Thoughts on Convergence 2014 Day 1 - Part III

In the first part of this series, I talked a little bit about how the Dynamics Business suite fits into Microsoft's overarching plan of delivering innovation to the customer, and also discussed some details on the Dynamics CRM roadmap specifically with the Spring and Autumn updates. The second post was all about the marketing tools available within Dynamics CRM as part of the Spring Update.

In this post, the focus will be on the upcoming enhancements to the Customer Service suite through the Spring Update of Dynamics CRM.

Thoughts on Convergence 2014 Day 1 - Part II

In the first part of this series, I talked a little bit about how the Dynamics Business suite fits into Microsoft's overarching plan of delivering innovation to the customer, and also discussed some details on the Dynamics CRM roadmap specifically with the Spring and Autumn updates. One constant theme of Day 1 of Convergence 2014 was on products delivering amazing customer experience regardless of the channel they use.

Thoughts on Convergence 2014 Day 1 - Part I

This post is Part I of a series where I will be discussing the Keynote speeches and my thoughts/ opinions around the presentations. The posts will have a decidedly Dynamics CRM bent to it (which by the way has 40,000 customers and 4 million users worldwide).

Convergence 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia is the largest Dynamics party of the year for customers and partners associated with Microsoft's Business product suite. The first 3 days are all about keynotes and breakout sessions, with the last day focused on getting all your questions answered by Microsoft's team members or Dynamics user group communities. The are about 12,000 attendees for Convergence this year.

Convergence 2013 Day 1 - Dynamics CRM and Netbreeze

It has been a long and eventful day at Convergence 2013 so far. The customer stories were a nice way to kick things off, and Kirill Tatarinov, President of Microsoft Business Solutions Division, did a great job of moderating and keeping the flow going.

Specifically with Dynamics CRM, there were some nice demos around Marketing Pilot and the upcoming release which supports Yammer integration. In this post though, I would like to talk a little bit about what I felt was the most exciting news so far - the acquisition of Social analytics company Netbreeze.

Extending CRM 2011 into the social sphere: Using Montage Page editor

The inspiration for this post is a whitepaper from Microsoft titled "The Connected Enterprise". It has a bunch of great ideas on how and why there exists a need to embrace social technologies to drive business needs. There is also a peek into the social tools that Microsoft is building or already built, and possible ways that might benefit your marketing and sales teams using simple storylines.

In this post, I am going to focus on one of those cool tools, and how users could possibly benefit by their integration with CRM 2011.

Gamification and the CRM (XRM) Platform

The Gartner Group defines gamification as the concept of employing game mechanics to non-game activities such as recruitment, training and health and wellness. They also predict that by 2014, more than 70 percent of global 2,000 organizations will have at least one “gamified” application, which can range from mastering a specific skill or improving one’s health. 

Pretty impressive numbers, is it not? Reading about these emerging trends, I do wonder how our very own CRM 2011 can be applied to create business solutions that cater to those needs. The opportunities for businesses are great – from having more engaged customers, to crowdsourcing innovation or improving employee performance.

Microsoft gets Social - Outlook Connectors for social and business networks

Social networks have a wealth of information just waiting to be harnessed, but I personally have two big issues with them:

• I do not want to be logging into multiple networks and going back and forth to collate data
• I want contextual information rather that a fire hose deluge 

Social Connectors to the rescue!
If you are using Outlook, and especially if you are a Sales person using Outlook with CRM, there is a cool new way to get information on specific contacts using the social networks. I see this being particularly useful in the social selling arena, as you get a bigger and better picture into customer connections, preferences, behaviors and sentiments, presented to you in one place.

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Activity Feeds and Yammer.

The news is hot off the press - Microsoft has agreed to buy Yammer for $1.2 billion. Yammer is one of the more mature enterprise social networks available on the market right now. There is already some speculation of how Microsoft is going to use (or misuse) this great tool, but the focus of this post is a little different. I am going to try and see how the existing activity feeds functionality stacks up against the Yammer platform. I understand it might be a little unfair to compare an eight month old feature will a full fledged platform, but my goal is not to beat up on a work in progress feature but to get excited about Yammer, and see what it can bring to our implementations.