Microsoft Dynamics CRM is in the cloud and was built to run happily in a variety of environments. This includes at the Microsoft data center, through a partner hosted offering (including additional bundled in goodies), within your office or even within a footprint managed by your Microsoft partner of choice.

If you are thinking of organizing your contacts, documenting and managing a process, building on or out your network of people and yet you are not really sure if you want to put all the infrastructure in place. You might dip your foot in the water with the cloud.

Did you know that despite the cloud, your data still integrates and can synchronize with Microsoft Outlook running in your office? I am not talking about Export and Import - I am talking about realtime sync (or close to real time sync). You don't have to do anything other than to get the intial configuration right. 

One of the coolest features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the slicing and dicing you can do with security roles. It is also one of the more complex features of the software.

Microsoft uses the concept of a Business Unit as a core security feature. I often explain business units as a rock wall divider within any given database, but given that Microsoft allows for a tree factor this is not necessarily a black and white rule.

The reason I emphasis "rock wall" is because once you create a business unit it becomes difficult to share data across business units without a more complex design. For those firms who do not have complex security needs I recommend keeping business units to a minimum. They are easy to abuse and can create some long term pain.  

One of the features that many a firm forgets about is the tracking of competition. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can build and then associate complete competitor profiles against any given opportunity. As you work the opportunity you can also unassociate competitors as perhaps they become less of a threat.

In Sales, Opportunities : Open an opportunity

In Sales, Competitors - Use the feature ADD Existing Competitor

Save and Close - It is that easy

When it comes to the world of Microsoft Dynamics CRM SBE licensing and Microsoft Small Business Server there is a major change

"There is no version of CRM Small Business available in the current version (4.0). Small Business transitioned to CRM Workgroup for anyone with 5 users or less and CRM Pro for anyone with more than 5 users. For anyone still running the CRM Small Business product that needs additional CALs, they must purchase the CRM Pro CAL and use the downgrade rights to install that on the 3.0 product (be it Pro or Small Business). They are considerably more expensive that the old Small Business CALs were, but unfortunately, that is the only option MS has left with that product."

You cannot run a report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0