xRM Consultant

• Management - The VAST  majority of successful implementations I have been involved in were lead from the top. Far from just ensuring that the project is delivered on time and signing the cheques, a good management team will support both the project processes (detailed scoping & requirements gathering, development etc..) but will also be fully engaged in any  changes to business process. Without this level of backing, delivering a successful CRM project (i.e. one that delivers real, tangible business benefits short and long term) is incredibly difficult.

• Who For - Management

• What To Do - Managing a CRM project can be a very lonely place, whether you are an outside consultant or an internal project lead. Every project will have its ups and downs and support from senior management is absolutely essential. Forming a Project Board is different from your project team. The project team will consist of individuals at all levels. However the Project Board will generally consist of (1) the Project Lead, (2) the main Project Sponsor and (3) at least 1 other member of senior management (director level). This means that when high level strategy is being discussed, a fair and accurate picture of your progress is given. In addition, when the project slows due to a lack of a decision being taken, you have individuals with the authority to either make the decision or take the delay on the chin on your behalf.

• Who For - Management

• What To Do - Ensure that very early on you identify the objectives of your project from the perspective of the management team and ensure that progress on these objectives is regularly measured and reported on. This can be a challenge, particularly when you have issues but control how those issues are communicated. If they have no impact on the deliverability of the management objectives don’t open your mouth unless necessary.

• Who For - Management

• What To Do - Any CRM project will ebb and flow when it comes to progress. Meetings with users to under
  stand feedback, getting documentation and sign-off and overcoming technical issues can all seem to take time with not much to show for it. This is why issuing weekly project updates is so critical. This allows you to front-up to the management team exactly what IS being achieved and where there are sticking points can be an excellent way of demonstrating the impact of these. This means that management are far more likely to support rather than question your progress.

• Who For - Management

• What To Do - An approach that is often taken by management teams is the sledgehammer approach ("Your having this system whether you like it or not!"). This often ends in wasted money, time and enthusiasm. Empowering users to give input goes a long way to ensure this doesn’t happen. Make it clear to end users who are involved that not only is there feedback welcome but it will have a direct impact on what the system looks like. Let them have considerable input into decisions, particularly around business process.

• Who For - Management

• What To Do - This is probably the simplest of measures but is so very important. Set realistic deadlines, push back if you feel expectations that are being put on you or the team are unrealistic, even putting your concerns down in writing, but then when you commit to a date…meet it. Trust is a key issue in any project as you need the management team to trust your view on how the project is going. If you make promises that go unfulfilled this trust will evaporate. On the other hand, if you do what you said you would when you said you would, it will engender support from those overseeing the project. 

With the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 mobile has become increasingly important to Microsoft. While the Microsoft Mobile App is certainly an improvement (with many more exciting improvements to come in "Vega" later this year) on what has gone before, there are another of cross platform options out there in the meantime. The video below shows my comparison of what i see as the three main options for organisations looking to implement mobile CRM now.


Hope this helps!

Thanks

Joel Abbott
Managing Director
xRM Consultant (UK) Ltd

How would you measure success in your CRM project?....For many of us that, contrary to what Mr Shakespeare would have us believe, is the question.

The answer? Well, in truth, this is no single right answer. Often each department, or even individual will have their own idea of what a successful CRM project look like for them.However, what fascinates me is that so many companies often embark on large scale CRM projects without taking the time to truly outline what will be viewed as success. The management team see a business issue, perhaps relating to cost or efficiency, and jump for a quick "fix". "Hey, everybody is using this CRM thingy....we should do that!". The only trouble is that partner's are enlisted, budgets agreed and scope documents signed off before anyone has actually asked "Why do we actually need this again?".

This probably sounds very much like an odd thing to say for a CRM Consultant who spends his life encouraging people to implement CRM. However, implementing it for the right reasons, with clear business objectives is essential. Only then can you truly define true success, see measurable improvements and significant ROI.

What does failure look like? Now that's a different story! Everybody has clear in mind what failure is (Going over budget, missing deadlines...) but that too is often very subjective and is often nothing to do with the objectives of the project. So, without getting any more philosophical, what can an organisation who is implementing a CRM solution do to ensure that their project is successful?

