Big plans for Dynamics CRM
I read some really great news a couple of days ago concerning the announcements made at WPC 2011. Microsoft Dynamics CRM currently has more than 30000 customers and more than 2 million users worldwide. For me it wasn’t such a big surprise though..Dynamics CRM really is a great product to work with. It’s easy to use, it has a great ROI and a low TCO. What more do you want from a CRM system?
Dynamics CRM is not slacking when it comes to new technology. We already have CRM Online, which is basically Dynamics CRM in the cloud. This provides Small to mid size businesses to benefit from Dynamics CRM with reduced upfront costs. To top this, Microsoft will soon be pushing CRM Online to the Office 365 package. Next to SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Lync Online and the Office applications this great cloud based software suite will also offer Dynamics CRM Online. With this you’ll have an all in one package for your business. What’s great about Office 365 is that it’s cloud based. You don’t have to manage the software yourself, they are accessible from anywhere where you have an internet connection, they integrate so well with each other and for small to mid sized companies the price tag is very interesting. You may be wondering..when will we be able to enjoy Dynamics CRM in the Office 365 package? Well, Microsoft promised to release these updates by the end of 2011. If you haven’t heard of Office 365, but would like to know more, then check out this page: http://www.microsoft.com/office365/
Coming back to these updates, we can expect for Dynamics CRM in Q4 of 2011. Here are some key points to remember:
- Identify federation to support single sign-on to improve the experience for end users
- Improved disaster recovery with in-region replication to further protect data and offer higher levels of business continuity in the event of a disaster.
Microsoft is also investing to improve the social aspects of Dynamics CRM:
- Micro-blogging: Status updates and notifications regarding business events and actions, bringing simple experiences for users similar to Facebook and Twitter.
- Activity feeds: Configurable real-time notifications on all important relationships and significant business events via a blended view of micro-blog posts and all interactions for a person, customer or sales opportunity.
- Conversations: Users will be able to post questions, observations, suggestions and status updates, allowing them to collaborate quickly and efficiently, locate information or expertise and gather feedback from others.
- Automated activity updates: Microsoft Dynamics CRM will be able to post information directly to the Activity Feed based on configurable event rules, e.g. a sales opportunity is closed. Users can subscribe to or “follow” these Activity Feeds, and consume them in a variety of ways.
- Windows Phone 7 mobile application: With a new Windows Phone 7 mobile app, users will be able to view their Activity Feeds, while away from the office.
To close this post, in the first half of 2012, Dynamics CRM will be supported on other browsers than Internet Explorer like for example Safari, FireFox and Chrome. This is great news for Mac users and the people who really like working in non IE browsers.
Looks like Microsoft has some big plans for Dynamics CRM and I’m really looking forward to these updates!
You can watch the keynote which Krill Tatarinov gave at WPC 2011 via the following link: http://digitalwpc.com/Videos/VisionKeynoteVideos/2/KirillTatarinov#fbid=0HAoXcXTXnG
Other resources:
http://preactcrm.blogspot.com/2011/07/microsoft-dynamics-crm-q4-2011-update.html
