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Platinum-Level Customer Service with Ignify’s Bank and Credit Union Customer Management Solution

January 11th, 2012 Ashley Harbaugh No comments

What has been one of the single-most defining issues of the American culture these past few years? The one thing that has affected virtually every facet of the American populace, from high-powered corporations right down to the single American individual? What is still the main topic of politicians and pundits, who make authoritative declarations on how they would undoubtedly fix this particular issue if they were in power? The economy!

Although the economy has moved into a slow recovery – people don’t forget the hard lessons learned during those challenging times. Both individuals and businesses are far more cautious on where they spend their hard-earned cash, hoping to make safe, solid investments and avoid potentially risky decisions. And finding the right, secure place to keep their money is a crucial judgment call.

For banks and financial institutions that serve the wary, watchful public, conveying to both clients and prospects that their money is in safe hands is absolutely necessary for conducting business. Financial organizations are built on the people’s trust; if they don’t think their money is in a dependable place, then they have no problem putting it somewhere else. The best way to communicate to clients that responsibility and reliability are core values of a bank is by offering outstanding customer service.

With Ignify’s Banking Customer Relationship Management Solution, banks and financial service institutions can better strengthen their relationships with customers through the 360-degree view of customer transaction history, account information, and individual preferences. Built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, this powerful solution is tailored for retail banks, commercial banks, investment banks, credit unions, private bankers, and others, enabling these organizations to utilize the robust functionalities that allow them to make their customers feel more connected, and thus more dedicated, to their services.

One crucial way that financial service representatives gain crucial insight into their information is through the rich dashboard functionality present in Ignify’s solution. With the clear, well-defined parameters that these graphical displays exhibit, these dashboards enable representatives to understand data at a glance. The ability to set up and design these dashboards according to personal preferences enable salespeople and representatives to instantly access the important customer information that they need, and to thus quickly assess the action items needed to take on their part to develop customer relationships.

Robust dashboard capabilities allow financial service representatives to get a comprehensive overview of customer data, and give them better insight on what action items to take

Robust dashboard capabilities allow financial service representatives to get a comprehensive overview of customer data, and give them better insight on what action items to take.

A representative can also click on a dashboard screen and drill down to find out more details on the data presented. For example, a bank representative can drill his Active Accounts dashboard screen (as shown in the image above) down to the New Accounts by Month specification, if he wanted to identify the number of new accounts that were added in the past few months. All of the dashboards are real-time and bring data from the different functional areas of the application, so users are assured of viewing data that is both current and accurate. As soon as you make a change, the reports automatically refresh to reflect it.

Because dashboards are dynamic and instantly reflect even the most recent data changes made, these tools allow representatives to access fresh, current data at any point in time

Because dashboards are dynamic and instantly reflect even the most recent data changes made, these tools allow representatives to access fresh, current data at any point in time.

Using Ignify’s Bank Management Solution enables financial institutions to maintain complete visibility into customer data, offering detailed and up-to-date records of the customer’s needs that can be used to a representative’s advantage. For example, if a customer calls up a representative, that rep can immediately pull up the customer’s file and view their account and transaction history while on the phone, and check on other issues that the customer might have had in the past. By having an in-depth record of customer activities, and by being able to discuss those customer actions with the customers themselves, banks prove to their clients that they – and their accounts – are receiving the utmost attention and care. And people notice: if a person feels that their financial needs are a top priority, then high customer satisfaction is the inevitable outcome.

Ignify’s Bank Management Solution ensures that detailed, up-to-date customer information is always readily available

Ignify’s Bank Management Solution ensures that detailed, up-to-date customer information is always readily available.

Establishing trust and providing good customer service to clients really cannot be overstated, especially for banks. Just going off of my own experience, I have personally known friends to transfer their funds to different banks because they continually felt that their account needs were not being taken care of, and that the bank in question was not listening or paying attention to what they wanted. If the bank had been able to instantly identify past problems that my friends had, and then made a concerted effort to attend to those issues, they would’ve been able to retain their business. Instead, their competitors got to benefit.

For the business clients who utilize multiple accounts and different currencies, the solution enables financial representatives to consolidate this disparate information in one view, as well as look at the transaction histories and activities for each individual account

For the business clients who utilize multiple accounts and different currencies, the solution enables financial representatives to consolidate this disparate information in one view, as well as look at the transaction histories and activities for each individual account.