Take Your Time

I chaired a discussion with over 30 delegates at a UK Housing Association conference last week on implementing CRM. When asked what they wanted to get out of our session, one delegate commented "To get it right first time with our CRM deployment".....Good answer

The only way to achieve this is to take your time in the first stages of any project. Rather than coming out of the meeting where you have identified your issue, reaching for Google and searching for CRM companies, take the time to really think about what the issues you are facing are. Identify the issues clearly and the solutions become more defined. Then, document what you would like to achieve from deploying a CRM solution, even writing a list of 2-3 key bullets of what are must-haves for the project to be a success.

Reaching back for Google yet? Hold on! Take the time to think about the wider business. If you are going to invest the time money and effort into a CRM project, why not see what else you can achieve whilst doing it? Can you bring teams that are working in disparate systems together and enable information sharing? Can you drive efficiency in areas that perhaps you would not expect (i.e warehouse, accounts dept...). Doing all of this takes time, time you may not think you have. But take it from one who has seen CRM projects rushed through by managers desperate to resolve their issues, if you don't take your time, you will pay the price down the line.

The time spent at this stage will save days even weeks of time resolving issues during or even after go-live.

Establish A Project Team


Now you have a clear view of your requirements. Ready for Google now? Not yet! Armed with your requirements and project objectives, establish an internal project team. I cannot emphasis enough how important this is. A good, well balanced (we'll come to that in a moment) and engaged project team can literally be one of the biggest factors in the success or failure of a project.

But who should make up this team? Your first inclination may be to involve all the people who have been involved in your discussions so far, or people who agree with your view on things. This is not always the best selection criteria and really any project team should be balanced. Your project team should have people from all areas and levels of the business with varying experience. Fresh ideas can come from the most unlikely of places. At a high level any project team should have:

A strong, driven Project Lead - This individual will be the first to read the documentation cover to cover and the last person to leave the night before go-live. They will get to know the system and therefore your business process inside out. They need to have the skills to draw out of people what they need and the strength to say no when asked for things that could derail the project. Clearly, this person is the most important member of the team and wouldn't normally be a member of senior management (trust me, you wont have the time)

Hi,

Quick but useful piece of JavaScript for you. Put this in the OnLoad event of any CRM form and it will maximise the window to fill your current screen size. Handy eh?!

window.moveTo(0,0);

window.resizeTo(screen.availWidth, screen.availHeight);

Enjoy!

Joel

Morning,

One thing that always used to wind me right up was the fact that once you hit save to create an entity in MSDYNCRM, you could not change any details about the primary attribute.

 

However, after a bit of searching i found this blog on the Microsoft Dynamics Community site that was very helpful. 

Modifying properties of primary attribute is disabled when you try to do it from “Primary Attribute” tab. However you can change the properties if you opened the attribute from Attributes left navigation instead.

1. Go to Attributes and select “name” i.e. primary attribute of entity. As shown in below screen shot.

2. Open primary attribute i.e. name and change its Requirement Level to “No Constraint” then Save and Close.

3. The changes will also get reflected in Primary Attribute tab. Publish account and test the changes.

Brilliant eh?! Above you have seen how to change the requirement level but this obviously also applies to the display name of the entity. This is particularly handy if you are renaming entities.

Thanks

Joel

Hi Guys,

I am very excited to release the xRM Consultant Mobile App for Iphone & Android!

To access this, open your web browser and go to www.xrmconsultant.com on your mobile device. This will give you access to all the features including the following:

• xRM Consultant Twitter Feed
• Blog Posts
• YouTube Videos
• Polling Questions

In addition, if you add it to the Home Screen on the IPhone, it loads as an app with no Safari bars getting in the way (as shown below)

Have to give credit to this to the guys at Widget Box. Fantastic site that allows you to create a host of widgets for your blog.

I have added some screen shots of it on the iPhone below for your perusal.

Enjoy!

IPhone Installation:

                        

                              

Morning,

Came in this morning to find a client had submitted a support request asking for a users surname to be changed. A simple task……

Problem is that even though it is simple to change the name in Active Directory, CRM will not allow you to change the profile in CRM. This is because when you create a user profile in CRM it keeps a copy of the GUID of the Active Directory record in the CRM user profile. So when you try and assign the profile to the new username, CRM thinks you are assigning it to a different active directory profile and wont let you save this. Obviously, you can setup a new user in AD and CRM to get around this, but this is not practical as all historical actions assigned to the previous profile will not be moved across to the new profile

Microsoft have provided a workaround for this, which i have tried this morning and does work so i thought i would outline the steps below

