Social Intelligence

The largest market for new clients within CRM is Social Media; the only issue with this is that it is so undefined. Social media is so large that it includes those annoying Facebook updates from friends telling you they are having a drink in your favourite bar while you work through to the recent offer to buy a company, where a franchisor offered 10 franchisee coffee shop opportunities across Canada and received 600 applications, selling 8 in 3 months, 6 more than more traditional methods achieved in the same timescale. Social Media is big business, the statistics are huge, LinkedIn’s last quarter revenue was $139.5m and despite still losing $1.6m a quarter it is still valued at over $3 billion Facebook has nearly a billion members, and Twitter exceeding 2 million tweets every hour. The information from social media that makes up both Business Intelligence and Customer Intelligence is invaluable, but how do you keep tabs on this information, you could spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 monitoring the social media platforms but how do you assess what is useful and ultimately what is going to become a potential lead? Monitoring social media is now a key business priority. Among firms surveyed by the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers  72% are now “monitoring conversations about their brand” yet only 6% use tools to help with the monitoring. More than 40% of the companies surveyed are using a specialist monitoring agency with the most popular in the UK being companies such as Brandwatch, Radian6 or Sysomos. Brand managers recognise that social media has become not only too big to ignore but also integral to the marketing mix. When IBM ran a social media conference for their 2000 largest clients nearly 1400 marketing directors said they were underprepared for marketing in the social media space. Social media has altered the way in which marketing can be done, the marketing issue is now that most social media users are not keen to receive marketing messages directly, preferring to receive recommendations from friends, and this has seen the trend in Klout scores becoming more important. The influence of the few far out ways the mass market scatter gun approach. It is therefore arguable that for companies to use social media to listen rather than to talk. Key influencers are targeted by companies such as Peer Influence who have been able to show some brands by utilising the right key influencers have the potential to receive as many as 40 000 inbound social media messages a week regarding their brand. Having overcome the issue of how to be involved social media and becoming successful there is then the issue of how to segment the virtual treasure trove of information that the company now has. When you couple this with customer intelligence that can be garnered from the open nature of most social media tools and the ability to “monitor” chatter about competitors as a company you can only be involved in …

CRM 2011

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 became available for download on April 1st 2011, but it was no April Fools. The jump from CRM 4 to CRM 2011 is not in the realms of Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap” but CRM 2011 is certainly a big step forward for Microsoft and is significantly different to the 1.2 version. CRM 2011 has been out in the US for some time and now Microsoft is allowing the rest of the world to join in the fun. The forward thinking is evident in a number of ways, not just the headline grabbing on premise or hosted environment, the XRM development, or the new Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace. The major advances have to be in the actual end user customer experience. Simplicity and power are the cornerstones of CRM 2011, understanding that not all users and even more importantly not all management will be completely IT literate, Microsoft has made significant changes in the Dashboards, Outlook and Office features in order to make the most of the experience and highlight the best features The simplicity of the Dashboard creation empowers users to be more creative with reporting, it is possible to bring together information from several places within CRM 2011 and from there to create and most importantly to be able to correct the Dashboards as you wish The integration of CRM 2011 with Outlook means the native functionality of Outlook is retained including previews and formatting.  The user is able to bring their experience of Outlook to CRM 2011 so there is no need for the users to “learn” a new way of working with CRM Outlook. CRM 2011 has come with an impressive new Office 2010 contextual ribbon. Good bye to creating mountains of JavaScript in order to create the Office ribbon within your CRM, now it is there as an out of the box solution. The new ribbon allows for a familiar navigation to anyone who uses Word or any Office product.  The ribbon is made even more impressive as the actions on the ribbon automatically update based on where you are in CRM. The functions when you look at a lead record will differ from the ribbon actions when you’re in the activity list with the simple hover feature giving further explanation of the ribbon should it be required. The ability to be familiar with elements of a new platform is seen as fundamental in bringing the users with you when you are upgrading or indeed implementing a new platform and as such it is easy to foresee the advantages that this will bring to both the VAR during the implementation and to the gaining the users buy-in.

