CRM takes effort. It takes love. Why? Because CRM is -- strike that-- should be a living, breathing enhancement to your business processes. But if  you expect CRM to magically solve all kinds of problems for your business with no effort whatsoever, well, I'll let Christopher J. Bucholtz break the news. I found his blog and started following him this week. Here's why I'll start reading regularly:

1) His article this week, "3 Painfully Common Misuses of CRM," boldly identifies that some (ok, many) CRM deployments are given as much resources as we give thought to the idea unicorns are real. Follow? It was bold, and unfortunately true, if not amusing. He only could have made this better by cross-referencing magical leoplurodons.

2) He metaphorically called CRM a cudgel. Elicits a great point. CRM should not be ammo! If Sales "Leadership" is using this tool to tear down their team, that's...

This is a very common question from our customers just starting out with CRM. Simple as pie:

1) Navigate to CRM Options in Outlook. For Outlook 2011, you can get there by clicking on the File tab in the top, left corner.

BONUS TIP: Get familiar with the Options area. You can use this to control all sorts of data flow (number of records per page, synching time interval, forms you'd like to use by default, currency, personal preferences, etc.). These settings can influence User Productivity – see Top 10 User Productivity tips here.



2) Navigate to Synchronization, and then hit the Shortcut to "Outlook Filters." There wasn't always a shortcut – this is even easier in v2011!



 

3) Select "My Outlook Contacts" as the items you wish to edit,...

Microsoft announced today that they will release a Mobile solution for Windows Phone 7.5, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile! See the link to the update on the Roadmap page on CRM or download the CRM Q2 2012 Preview Guide.

Here is a quick summary of the main features coming in Q2:

We all have Goals for 2012. Setting and then managing to your Goals help make your business more predictable. If you are a Bank, you might have a number of Goals for your Banking Team that are both revenue related as well as Activity related.

Specifically, you may want to look at:

Loan Volume Cash Management Fees Deposits Appointments Have a look at the sample Dashboard below that visually shows how I am performing against my 4 Goals. What is great about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is that the sales team can manage their Opportunities and Activities and Goals manage themselves.

We have put together a video on how to set up Goals for your team. Check it out here.

 



 

Want to know more about Cloud CRM? Connect with us @ Zero2Ten:

 (866) 420.7624        info@zero2ten.com    http://www.zero2ten.com...

Here's a riddle.  Red Rover: Excited School Kids as CRM Deployments: Profitable Teams 

What do I mean? Maybe at first you were worried about "going to the other side." Migrating to our Zero2Ten CRM user family from whatever team you were on – Excel, ACT, SFDC – may have been scary. Do you remember in in Red Rover when you did get to the other side, though, you probably pretended to be mad you had to join the blob (but were secretly having fun)? As you adjusted, you wanted others to join the team, too. You got on board with the new team 125%.

Similarly, we hope now that you're in the Zero2Ten CRM user family you'll commit to working strategically and leveraging our expertise in Adopt2Win (have you seen it yet?) to get the most out of the partnership. You don't have to pull all the weight on your own! Working smarter, with our resources and your expertise from hundreds of deployments, you can pull down more wins than ever before. Let's get some more folks on this team and keep up the practice!...

Increasing Out of the Box capabilities of CRM 2011 in a creative way!

I am currently working in a Project where our customer requires a Unique ID to be added to each Opportunity created in CRM 2011. Opportunities will be created manually sometimes but mostly via data imports so this process had to be accurate as these records will be imported in the thousands and handled by multiple departments and users within our customers company.

I started researching for a solution online for this issue but I couldn't find a single reliable solution that could satisfy the assignment of Unique IDs to thousands of Opportunities created by CSV Import on CRM 2011 Online.

We started thinking about creating a custom Plug in that would address this issue for our customer but we had some concerns regarding the fact that we were not allowed to lock the server during the operation, so we could not prevent duplicated numbers. In CRM 2011 On-Prem we lock the server from the time we query for "what was the last...

Keeping your CRM forms simplified can be tough. This guide should show you a few simple steps to show/hide field(s) in CRM 2011. In this guide we will be hiding the email field on the Accounts entity.

 

Step 1: Go to 'Settings' on the left navigation of CRM and then 'Customization'







Step 2: Click the 'Customize the System link'

Step 3: Select 'Entity' and then 'Account' (or whichever Entity has the fields you wish to hide on it).

Step 4: From here open 'Forms' and then the form with the Form Type listed as 'Main'



Step 5: From here double click the 'E-mail' field displayed

Step 6: Uncheck this checkbox to hide or show the field on the form

...

CRM 2011 help doesn't work after IFD has been enabled?

Here is the scenario: You complete the installation of CRM 2011 On-Prem on a Server and proceed to enable Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) on that server to make it available for users coming from the outside of the network without having to connect via VPN or any other means. You successfully deploy IFD and the users can access CRM 2011 (via HTTPS) just fine.

Let's just say that after your successful deployment of IFD your server details are:

Internal (Original) URL for Web Application Access = http://crm -> Internal DNS Server Resolves the Host name to Internal IP Address (I.E. 10.10.0.100)

External IFD Configured URL for Web Application Access = https://crm.yourcompany.com -> External DNS Servers Resolve the URL to External IP Address (I.E. 70.37.95.39)

The problem comes when the users click on "Help":

...

The BEST feature of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the fact that it is highly Customizable.

Anyone who has worked with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 knows that it provides a wide range of tools and procedures to configure and customize the out of the box functionality to the organization they are supporting. You can go in and add or change Fields, Entities (Record Types), Relationships, Workflows, Charts, Grids, Iframes, you name it! CRM is easy to customize and adapt to any business model.

The ultimate goal for any CRM implementation is that the business adopts it and it helps drive better business results. The business though almost always likes to "Keep it Simple"…at least at first. In my opinion, the reason why Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the best CRM system on the market is the high percentage of user adoption that CRM 2011 implementations generate. Your customizations/configurations are one of the biggest (if not the biggest) reason for high (or low) User Adoption but the solution is...

Tired of getting errors upon import due to Inactive records in CRM 2011?

    

When records are deactivated manually or after a merge procedure, they are "as good as deleted"…that is until you try to import data and your published duplicate detection rules detect "duplicates" by matching the incoming records to both active and inactive records in CRM.

With the introduction of Update Rollup 5 for CRM 2011, Microsoft has given us the ability to limit Duplicate Detection to Active Records only if needed. There is a new field on the Duplicate Detection Rule Entity which must be added to the form to enable this functionality.

Follow these simple steps to accomplish this:

While logged in as an Administrator in CRM 2011, Navigate to Settings -> Customizations -> Customize the System Expand 'Entities' -> Expand the 'Duplicate Detection Rule' Entity -> Click on 'Forms' and Double Click the Main Form. Notice...