CRM 3.0 had the ability to move customizations between different systems. Titan has some nice enhancements to this feature. You can now import/export much more stuff (eg. configuration settings, security roles, workflows etc) and we have used zip compression to make the files smaller. In addition - we did some work to make the import more reliable and we now offer 'less cryptic' error messages.
Import/Export customizations also underwent some major work behind the scenes to cater for lots of complex multi-lingual scenarios (eg. import customizations which were done in different languages).Screencast: Export Customizations
Monday, October 8, 2007
Philip Richardson - Preview and features of CRM 4.0
This guy is in the know so here is his post:
The time has finally come in the Titan project where we can talk more openly about the project. I joined the team shortly after the RTM of CRM 3.0 and I've incredibly proud of the work I've been privileged to participate in.
Titan is not just a solid CRM package it is also an extensible platform for customers and partners to build their own customer centric business systems.
Over the next few weeks I'll be publishing some screencasts of the cool new Titan features. Possible topics (in no particular order) might include:
Multi-tenant web services
Duplicate Detection
Windows Live ID Authentication with a SOAP web service
New relationship features
Workflow
Multi-Lingual User Interface (MUI)
Plugins/Assemblies in CRM 4.0
Windows Workflow Foundation Activities
The CRM Live 'experience'
The Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) 'experience'
Outlook Client enhancements
Task Management
Web Import
User Management
Multi-Currency
Metadata API
Lookup Auto Resolve
Translating the User Interface
The Resource Center
Mail Merge
Offline SDK
There are dozens more new features which also deserve consideration. Many older features are also worth re-examining as there are some interesting synergies with some of the new features (eg. Tasks + Workflow + Relationships all together make for some very cool process management).
The time has finally come in the Titan project where we can talk more openly about the project. I joined the team shortly after the RTM of CRM 3.0 and I've incredibly proud of the work I've been privileged to participate in.
Titan is not just a solid CRM package it is also an extensible platform for customers and partners to build their own customer centric business systems.
Over the next few weeks I'll be publishing some screencasts of the cool new Titan features. Possible topics (in no particular order) might include:
Multi-tenant web services
Duplicate Detection
Windows Live ID Authentication with a SOAP web service
New relationship features
Workflow
Multi-Lingual User Interface (MUI)
Plugins/Assemblies in CRM 4.0
Windows Workflow Foundation Activities
The CRM Live 'experience'
The Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) 'experience'
Outlook Client enhancements
Task Management
Web Import
User Management
Multi-Currency
Metadata API
Lookup Auto Resolve
Translating the User Interface
The Resource Center
Mail Merge
Offline SDK
There are dozens more new features which also deserve consideration. Many older features are also worth re-examining as there are some interesting synergies with some of the new features (eg. Tasks + Workflow + Relationships all together make for some very cool process management).
Menno - TITAN Workflows - "Freaky Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog"
More CRM 4 news by A Freaky Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog: Workflows are now available to end users, who no longer need access to the server in order to create, modify, and monitor them. Child workflows and workflow templates provide two ways for users to build upon existing workflow logic while they are creating new workflows.
Workflows now support many more record types. Also, they can now be triggered by the update and delete events, and a workflow can be triggered by more than one event. Dynamic values and conditionals are more useful. The new user interface for workflows includes the Form Assistant, a tool for specifying dynamic values. Dynamic values are also improved by the increased number of record relationships. So, there are more records and attributes available for inclusion in dynamic values. One of the other things that has changed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is that we now can apply and use stages on all workflow logic which makes it possible to define and monitor parts of a complex workflow. In CRM 3 we only could use staging on the opportunity level.
Philip Richardson - TITAN v4.0 Videos posted
These are awesome videos that you can easily view online and get a good feel for what the applicaiton looks like and feels like. Also you get to see some of the new features etc.
Philip Richardson has posted some nice Titan videos:
- Web Import in Titan
- Duplicate Detection
- Duplicate Detection
- Add Multiple Users
Philip Richardson has posted some nice Titan videos:
- Web Import in Titan
- Duplicate Detection
- Duplicate Detection
- Add Multiple Users
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Companies See Increased Productivity Through the Convergence of Enterprise Applications and Desktop Tools
MS CRM brings all the power of your server side business application, analytics, reporting and workflow right into the friendly, familiar user interface of Office and Outlook! I like to say that CRM is EMBEDDED in Outlook. Better than integrated.