By using a customer relationship management solution that is specifically built for banks and other financial institutions, these organizations are better equipped to offer their customers the premium service that ensures customer satisfaction and, ultimately, retention. And the more happy customers there are, the higher the chance they will spread the word to their friends and relatives (and if there are some folks in their network who are disgruntled with their bank, they’ll definitely be listening intently to the message). Give them every opportunity to sing your praises – capture those customers from your competitors.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, software solutions to banks, insurance and financial service institutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Analyze up to 100 million rows of data from ERP and CRM using PowerPivot for Excel

January 6th, 2012 Abi Shende No comments

Companies often have valuable operational and financial data stored in multiple systems and have to create reports by combining this data. For example, a retailer may have customer demographic data such as customer location, gender, employment status and home ownership stored in Dynamics CRM, and sales data stored in ERP such as Dynamics AX or Dynamics GP. The retailer might then want to create a sales analysis report by combining data from both CRM and ERP. In the past, it has been difficult to create PivotTables based on data from different data sources. PowerPivot is a free add-in for Excel 2010 that allows you to easily create PivotTables based on data from disparate systems, websites, spreadsheets, or databases. Using PowerPivot, you can quickly create PivotTables based on up to 100 million rows of data.

After you install PowerPivot, you will see a PowerPivot tab on the Ribbon in Excel. When you click the PowerPivot tab, you see the following buttons.

PowerPivot tab in Excel

PowerPivot tab in Excel

Clicking on the PowerPivot Window button opens the PowerPivot window and displays the following options.

Home tab after clicking on PowerPivot Window button

Home tab after clicking on PowerPivot Window button

You can now import data from external data sources such as SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and text files.

In the following example, the company has the customer, customer address and sales data stored in the ERP system. It maintains sales territories in the Dynamics CRM system. It has also created a custom entity in Dynamics CRM to maintain the mapping from State/Province to sales territory. For example, Alaska (AK) is in the Northwest territory and California (CA) is in the Southwest territory.

The company has imported the customer, customer address and sales data from ERP and Territory data and State/Province to Territory mapping from CRM into PowerPivot. It has also created the following relationships:

  • Customer Address to State/Province (based on State/Province)
  • State/Province to Territory (based on Territory)

PowerPivot enables you to manage relationships between tables in PowerPivot based on common data elements. The following screen shots illustrate this feature.

Relationship between Customer Address and State/Province based on StateProvinceID

Relationship between Customer Address and State/Province based on StateProvinceID.

Relationship between State/Province and Territory based on TerritoryID

Relationship between State/Province and Territory based on TerritoryID.

Now you are ready to do the analysis by combining data from both sources.

PowerPivot for Excel enables you to analyze Sales by Territory by combining data from ERP and CRM

PowerPivot for Excel enables you to analyze Sales by Territory by combining data from ERP and CRM.

In summary, PowerPivot for Excel enables you to create reports based on data residing in multiple systems and tables using the tool you are already familiar with. You can download the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 here.

This post is written by Abi Shende. Abi is a Team Leader in Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Ignify. Ignify is winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2011 and provides CRM, eCommerce, and ERP software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine, and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011. If you are seeking assistance to maximize your efforts with your CRM project, contact Ignify at 562-219-2001 or email us at crm@ignify.com.

Powerful Social Collaboration and Organizational Chatter with Activity Feeds in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

December 14th, 2011 Sandeep Walia No comments

The newly released Activity Feeds in Microsoft Dynamics CRM allow you to stay up to date with what’s important and keep others informed.

Activity Feeds is your Social network within your organization. The Activity Feeds are available in the workspace in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Activity Feeds within Microsoft Dynamics CRM improve Social Collaboration within the organization

Activity Feeds within Microsoft Dynamics CRM improve Social Collaboration within the organization

As with any other social network, Activity feeds let you follow a colleague, lead or an organization (Account) and follow any organizational chatter. For example I can go to the user screen for Chris Gray below and see their Record Wall and see Chris’s posts and activity. But I can also follow Chris and then his posts and activities will just show up in my consolidated Activity Feeds.

