CRM Trends & Tutorials (2021) - FMT Consultants Inc.

nVerge 2015 is a Microsoft-centric technology conference taking place on October 27th in San Diego, CA. The conference offers 35+ breakouts, keynotes, roundtables and workshops on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Dynamics Marketing, Microsoft Social Engagement, Microsoft Dynamics GP, SharePoint, Office 365, Power BI and general business management best practices. This blog post provides a brief overview of the nVerge sessions on Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Social Engagement and Dynamics Marketing. Visit www.nVerge2015.com for complete agenda. Related: Live Sessions on Microsoft Dynamics GP and Management Reporter at nVerge 2015 Reimagining Customer Engagement through Social & Behavior-Based Messaging Products: Microsoft Social Engagement, Dynamics Marketing, and Dynamics CRM Customer buying patterns have changed and impacted the way marketing and sales need to engage. Social media and the Internet have empowered buyers and accelerated their path through the buying cycle. Engaging on the customers’ terms, through their preferred channels with customized messages has never been more important. […]

Every marketer knows that in order to successfully sell a product or service it is vital to understand your customers’ behavior first. With the rise of the Internet and social media, we are now connected to seven continents, 196 countries, and billions of people in the world. While this accessibility and reach is presumably most marketer’s dream, it is nearly impossible to gather and evaluate feedback from the vast human population with one marketing team. So what good is it to push out ads and continuously post on social media when you don’t know what catches your customers’ attention, what they want to see or what channels they are most active on? But fear not fellow marketers! Microsoft has introduced a tool that collects feedback and data from your customers and prospects all over the world and displays it in real time right in front of your eyes. Microsoft Social […]

In this post I will describe a solution to add Microsoft Office Outlook style functionality to follow-up e-mails. In Microsoft Office Outlook, you can mark an e-mail as read/un-read, and you can also mark the e-mail for follow-up with various scheduling options (today, tomorrow, next week, custom date) and finally mark complete. We’ll see how we can make customization and add similar functionality in CRM as well. The idea behind the solution is to track the activity action history, i.e. we want to keep track of when an action was performed. Whether it was opened, marked read/un-read or marked for follow-up or completed. Let’s start by creating a new entity “Activity Action History” in Dynamics CRM with the following attributes.   Next we’ll customize the form ribbon on the e-mail entity. We’ll add 4 ribbon buttons as shown below.   We will add commands for each ribbon button and add […]

Preface At a high level, the implementation of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Portal allows for data from non-CRM users to interact with data from the Dynamics CRM System via a public website. Please see our guide to portal development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to learn more about the essentials of developing a portal solution for your Dynamics CRM Organization. While the aforementioned blog post covers the necessary steps to get started, there’s a lot of additional functionality that can be added to your portal. This blog post will specifically address the implementation of a clickable GridView control to mimic the View functionality in Dynamics CRM. Dynamics CRM Views One of the core features of Dynamics CRM is the ability to use Views. Views show data in a tabular and filterable format, allowing for users to work with multiple records at one time. This crucial functionality can be replicated in a […]

This page outlines the feature enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Update 1 (Spring Release) within the areas of: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Microsoft Social Engagement (previously Social Listening) Parature Download the as PDF here. Introduction Customer experience has become increasingly important for brands, yet there is a significant gap between how companies think they’re doing on delivering great customer experiences and what customers think. We believe companies must think about their customer journey and engagement models differently in today’s world. Our mission with Customer Engagement solutions from Microsoft Dynamics is to enable companies deliver amazing customer experiences via intelligent customer engagement. We provide end-to-end customer engagement solutions so that companies can deliver customer expereinces that are personalized, proactive and predictive. Companies can: Personalize customer experiences by creating end-to-end, outcome-focused journeys that engage customers at the right time and place with the right message. Create proactive experiences […]

Microsoft Social Engagement 2015 Update 1 adds new capabilities that will give you greater insight into what people are saying on social media and news. This blog will help you understand what has changed from the previous release (Microsoft Social Listening) and what to expect in this new release of Microsoft Social Engagement. Download as PDF document here.     What's New in Microsoft Social Engagement? Here are some of the areas we have enhanced in our latest release: User Interface New modern user interface that is intuitive and easy to use with visual filtering. You can choose a light and dark theme to suit your visual preference. Social Analytics Reimagined analytics with new visualizations, including phrase clouds, top fans, top critics, and top hashtags for greater insight. Social Center Collaborate with sales, marketing, and service teams and engage with social communities. Social Profiles Add your authenticated Facebook and Twitter accounts […]

This video highlights the new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 including: Enhanced sales process automation New hierarchical visualizations Product management enhancements The new sales and marketing collaboration panel Mobile sales features Expanded case management functionality The many new marketing automation tools FMT Consultants is a leading Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Partner.

