There are a series of excellent enhancements avaialble in Microsoft CRM 2011 including a great focus of integration with Microsoft Outlook.  The new CRM 2011 release will treat CRM data in the same manner it treats Outlook data – Outlook and CRM 2011 will be a much more deeper experience, with functionality including previews and conditional formatting.  This will result in less clicks, user customisations, grouping of records within CRM 2011 and userability.  MS CRM 2011 certainly will help users to become more focused on CRM and its high achieving results. 

There is a new “ribbon” (tool bars and buttons) for Outlook and web browser user that offers great Microsoft Office navigation.

Real time dashboards that can be role tailored, fully contextual and individually tailored – which will offer great management intelligence for sales pipelines, customer service and service and case management.  FrontRange GoldMine have offered dashboards in GMPE v. 9 and these have been excellently received.  A great success. 

Role tailored client has been incorporated to CRM 2011.  Basically it tailors the client (so the users interface and experiences) to the job they do – so that the users get fast access to the information that they need and then are also prevented from seeing data they do not necessarily need to see.  Its a MS CRM Nav success which is now available in MS CRM 2011.

Caltech have been offering Microsoft CRM Hosted option for some time now and its a popular option for some clients.  However, it has its limitations in terms of advanced customisations and integration.  Now in CRM 2011 it will be possible to have developed code as a hosted option – or in the Cloud as many refer to this; and Caltech are looking forward to taking this forward as we have for many MS CRM on premise clients.

Impressed so far with Microsoft CRM 2011 – well thats not all.

Other successes to this new release include

• Advanced user personalisation creating views and commonly used records by user
• Inline data visulations which facilitates the ability to create and share inline charts
• Flexible goal management where businesses can define key performance and busienss health indicators providing a great track and measurement tool against key strategies
• Integration out of the box with SharePoint so they can work together far more easily

These are the initial updates from Microsoft and Im sure that there will be more features to follow  – as soon as we know we will let you know.

Look forward to showing some demos later this year!

Phil Callaghan

Managing Director of Caltech CRM

Caltech CRM are a Microsoft Partner based in Yorkshire.  Caltech have worked with Microsoft CRM for many years now and were involved in v. 1 when Microsoft were putting this together.  Now in MS CRM v. 4, Caltech are pleased to continue working with such an exceptional solution, and all the enhancements that MS CRM 2011 will bring.