CRM Leadership Starts at the Top

Customer relationship management (CRM) doesn't help a company if it is not adopted by users, and that adoption starts with the commitment of senior leadership. For sales, the top management is often a vice president for sales, followed by managers for specific lines of products or services and, ultimately, account teams.

Without CRM in place, sales leaders often rely on spreadsheets as the basis of forecasts and pipeline meetings. With CRM, the first step is to throw away the spreadsheet, and make CRM the authoritative source for all sales pipeline information. Sales leaders must convey that if the opportunity is not in CRM, it doesn't exist for sales discussions or eventually for commission payments.

Using CRM as the system of record for sales doesn't mean you have to give up the functionality of spreadsheets. Dynamics CRM can export views such as open opportunities to Excel, allowing further manipulation and analysis in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet may also be forwarded to people who may not be familiar with CRM. Dynamics CRM even allows a spreadsheet to be linked to underlying CRM data so that it may be refreshed with the latest data rather than regenerated.

If managers don't commit fully to CRM, sales professionals will notice and follow their lead, setting up the implementation for failure. Don't be one of those sales leaders. Don't let your CRM project fail because you never gave it the support it needed.

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises. These concepts also apply to Power Apps. The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps. This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant . A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni

Understanding Dynamics 365 and Office 365 Admin Roles

Managing Dynamics 365 instances If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) in the Microsoft cloud, you need to understand how your Dynamics instances relate to Office 365 and choose which of your administrators receives which roles and permissions to manage Dynamics 365. In on premises deployments, your network administrator would create and delete user accounts. The Dynamics 365 admin would then assign permissions to users in Dynamics 365. This post explains three administrator roles: Office 365 Global Administrator Dynamics 365 System Administrator Dynamics 365 Service Administrator You may think that the Dynamics 365 system administrator would have power to do all the actions needed to manage Dynamics 365, but this is not the case. What's different in Microsoft cloud deployments is that licenses and user accounts are managed in Office 365 by an Office 365 Global Administrator. This role is analogous to a network administrator for an on premises

My Favorite Microsoft Power Apps Bloggers and their Blogs

by James Townsend Updated 7/5/2022 Microsoft Power Apps is one of my favorite subjects, and I enjoy reading blog posts from members of this thriving technical community. Here are some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs: The Official Microsoft Power Apps Blog I have to start with the official Microsoft Power Apps blog. It has many contributors, largely Microsoft program manager, including frequent posters Denise Moran , Greg Lindhorst , Kartik Kanakasabesan , and Adrian Orth . This is the place to go for product announcements, updates and technical how-to for a broad range of Power Apps topics. April Dunnam April Dunnam was formerly focused on SharePoint and now devoting herself to Power Platform. April offers highly understandable explanations of Power Platform, Dataverse and other top Power Apps topics. She joined Microsoft in late 2019 and has a thriving YouTube channel . Carl De Souza Power Apps Blog and eBook This is one of the most extensive and best organized blo

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