Software Answers

Postcode Lookups

For years you have had the ability to use postcodes to accurately retrieve addresses in the UK.  For most companies the  high cost to licence and pain to install and update was such that it was not viable however given that licence costs per annum per user where anything up to £300+. Unless a large proportion of your time was spent entering addresses the return on the cost was simply not there. 

Now however a company called World Address have changed that. First point is that you pay per query as as the pricing table shows below even for small usage its not so expensive.  At between 8p each for less than a thousand per to 7p for ten thousand plus its justifiable to make sure you get accurate addresses entered rapidly.

Secondly there are no installation or maintenance costs, its a service over the web that your systems can just call when they need it. This means that you don’t have to install it on each computer and get and distribute update files from the provider, much better.

Finally the interface we have to link it seamlessly to your existing systems is very good, From CRM, NAV, AX or Pegasus you can just enter a postcode in the normal box and a new window comes up to display the alternatives i.e the house numbers and names in that postcode, you select the one you want and it updates the relevant fields, simple and easy.

Technology Management have been using it both internally and with clients for a while now, it gets our clear recommendation. If you think it could help your business let us know. 

Dynamics CRM Update ‘R8’

So in the last twenty four hours the web has been alive with tweets welcoming the announcement of what will be in the Dynamics CRM Q2 2012  update codenamed R8. Titled CRM Anywhere it includes two major highlights allowing CRM systems to be accessed from as many devices as possible in as many different places as possible plus four other “enhancements”. What does it all mean for you?

• There will be a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone devices
• It will support other web browsers than Internet Explorer, such as Firefox, Chrome and Safari
• More social network integration (improving the activity feeds introduced in R6)
• Industry templates to get new customers started quicker
• Support for SQL 2012 including its new Power View BI tool and links to Azure
• More security certifications for CRM Online such as SAS70 Type II, Safe Harbour & DPA 

Well we were at the announcement in person at ExtremeCRM conference in Berlin so got the detail that is maybe not highlighted in the official announcement document.. 

There is no doubt the most exciting bit is that Microsoft is launching their own Mobile app. This is in fact a version of the CWR mobile application that's been available for some time and now we have the full detail we know that despite communicating through Microsoft’s data centres it will connect to both our hosted and clients on premise applications that have been setup with an Internet Facing Deployment. It costs $30 per month per user but you can access it from as many devices as you like so those with a phone and a tablet will not have to pay twice.

A few will like the ability to use other browsers and the same for the ability to filter, like and unlike activity feeds but for me the best news is the early support for PowerView which is a really strong Excel add in for analysing data. Reporting in CRM is already strong in 2011, made stronger in R6 with more graph possibilities including 3D out of the box but will be unbeatable by any application in my judgement once PowerView is in the mix.

The good news in that this announcement is making all the mobile partners like  Resco look at their pricing and most are likely to match Microsoft’s price point if not better it, bringing down the slightly prohibitive entry level costs to date. Even better  ones Resco  can support all the standard entities such as service cases which appear missing on the MS option as well as allowing customisation to a far higher level. That means the tailoring you’ve had done to make your CRM fit your business will be possible on the whatever device your using too.  

And finally you don’t have to wait, either the CWR or Resco options are available now rather than waiting till Microsoft release in the the October/November timeframe (their Q2 is our Q4) so if you’d like to try it out give us a call.

Microsoft Certification Gold in CRM and ERP for 2012

Pleased to confirm that we continue to hold Gold Certification with Microsoft for Dynamics ERP and CRM for the next 12 months.

This certification is the highest available from Microsoft, and requires a minimum of 6 certified employees in each competency. A number of case studies plus the completion of a customer satisfaction survey was also required to be successful.

The CRM team now stands at 10 dedicated people while our Dynamics ERP teams number 16. The investment in quality people all trained and certified to the highest level in implementation, consultancy, development. training and dedicated support is recognised by this certification.

CRM 2011 Role Tailored Forms

I have come across many CRM implementations where the fields on various forms can start to get cluttered and confusing. The fields always tend to be required by someone within the business but without proper management the sheer number of fields can start to take up un-necessary real estate on the form. Take for example a sales manager, when they open an account record they probably want to see key information such as year to date revenue, sales forecasts and turnover. This is fine, we can add that information to the form and the sales manager will be happy, but what about the poor support technician? When they open the account form they want to be able to see support contract details and case history, without having to scroll past a boat load of sales information first. Thankfully CRM 2011 has a great feature that means you can tailor forms based on the role of the user, so the form for a sales manager can now have completely different content and layout to what a support technician may see. All we need to do is create a relevant form, with the desired layout, and then assign a security role to that form.