Interview With Derek Warburton

Derek Warburton May 2011 Derek Warburton; TenDigits Vice President, Sales. He is responsible for developing and executing the corporate sales strategy, including growing and managing the sales teams in support of corporate growth plans. How many years have you been a Dynamics VAR / ISV? TenDigits has been Dynamics CRM ISV for 7 years. During that time, we’ve been 100% focused on delivering robust mobility solutions for Dynamics CRM. It’s all we do. Many customers and partners have said that we were ahead of the curve as the market demand for Dynamics CRM (and by extension, mobility for CRM) 6 or 7 years ago was not that great. Our R&D and customer experience from those early days, has served us very well though, as our products a now very mature and comprehensive. It’s great that we got in this game early, as it’s allowed us to stay far ahead of the new entrants into the space. Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics CRM? With respect to Dynamics CRM, Microsoft has done a great job with recent versions and especially CRM 2011 to provide a world class CRM offering that is highly adaptable and configurable compared to others, relatively cost effective to implement and maintain, all for a fraction of the cost of similar caliber CRM systems. If that’s not enough, the integration with Outlook is far superior to that of other CRM’s. What has been your biggest success within Microsoft Dynamics? The best successes are when we win in tandem with a Dynamics VAR and/or Microsoft. A great example of this is from a little over a year ago. Microsoft and a Dynamics CRM VAR were competing against SalesForce for a 6000 seat CRM deal. Mobility was a key requirement and SalesForce brought in their CEO who told the customer the reason to go with is offering was that the mobility solution for Dynamics CRM was weak. Microsoft and the VAR called TenDigits for help. Within a few days, we illustrated to the senior executives at the customer that the TenDigits Mobile CRM solution was in fact far superior to the SalesForce mobility solution, and a much better fit for their business requirements. This became a key turning point in the sales cycle, causing SalesForce to be quickly ruled out as a potential vendor choice, and leading to a collective a win for Microsoft, the VAR and TenDigits. What is the biggest competitive advantage you have added to a client? With HealthSouth http://www.healthsouth.com/ , a multi-billion $ US based healthcare company, their use of Dynamics CRM combined with the TenDigits Mobility solution, has allowed them to re-engineer a critical business process. In the US, healthcare is private (not run by the government), and healthcare companies compete for customers (patients). They had a need to improve the process by which their 1000 Patient Liaisons (effectively sales staff) accessed and updated patient information, to ensure they get referred to the appropriate rehabilitation healthcare facility and doctors. The business process was quite manual, and was costing the company significant money, while at the same time negatively impacting the effectiveness of and efficiency of …

HostedAX for £50

The future is bright the future is £50 The start of the Microsoft Dynamics Hosted AX revolution is beginning with what could be the best value for money for any ERP platform. The ERP environment is rapidly changing, moving away from the traditional server-based IT model towards a virtual environment accessed through the internet. The 2 key areas of concern have always been reliability and security, and through the delivery of a private cloud, and advances in Cloud Enterprise Services, these areas have been quashed. The private cloud now offers those that migrate a faster more secure and reliable way of computing. The delivery of those that have previously chosen to host their internal server infrastructure have already taken advantage of the chance to minimise waste and have shown the advantages that can be gained from hosting Microsoft Exchange Servers, Microsoft SQL Servers and Microsoft Sharepoint Servers so what is it that has stopped those same end users from hosting AX. It might just be that there has been a lack of understanding of the benefits. A private cloud enables the end user to have their physical servers virtualised into a private and dedicated environment. This is seamless and offers a guaranteed uptime. But the biggest change is that of the costing. It is now possible using Dynamics AX 2012 Hosted for an end user to reduce the cost of ownership dramatically. A 100 user site can now reduce the cost of the licence substantially OnPremise v Hosted Monthly Cost Annual Cost Upfront Cost Maintenance Plan AX 2012 OnPremise £160 000 £25 600 AX 2012 Hosted £50 per user per month £60 000 £4500 So with the potential to deliver Dynamics AX as a hosted solution for just £50 a month per user this has to be the an incredible effort on behalf of Microsoft and the hosting partners to be able to deliver a truly affordable ERP Platform for today’s financially impoverished times. Hosted v OnPremise Monthly Cost Annual Costs UpFront Costs Maintenance Plan SAP £216 000 £32 400 Oracle £220 000 £44 000 Dynamics AX £50 per user per month £60 000 £4 500 But it is against the ERP competition that Dynamics AX 2012 Hosted comes into its own A client choosing Dynamics AX 2012 Hosted over Oracle now has a simple task, over the first 3 years they can spend a total of £208 800 against £352 000 in fact it would be take 10 years for the total licence cost of Dynamics AX 2012 Hosted to be more expensive and that is without taking into consideration the value of saving the upfront costs to the end client. This is a massive step change in the ERP market, one in which Microsoft have nailed their flag to the mast, they clearly want to increase market share and the battlefield they have chosen is that of price. At DynamicsWorld we are talking with Microsoft and Hosting partners about how to assist in the delivery of private clouds …

