deliver ever-greater value to the business.

You can download this case study here and see a video demonstration of marketing automation using Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.

You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here or ClickDimensions here.

Professional Advantage works with companies who seek to improve the performance of their business through the application of technology. Over the years it has assisted more than 1,000 clients to increase revenue and profits, control and reduce costs, improve efficiencies and achieve better value from information. The company employs more than 250 people in offices across Australia, the UK and the US.

Marketing basics: a view of the customer

The foundation of Professional Advantage’s business is its relationship with clients. This requires more than simply knowing who the main contacts are within an organisation. It demands an understanding of the client’s business, their needs and the ability to apply technology to help achieve business goals.

Since the early 2000s Professional Advantage has been achieving this with the help of Microsoft’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. The software contains customer and prospect data and is the bedrock of all activity. Each client record contains information regarding the equipment and solutions used by the client, maintenance contracts, every service call ever placed, every conversation with a Professional Advantage Business Development Manager, every direct mail piece issued and every Professional Advantage event that the client has attended.

One of the heaviest users of CRM is Professional Advantage’s Support team. Lisa Williamson, Support Manager, explains, “We’re in the system all day. The first time a customer calls in with a question, it is logged into CRM where it is given a unique case number. All subsequent conversations, emails and so on associated with that case are tracked through that number until the issue is resolved.” This removes reliance on any single person and ensures no staff absences affect the company’s ability to provide swift issue resolution.

A QlikView dashboard highlights up-to-the-minute data such as how many cases have been logged or are awaiting resolution, allowing Williamson to identify potential bottlenecks and redistribute workloads for optimal turn-around times. Data is also made available to the client via a secure portal, enabling them to keep tabs on how their support issues are being managed.

Reports and analytics highlight changes in call patterns which may indicate an issue or a need for additional training. “It gives us the opportunity to proactively check if business processes have changed and allows us to have more detailed and meaningful conversations with customers,” Williamson says.

You can read this case study here. You can read more about Professional Advantage and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here.