Dynamics CRM provides the ability to see a colleague’s updates and activities on their Record Wall

Dynamics CRM provides the ability to see a colleague’s updates and activities on their Record Wall

If you wanted to check in updates just before going into a meeting, the activity feeds are available on your mobile device as well as shown below.

Social collaboration on the Windows Phone

Social collaboration on the Windows Phone

If you wish to get more information about improving social collaboration within your organization or need help with your CRM initiatives email us at crm@ignify.com.

Sandeep Walia is the CEO of Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

CRM Buyers Guide Released by Technology Evaluation Centers features Microsoft Dynamics CRM

November 22nd, 2011 Bhavesh Ashani No comments

The Technology Evaluation Center (TEC) released its annual CRM buyers guide: Innovations in CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is featured prominently in the guide in three case studies. One of the case studies is an Ignify Customer – Associated Foreign Exchange (AFEX). The guide highlights Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s differentiators such as offline access, integration to Outlook, free mobile access through Mobile Express, and ease of use with a familiar user interface.

We are very pleased to see the recognition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Ignify in the CRM Buyers guide. You can download the guide here.

Bhavesh Ashani is Vice President at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify is winner of Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2011. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Dynamic Reports with Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Pivot Tables

September 9th, 2011 Abi Shende No comments

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides native capability to allow you to export any screen or view into Excel. That export can be a static file with just the data on the screen as a snapshot or as a Dynamic export in the form of an Excel Pivot Table. You have an option to select the fields you want to include in the Pivot Table. Once you have exported the view as a Dynamic Pivot Table, you can then slice and dice the data for further analysis and save the Pivot Table report for future use.

You can open the saved Excel workbook at a later time and refresh it (Data > Refresh from CRM or Refresh All) to update the Pivot Table to reflect the up-to-date information from Dynamics CRM 2011 without having to log into Dynamics CRM. This is incredibly powerful as the report is now on your desktop and every time you open the Excel file, you will have updated numbers.

Here’s an example of a Dynamic report showing the Open Sales Opportunities. The Pivot Table shows open sales opportunities in various pipeline phases by territory. Note the “Refresh from CRM” and “Refresh All” buttons in the Data ribbon. Whenever I want to refresh the data, I would just click the button and my graphs and data will refresh to give me the latest sales pipeline.

The Pivot Table in this Dynamic report shows Open Sales Opportunities in various sales pipeline phases

The Pivot Table in this Dynamic report shows Open Sales Opportunities in various sales pipeline phases. By clicking the “Refresh from CRM” and “Refresh All” buttons in the Data ribbon, the data and graphs refresh to give the latest sales pipeline.

If you want to make this Pivot Table report available to the other CRM users, you can upload the Excel workbook containing your report to Dynamics CRM. You do this by simply going to the reports area in the workplace and start creation of a new report – specify that it is for an existing file and browse to the location where you saved your Excel workbook and your Excel report containing the Dynamic Pivot Table; it is now available to the other users.

The data displayed in the Pivot Table will depend on the user’s privileges set in CRM. For example, when a user opens the Excel workbook created in the example above (open opportunities by territory), the user viewing this report would see only the opportunities that he or she can otherwise see in CRM.

Dynamic Worksheets and Dynamic Pivot Tables require the use of the Excel add-in which is part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook client. You can download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook found here.

You can take advantage of Pivot Table reports using the valuable data in CRM, and find the answers to questions like:

  1. Which territories performed best and what products are they selling?
  2. Which products are selling best over time?
  3. What are the top reasons why we lost opportunities?
  4. What are the Win and Loss ratios by Lead Source?
  5. Which Marketing Campaigns performed well?
  6. Who were the top performing Customer Service Representatives (based on case resolution)?

Both a PivotTable report and a PivotChart report enable you to make informed decisions about critical data in your Dynamics CRM system. You can learn how to visualize summary data in a PivotTable report, and to easily see comparisons, patterns, and trends here.

This post is written by Abi Shende. Abi is a Team Leader in Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Ignify. Ignify is winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2011 and provides CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011. If you are seeking assistance to maximize your efforts with your CRM project contact Ignify at 562-219-2001 or email us at crm@ignify.com.