Check out this validation on that strategy.
October 04, 2007: 01:24 PM EST
The integration of desktop tools with enterprise applications is a two-way street that brings personal productivity, which in turn translates to improved corporate productivity. Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), recently conducted a benchmark report titled "Two Worlds Converge: Enterprise Applications Meet the Desktop" and discovered that Best-in-Class (BIC) companies see a 20% increase in gross margin and 21.3% increase in revenue year-over-year, with a ratio of revenue growth to staff growth of 2.2. This compares with less than 1% increase in gross margin, 1.6% increase in revenue and a ratio of revenue to staff growth of .7 for Laggard organizations.
Driven by pressure to grow profitably with minimal investment in staff growth, Best-in-Class companies distinguish themselves as follows:
-- 100% of executives (C-Level and VPs) in Best-in-Class companies have direct access to data in enterprise applications
-- Best-in-Class companies are 3.6-times more likely than Laggards to be able to complete process flows without switching between applications (both desktop and enterprise)
-- Best-in-Class are 3-times more likely to coordinate business processes between departments with fully automated workflows
Converging enterprise applications -- like ERP -- and desktop tools such as those found in Microsoft's Office Suite make data needed for decision-making more easily accessible. This is most effective when enterprise applications become a natural extension of the desktop tool. Ultimately, from the end user's perspective, the goal is to improve personal productivity, in the hope that this will translate to corporate productivity. From the enterprise application vendor's point of view, it's about getting more workers in a company as ERP users. The convergence of these goals is synergistic.
"The key to wider adoption of enterprise applications throughout the enterprise is to make them easily accessible, intuitive to navigate and perhaps even transparent to the users that they are using applications such as ERP," says Cindy Jutras, Vice President and Group Director, Aberdeen Group. Jutras adds, "By providing easy access, easy analysis in a familiar setting, while keeping users captive within the secure ERP environment, we get the best of both worlds."
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Exact Software, Microsoft, and Tectura. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4316.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company - Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market.
For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com/ or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com/.
© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Check out this validation on that strategy.
October 04, 2007: 01:24 PM EST
The integration of desktop tools with enterprise applications is a two-way street that brings personal productivity, which in turn translates to improved corporate productivity. Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), recently conducted a benchmark report titled "Two Worlds Converge: Enterprise Applications Meet the Desktop" and discovered that Best-in-Class (BIC) companies see a 20% increase in gross margin and 21.3% increase in revenue year-over-year, with a ratio of revenue growth to staff growth of 2.2. This compares with less than 1% increase in gross margin, 1.6% increase in revenue and a ratio of revenue to staff growth of .7 for Laggard organizations.
Driven by pressure to grow profitably with minimal investment in staff growth, Best-in-Class companies distinguish themselves as follows:
-- 100% of executives (C-Level and VPs) in Best-in-Class companies have direct access to data in enterprise applications
-- Best-in-Class companies are 3.6-times more likely than Laggards to be able to complete process flows without switching between applications (both desktop and enterprise)
-- Best-in-Class are 3-times more likely to coordinate business processes between departments with fully automated workflows
Converging enterprise applications -- like ERP -- and desktop tools such as those found in Microsoft's Office Suite make data needed for decision-making more easily accessible. This is most effective when enterprise applications become a natural extension of the desktop tool. Ultimately, from the end user's perspective, the goal is to improve personal productivity, in the hope that this will translate to corporate productivity. From the enterprise application vendor's point of view, it's about getting more workers in a company as ERP users. The convergence of these goals is synergistic.
"The key to wider adoption of enterprise applications throughout the enterprise is to make them easily accessible, intuitive to navigate and perhaps even transparent to the users that they are using applications such as ERP," says Cindy Jutras, Vice President and Group Director, Aberdeen Group. Jutras adds, "By providing easy access, easy analysis in a familiar setting, while keeping users captive within the secure ERP environment, we get the best of both worlds."
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Exact Software, Microsoft, and Tectura. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4316.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company - Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market.
For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com/ or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com/.
© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Monday, October 1, 2007
The CRM 4.0 NDA has expired
We have been in the Early preview and beta test group for MS CRM 4.0/TITAN for quite some time now. Since about February or March. We were also in the Beta test partner group for 3.0. It provides a wealth of information and advanced planning.
It helps us to architect our client systems to not waste time and money on features they might already have in the next version.
We are not allowed to release too much info while under the NDA. Now that is passed and we are going to compile all the great info out there and try to provide as much as possible for our readers. We are also actively using the CRM 4.0 beta code and now the CRM LIVE Beta testing sites. CRM LIVE is really cool.
We will be passing on our findings and thoughts and pinings to this blog too. You will see a lot of info in the coming weeks and months.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli - http://www.productivegap.com/
It helps us to architect our client systems to not waste time and money on features they might already have in the next version.
We are not allowed to release too much info while under the NDA. Now that is passed and we are going to compile all the great info out there and try to provide as much as possible for our readers. We are also actively using the CRM 4.0 beta code and now the CRM LIVE Beta testing sites. CRM LIVE is really cool.
We will be passing on our findings and thoughts and pinings to this blog too. You will see a lot of info in the coming weeks and months.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli - http://www.productivegap.com/
Guy Riddle - TITAN NDA lifted
THis guy knows a ton about CRM and posts very frequently. Great info. Here is a good feature overview of some of the functional and feature enhancements to MS CRM v4.0 vs CRM 3.0.
For those of us who have been lucky enough to be working with TITAN for some time now we can finally share some of the great features now that the NDA has been lifted.
Core features include:
Multi-Tenancy
Muli-Lingual User Interface (MUI packs will be available to download and install)
Multi-Currency
Workflow now integrated into the browser utilising Windows Workflow Foundation Activities
Duplicate Record Detection
Report Wizard
New 'Relationship' capabilities for Entities
Web Import (including custom entities) - including the ability to import data that 'updates' existing records
Improved Mail Merge including merge to Word from the browser
Ability to display attributes from a related entity in a view
Offline SDK for the Outlook Client
A Resource Center
and lots of performance improvements........
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Observations from the field
I thought I would post a couple observations from my visits with customers and partners.
MS CRM recently surpassed 11,000+ business customers and 475,000+ users representing every size and type of organization. The consistent driving factor among our newest clients is recognition that:
Outlook is already the most reliable and current source for tracking customer information and dialogue.
o Activities, communications, clients and engagement history are most accurate in Outlook.
o Your users have already endorsed it as your CRM platform, why force a change of that acceptance?
UI User Adoption is immediate thereby eliminating the biggest cause of CRM failure.
o Outlook’s interface is friendly, powerful, familiar and requires minimum training.
o Your employees continue to use the application they already know and use on a daily basis.
Microsoft CRM simply extends what you already own.
o Leverage your existing investment rather than purchasing and introducing additional applications into your IT ecosystem.
o Your IT team will appreciate one source of integrated technology which reduces training, rollout, management and risk.
It is extremely easy to implement a phased rollout based on need and matching your organizational goals.
o Begin with client management, project management, and reporting, then build automated workflow, eventually connecting into your back office system, and finally integrate to additional internal/external partners and customer systems.
If you’ve experienced exceptional growth or are facing increased competition then Microsoft Dynamics CRM is designed for the many changes a company experiences. This is the ideal time to further investigate how CRM can best meet your growing needs.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli
President and Founder
ProductiveGap Corp - http://www.productivegap.com/
MS CRM recently surpassed 11,000+ business customers and 475,000+ users representing every size and type of organization. The consistent driving factor among our newest clients is recognition that:
Outlook is already the most reliable and current source for tracking customer information and dialogue.
o Activities, communications, clients and engagement history are most accurate in Outlook.
o Your users have already endorsed it as your CRM platform, why force a change of that acceptance?
UI User Adoption is immediate thereby eliminating the biggest cause of CRM failure.
o Outlook’s interface is friendly, powerful, familiar and requires minimum training.
o Your employees continue to use the application they already know and use on a daily basis.
Microsoft CRM simply extends what you already own.
o Leverage your existing investment rather than purchasing and introducing additional applications into your IT ecosystem.
o Your IT team will appreciate one source of integrated technology which reduces training, rollout, management and risk.
