The Dynamics 365 App Paradigm

A new feature of Dynamics 365 is the ability to create “Apps”. An app is a set of related features and functions that are used to deliver an outcome for a user. team or function I.e. Field Service App for field resources, Sales App for sales managers and sales reps to engage with customers.

The app paradigm enables customers to define quickly and cleanly a new interface for different users in the organisation to utilise. Its the ability to limit what a user sees in a controlled configurable manner. It will enable ISVs to deliver a controlled experience for the intended user.

In previous versions of Dynamics, you worked with a single app view I.e. sales, service and marketing. To control what a user could see you needed to manipulate the site map and it could get quite messy! The new App designer makes it very easy to personalise the experience for business users.

So what can I do with the App designer in the first release of Dynamics 365?

• Define the sitemap elements
• Define which Dashboards are displayed
• Define the business process flows that can be utilised
• Define the Entities to be included
• Define which forms are to be consumed
• Define the Views that will be available
• Define which charts should be displayed

All in all pretty comprehensive ability to control what a user can see.

Enabling resource scheduling for any entity

With Dynamics 365 Field Service, comes an amazing feature, the ability to schedule any entity, not just project tasks or work orders.

Why is this so good? Think of these scenarios:

• I manage leads and I want to schedule those leads for calls base don the right skill match for the lead request
• I need to schedule a team to deliver a presentation or process
• I want real time updates on the progress of scheduled items
• As a business we have cars that the staff can book, so need the ability to schedule the cars and see real time what is in use and when they will be back in

The list just keeps on going, the number of scenarios I can think about where there is a scheduling need is endless.

So how do I set this up, follow these simple steps to get you up and running:

1. You will need either the Field Service or Project service App or a Plan license to utilise these features.
2. Once you have installed the App, you will get a new site map node “Resource Scheduling”, select this node
3. Now click on Administration and then “Enable Resource Scheduling for Entities”
4. You will be presented with the screen below, showing enabled entities and ability o enable a new entity.
5. 
6. In the Add entity, select the entity that you want to schedule, I am going to use Accounts, for scheduling an Account Update meeting.
7. For the booking relationship, select create new relationship and if skill requirements are required select create new relationship for skills.
8. Then select publish, this will enable the booking relationship and skill relationship for Accounts. This may take a few minutes to publish, be patient 🙂
9. Once completed you will be presented with a final metadata setting screen for the new scheduling entity. Here you can select the appropriate statuses for the booking process, default booking duration, and the Longitude and latitude fields to be used in mapping. See below for my Account:
10. 
11. Update as required and save and close the metadata. Your entity is now set-up.
12. To  schedule, navigate to your entity and you will notice a new command “Book” as below.
13. 
14. Select Book, and you will be prompted with the schedule experience
15. Select your resource and book and close
16. 
17. You can see the booking by navigating to the new Booking resource booking associated view and the booked resource can engage with the booking.
18. 

That is it, easy as! Great work from the Dynamics Team!

Customers expect great service, deliver it with Field services for Dynamics

What do your customers remember you by? Your last delivery.

Building long lasting trusting relationships around a solid reputation of delivery is paramount into today’s services economy. With many providers delivering similar services your customer experience needs to be distinct and consistent across every client interaction. As an organisation the level of transparency and collaboration both internally and externally has escalated to the point people expect it, they expect to be involved, they expect to collaborate, they expect to be online, they expect to be able to do it anywhere, and they expect it to be simple. Delivering great field services is all about delivering to time, to expectations while managing a great relationship, so why should it not be embedded into a Customer Relationship Management solution?

The focus of Field Services

Field Services powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, focusses on the after care service of delivering products and services. How do I maintain the relationships and grow the experience post the sale? Delivering exceptional after care service is not an easy task, but if you focus on the following then you will be on the right path:

