Convergence Diary: Microsoft Dynamics NAV CRM

As a personal interest, I attended this session about Microsoft Dynamics NAV CRM.

As you know, already quite a lot is possible with the CRM functionality that comes right out-of-the-box with Dynamics NAV, although we notice that many times, people just think that "it's not Microsoft CRM, so it's no good". If you just give it a chance, and see which area's this granule covers, you'd be surprised.

Eva Sachse, Senior Product Manager (I suppose for CRM) is hosting this session. I know Eva to be the number 1 contact for ISV's, but I didn't know she was functionally involved in the team… . So let's see how it goes… .

She started out by giving a simple, commercial explanation of "CRM". CRM is a strategy, not a product:

• Find, keep, and grow profitable relationships
• Match your business strategy, organization and people

Ok, now I get it … this was all Eva is doing in this session. Torben and some other dude (from which I (again) didn't get the name - so I will refer to him as "the dude" ) is taking over.

The dude explains why CRM might be necessary in your organization (lead management, interaction management, …) and that the fact that it's fully integrated in NAV, is a big advantage.

Demo time: He creates a campaign, configuring the items that belong to the campaign, configures the prices (with a minimum quantity and all other conditions) and discounts for the items, for this campaign. Furthermore, he defines who can benefit from this campaign - so he sets up a segment for it. In this segment, he defines a general template (some kind of invitation letter) for every contact and shows that it's also possible to create a unique invitation for a certain person in the segment.
Next step in the process: the customers who got the letter are interested, so sales opportunities can be created and managed.

"The dude" concluded the demo by mentioning again what are the benefits of doing marketing like this. Amongst them:

• Define individual customer profiles, and easily access specific contact information
• Access comprehensive and centralized log of interactions
• Use information from across your business - sales and purchases history and statistics
• Structure and track sales cycles with rich customer information management
• Rich integration with office system (like map point)

The dude continued with explaining the Service Management part of the session. In my opinion, it has not really something to do with CRM, but on the other hand … who cares about my opinion .

Demo time again. He explains the Service Item card, what you can define on it (customer info, troubleshooting tips, serial no, … ). Something happened, customer calls, so let's create a service order, selects the service item.
Another role (service dispatcher) logs in and opens the dispatch board, where you can allocate resource, having the skills of the resources and availability information right where you need it. He allocates a resource on a specific date.
Later, that specific resource logs in and gets the lists of allocated service tasks where he/she has to work on. The dude is updating the Service Item Worksheet with the data that was needed to solve the case (new components, symptom code, …).
After shortly explaining the contracts in Service Management, he concluded the demo and explains the key benefits of Service Management. Amongst them:

• Get up-to-date information about contract agreements, pricing, task prioritization
• Gain overview of the skills and workloads of service technicians
• Streamline the generation, dispatch, completion, and invoicing of service orders
• ..

It being a part of the erp solution, you get:

• 3-tier architecture
• Web service
• Office integration
• Rich reporting and visualization capabilities
• Role-tailored, personalizable user experience

This concluded the dude's part … ah … finally got the name of the dude … it's Dmitry Chadaev. He's from Celenia … and I must say … a great presenter!

Next is Torben Kragelund from Celenia (it's really a Celenia-session it seems - always the same partners on stage - I hate that! ). Torben wanted to highlight Celenia's CRM Connector (advertisement for one specific product of one specific partner - I hate that even more! - but trying to have an open mind, I just stayed and watched how the tool works). The CRM Connector comes with a number of templates with default settings for the connector, based on the many implementations they've done. I must say, the template he showed was very basic, but complete (contacts, customers, quotes, orders, …). Some of the highlighted features:

• Multi-company support (one CRM system, multiple legal entities)
• Two-way synchronization
• Simpler configuration and customization
• Offline ability
• Support from NAV 4.0 and CRM 3.0.

Torben concluded with a Demo. He creates a customer … and the demo fails… oops. After restarting some services, he continued. You could see the customer number from NAV being returned in CRM. The synch worked. I have some questions about the performance (not writing any code in CRM usually means that the system is scanning for new records … so I would like to get to the bottom of that … ).

Ok, time for lunch :-)!