Welcome TechnologyAdvice viewers to this week's product spotlight.
Joining us today is Andrew Winters, Marketing specialist for Dynamics CRM, a CRM software
provider.
Thanks so much for joining us today Andrew.
First question is can you describe Dynamics in one sentence?
Dynamics CRM is an application that helps an organization better interact with their
customers and their prospects.
What differentiates Dynamics from other project management companies?
What really differentiates Microsoft CRM is it’s part of a family of solutions and applications
such as office, powerBI which is reporting, business intelligence, and it all kinds of
falls together.
The end user gets in front of a PC/mobile device and has a single application experience/UI
for engaging with customers and prospects.
It really differentiates Microsoft in the marketplace because it’s a single application
set that allows you to better communicate, collaborate, and share information with your
prospects and clients.
What is Dynamic pricing model?
We price it on the per user basis so if a user is a power user or professional level
user, if they’re a basic user and need to see reports or modify the system.
There’s also what’s called an essential user so there’s three different levels for
which the product is priced.
It’s also priced as a cloud service as well.
It’s also a licensed product as well.
The organization has the option, they can either go in the cloud and have those servers
and applications be hosted on a server that Microsoft provides or they can install the
application internally on their servers and have a license with Microsoft for access to
the application.
Tell us about your ideal customer
Our ideal customer is a customer who really values their engagement with a customer and
wants to really get the most out of data engagement and use an application that really helps them
do that.
If they have a sales group that wants to have a best of breed application for lead management,
opportunity management, they have a customer service division that wants to be responsive
to cases coming into the system and customer requests.
Finally marketing, if they want a handprint on who they’re working with and how they’re
working with.
Wholistically the customer will engage with a prospect or customer through these different
departments.
Dynamics really provides a best-of-breed application for dynamics marketing, sales, and service.
Are there any limitations to Dynamics?
The limitation that we see is when you’re rolling out CRM, it isn’t a plug and play
application, it really requires the organization take on a culture of CRM if you will and make
it important for the end users who are using the CRm application to put in the system because
you’re doing something with the data on the backend.
The limitation we’re seeing is not necessarily the application itself but the organization
not taking on the ownership and getting that role effectively.
Really needs to be on top of making sure users are using the system, how they’re using
the system and continually work with them to make they're effectively using the application.
What’s a best practice for implementing Dynamics?
I think a best practice is to start small.
You don’t have to boil the ocean in one big rollout of CRM.
YOu can start with a small group, roll it out, learn best practices with that small
group and roll out to a larger group.
You think about getting user adoption throughout the process and involved business/technology
leaders together in the process to make sure the adoption level is being adopted throughout
all the phases of the CRM rollout.