Authors: Mike Snyder, Jim Steger, and Kristie Reid

Publisher: Microsoft Press (http://microsoft.com/mspress)

For more information about the book, visit www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Book.aspx?ID=14906&locale=en-us

Distributed for Microsoft Press by O'Reilly Media (http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com)

Companion Web site, from which code used throughout the book can be downloaded (the address of site is provided in the book’s introduction)

Published: EBook: March 2011; Print edition: April 2011

ISBN 10: 0-7356-4812-3

ISBN 13: 978-0-7356-4812-8

Formats:

• Print, soft cover, 624 pages
• EBook
• Safari Books Online

Prices:

• EBook $39.99 (Formats: ePub, Mobi, PDF)
• Print only: $49.99
• Print and EBook $54.99

Customizing Your Organization’s CRM Solution

As a concept, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) seems simple enough – just keep track of how your company or organization interacts with its customers. It also would make sense to use some sort of dedicated CRM software to handle that tracking, for example, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM.” In reality though, CRM is a lot more involved than it first appears. And it is for that very reason that the book, “Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011”, isn’t a small book, but instead one that is over 600 pages in length.

The book’s three authors, Mike Snyder, Jim Steger, and Kristie Reid, all have extensive experience with CRM in general and Microsoft Dynamics CRM in particular .They define the goal of CRM as enabling “businesses to better manage each and every customer experience. More important, CRM strategy recognizes that customer experiences span over time and that a typical customer might interact with your business 50 to 100 times in the course of your relationship. Ideally, your company could provide each customer a personalized experience based on the customer’s unique history of interactions with you. For example, when customers call your service department, you wouldn’t have to ask them to answer the same questions over and over again; your most valuable customers would always receive preferred pricing; and you wouldn’t ask longstanding customers if they would like to open an account.”

In the opening chapter of their book, Snyder, Steger, and Reid point out that “Microsoft saw the need for a better CRM software platform and created a solution called Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft designed this software for companies of all sizes to use as their technology platform for implementing CRM strategies.” The first release of the software was in 2002, and has subsequently been updated via new releases, with features either being added or refined. Snyder, Steger, and Reid’s book investigates not only the latest release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, but also Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft’s hosted version of the software (a 30 day, free trial is available at http://crm.dynamics.com).

Before taking a look at the sort of information covered in “Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011”, it is important to first talk about the book’s intended readership. This book is “not” aimed at:

• End users working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a regular basis. If you happen to fall into that category, Snyder, Steger, and Reid suggest that you instead read the book “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Step by Step (published by Microsoft Press).
• IT professionals seeking help with the installation of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 software, either installing from scratch or upgrading from an earlier version. For assistance of that nature, Snyder, Steger, and Reid recommend consulting the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation Guide.

So who should read it? Snyder, Steger, and Reid explain that “we wrote this book for the people responsible for implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM at their organization. If you’re the person responsible for setting up or configuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM software on behalf of other users at your company, this book is for you. You might be an information technology professional or simply a Power User from the sales or marketing departments. You should be comfortable with technical concepts and understand the role of various Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Active Directory, and Microsoft SQL Server. You don’t need to be a coding expert to benefit from this book, but we hope that you can edit an XML file and that you understand how relational databases work.” In addition, to get the most benefit out of this book, you should also possess System Administrator rights to the software.

The content of “Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011” is comprised of a total of 15 chapters, and has been divided into three major parts titled as follows:

1. Overview and Configuration
2. Solutions
3. Processes

After an opening chapter that gives an overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the remaining three chapters in the first part of the book respectively tackles the topics of common tasks, security, and the management of both data and documents.

The bulk of the book is contained in its second part. The goal of the book’s three authors here is straightforward, and that is to show readers how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be successfully modified to meet the needs of your particular business or organization. According to Snyder, Steger, and Reid, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers an incredible number of system customization opportunities, and you can complete most of them through a web-based interface without any programming expertise.” In order to comprehensively address all of those different customization features, they have written a series of chapters, the topics of which are as follows:

• An investigation into the concepts, terminology, and processes associated with modifying, adding and deleting fields.
• A discussion about forms from the different perspectives of components, customizations, actions, and controls, along with the use of multiple forms.
• A detailed explanation as to the various ways data can be presented using views and charts. The significance of charts is that users can take advantage of them to display data graphically.
• Entity relationships. Snyder, Steger, and Reid report that “Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes hundreds of default entity relationships, and you can modify these default relationships or create entirely new entity relationships.”
• Custom entities and activities. Snyder, Steger, and Reid appreciate that “Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes many powerful features” but in their opinion, “the ability to create custom entities, including custom activities, through a web-based administration tool ranks as one of the more important ones.”
• An examination of web resources and their use in creating customized solutions. To demonstrate the practical application of web resources, four different examples are presented in the chapter, the first one showing how to format and translate U.S. phone numbers to a common format.
• Client extensions, the section of the book where its authors discuss how to “use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM site map to customize and revise the application user interface, as well as introduce the ribbon controls you can use to surface custom functionality.”
• A review of how to access, customize, and manage reports with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, as well as a discussion of how to customize dashboards in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Snyder, Steger, and Reid regard dashboards as being “a captivating way to display data and allow your Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to take immediate action on data available. Dashboards typically act as the home page for all users.”

The third, and final part of the book, consists of just two chapters, the first of which discusses workflow processes while the second one looks at dialog processes. Snyder, Steger, and Reid explain that “Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a workflow module that you can use to automate your business processes based on rules, logic, and actions that you design.” Likewise they point out that the software also “introduces a dialog module to handle instances where you want to add wizard or call script functionality to the application. Similar to workflows, dialogs are processes that guide a user through a series of steps in an automated manner.


Undoubtedly all authors have an affinity for the subject matter they write about. But Mike Snyder, Jim Steger, and Kristie Reid take that devotion to a new level when they state, in the introduction to their book, that “we love Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, and we hope that by the time you finish reading this book, you will love Microsoft Dynamics CRM too. We understand that you might be skeptical about the possibility of falling for a piece of software, but we want you to know right up front that our goal is to show you all of the wonderful and amazing benefits the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application can provide for your business.”

In summing up, I suppose it’s largely irrelevant whether or not you “fall in love” with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. What is much more important is that the software helps you and your company to have significantly improved relationships with your customers. And this particular book can help you to achieve that goal through the many insights and tips it provides into the workings of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

One final point. I mentioned at the start of this review that while CRM may seem a simple enough concept to understand, at least from a theoretical perspective, there is also a lot of practical detail that has to be understood and assimilated before the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 software can be successfully customized to your organization’s unique business needs. Hence it’s not surprising that the length of the “Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011” text is composed of hundreds of pages. The book’s authors, however, offer a rather different perspective when they state that their book is “only 624 pages, so obviously it can’t possibly cover every nook and cranny of how Microsoft Dynamics CRM works. Rather, our goal is to focus on the key areas most companies will need to set up, customize, and extend the software while providing plenty of examples and real-world advice.”