Below you'll fint the spring 2015 Parature preview release guide. The guide contains information about the many new features and product enhancement within the areas of Knowledge Management, Support Ticketing, Self-Service Portal, Mobile, Social, Chat and Packaged Integrations. Contact FMT Consultants for more information about Parature from Microsoft. Download the full PDF guide here     Content Introduction Knowledge Management Support Ticketing Self-Service Portal Mobile Social Chat Packaged Integrations Conclusion Introduction Technology has fundamentally changed customer care, empowering the customer with as much or more information, devices and channels of engagement as the average customer service agent has to deliver service. Growing expectations have presented brands and organizations with the need to become “customer obsessed” and more deeply invest in the technology that will allow them to productively, proactively, personally and consistently respond to and engage with customers at the time and on the channel of their convenience. Microsoft, the productivity […]

Southern California Dynamics CRM consulting firm, FMT Consultants, will be demonstrating the new features and product enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 in Los Angeles and San Diego on February 17 and February 19, 2015. San Diego, CA, January 13, 2015 – FMT Consultants, a gold certified Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner, today announced its upcoming roadshows featuring two Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 demo events. Dynamics CRM 2015 is the latest release of Microsoft’s robust and scalable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution designed for business of all sizes. The Dynamics CRM 2015 showcase sessions take place on: Tuesday, February 17, 2015 from 1:00-3:00 PM PST at the Microsoft Office in San Diego, located at 9255 Towne Centre Drive, Ste 400, San Diego, CA 92121 Thursday February 19, 2015 from 1:00-3:00 PM PST at the Microsoft Office in Los Angeles located at 13031 West Jefferson Boulevard, Ste 200, Los Angeles, CA 90094. […]

Register now for our Dynamics CRM 2015 events in February 2015! Microsoft released the latest version of its robust Customer Relationship Management solution, Dynamics CRM 2015, in December, 2014. This page highlights some of the new key features and enhancements of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015. Download the Preview Guide as PDF here: Download Marketing Business Context – The world is changing and it is impacting how companies need to engage with customers. Customers are 57% of the way through the buying cycle before they engage with you. Marketers, more than ever, need to be there every step with the customer, ensuring that when the customer does reach out, sales, marketing and the customer are all on the same page. Marketing owns more of the customer journey than ever before, so they must engage customers in new ways, across new channels in a personalized, relevant way. At the same time, marketers […]

What are Business Process Flows? Business Process Flows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 are a new and powerful addition to the Processes section that helps visualize the necessary steps in a business process. From MSDN: A business process flow guides you through various stages in the business process, from start to finish. …..The process flow will tell you where you are in the process, where you came from, and what to do next. You are able to continuously monitor your own progress.  Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn481586.aspx Creating/Modifying Business Process Flows As business process flows are an out–of-the-box construct in CRM 2013, it is quite simple to create or modify a business process flow. The easiest way to view all business process flows is to first select Settings on the command bar, then Processes from the sub-options in settings. Then you will be able to change the view of the processes to Business […]

Business processes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 are great out-of-the-box, but there are also a few things that we can do in terms of extending the functionality of the stages with some customizations. In this blog I'll show how to conditionally hide/show a business process flow section based on the current stage. For example, let’s say that for some business process flows, before entering information on a new lead you want to validate that this lead does not already exist in CRM as an account or contact: To drive home this point to your end users, on the lead form, you will not show ANY sections unless this stage has been addressed. Therefore, if you are in the “INITIAL” stage as shown above, then nothing should be visible on the lead form until you progress to the next stage (in my example the stage name is GATHER). Here is how […]