MS Word Proposal for CRM Online

re: MS Word Proposal for CRM Online

Neil Benson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:42:50 GMT

Hi Jon, thanks for sharing the demo. Merging some customer data fields from a CRM system into Word, however, is something that our customers have been able to do with contact management systems like ACT! since the '80s.

Much harder in Microsoft CRM seems to be presenting a quote in Word, with quote line items in a properly formatted table. Or how about a feature that merges invoice data into an email, again with invoice line items, emails the invoice to the customer (perhaps along with a nicely formatted PDF attachment) and stores the communication activity in CRM.

These are real world scenarios that our customers have requirements for, that are way beyond simple Word merge, and that take dozens of clicks and a long time to complete in CRM 4.0 today...

Neil

re: MS Word Proposal for CRM Online

Helen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:54:43 GMT

That is a very long explanation of a very simple concept.

re: MS Word Proposal for CRM Online

Joel Lindstrom — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:48:37 GMT

Neil,

Don't overlook SQL Reporting Services. You can create a quote/proposal report that is formatted exactly like you describe.

Here is a link where you can download a SRS report that you can use for a starting point: http://blog.customereffective.com/blog/2007/09/sales-proposal.html

This makes it easy to export to PDF to email, and with SQL 2008, you can export it to Word format.