Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 became available for download on April 1^st 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.