So here’s what a sales manager will see when they open up an account record:

And here is what a support technician will see when they open up an account record:

As you can see, they are two totally different sets of fields, but very relevant to the user accessing it. The forms are clean and un-cluttered, which makes the user experience a whole lot better as they don’t need to search through a maze of fields to get to the information they need.

This feature doesn’t stop there though, not only can you customise the form layout on a role by role basis; you can also specify the code driven business logic too! This means you can add different sets of validation and actions to a form, depending on the role of the user accessing it. The combination of these features makes quickly implementing a UI, which fits all users’ requirements, a lot more achievable then previous versions of the product. Feel free to contact Technology Management should you require more information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, email crm@tecman.co.uk or visit our website http://www.tecman.co.uk/Products/Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM

Nathan.hawkins@tecman.co.uk

Process Documentation Tool

Technology Management provides software that controls and drives business processes. Whether its from the basics of enquiry through sales order to delivery and then payment or a much more industry or even customer specific getting all the steps right and clearly understood can be the key to rapidly and reliably implementing changes.

Documenting how it will work before you do the development in a way that’s clear and easy to understand but no the less comprehensive has always proved a challenge. When you write a specification in word its too open to interpretation but trying to diagram anything but the most basic flowchart in Visio can take an immense and lead to frustration the first time an amendment is needed and all those lines have to be reconnected.

So we are delighted to have recently found and trained up in a new tool called Engage Modeller. Engage is a cloud based tool that easy and rapid enough to be be able to ‘build while you talk’ negating the need to take copious notes and then try to understand them later. As you identify the actions and questions you can drop them into the schematic there and then complete with as many notes about each stage as you need. The connections are created automatically or by drag and drop and you can drill through to sub-processes.

Putting responsibilities and probabilities against each stage and you can calculate your capacity and reliability for each process as well. 

So next time your talking to one of our consultants about a process change don’t be surprised if they fire up Engage. We believe its going to serious improve our quality by not just enabling us to create solutions ‘right first time’ but by shorter solution delivery times via easier communication and making handover to support and understanding of how it works in years to come much easier.

Another Successful Microsoft Dynamics NAV Event

On November 23^rd Technology Management ran yet another successful Microsoft Dynamics NAV event.

Throughout the morning the functionality of the system was explored; topics covered included how NAV can work with CRM, EDI and E-commerce.

In particular the event highlighted how NAV can provide greater efficiency and productivity to an organisation which in turn can empower employees for business improvement and growth.

If you were unable to make the event but would like to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics NAV then Technology Management would be more than happy to come across to your offices and discuss the solution in more detail. To arrange this please contact Jason Tromans on 01902 578300 or email jason.tromans@tecman.co.uk.

Technology Management are in the process of putting together more events for the New Year; to keep updated with the events schedule keep checking back on http://www.tecman.co.uk/Events.

Microsoft vision of the future part 2

About 2 years ago Microsoft launched a concept video on how technology would impact our lives, the new forms of user interface like touch and gesture, new devices like slates and worktops being computers.  How data would interact with the real world with augmented reality, and how that data should flow seamlessly and between individuals and organisations. We used the video alot in presentations and have seen some of those technologies come to life in some shape or form.  Every time I showed it i got great feedback from the audience and many said it inspired them to see what IT may be capable of. Pleased to say that Microsoft have released another such video updated with new research and although builds on the original video rather than taking a different time scale. If you thinks its a little far fetched, just considered what you do with your smartphone today and how you would have felt if someone had predicted that 10 years ago…..

Enjoy the video

Productivity Future Vision

Rapid release schedule promised for Dynamics CRM

So now that the Dynamics CRM 2011 release is fully out and in general use, Microsoft has reiterated their plans to release two updates a year. Planned to appear in quarters 2 and 4 each year this is a very rapid schedule and it will be interesting to see what improvements are actually included in each one over and above the usual service pack ‘issue resolutions’.

2011’s Q4 release is now not so far away so they have published the chart below to illustrate the areas that it will affect and while the Office 365 is more about making their cloud offering work properly, I am excited to see yet more BI capabilities and enhanced dialogs on the list both of which look real advances when you dig into the detail. 