It is extremely easy to implement a phased rollout based on need and matching your organizational goals.
o Begin with client management, project management, and reporting, then build automated workflow, eventually connecting into your back office system, and finally integrate to additional internal/external partners and customer systems.
If you’ve experienced exceptional growth or are facing increased competition then Microsoft Dynamics CRM is designed for the many changes a company experiences. This is the ideal time to further investigate how CRM can best meet your growing needs.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli
President and Founder
ProductiveGap Corp - http://www.productivegap.com/
Monday, July 9, 2007
WWPC TITAN Update notes
I saw TITAN in action at WWPC on Monday 7/9. It was awesome!.
Sounds like they will stick with the current Dynamics naming conventions and call it Dynamics CRM 4.0.
It was Friday’s build so it was the latest and greatest. They had us in an invite only meeting for the key partners in CRM from around the world. Just a handful of people and the MSFT folks.
Here are some of the tidbits and notables from the presentation. This is totally confidential and only my opinion of what I saw so please do not spread this around to anyone else at this time until something more official comes out:
· The UI is a little cleaner but almost exactly the same.
· SPEED - The system is caching faster so everything is speedier.
· Multi Tenancy, Language, and Currency is included in the Version.
· Many to Many relationships are now easily handled.
· Reports Wizard - There is a lot more Reports creation features that will make it easier to create most of the reports and cross entity reporting stuff we do.
· There is a Data migration tool set for that will do look ups and updates and migrations. It is a lot like scribe but not as powerful for translations and integrations. It will help a lot on that front. You can add info and inject it into the existing data set.
· WWF - Windows Workflow Foundation looks really slick and easy to use. Much better then what we have now.
· Mobility will be a core part of TITAN and will be integral and treated like the Outlook client.
· It has Duplicate Detection rules and scheduler built in.
· You can now refer to multiple USERS from an entity like and account or opp for primary owner and secondary owners and backups etc.
· Templates look a little improved and now you can pull in fields from all related entities onto the template.
· You can now add multiple users in a couple clicks instead of one at a time
· Import Export - ISV Config, WEB Config and Workflow and Sitemaps etc are all now in the customize entity area. This will make it much easier to move or drop in customizations to a client system.
· The GUID Tracking Token can now be hidden/removed but still tracked! There are many more options to do this better and cleaner.
· They have added auto-complete features to the fields as you fill them out.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli
President and Founder
ProductiveGap Corp - http://www.productivegap.com/
Sounds like they will stick with the current Dynamics naming conventions and call it Dynamics CRM 4.0.
It was Friday’s build so it was the latest and greatest. They had us in an invite only meeting for the key partners in CRM from around the world. Just a handful of people and the MSFT folks.
Here are some of the tidbits and notables from the presentation. This is totally confidential and only my opinion of what I saw so please do not spread this around to anyone else at this time until something more official comes out:
· The UI is a little cleaner but almost exactly the same.
· SPEED - The system is caching faster so everything is speedier.
· Multi Tenancy, Language, and Currency is included in the Version.
· Many to Many relationships are now easily handled.
· Reports Wizard - There is a lot more Reports creation features that will make it easier to create most of the reports and cross entity reporting stuff we do.
· There is a Data migration tool set for that will do look ups and updates and migrations. It is a lot like scribe but not as powerful for translations and integrations. It will help a lot on that front. You can add info and inject it into the existing data set.
· WWF - Windows Workflow Foundation looks really slick and easy to use. Much better then what we have now.
· Mobility will be a core part of TITAN and will be integral and treated like the Outlook client.
· It has Duplicate Detection rules and scheduler built in.
· You can now refer to multiple USERS from an entity like and account or opp for primary owner and secondary owners and backups etc.
· Templates look a little improved and now you can pull in fields from all related entities onto the template.
· You can now add multiple users in a couple clicks instead of one at a time
· Import Export - ISV Config, WEB Config and Workflow and Sitemaps etc are all now in the customize entity area. This will make it much easier to move or drop in customizations to a client system.
· The GUID Tracking Token can now be hidden/removed but still tracked! There are many more options to do this better and cleaner.
· They have added auto-complete features to the fields as you fill them out.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli
President and Founder
ProductiveGap Corp - http://www.productivegap.com/
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Multi-Tenancy with value for the client
What does Multi Tenancy mean to the client??
