Software Advice sat down with Dynamics CRM General Manager Brad Wilson and discussed a variety of topics in the videos below. It’s interesting to see the man behind the product, as well as discovering his thoughts on the current state and future of Dynamics CRM.

What’s new in Dynamics CRM 2011

More videos, continued.
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As a pleasant surprise, Microsoft publicly released the official On-Premise bits a couple weeks earlier than previously announced (Feb 16).  This is great news for those who want to get started on upgrading from Dynamics CRM 4.0 On-Premise.  Yes, I’m a bit late posting this announcement, but it’s well worth mentioning.

Check out the various download links below.

Trial License Key Information:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workgroup Server 2011 (5 CAL limit):
H84KC-JH8DF-7PDYK-TXBXR-2RMMT
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011 (no CAL limit):
MQM2H-JYYRB-RRD6J-8WBBC-CVBD3

On a personal note, I’ve been neglecting this blog for weeks due to one major reason: the release of CRM 2011!  This new version has caught quite a lot of interest, and I’ve been criss-crossing the Midwest to help address the demand.

Be sure to drop a note at my Twitter account if you’d like to chat about the new version!

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The Wayans bros. were the first CRM Consultants

The Wayans bros. were the first CRM Consultants

According to this Gartner press release, the worldwide market for CRM solutions has grown 12.5% since last year in 2007.  Looks like there’s now solid evidence businesses are catching on to the benefits of a CRM solution… or even better, xRM.

But one of the highlights of this story is that Microsoft Dynamics CRM revenue grew 75% last year.  Much of the success was attributed to the trend in SaaS, with the likes of Microsoft CRM Online and Salesforce.com.

Software as a Service (SaaS) continued to drive the market forward, representing nearly 20 percent of total CRM software market revenue in 2008, up from just over 15 percent in 2007. Interest in social networking and social software also escalated in 2008 as businesses were confronted with the sales, marketing, and serviceability impact of increasing consumer participation in online forums.

SAP continued to be the market leader accounting for 22.5 percent of worldwide CRM software revenue in 2008 (see Table 1), but this is down from a 25.5 percent share in 2007. Microsoft experienced the strongest growth rate among the top 5 vendors, as its revenue increased 75 percent in 2008.

I’ve been busy on a couple projects lately, so I’m predicting there will only be more in the near future!  Let me know if you’ve personally seen more CRM business too.

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And yet another highly anticipated accelerator for CRM 4.0 was released recently, over the weekend.  This is part 1 of 3 of the Analytics Accelerator.  The other future releases deal with SQL 2008 and other advanced SQL reporting capabilities.  Screenshots are below, and the documentation and installation files can be downloaded at the below link to CodePlex.

I’ll post my review of the eService and Analytics Accelerators this week.  So far so good!

analytics01 analytics02 analytics03

Release Notes:

This is release 1 of 3 for the Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The following future releases are going through final testing and packaging and will be available soon:

  • R2 delivers SQL Server 2008 dashboards as well as Sales Pipeline trending capabilities
  • R3 delivers more advanced SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) capabilities as well as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server scorecards

Many customers and partners will be familiar with Analytics Foundation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 which was a business intelligence feature pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. Analytics Foundation for Dynamics CRM 3.0 included Dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and a suite of new reports. Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (R1) expands on this, and is designed to support a range of business intelligence “maturity” levels for customers and partners. The Analytics accelerator has been built to cater for differing business intelligence skill-sets and experience levels.

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John O’Donnell from the Microsoft ISV Developer Evangelism Team recommends viewing the following sessions for Dynamics CRM related content.  These links also have downloadable PowerPoint decks.  Be sure to check them out!

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