Dynamics CRM 4.0 Accelerators, coming at ya!

CRM Analytics Accelerator

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog has exciting previews on five (5!) CRM Accelerators coming your way this Q3.  Needless to say, I can’t wait to plug them in and start working on these new features.  This official Microsoft site has proven time and again to be a bookmark-worthy source of all things Dynamics CRM.

For screenshots and even more details, check out the links below that go directly to the source articles.

• Analytics Accelerator
  • Sales, service and operations dashboards delivered with Microsoft SQL Server® Reporting Services (SSRS).
  • Sales, service and operations dashboards and scorecards delivered with Microsoft PerformancePoint Server.
  • Additional reports delivered with SSRS.
  • Two Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes which are designed to allow customers to conduct in-depth analysis and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 data.
  • Predictive analytics to provide statistical guidance in areas such as lead and sales opportunity management.
  • The analytics accelerator will work with SQL Server 2005 with some components enhanced to take advantage of SQL Server 2008.

• eService Accelerator
  • Customer authentication into the portal and workflows to manage the setup of a contact as a web self-service customer.
  • Customer profile updates to contact details; this capability is configurable allowing organizations to choose which attributes of the profile they want to expose to the customer portal such as name, contact details and communications preferences.
  • The ability to view, create, edit and close service cases. There are two permission levels available to web portal customers:
    • Account-Level: these customers can view and modify all cases raised against the account they are associated with.
    • Contact-Level: these customers can only view and modify service cases that they themselves have raised.
  • Online service scheduling allowing customers to search for convenient times and then book service appointments with the organization.
  • Search against the Microsoft Dynamics CRM knowledge base (KB) using keywords. Once the appropriate KB article has been located the customer can then email that article to themselves or others.

• Event Management Accelerator
  • Event Planning – logistics around an event such as:
    • Booking the venue
    • Presenters
    • Catering
    • Presentation content preparation
  • Event Attendance – all aspects around managing the attendees such as:
    • Inviting the target audience via phone, fax, letter and email
    • Managing registrations via phone, letter, fax, email and web
    • Tracking all people who actually attended the event
  • Event Review – Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports that measure the effectiveness of the event:
    • How many people attended the event?
    • What was the revenue impact of the event?

• Enterprise Search Accelerator
  • View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through SharePoint. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM security model is preserved and enforced so that users can only view or edit CRM information that their security role allows.
  • Launch a SharePoint search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

• Sales Methodologies Accelerator
  • The sales methodologies accelerator is for customers who work with or want to work with one of the leading sales methodology vendors, including: Target Account Selling (TAS), SPI Solution Selling and Miller Heiman. Each of these vendors has their own distinct software products which need to be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a holistic approach to sales management.
  • The sales methodologies accelerator will provide customizations, advice and guidance for customers on how these sales methodologies can be configured, managed and integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

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