For those interested the full document describing the changes can be found at http://az26122.vo.msecnd.net/docs/Release_Preview_Guide.pdf

 

Microsoft’s Partner Conference Major Themes

Having been out with Microsoft at their Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) over the past week, i thought it may be good to list a few of the key points that i felt may be of interest. There was plenty of detailed information that was also released, but the 3 overriding themes I wanted to mention are below.

Cloud
For the 3rd year running the Cloud computing theme has been huge at this years WPC. With Dynamics CRM 2011 Online now live and Office 365 launched at the end of June, Microsoft definitely have a cloud presence already (that’s before you even consider Xbox live has 10 million paying subscribers for that cloud service!). I really think Office 365 is a great product and will be doing a separate blog posy on this in the coming days so stay tuned. However we also heard this year that Dynamics NAV will be the first of the ERP products to be available in the cloud. This will be interesting to see if it will be limited in any way in its initial release, but confirms that Microsoft see the Cloud as the future and more and more products will end up being deployed there. Technology Management have been offering NAV and CRM on there own private cloud for several years now and this platform continues to go from strength to strength. The way we deliver CRM and NAV means there will be no limitations to what you can do to the product.  We also resell CRM online with Microsoft and Office 365 as well as the on premise solution. We believe that the right product and platform depends on the customer and will continue to offer choice in all these critical areas.

Research and Development
One announcement that really blew me away is that Microsoft now spend more on R&D than any other company in the world, not just in the IT sector but in every sector. They spent $8.9 billion dollars last year… This shows how much commitment they have to develop their products, Dynamics CRM, NAV & AX are all beneficiaries of this R&D funding and should provide confidence in the longevity of the products that run your business. Microsoft don’t always get it right, however they have the ability to correct it and in the last 5 or so years there offerings have been a hit from the day of release. Think Windows 7, Office 2010, Sharepoint 2010, CRM, NAV. All leads back to that huge amount of R&D budget.

 

Natural Use Interface (NUI)
NUI played a large part at WPC and although we may feel its early days for this technology Microsoft are leading the way. Natural User Interface is the idea of voice, touch and gesture being a more intuitive way to interact with IT. Touch has already become a standard way we use devices such as smart phones and Sat Navs and it makes sense. We have seen Microsoft Kinect use gesture and motion to allow us to use the Xbox 360 and having seen how some organisations are now deploying Kinect with PC’s into industrial environment was enlightening. Voice is also available with Kinect and is something i have used when streaming movies to my Xbox, telling it to pause and resume are very basic features but it means I don’t have to find the xbox controller and voice is our main way of communicating with each other so why not with our growing range of electronic devices. Our children are already expecting to have this technology, they grow up with touch screens on their Nintendo DS’s and are used to using touch on phones and IPads. I found this out when i brought a new car home and my 4 year old said the sat nav was broken, it wasn’t it just didn't have a touch screen and that was his initial assumption to how the technology should work.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - Charts

Welcome back to our discussion on new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. In my last post we found out how flexible and powerful the dashboard functionality is in this new version. One of the reasons for utilising dashboards is to get a quick overview of key areas of the business that you deal with. A good way to get at that information is through the use of charts and that is what we’ll concentrate on for today. There is a good reason to learn about charts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and one of those reasons is because they are everywhere!

Charts are based on views of data, such as ‘my open opportunities’ or ‘overdue cases’ and are graphical representations of that data. As with views you can create them from a system side and publish out to everyone or individual users can easily create charts to manage their own data. They are quick and easy to build and as soon as they are ready you can use them. But charts aren’t just pretty pictures, they automatically have the ability to drill through to underlining data based on filtering by any field in that record type and are looking at live data whenever you go into them. This makes them extremely powerful for getting a quick snapshot of your information with the ability to easily drill through to understand what is really going on.

All of this is really nice from a dashboard view, but when I said everywhere…I mean everywhere. Whenever you go to any view/list of data you can easily display the relevant charts in-line with the records to get the graphical view of the records you are looking at.  In addition to this you still get the drill through ability and as you drill into the chart the records displayed in the view change to match the new filtered chart. This is great both from understanding the data in the charts as well as a great navigational aid for those of us that work better with images. All of this can of course still be managed direct within Outlook bringing excellent Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 functionality to users familiar with the Office Outlook program. 

 

Charting is central to the idea of providing users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with easy to access, clear data and it’s great to know that once you’ve put your information in it is really easy to get it out again in an intelligent way enabling better, more informed decisions and a greater understanding of your clients, opportunities, cases and any other information you keep.