Microsoft focused on building CRM technology that promoted user productivity, business agility, and technical flexibility. Designed to work with Microsoft Office Outlook and built with a Microsoft .NET Web Services architecture, Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers lower training costs, broader user adoption, less application switching, higher productivity, greater mobility, and a faster return on investment than competing CRM products. Microsoft CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a Microsoft Business Solution that uses Microsoft .NET-connected technologies to automate day-to-day tasks for sales, customer service, field service, call center, and marketing professionals.
Microsoft CRM Features:
Sales
Microsoft Outlook client -Work online or offline through Microsoft Outlook with synchronized access to full sales functionality.
Complete customer view - View all contact and account information and history from a central location, includind customer service records.
Information sharing – Tightly integrated Sales and Customer Service modules make it easy to share information across departments.
Leads and Opportunity management – Automate leads routing and escalation, convert leads to opportunities, and track and manage opportunities through the sales cycle.
Sales process management – Use powerful workflow rules to automate stages in the selling process.
Quotes – Create customized quotes using a full-featured product catalog.
Order management – Easily convert quotes to orders, and then modify and save orders until they are ready to be submitted
Quotas – Measure employee sales performance against individual goals.
Reports -Forecast sales, identify top opportunities and customers, and evaluate trends with robust reporting tools.
Sales literature – Maintain a searchable library of sales literature that can be used online or offline.
Territory management – Create sales territories and manage territory-based processes with workflow rules and reports.
Competitor tracking – Analyze competitor performance and maintain a library of articles on competitor activity.
Direct e-mail; print communications – Using customizable templates, create and send e-mail to targeted prospects and customer groups. Create and send print communications using Microsoft Word Mail Merge.
Customer Service
Case management – Create, assign, and easily manage cases for customer service requests. Manage actions and communications for each case from a central location.
Complete view of accounts – View all accounts, including sales and order information, to identify top customers and better understand specific customer needs.
Automated routing and queuing – Customizable workflow rules let you automatically route service requests and cases to the appropriate representative or to queues for resolutions, escalation, or reassignment.
Searchable knowledgebase – Publish support articles and other relevant support information to a searchable knowledgebase.
Service contracts – Easily create and maintain service contracts within Microsoft CRM. When a support case is resolved, relevant contract information is updated automatically.
Auto-response e-mail – Use customizable templates and workflow rules to generate and send auto-response e-mails to customer requests.
E-mail management – Maintain an accurate record of customer-related communications, with automated tracking of customer e-mails that associates those mails with appropriate customer records.
Integration
Sales and Customer Service modules – Sales and Customer Service modules integrate tightly, making it easy for employees to share information across your business.
Microsoft Office – Salespeople can use Microsoft Outlook to work online and offline with access to full sales functionality.
Microsoft Outlook client – Integration with Microsoft Office lets users create print communications using Microsoft Work Mail Merge, as well as export data to Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft Business Solutions – Microsoft CRM integrates easily with Microsoft Business Solutions ERM applications. Key data mapping includes accounts, contacts, product catalog, pricing lists, orders and invoices.
Third-party applications and Web services – Microsoft CRM functionality can be exposed through platform APIs for integration with third-party applications and Web services.