Not much if you are working with a SAAS provider. Some SAAS providers like SalesForce.com tout Multi Tenancy as a valuable feature to a client. The only real value is to the provider or to Salesforce. That is if you are working with a SAAS solution. Multi Tenancy to salesforce type companies means they can cram more clients on one server and greatly reduce their costs. There is no value to the client or users in this model.
I find it funny that they used to tout Multi Tenancy in their marketing materials. They made it sound like it was a benefit to the Client. The only benefit might be in a lowered user cost to the client but that does not seem to be happening as Salesforce.com prising is double to triple MS CRM hosting costs and the projected CRM LIVE costs.
MS CRM v4.0 will offer multi tenancy to clients that will actually translate into value for the client and the end users. Larger mid market companies and enterprises will be able to have one server to deliver separate CRM instances to multiple departments, divisions, or groups/teams. That is valuable to them. No multiple CRM front end servers to manage and patch and backup etc.
We have multiple clients that are very excited about this architecture model. Some have 5-10 different CRM Front end servers with one back end SQL server. They will be able to upgrade and then move all the CRM instances to one box! This will have to be a beefy box but it will GREATLY Reduce their costs and management tasks. That is valuable to the IT group.
I was in Redmond at the end of September 2007 for 5 days on the new version and I experimented quite a bit with the creation of new instances. It is pretty AWESOME! I could not believe how easy it is to build out a new, entirely separate instance of CRM.
They have moved around the DB architecture to facilitate this and other features. Now there are basically 2 DBs. The CRM DB and the Config DB.
In the CRM DB you now have all the records and customizations for an instance.
In the Config DB you now have all the System and User Settings.
When you create a new instance of CRM it just adds a new named CRM DB instance.
So the Config DB Services all the CRM DB Instances in SQL. This makes moving around as an Admin very easy!
The one thing that I did not like is that you cannot easily move data and utilize it between instances. There will have to be backend synch or integration to facilitate that sharing and unification of the data. That is ok. It would have been cool if you could have mapped from one DB Instance to another to share fields and all the data stayed synched. Maybe in the next version.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli - http://www.productivegap.com/
Not much if you are working with a SAAS provider. Some SAAS providers like SalesForce.com tout Multi Tenancy as a valuable feature to a client. The only real value is to the provider or to Salesforce. That is if you are working with a SAAS solution. Multi Tenancy to salesforce type companies means they can cram more clients on one server and greatly reduce their costs. There is no value to the client or users in this model.
I find it funny that they used to tout Multi Tenancy in their marketing materials. They made it sound like it was a benefit to the Client. The only benefit might be in a lowered user cost to the client but that does not seem to be happening as Salesforce.com prising is double to triple MS CRM hosting costs and the projected CRM LIVE costs.
MS CRM v4.0 will offer multi tenancy to clients that will actually translate into value for the client and the end users. Larger mid market companies and enterprises will be able to have one server to deliver separate CRM instances to multiple departments, divisions, or groups/teams. That is valuable to them. No multiple CRM front end servers to manage and patch and backup etc.
We have multiple clients that are very excited about this architecture model. Some have 5-10 different CRM Front end servers with one back end SQL server. They will be able to upgrade and then move all the CRM instances to one box! This will have to be a beefy box but it will GREATLY Reduce their costs and management tasks. That is valuable to the IT group.
I was in Redmond at the end of September 2007 for 5 days on the new version and I experimented quite a bit with the creation of new instances. It is pretty AWESOME! I could not believe how easy it is to build out a new, entirely separate instance of CRM.
They have moved around the DB architecture to facilitate this and other features. Now there are basically 2 DBs. The CRM DB and the Config DB.
In the CRM DB you now have all the records and customizations for an instance.
In the Config DB you now have all the System and User Settings.
When you create a new instance of CRM it just adds a new named CRM DB instance.
So the Config DB Services all the CRM DB Instances in SQL. This makes moving around as an Admin very easy!
The one thing that I did not like is that you cannot easily move data and utilize it between instances. There will have to be backend synch or integration to facilitate that sharing and unification of the data. That is ok. It would have been cool if you could have mapped from one DB Instance to another to share fields and all the data stayed synched. Maybe in the next version.
Regards,
Jon Petrucelli - http://www.productivegap.com/
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