• Exceed Customer Expectations – focus on developing a robust process around resource skills, scheduling and prioritizing of effort. Delivering great experiences is about turning up on time, with the right resource, tools to complete the job the first time.
• Empower the Service Delivery team – enable you service delivery team with the right tools to deliver great service. Provide them the tools to enable them to keep you updated on the progress of the job and expected completion time. The more information that you have regarding the progress of service delivery will enable you to ensure your meeting the first point delivering exceptional experiences.
• Template the approach – drive consistency within the delivery approach, create templates that can be followed and repeated. Templates enables service to be delivered consistently every time with the assurance to customers that whoever turns up will deliver the same experience and service.
• Uncover Insights – through capturing the delivery in a consistent manner, drives up the quality of data that you can run analytics on, uncovering key insights. Insights enable you to focus your delivery team on the right KPIs to drive up customer satisfaction and experience.
• Visibility of schedules – the ability to schedule efficiently and have wide visibility of resources, their schedules and location enables you to deliver to your customer’s expectation. A schedule boards importance is being able to present the relevant information in the most efficient manner to meet the end users need. Thus it is important to be able to define different views of the data to support the scheduling delivery team. You may need to look by product, by region, by fault, by location, the more flexible the board can be the more customer focused experiences you can deliver.
• Billing – Effective billing is essential for great service delivery. Being consistent with the way you bill and how you bill drives great customer experiences and provides the customer with confidence in the service that you are delivering. Thus having the ability to automate the billing process and charge appropriately by the customer is critical in the success of any service delivery operation. 

 

Introducing Field Services for Dynamics CRM

Field Service is an end-to-end solution that extends Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a single system of customer engagement for after care and service delivery teams. Through the common user interface of Dynamics CRM and Office 365, you service delivery team can excel at what they do best, delivering exceptional customer service.

Field services for Dynamics CRM delivers: 

• Service Agreement. Field Service agreements enable you as a business to sell and manage consistent offerings. Service agreements enable you to bundle recurring jobs, the preferred resources, at the agreed rate and billed on agreed schedule. Service agreements form the foundation of great service delivery.
• Case Management. Case management enables you to log a call, manage the activity related to the call, within the right Service Level Agreement and generate work orders as and when required. Case management is the backbone to managing after care service excellence. It provides the mechanisms to drive insights that drive performance and efficiencies. Coupled with Knowledge management, self-serve and team management, makes Case management a very comprehensive solution.
• Resource management. Resource information includes the skills and proficiencies of your workforce. You can view and filter resources based on skills and availability, so you can assign the right people to the right jobs.
• Time and expenses. The job costs can be recorded within the system by the service delivery user and presented to the customer at the end of the job. Sophisticated product and service pricing can be managed within the familiar product management of Dynamics CRM.
• Work Order Management. Work orders can be created and scheduled according to the request be via an agreement or ad-hoc call. Work orders can be associated existing customer assets and service plans to drive the correct resolution of the incident type. The scheduling board provides clear visibility of the jobs that are scheduled, the unscheduled jobs and the availability of the resources to deliver

All you can consume – Dynamics News

Just created my first paper.li, read it here:

All you can consume, Dynamics News

The Real Reason Microsoft Is Buying LinkedIn (And It Is Not For Their Profitability)

Great post by Leon Tribe on why Microsoft bought LinkedIn – the real reason, his view anyway!

That CRM Blog

Microsoft bought LinkedIn this week which came as a surprise to practically everyone. No one leaked the story and the rumor mill was quiet as the grave. The immediate question was “Why?”

The Numbers

Financially, like my old friend Salesforce, recent years have not been kind to LinkedIn in terms of profitability. Revenue is expected to be $3.7b for 2016 and is growing but they consistently make a loss.

So, from a financial perspective, the deal is problematic. At $26.2b, even if Microsoft took 100% of the revenue as profit, it would take more than seven years to get their money back. If we are a bit more realistic and suggest a modest profit of 10% on this revenue base, we are looking at a return of the buy price in 70 years.

And yet, Microsoft paid almost a 50% premium on the share price. It is clear they were…

View original post 1,104 more words

Remove the project data silo from your business with project services for Dynamics CRM Online

What do your customers remember you by? Your last delivery.

Building long lasting trusting relationships around a solid reputation of delivery is paramount into today’s services economy. With many providers delivering similar services your customer experience needs to be distinct and consistent across every client interaction. As an organisation the level of transparency and collaboration both internally and externally has escalated to the point people expect it, they expect to be involved, they expect to collaborate, they expect to be online, they expect to be able to do it anywhere, and they expect it to be simple. Delivering projects is all about the relationships and team collaboration so why should it not be embedded into a Customer Relationship Management solution?