1. Modify the user account in Active Directory. For example, change the user name, and then change the logon name.
2. Open Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 as a System Administrator user.
3. Click Settings, click Administration, click Users, and then open the user record that you want to change.
4. In the Domain Logon Name box, type an Active Directory user account that is not used by a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user record.
   Note If all the Active Directory user accounts are used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user records, create a temporary Active Directory user account.
5. Click Save.
6. In the Domain Logon Name box, type the Active Directory user account. Then, click Save and Close.
   Note The Active Directory user account that you type in this step is the account that is used by a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user record. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user record is the record for which you want to change the user name and the logon name in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Hope this helps

J

Hi,

We had a client for whom we developed a very complex CRM solution. It would seem simple; Sales Process and Stock Management Process. Not so. Their internal processes made this a complicated system that required a lot of thought, particularly when it came to the layout (Site Map) as we wanted to create areas for each of the relevant areas within CRM, putting all their entities in one place for them.

The problem came when trying to show the Queue Manager in another area other than Workplace. Not a big fan of editing Site Map XML directly, so we had been using the Demonstration Tools Utility. This awesome little tool that has been around for years, allows you to do a host of things including editing the Site Map and publish it to CRM directly.

However, the problem came when trying to add the Queue Manager entity as it didn't appear in the list of entities.

There’s a simple reason why……its not an entity! We found that it was actually, what appears to be, an ASPX page that displays the information. So, with a bit of lateral thinking we realised we could simply add this to the Site Map by referring to the URL. We actually got the URL in the end by using the Outlook Plug-in. If you navigate to the Queue Manager Folder in outlook, right click and then click on properties it brings up the properties box for that folder.

Click on the Home Page tab and as if by magic you get the URL for the Queue Manager view!

                                     

From here we simply put this link in as the destination URL for the Site Map item!

Once you have published your Site Map changes to CRM, you will find your Queue Manager view no in the place you want. For our client this proved to be a great way keeping everything in a single area and making things simpler for the people “on the ground” .

As far as I can see, you can also use this method to find the URL of any non-entity CRM function.

Hope This Helps

Joel

Hi All,

My friend and colleague at Chorus IT, Rob Peledie, developed a fantastic method  for displaying Visio Diagrams in MS Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Within Chorus, we had a requirement to display Visio Diagrams of our clients networks to aid the support engineers in their work. We had played around with a few ideas, but eventually Rob came up with the method he talks about in his blog. This method retains the formatting and viewing tools that Visio gives you giving great flexibility.

Anyway, for a more details explanation, pop over to his blog CRM Consult and have a read.

Thanks

Joel

As many Dynamics CRM proffesionals will know, the ability to do filtered lookups on CRM 4.0 has long since escaped many of us. The only answer seems to be, "its coming in CRM 5.0" (is it me or is that the answer to everything?)

Anyway, with thanks to a fellow Dynamics CRM blogger, i have found a way of achieving filtered lookups in CRM 4.0!

In my scenario, i needed this functionality for 2 reasons. Firstly, i have an entity called Assets on which i have a set list of values, product families (i.e. servers, laptops etc) This list is published on my form as a picklist attribute. I also have another entity, IT Products, which houses my list of products. The same list picklist of product families is published on the IT Products form.

Therefore, i wanted to be able to add an Asset, select a product family from my drop down list and when clicking on my lookup to my products, display only those with my chosen product family.

I adapted some code found on another blog to achieve this:

Paste the following into the OnLoad event of the form:


document.FilterLookup = function(source, target)
{
    if (IsNull(source) || IsNull(target)) { return; }

    var name = IsNull(source.DataValue) ? '' : source.SelectedText;

name=encodeURIComponent(name);

    target.additionalparams = 'search=' + name;
}

document.FilterLookup(crmForm.all.citja_productfamily, crmForm.all.citja_itproductid);


Paste the following into the OnChange event of the Picklist:

document.FilterLookup(crmForm.all.citja_productfamily, crmForm.all.citja_itproductid);

For those of you that noticed, the "name=encodeURIComponent(name);" line allows you to deal with ampersand characters as well as any other funny international characters that may appear in your list

This works very very nicely and is a great workaround till version 5.

Enjoy

Joel

P.S. Credit to the guys at Advantage Works for their original post

Any ideas? The answer is actually very simple. We all know that CxM is Customer Relationship Management.

Hi,