Dynamics CRM is a great product and just keeps getting better. That's especially true this spring, with a wave of updates, enhancements and new offerings that are aligned with key business needs for marketing, sales and service.
You can refer to the following Microsoft resources for more details on the Dynamics CRM Spring '14 Wave:
This series of updates has something for everybody, so here's a preview list, with a few images from Microsoft's Overview Guide. Let us know what questions you have—we're here to help you make the most of CRM! With PowerObjects at your side keeping track of all Spring '14 updates has never been easier.
Market Smarter
This release will introduce a new product called Dynamics Marketing, a marketing planning and automation system that integrates with CRM. Dynamics Marketing includes:
- Drag and drop visual campaign designer
- Scalable email marketing
- Lead lifecycle management
- Asset and collaboration management tools
- Configurable dashboard and advanced analytics of marketing performance and revenue
- Power BI for visual analysis of lead performance, asset management and channel effectiveness
The drag and drop visual campaign editor - image courtesy of the Microsoft preview guide
Sell Effectively
CRM has always had a focus of sales effectiveness, and the new wave of features support a changing sales environment of mobility, social, and alignment with marketing and service. New features of the sales module include:
- CRM tablet app enhancements for Window8, iPad and Android devices
- "Sales Insights," which puts real-time company and contact information directly into CRM for sales and account management, including financial data, industry profiles and news, social buzz and social media connections
The Spring '14 Wave will include tablet enhancements - image courtesy of the Microsoft preview guide
Care Everywhere
Earning customer loyalty means getting immediate insight to deliver engaging and relevant responses when and where your customers need you. New features in CRM are built to serve, including:
- Unified Service Desk, which gives you an updated interface designed specifically for front-line service providers, allowing CRM users to have a unified experience and deliver faster case handling, better resolution, and higher customer satisfaction.
- The Parature Portal, a customer support and knowledge center that is integrated with your organization's existing website to provide web-based help easily and intuitively to your customers. Parature can be accesses via the web, mobile applications, and a seamlessly integrated Facebook portal. It also has real-time chat functionality that conforms to your service level agreements for escalation and prioritization
- Enterprise Case Management that lets you define and manage service level agreements, case routing and queuing, and enterprise-wide KPIs for the metrics that matter to you
- Updated Case Form with better visibility to merged cases, parent/child relationships, and even case timing to make sure your team conforms to SLA
- Entitlement creation and management to provide clear definitions of service expectations to your support team
- Define Service Level Agreements to specify your organization's requirements for case tracking, routing, and response times
- Social Care, which allows your team see what customers are saying on social media about your brand or products to engage and take action when needed
- Case Management CRM Tablet App, allowing you create and update cases simply via your tablet
The Parature customer support portal - image courtesy of the Microsoft preview guide
Social Listening
Microsoft Social Listening is a new product that lets organizations monitor social media for sentiment about your brand, products and service. Key features include the ability to:
- Listen and analyze the mountain of social channel data to understand global sentiment analysis and share of voice as well as gather competitive intelligence
- Evaluate the social impact of your marketing campaigns
- Identify trends and individual influencers or posts that need attention
- Get all this insight inside CRM to put Social Listening into your organization's daily work
The Spring '14 release includes a new social dashboard and social insights - image courtesy of the Microsoft preview guide
Platform Tools and Improvements
Miscellaneous platform tools and improvements in the Spring Wave include:
- Server-side Synchronization to manage email, tasks, appointments and contacts between CRM and Exchange, including the Email Router, Outlook, and common POP3/SMTP providers.
- Enhanced SharePoint integration to enable easier document management
- Sandbox environments for development and testing in non-production environments
- The updated CRM Online Admin Center, bringing you even easier administration of CRM environments, licensing, users, and add-on services
The new CRM Online admin center - image courtesy of the Microsoft preview guide
So that's it—a quick overview of what to look forward to with the Dynamics CRM Spring '14 Wave! As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact the experts at PowerObjects.
Happy CRM'ing!