Lack of Dynamics Consultants

The lack of Dynamics Consultants is a serious issue that is easily solved.   By Jared Steadman May 2011 There has been a lack of Dynamics Consultants and Developers for some time. Microsoft in the UK has attempted to make small steps to combat the issue with little success. They had the right idea in the UK when they partnered with Sheffield Hallam University offering a MBA in Information Systems with Microsoft Dynamics. Today the qualification is well respected in the industry and the graduates are highly skilled and competent. Unfortunately that was never sold to enough potential graduates. Globally there has been an increase in Microsoft university courses and other Microsoft initiatives. But is it really Microsoft’s role to train additional personnel and therefore is what they are doing just sticking a plaster on a much larger wound? Today, basic development isn’t the issue. Huge teams outside of the EU can complete implementations quicker and cheaper than UK and other Northern European based companies. This is largely due to excellent, cost effective training programmes, which are often run by large resellers. The aim of these facilities is to train new staff, often just managing to break even, not to make a profit. Something I thing the European market could learn from. Consequently, face to face Consultants are in high demand across Europe and the US, which inevitably drives up rates. Partners spend millions of pounds on implementations and upgrades and need the work completed properly. They are feeling squeezed between lack of affordable resources and the need to have the work completed to the standards they require. A complaint that has been put to Microsoft. Recent conversations have shown me that Microsoft are looking for solutions to this problem. I was recently asked what I thought was the best way to combat the problem in the short term. In my opinion there is a simple answer. Recruitment companies. Recruitment companies can employ non EU staff as full time employees or on fixed term contracts. With their skills and experience and the obvious lack of these professionals, they will be accepted as Highly Skilled Migrant Professionals, HSMP (or the equivalent name outside of the UK). Microsoft need to act as a middle man, introducing partners who are interested in cutting costs to recruitment companies that have the resources and inclination to provide a solution. Partners will no doubt want MS Certified, experienced candidates who have excellent English. The recruitment companies will want to gauge demand and want reassurances that these people will be employed. Once agreed recruitment companies will bring the candidates from outside the EU and US, employing them on a fixed term contract for the duration of their visa. The candidates will have a chance of earning comparatively excellent wages. MS partners will have affordable resource for their projects that delivers a high standard of work. I was told that Microsoft would be interested in pursuing this idea, and that they were planning to arrange a preliminary meeting …

Interview Pedro Rodriguez

Pedro Rodriguez September 2011 Pedro has been working with Dynamics Ax since nearly 6 years. His experience focus with end users helping them to optimize their ERP. He has worked with the end users Juan Jimenez García and Novatec Solar. What was your first job in Microsoft Dynamics? It was 6 years ago when I was working in my first job as .NET developer when a colleague gave me a newspaper advertisement about a company in my born city that needed someone to help them with their new ERP. It was called Axapta and I haven’t heard about it before but it sounded so cool… Who has been your biggest influence/s in Microsoft Dynamics? In Spain I have to mention Manuel Querol who worked in a former partner of us (IFR). Actually he is a MVP by Microsoft. Also I have to mention Antonio Ramón de Mata-García Sánchez who gave me the hints to make a successful upgrade from Axapta 3.0 to Dynamics Ax 2009. On an international side I can mention Rahul Sharma. His contributions are always incredible and quite useful. What has been your biggest achievement/s in Microsoft Dynamics? Spain is fighting against the economic crisis for several years and the worse is to come so for Spanish companies is quite important to keep costs down. With Dynamics Ax I have helped my company to make this in two ways. First, we have achieved to make everything inside the company (from customization, to more complicated projects like upgrades) dropping expensive IT services rates. Second, we have optimized the ERP to our business making a very fast decision making environment in our company and reducing all the redundant tasks. We also introduced integration with Blackberry applications some years ago when mobile applications weren’t so usual like today. What is the best thing Microsoft has brought to the community? Dynamics Ax is an environment that promotes creativity and it is quite easy to use and to customize. On the Axapta 3.0 times it was more difficult to find information on the Internet but nowadays with Dynamics Ax 2009 and even Dynamics Ax 2012 you can see plenty of dedicated websites and blogs talking about new fantastic add-ons. Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics? Dynamics Ax is a tested tool. Even Dynamics Ax 2012 despite the improvements should keep the core of Axapta 3.0. It is quite easy to use and customize if needed. There is now out there plenty of professionals and also it is not very difficult to introduce a generic software developer into Dynamics Ax so the lack of professionals can be coped if the company have patient and give some training meanwhile the developer knows the company. On the times of Axapta 3.0 I thought of SAP for biggest companies and Axapta for medium companies but this is no longer true and big multinational companies can make a very good choice with Dynamics Ax 2009 or Dynamics Ax 2012. What are the biggest challenges facing …

