Is Dynamics 365 right for SMB?

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Hello all, would appreciate your insight and guidance on this one.

We've been operating as a SugarCRM Community Edition shop for a long time. Quoting took place in Quotewerks, financials managed by Quickbooks. With the demise of SugarCRM CE, and a very strong desire to consolidate onto a single platform, we started using Dynamics CRM and Financials in hopes of simplifying our processes.

In short, it has been nothing short of frustrating - and I'll readily admit there's some self-inflicted pain because we have not yet engaged a professional services partner. But, we're a tech-shop and we like to play before we pay.

Financials has proven to be lacking over QB at this time but I've already addressed that in the Financials forum. So, we decided to keep with CRM as the reporting, integration with O365/email, mobile access, and several other features are really enticing even if we have to keep QB in the picture for now.

Here's the parts where we are struggling and it seems like these things should just be part of the product, but they're not.

Easily creating customized templates. In Quotewerks, we have a very simple editing interface that's quite similar to modifying reports, but it is built-in versus requiring the use of a separate reporting creation/editing tool.
The reports we've modified, don't work. There's no log of why they don't work, there's no error messages, they just don't work. Again, a partner could probably help here, but it seems like this is one of those things that Microsoft could offer without the need to hire a 3rd party?
Simply emailing a quote to a customer directly from CRM. All the data is there, why do we need to do a mail merge in Word?
Portals. Wow, So we have to pay $6000 extra a year just to have a support portal? Our Freshdesk subscription is $1500/year.

So I guess I'm trying to understand how much of these concerns are reasonable and things Microsoft is working to improve, and how much of this is "just the way it is" and if we want to use the system we have to pony up the funds for professional services and extra portals. Is there a different CRM package from MS we should be using instead that's more tailored to SMB's with an externally-facing support portal?

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ACECORP 1,589 on at

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I'd like to quickly respond to some of your questions:

In my opinion, yes CRM is PERFECT for SMB and non-profits.

For # 1 where you said Easily creating customized templates. In Quotewerks, we have a very simple editing interface that's quite similar to modifying reports, but it is built-in versus requiring the use of a separate reporting creation/editing tool.

MY ANSWER: You can make use of advance finds. As long as your query is no more than three dimensions deep, you can use advanced finds all day long to display data and you never need to touch SSRS or another reporting package.

For # 2. where you said "The reports we've modified, don't work. There's no log of why they don't work, there's no error messages, they just don't work. Again, a partner could probably help here, but it seems like this is one of those things that Microsoft could offer without the need to hire a 3rd party?"

MY ANSWER: Are you querying the filtered_view as opposed to the database tables? That's key.

For # 3. Simply emailing a quote to a customer directly from CRM. All the data is there, why do we need to do a mail merge in Word?

MY ANSWER: You can email quotes directly from within CRM. Make sure you configure the CRM email router component to work with your exchange environment, via the CRM Email Router Configurator, and you can easily send email directly from within CRM and even receive email into CRM for automated processing and passing to sales folks if you like.

For # 4.Portals. Wow, So we have to pay $6000 extra a year just to have a support portal? Our Freshdesk subscription is $1500/year.

MY ANSWER: Yes -- if you want external folks to be able to get data or put data into CRM from a portal, then yes you need the internet connector license which allows for that.

I've done tons of Dynamics CRM implementations to the point where rolling them out is fast and easy.

It's the "smallest" Dynamics Product, making it great for SMB. The other Dynamics Products are much larger and have more moving parts, with added layers of complexity. Those other ones are better for larger organizations. Dynamics CRM can scale very large, but it can also work very well small.

Hope all that was helpful!

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Nadeeja Bomiriya 6,804 on at

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Hi mtstl,

Here's my stab at answering your questions. :)

Question:

Easily creating customized templates. In Quotewerks, we have a very simple editing interface that's quite similar to modifying reports, but it is built-in versus requiring the use of a separate reporting creation/editing tool.

Answer:

There a many options to create reports.

1. Advanced Find

2. Mail Merge Templates

3. Word Document Templates

4. SSRS Reports

5. Third party add-ons such as XperiDo and DocumentCorePack

Question:

The reports we've modified, don't work. There's no log of why they don't work, there's no error messages, they just don't work. Again, a partner could probably help here, but it seems like this is one of those things that Microsoft could offer without the need to hire a 3rd party?

Answer:

With any product, when you use it for the first time, it may look difficult. You need to get trained in Dynamics 365 (CRM). Since you are already a customer, you can go to CustomerSource which includes all the training materials and videos. If you need to get things quickly, then you would have to engage a suitable partner.

Question:

Simply emailing a quote to a customer directly from CRM. All the data is there, why do we need to do a mail merge in Word?

Answer:

You can use workflows with Word Document Templates to generate and email quotes directly from CRM. Since you have Office 365 subscription, use Server-side synchronisation to quickly enable email in CRM.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-customer-center/set-up-email-processing-through-server-side-synchronization.aspx

Question:

Portals. Wow, So we have to pay $6000 extra a year just to have a support portal? Our Freshdesk subscription is $1500/year.

Answer:

Microsoft recently purchased Adxstudio Portals to provide the portal features. It used to be $10K+ for single portal and $20K+ for multiple portals. Microsoft have reduced the prices and added lot's of new features recently.

In addition to your question, I would like to add there's an addon to integrate QuickBooks to Dynamics CRM

http://www.inogic.com/product/integrations/inolink-quickbooks-microsoft-dynamics-crm

Inogic

Hope my answer clarified some of the questions.

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Guido Preite 54,086 Moderator on at

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Hi,

all the points you made are reasonable and as other already replied before me there are third-party solutions available to fill up the gaps of the out of the box functionalities.

I am not familiar with the pricing offer of SugarCRM that makes you consider the switch to another platform, but I can understand that if you already used it for a long time another platform will not be able to do the same stuff in the same way. (in the same way if I use for example the workflow capabilities of SugarCRM I will be very limited compared to what I can do with workflows inside Dynamics CRM)

only a note on the portals, now with every subscription of Dynamics 365, a single portal instance is included for free.

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Community Member on at

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Hello I saw your post, are you using Dynamics 365 online? My team has built an integration that enables customer and company mapping to import CRM information into Freshdesk. Would like to have your feedback if possible. softwaredevtools.com/.../ms-dynamics-365-freshdesk-deeper-integrations-for-your-crm-and-help-desk-platforms

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