Questions & Answers
Microsoft Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is Microsoft Customer Relationship
Management?
Microsoft Customer Service Relationship is a comprehensive
CRM solution that helps small and medium sized businesses increase
sales success, provide superior customer service, accurately
forecast sales, and analyse business performance.
Accessible from both, Microsoft Outlook and the Web, Microsoft
CRM offers a flexible, scalable architecture that integrates easily
with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions,
third-party applications, and your business's customer-facing Web
site.
Q. What sort of sales management functionality does
Microsoft CRM offer?
- The Sales Module supports your sales team at every stage of the
sales cycle, from leads and opportunities management to fulfilment
and invoicing:
- Complete customer view and activity management: View and manage
account activity, customer history, calendar, and communications
including phone, fax, and e-mail.
- Outlook synchronization: Access full sales functionality either
online and offline from Outlook.
- Reports: Use or customize a wide range of reports to forecast
sales, measure business activity, and identify trends
- Opportunity management: Qualify leads and track opportunities
separately from customers through the sales cycle.
- Workflow rules: Use or customize automated business processes
for leads routing, opportunity tracking, and pipeline
management.
- Information sharing: Centralized data storage and integration
capabilities make it easy to access, update, and share consistent,
current information across teams and departments.
- Order management: Automatically update orders with product
catalogues, quotes, and invoices.
- Quotas: Measure sales against individual employee goals.
- Direct e-mail: Customize templates and use Mail Merge from
Microsoft Word to send e-mail to targeted groups.
- Sales library: Create and maintain a searchable library of
sales and marketing literature.
Q. What sort of customer service functionality does
Microsoft CRM offer?
- The Customer Service Module helps customer service
representatives deliver stronger, more consistent and efficient
support, with the following features:
- Case management: Create and assign cases for customer service
requests and manage those cases from creation to resolution.
- Activity management: View and update calendar, workload, and
records.
- Routing and queuing: Use workflow rules to automatically route
service requests and cases to appropriate resources for resolution
or reassignment.
- Searchable knowledgebase: Easily create and update a library of
articles and FAQs.
- Contracts: Create, update, and manage contracts and service
license agreements.
- E-Mail auto-response: Use customizable templates and send
automated responses to customer requests.
Q. How does Microsoft CRM integrate with Microsoft
Office?
The Sales and Customer Service Modules are integrated with
Microsoft Office 2000 and Office XP applications, supporting full
sales functionality both online and offline from Microsoft Outlook,
e-mail templates and Mail Merge with Microsoft Word, and data
export to Microsoft Excel.
Q. Does Microsoft CRM integrate with Microsoft Great
Plains Business Solutions?
Microsoft CRM integrates with Microsoft Great Plains.
Integration of key data includes: Contacts, accounts, contracts,
products, price lists, orders, contracts, and more. Data mapping
can be customized using Microsoft BizTalk Server tools and services
that ship with Microsoft CRM.
Q. Does Microsoft CRM integrate with non-Microsoft
applications?
Yes. Your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner can help you
customize your Microsoft CRM solution for integration with
third-party applications, using open Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) and Microsoft BizTalk Server tools and
services.
Q. We'd like to offer self-service for customers, but we
already have a customer-facing Web site and don't want to create a
new one.
The Microsoft CRM Customer Portal integrates with your
customer-facing Web site and with the Sales and Customer Service
Modules. This allows customers 24/7 access to a knowledgebase of
articles and FAQs and the ability to update data, check order
status, submit service requests, and chat online in real time with
customer service representatives.
Q. How is Microsoft CRM implemented and
supported?
Microsoft CRM is designed for rapid implementation, with
centralized server-side installation that ensures faster
deployment, easier maintenance, and more straightforward
upgrades.
Because Microsoft CRM is delivered, implemented and supported
through highly trained Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions
partners, you'll have hands-on assistance with the setup and
maintenance process, as well as 24-hour access to Microsoft
Technical Support services.
Q. We need a solution that salespeople can use with
Microsoft Outlook and that they can also access from the
Web.
Microsoft CRM offers both a rich client (accessible through
Microsoft Outlook) and a thin client (accessible from anywhere
through a Web browser). Users can work either online or offline to
access sales functionality from Outlook. This means that they can
pull up accounts, contacts, products, sales literature, activities,
and opportunities, as well as synchronize Microsoft CRM contacts,
appointments, tasks, and e-mails with Outlook.
Q. My salespeople hate being controlled by complex,
time-consuming data entry requirements of our current contact
management software. Is Microsoft CRM easier for them to
use?
Using Microsoft CRM virtually eliminates redundant data entry.
Centralized information storage and viewing let users easily share,
manage and update information across the Sales and Customer Service
modules and across other business applications and systems.
Q. Can Microsoft CRM help me with turnover among my
customer service representatives?
Microsoft CRM makes it easy for your business to provide
consistent, effective service and increase volume capacity without
adding headcount. Service employees can easily view, share, and
update customer and product information, ensuring efficient,
up-to-date sales and service. Automated routing and queuing of
support requests ensures that Customer Service Representatives can
assist customers efficiently from initial contact through
resolution.
Q. We need a solution that not only helps us acquire
customers, but also keep them. Can Microsoft CRM help?
Microsoft CRM helps your business improve customer acquisition
and retention. With a complete view of customer information, your
sales team can track customers and new leads through the sales
cycle and easily update records, while service representatives will
find it easy to track and manage support incidents from initial
contact to resolution. Microsoft CRM also ensures more efficient
and consistent sales and service processes, with customizable
workflow rules that let you create and automate processes for
sales, support, routing, and notifications-so responses are always
timely, and customer requests never "fall through the cracks".
Q. We need to accurately forecast business activity.
What reporting capabilities does Microsoft CRM offer?
Microsoft CRM includes a comprehensive set of reporting tools
for measuring business activity and forecasting sales. You can run
and view reports for sales activity and quotas, closed and pending
orders, support incident management and resolution, closed and
pending orders, financial summaries, and more.
The robust reporting capability of Microsoft CRM will help you
identify the opportunities, trends, and problems that guide your
business decision making processes. You also can easily export
Microsoft CRM report data to other applications, such as Microsoft
Excel.
Q. Is Microsoft CRM hosted or on-premises?
Microsoft CRM is available on-premises or through hosted
offerings provided by our channel partners.
Q. How is Microsoft CRM different from Microsoft
bCentral Customer Manager?
Microsoft CRM is designed for both small and medium-sized
businesses, offers full sales and customer service functionality
both online and offline, and integrates richly with other financial
and business systems. Microsoft bCentral Customer Manager is
designed for small businesses with fewer than 25 employees and
offers leads management available only through the Web.
Q. What if we're not in a position to invest time and
money training our sales team to use a new solution?
Microsoft CRM offers the same logical user interface and
intuitive work tools that your sales and support staff is already
familiar with for Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook.
Implementation includes online tutorials and 24-hour Web-based
support from Microsoft, so training costs associated with upgrading
to Microsoft CRM are minimal.
Q. Can we customize Microsoft CRM to suit our specific
needs?
Microsoft CRM can be tailored to meet your business needs,
processes, and environment. You'll be able to import existing data
from multiple sources, integrate with new or existing solutions,
and scale the installation as your business changes and grows.
Q. What are the implications of Microsoft CRM being a
.NET business application?
The first business application built from the ground up on
Microsoft. Net technologies, Microsoft CRM delivers tremendous
business value through easy integration with Microsoft Office,
Microsoft Great Plains business applications, third party
applications, and Web services. In addition, the flexible .NET
architecture gives users the choice of working online or offline in
Microsoft Outlook or directly through a Web browser.