Businesses spend the majority to their IT budgets making incompatible systems compatible, and trying to support them (Rettig, 2007, p. 21).  Best practices suggest the business owner spend the time to plan for the inevitable change in IT.  The prudent way to prepare for such constant change is to adopt a system that can be rapidly configured to meet business demands.  It must be built on a platform that can support these ad hoc changes including native external database connectivity.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is built on a SQL database, and over the past 10 years, Microsoft has invested heavily in SQL infrastructure.  Thousands of programs and other platforms integrate very well with SQL databases making the information stored accessible and secure.  One company, Assistance Software, built a project management suite entirely on the Dynamics CRM 2011 platform.  This transition from its standalone PSO product to a CRM 2011 add-on shows sound business planning and foresight.  Such a move significantly minimizes their development time and reduces costs and yet delivers many additional benefits not available in their standalone product.

Out Of The Box Power Of Choice – Assistance Software PSA immediately gives the user the same three options for acquiring the use of the program that Dynamics CRM 2011 offers; SAAS, on premise, or as an add-on to Dynamics CRM 2011 Online.

Short development time – Dynamics CRM 2011 is infinitely configurable, capable of creating new entities to track or new workflows to create.  PSA has built on top of this and made their fields and data as easy to configure as CRM itself giving maximum flexibility to the user to define the information and workflow to best fit the company’s needs.

Web based UI  - Over 60% of office workers use Outlook (Campaign Monitor, 2011).  Dynamics CRM 2011 & PSA user interface has been based upon the Outlook model for instant familiarity & ease of adoption.   Dynamics CRM 2011 is built on web based architecture with robust security settings giving PSA the same ease of access from anywhere with simple internet access.

Outlook Integration – Dynamics CRM 2011 has native Outlook integration.  PSA tapped into that connection and any project tasks created in PSA are synchronized to the task owners’ respective Outlook account.

Standard connectors to AX/NAV/GP for free – Dynamics CRM 2011 has native Dynamics ERP connectivity.  This allows PSA to extend this same capability to users of Microsoft’s ERP products to connect project development software into their ERP software suite without the need of additional software or database connections to manage.

Workflow capacity – Workflow is critical for leveraging the technology into a company’s competitive advantage.  Dynamics CRM integrates with MS Exchange server and SQL Reporting Services allowing automated processes including email alerts and scheduled reports.  Using CRM’s workflow templates, each user can create/use workflows in their production cycles and project planning without additional installations or software.

Seamless integration with SharePoint – Dynamics CRM 2011 comes with a completely supported connection with Microsoft SharePoint.  SharePoint is an enterprise –level document storage and archiving platform.  All project and customer specific documents can be stored here and easily retrieved from within CRM/PSA.

Large installed base worldwide – There are tens of thousands of users for Dynamics CRM 2011 making the product easy to support from the partner community.  Many companies around the world can support Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 giving peace of mind to the user that if there are any problems, help is not far away.

These are fantastic benefits for the business professional that needs to keep track of customers and projects at close detail.  Although the pairing of PSA with Dynamics CRM 2011 increases the cost of PSA, this temporary strain on cash will prove that the ROI is substantially greater with PSA/CRM mix than just PSO.  Business users will realize that the upfront cost will be well worth the long term stability of building on a solid architecture and partnering with a stable company like Microsoft.

Campaign Monitor. (2011, December 28). Email Client Popularity: June 2011. Retrieved from CampaignMonitor: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/

Rettig, C. (2007). The Trouble With Enterprise Software. MIT Sloan Management Review, 21-27.

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