Process maturity as published by SPI Research for Microsoft on 2016 Professional Services Maturity talks about moving organisations from Project Heroic and Functional Excellence to Portfolio and Collaborative Excellence, the move away from individual project heroes leads to significant performance improvements and increase in average EBITDA compared to organisations that are less mature. To be able to progress on the maturity lifecycle you require systems that are embedded into the process, systems that remove silos of data, that enable greater collaboration amongst teams both internal and external

The focus of Project Services

Project Services for Dynamics CRM focusses are removing the project data silos by embedding deep project services capabilities into Dynamics CRM. This focus of Project Services is on three core operational excellence factors:

• Deepen customer and employee engagement – focus on building credibility through collaborative project planning, estimation and expectations setting. Provide confidence in project success through proven processes and a responsive engagement model. Then deliver predictable on-time and on budget projects with process automation and transparency. 2015 Miller Heiman Global Sales Best Practices study states that 94% of world class organisations collaborate across all departments to close large deals, as opposed to only 43% across all organisations.
• Empower Professionals – at the end of the day it is the quality of your professionals that deliver excellent customer engagement and customer experiences. The focus here is ensuring consistency and process excellence to drive up the maturity lifecycle. Through a single system view, you can facilitate transparency with comprehensive views of skills and their relationship to project requirements, ensuring the right resource with the right skills is assigned to work. Inevitably, driving more realistic attainment of on-time and on-budget projects. You can enhance productivity through providing collaboration tools via Office 365 groups, project team sites and tools like visual studio online. By empowering the employee to find projects to maintain skills, to collaborate amongst the team increases loyalty through visible interaction, recognition and skills development.
• Optimise Growth – 2016 SPI Professional Services Maturity Benchmark states organisations using an integrated project-based solution with CRM are 44% more profitable than those using neither. Coordinating a firm wide approach to prioritizing client and pursuit management using team collaboration in consistent ways helps to deliver successful projects. Monitoring and managing overall status and having that visible to the professionals is critical in ensuring that real time visibility of project status. The more people are aware then the more they care and focus on delivering successful project outcomes. Using the built in metrics in Project Services and PowerBI reporting tools facilitates timely decision making enabling the business to adapt and change accordingly before it is too late.

Introducing Project Services for Dynamics CRM

Project Service is an end-to-end solution that extends Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a single system of customer engagement for project sales, resourcing, delivery and billing.

Through Office 365 integration collaboration becomes second nature and automated, notes can be shared using OneNote, documents worked on by multiple people seamlessly and shared with the team both internally and externally.

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If you’d like to know more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM project service and how we can help your organisation to deliver project excellence and move along the project lifecycle, we’d love to talk to you. Find out more and download a datasheet here.

An Overview of Project services

Project services for Dynamics CRM has been released in the CRM Online Spring release. Project services will enable all aspects of a project to be managed in CRM from Pre sales opportunity management through to project planning, delivery and billing.

Project services will be delivered under an add on license to a CRM Online Basic or Professional sku. When trialing Dynamics CRM Online you will be able to load as a solution a trial of Project services.

The core capabilities of Project Services are:

• Opportunity Management
  • Estimate, quote, and contract work, Plan and assign resources and Enable team collaboration
  • This great feature allows for a project quote to be created off the back of a work break down structure definition. As pre sales you will be create a draft project, start from a project template and adapt for the specific needs of the opportunity. Once the plan has been approved you can import in the project lines in to the quote and summarise the details by role or phase. Using the new word template functionality you will then be able to create a nice looking word document for your quote / statement of work.
• Project-based contracts
  • Project contracts relate quotes and orders to project plans, financial estimates, labour pricing, and billing arrangements, like time and materials or fixed price. The contract highlights key metrics, including profitability and feasibility.
• Project planning
  • Visual project planning and estimation includes predecessors, automatic task scheduling, and views of sales and cost information for time and expenses. You can use the resulting plan in quotes and project contracts.
  • 
• Resource management
  • Resource information includes the skills and proficiencies of your workforce. You can view and filter resources based on skills and availability, so you can assign the right people to the right projects. You can also track resource utilization and forecasting metrics.
  • Resourcing of projects can be performed by a centralized user role or by the project manager depending on your organisation needs.
  • Resource Availability screenshot
  • 
  • Resource Utilisation screenshot
  • 
• Time and expenses
  • Capture time, expense, and progress data for real-time insights and accurate invoicing
  • Team members can use the web or mobile apps to record time and expenses for multiple projects. Managers can easily approve new entries while understanding the financial implications of the newly-approved items.
  • Screenshot of the time recording grid view
  • 
• Project billing
  • Project invoices reflect the terms of the contract and the approved work and expenses. The financial impact of project work, including costs, unbilled revenue, and invoices, is recorded for use in analytics and integration into financial systems.