Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Implementation

Addressing common challenges

Managing a sales team, it can be difficult to keep track of activity and KPIs. The Dynamics 365 Dashboard helps sales managers see at a glance what is happening within the business – including salesperson performance – without the need for staff reports or meetings, focusing effort on problem areas or more profitable sales opportunities.

Failure to record information about prospects and customers in a central location results in a risk when a salesperson leaves the business. You don’t want to lose your best customers along with your star salesperson! A CRM allows any team member to instantly view a client’s history, preferences and previous marketing activity, allowing flexibility in team allocation.

Organisations with many suppliers or retail channels can use a CRM to stay connected with these partners, using Dynamics 365 to identify any issues early or highlight and profit from exceptional performance.

Insights on the go

If there is one feature your salespeople require above all else, it is mobility. Managing leads and opportunities on the road without a consistent, touch-enabled interface to the central client repository is like trying to talk a civilian through landing a plane: risky and unreliable. Designed to mobilise sales teams, Dynamics 365 apps are available across most platforms to allow simple read / write access to sales entities with a customisable home tab dashboard for quick updates on the go. No matter where you are, you can check your phone for analytics on your team's performance, or advance an opportunity towards a successful close.

Effective reporting

Are your marketing efforts creating enough leads? Which channels deliver and which ones are wasting money? Do your salespeople make enough calls, are their targets right, are they converting as often as they should? Which of your customers are costing more to service than they deliver in revenue? In most successful businesses, the real-time answers to these questions and more are a few clicks away in the CRM, rather than after a monthly scuffle with half a dozen spreadsheets.

Managing salespeople

Sometimes, sales teams can be more focused on closing deals than following processes. Microsoft Dynamics 365 takes the frustration out of compliance with a prominent visual process display that reflects your phases and key step to progress leads, opportunities, service cases and other tasks. Users can easily see which stage each item is at and what needs to happen next, and the database will be automatically updated with an activity record when, for example, the CRM is used to send product information directly to a prospect while on the phone.

Protecting data

How clean is your customer data? Your database is one of your most valuable businesses assets and yet many organisations struggle to find the balance between making it easy for staff to enrich the database and making sure data is entered in a consistent way. Dynamics 365 allows controls to be applied to enforce condition- and action-based rules including options to hide fields and enforce field entry based on related field values. And as always with Microsoft products, you can rest easy knowing that experts are responsible for the security of your precious database.

Do your homework

A solid requirements document forms the foundation of a successful CRM project – yours should be detailed with well-defined objectives and devote significant space to how the system will be used: the processes and the people. While technology selection is important, it’s processes that will ensure the system can function effectively and people that will determine whether it is used at all. CRM systems and Microsoft Dynamics 365 in particular are almost endlessly flexible and can be deployed in a myriad of different ways. Make sure you are clear on why, how, who and when before you start even thinking about vendors. That said, don't get too obsessional about every single option in each dropdown menu. You can always update options as you go, this is what makes Dynamics 365 such a versatile and extensible tool.

Data is not I.T.’s responsibility

Let’s have a show of hands – who is 100% happy with their client database? Up to date account contact details, few duplicates, no spelling errors, minimal “null” values, no customers assigned to long-exited account managers… data maintenance can be a challenge. In 2013 Gartner surveyed a wide range of companies who estimated that on average, data quality cost them over $14 million dollars a year. Bad data affects more than just servers and databases, it is a business problem and one that must be dealt with if you want business users to engage with your CRM. Task account managers with personally verifying medium-large clients and consider engaging a service to maximise field completion and consistency for leads and smaller accounts by sourcing data internally and externally.

Carrot & stick

It can be infuriating when the recipients of this amazing new system don’t fall over themselves to use it, but accept there will be some resistance. User adoption is always the most challenging element to a deployment, particularly one with such far-reaching and fundamental business impacts as a CRM. Try to plan the migration of data and system transition at a quiet period in your business and don’t assume that half a day of training and an encouraging smile are going to be enough. Start decommissioning alternative options such as spreadsheets and highlighting success stories from early adopters. As with any new implementation, enthusiastic 'champions' in key departments who can address concerns and offer real time assistance will go a long way to driving change

Call in the professionals

Would you install your own solar power? Calibrate your own manufacturing equipment? Design the company logo in PowerPoint? Implementing your own CRM system can be a false economy. Experienced consultants have seen many CRM projects, can help you avoid the common pitfalls and can achieve in hours things that could take you days. Your new Dynamics 365 CRM should give you more time to concentrate on the thing you know best – your business. Don’t waste your precious resources on something that can be achieved faster and more effectively by an expert.

Dynamics 365 and your business

Every organisation is unique, with different goals, strengths, structures and processes. The flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics 365 means it can be configured to meet almost any business requirement but the incredible range of settings, fields, report and views – not to mention integration with other systems and data sources – can be challenging.

WebVine will work with you to implement this flexible and powerful tool to optimise your business outcomes, from actively managing and driving new business from existing clients, to acquiring , nurturing and converting new customers.

One of our recent client projects with Redback Boots was recently selected for a Microsoft Dynamics 365 case study, illustrating how a classic Australian workwear company is building a strong export business using WebVine's 365 solution.

Microsoft
Dynamics 365