Interview With Ben Grech

Ben Grech 2011 Ben has been working in the IT industry for the last 13 years. He has designed, consulted, managed, implemented and supported various system roll outs for multinational companies including Safeway Stores, FujiFilm, Demajo Group, Microsoft, and Phonak. How many years have you been a Dynamics VAR / ISV? I have been in Dynamics for the 11 years+, having working on different versions of MS NAV and also MS Retail Management System. I was fortunate to implement NAV in different countries across a range of industries. Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics? The track record of the Microsoft Dynamics products speaks for itself, before and after Microsoft started acquisitions. They are very trusted, stable systems which steadily continue to deliver solid business benefits to the end users coupled up with operational cost savings. And with the innovations which came about, and still to come around in the system platforms and UX areas, I’m sure things will get more interesting, both for partners and for end users.   What has been your biggest success within Microsoft Dynamics? Two big successes come to mind right now. One of them was when I start off a Dynamics NAV Division in a software house I work for 8 years, to end up having built and trained a good number of Developers, Consultants & PMs. Another one is when together with a team of Consultants and Industry Experts we build a product (a NAV vertical) which was rolled out in different countries, and was fantastic seeing the product performing exceptionally well and delivering the benefits. What is the biggest competitive advantage you have added to a client? I had a egaming/ebetting customer and we had to build a complex billing engine for them. It was a great challenge due to the amount of billing exceptions, but when we delivered and implemented the finished product, the client was able to process the billing cycle in less than 4 hours, whilst before it used to take around 200hrs processing, also risk having human errors. And no matter how many customers they were adding to the system, the billing cycle processing time was still very contained. Another big competitive advantage was interfacing NAV with SAP for Order/Delivery/Invoice Processing including product attributes configurations…..it was an amazing experience, apart from the long nights at work!! But the process streamlining and subsequent gains were well worth it!!! How can a client best maximise Microsoft Dynamics? First you have to look at your processes and make them lean. Sometimes people forget about the KISS concept (Keep It Simple) and make their systems unnecessarily complicated. If there is a strong case to have a complex process, then let it be, if its delivering the required benefit. But complex processes require more investment in customisations, training etc, and people should ask themselves if the complexity is really necessary. To maximize on your Dynamics Investment, people should focus on simplifying their core operations, and automating most of them, so you let …

Interview With Nico Tissink

Nico Tissink May 2011 Nico Tissink CEO and founder of AXtension. My goal is to create a respectful relationship with the AXtension partners and inspire them to create a sustainable business for themselves, based upon our great solutions. What was your first job in Microsoft Dynamics? I was one of the founders of Pulse in 1986 and I have worked the Software Industry since that time. The moment Microsoft Dynamics™ AX (Damgaard Axapta) was born we started working with it, selling it and implementing it. I was involved in that process as a Consultant, Sales manager and Managing Director in our VAR business called Pulse Business Solutions. In 2008 we started a very successful ISV business under the name AXtension. The Pulse group now consists of three companies: Pulse Business Solutions (Dynamics AX implementations worldwide), AXtension (ISV solutions for Dynamics AX worldwide) and MigrAX (Automated Migration software for Dynamics AX). Who has been your biggest influence/s in Microsoft Dynamics? My biggest influences where Erik and Preben Damgaard, as founders of the first object oriented ERP system in the world. What has been your biggest achievement/s in Microsoft Dynamics? My biggest achievement in Microsoft Dynamics has been founding the AxPact network, which now consists of more than 35 worldwide AX partners, working very successfully together in worldwide implementations. Amongst other things, I also think that building trust and healthy, honest relationships as a partner is also one of my most important achievements. What is the best thing Microsoft has brought to the community?   With respect to Dynamics, I think the best thing Microsoft has brought is their enormous development capacity. They were able to invest the amounts of money that were necessary to make AX the professional product it is now. Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics? There are of course a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is that with Dynamics our customers are able to increase their profit by working much more efficiently. Microsoft Dynamics enables them to be very flexible and adaptable to changes in their business environment. This means that Dynamics users always have the ability to change their software according to their changed business processes, without having to make enormous investments. What are the biggest challenges facing Microsoft Dynamics in the ERP market today? Understanding the needs and the pain of the market they are in. Which add-on has made your clients life easier? Of course, this must be our AXtension solutions. What do you want to see happen with Microsoft Dynamics in the future? Continuous investment in the product to make it more usable in the cloud environment.

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