F.A.Q on CRM
The following are some frequently asked questions by our customers. If you do not find your answer, please contact us with your question.
- What does EASI provide?
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EASI provides all services a client might need in regards to CRM.
Consulting - We provide consulting which mostly entails discussing your business processes (current and desired) and making those business processes a seamless part of CRM. That means when your organization is working in a CRM screen that was tailored to your organization’s business processes your staff feels like they are working in a product built specifically for your company and the logic behind those screens executes rules that enforce the rules that were discussed and documented during your consultations with us.
Customization & Development– We provide all types of customizations for Dynamics CRM, and these can vary widely, but we provide our development services for them all. If there is a desire to have CRM look or act a certain way then we will NEVER tell you that it cannot be done. We may tell you it’s not worth it, but it will always be possible with CRM. We will also design and build and reports you desire for your system and can provide training for any staff wishing to learn these skills to use in-house.
Training – It’s our belief that the success of any CRM implementation is going to rely on a solid foundation of user training and the belief that someone is available to answer questions for new users of the system. We provide scheduled on-site training for as many people as your facilities can house for the same hourly rate. We will also provide schedule live web based training for up to 20 people at a time.
Support – Our goal is to have your organization as a client for life. We will continue to upgrade and maintain your CRM system indefinitely. We will manage any renewals that you have and keep you informed of when we think you should upgrade to new versions of CRM.
- Using the Outlook CRM client and Outlook itself do the two automatically synchronize? For example, when I email from Outlook will the email (or task etc.) be associated in CRM?
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Outlook to CRM integration has options which can be set by the user via the additional “CRM” menu available in Outlook’s top menu bar. Just click CRMàOptions and then click the email tab. Check the box which reads “Check incoming e-mail in Outlook…” and then in the “Track” pick list set the option which reads “E-mail messages from CRM Leads, Contacts, and Accounts”
- What is the primary difference between CRM for Outlook and Internet client when using CRM online?
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Nothing really. The forms that appear inside the Outlook client are the same forms that would appear in the web-client. Working in the Outlook client is preferred by some and not by others when dealing with CRM forms. However, the Outlook activities forms which will “Track in CRM” are generally preferred by all and this is a large benefit to working inside of Outlook. Typically though, with clients who have used CRM for a while, I find their users using both all the time. They will open windows in the website or in outlook depending on what they are doing. If they are in Outlook reading an email chain then they will usually jump to the web-client to keep outlook on the email chain they are working with.
- How are workflows created? Are workflows limited to use with web client and not Outlook client?
- How are workflows created? Are workflows limited to use with web client and not Outlook client?
- Can we include automatic emails to a service workflow? For example, once a case is established can an automatic email confirmation be sent to the end user, dealer and sales manager? Then, if case is not resolved within some time period, say one day, can there be automatic escalation with escalation emails to sales manager and president?
- Can CRM be used to track status of engineering projects by adding, creating or modifying a module?
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Yes. We have customers that use a customized Project entity (you referred to it as a module, we call them entities in CRM) to manage all of their project operations. The project entity was co-designed by EASI and our customer during consultations and we implemented the new entity to enforce all of the business process logic and rules that were defined.
- How is Workplace different that the items in the basic three categories?
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The most important thing you will note about the workplace is that (1) It provides users with a list of their activities (2) It provides users with the reports list where they can generate and create reports (3) Knowledge based article searching should be done from the “Articles” navigation option within this section. In addition, it provides some users with access to Queues, Announcements, Duplicate Detection Jobs, and Import Jobs.
- Is it easy to set up a sandbox environment?
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The CRM Sandbox has been discontinued, however EASI is happy to host a CRM demo for anyone for 30 days – during which they are welcome to deploy any custom plug-ins and modifications they want. We can also provide a permanent Dev Environment (separate from a live production environment) for customers who have that requirement.
- Upon adding a task to be done Monday and selecting a time will I get a reminder before the scheduled task?
- In Contacts and Accounts how do we segregate or filter by type of relationship (e.g. Dealer, Representative, Customer, Strategic partner etc.)?
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CRM uses views to show information about entities in list form. These views have 2 roles, Public views and My Views. The Public views are customizable for the entire organization, meaning these are the views you change when the change you want benefits the entire organization. The my views can easily be created by users on the fly using the advanced find utility, which can be accessed from the “Advanced Find” button that appears on the Outlook CRM toolbar and also at the top of any list view in CRM. The Advanced Find utility allows you to query against any entity’s field set and also against an entity’s related field set, meaning you could actually search accounts for all accounts that had an order in the last 3 months which contained product XYZ.
- Our dealers may register an opportunity they are working on before it becomes an advertised bid pursuant to certain qualifying rules. By so registering only that particular dealer will receive support from our company for that opportunity. How can we associate registered opportunities to both the opportunity itself and to the dealer?
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We have made this customization on your demo system already. By setting the “Dealer” lookup on the Opportunity you are essentially registering the Opportunity for that Dealer. The other part to that is the “Potential Customer” lookup, which will define who the end-user will be. You could then create a fail-safe workflow rule which would email the Opportunity Owner and their Manager if the customer selected had any existing open opportunities already registered to prevent any dealers from coming in late to the game and registering a deal with you.