A CRM Riff

“CRM at the Speed of Light” – Paul Greenberg

Jim Glass — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:22:47 GMT

"I have a saying that one always overestimates what can be done in one year and underestimates what can be done in ten years. We see this over and over..." Paul Greenberg in "CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition". So begins my reading of Paul’s newest book. You can see his Biography here.

The book promises us new ways to look at CRM in the light of an Internet with rampant growth of things like blogging and social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. CRM’s promise is still developing and getting better with every release. Sometime in the near future companies without CRM systems will realize that without the CRM toolset, they can’t compete and/or survive. And the customer will be the ultimate benefactor of a system that makes buying, maintaining, and using necessary products easy and painless.

Okay, so now I’m going back to finish chapter one. :o)

CRM in 2010: The experts' predictions

Jim Glass — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:01:46 GMT

MyCustomer.com is looking at what 2010 might hold for the CRM industry.

"CRM is a solid industry. There may be naysayers who state that the CRM failure rate is 50-70% and so on, but the reality is that this isn’t even true anymore. That was from a Gartner report six or seven years ago when CRM was an immature industry and when the hype surrounding it was greater than what the reality could deliver. Now it has settled into reality and it is now a $13bn industry that has projected growth. Businesses are not so stupid that they would keep investing in something that has a great likelihood of failure. But not only are they not stopping, but they are increasing their investment in it. And furthermore, the projects continue to increase because there is enough success in CRM to indicate that it is worth the risk - and everything is a risk.

CRM has matured and consequently people realise that the seven cities of gold are not going to appear as a result of their CRM implementations. But what is going to happen is that you get better results with your customers. With expectations a little more realistic and legitimate, it provides enough value to be worth it, and when you combine that and the downturn, where businesses are looking to retain customers, overall you’re looking at a healthy industry." – Paul Greenberg

This is a good read.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Videos - 2009

Jim Glass — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:11:06 GMT

Here are some of my favs, in case you haven’t seen them.

Are we ready for 2010?

CRMUG Announces January Microsoft Dynamics CRM User Group Meetups

Jim Glass — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:20:08 GMT

CRMUG Pacific Northwest Regional Chapter
1/13/2010, 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

Join us at a special Regional Chapter meeting in Portland, January 13, 12:30 PT.
More Info

CRMUG Denver Regional Chapter
1/20/2010, 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM Mountain Standard Time

Join us for the next meeting of the CRMUG Denver Regional Chaper on January 20, 11:30 MT.
More Info

Updated Sponsor:

CRMUG Ontario Regional Chapter
1/27/2010, 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. with optional Program Committee meeting from 4:00 to 4:30 p.m.

Join us for the next meeting of the CRMUG Ontario Regional Chapter on January 27.
More Info

Follow CRMUG on Twitter!
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Once you are a member, open the CRMUG profile page and click "Follow" or send a text message to Twitter with the words "follow CRMUG" from your phone. You can also subscribe to the CRMUG RSS feed.

MSDynamicsWorld.com: Top 10 Microsoft Dynamics Stories of 2009

Jim Glass — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:31:16 GMT

MSDynamicsWorld.com published this yesterday: Our Top 10 Microsoft Dynamics Stories of 2009

The article picked this to be one of the top titles: How Microsoft Has Used XRM to Take Dynamics CRM to a New Competitive Level

Here’s an excerpt:

Interest in XRM appears to be growing considerably. One measure of the interest in xRM is the conception and rapid growth of the XRM Virtual User Group. The group, led by Julie Yack of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft application consultancy, has grown well past 500 members since its inception in March 2009. New members continue to join at a steady rate every day, Yack says.

True to its name, the XRM Virtual User Groups have built their online presence as an XRM application - a web site hosted on Azure, built with the web site building tool ADXSTUDIO, and connected, via ADXSTUDIO's XRM Extensions, to Dynamics CRM Online for managing everything from the articles and events to the user identification.

While Yack estimates that as many as 80% of the members of the user group are developers, some are Dynamics CRM users who "know CRM forwards and backwards and have never written a line of code in their lives. " They see the platform and its re-use as a cost savings measure in developing new applications for their business.

Kudos to CRM MVP Julie Yack! :o)

Accelerators: Microsoft Ties Dynamics CRM to Twitter

Jim Glass — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:04:17 GMT

When it comes to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the new stuff. The accelerator program is conducted by people who luv the CRM product. From the CodePlex site we learn:

CRM Accelerators are a range of add-on solutions developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 customers and partners. Each accelerator is available at no cost and will showcase how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform can be configured and extended to broaden marketing, sales and service capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners are encouraged to further extend these accelerators to meet their specific business needs. Each accelerator will be fully supported as per any other customization for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that follows SDK guidelines. Additionally, all samples are supplied with full source-code so they can be extended further to meet specific customer requirements.

This summer one of the more interesting Accelerators was highlighted on About.com’s Computing Center:

“Microsoft has integrated its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) software with Twitter, in just the latest move by an enterprise software company to latch onto the wildly popular micro-blogging service.

The social-networking accelerator -- part of three new add-on modules Microsoft is releasing for Dynamics CRM -- culls and catalogs relevant Twitter messages, such as a discussion about the Dynamics user's company, and provides various analytic tools.

The integration, announced Thursday, is also meant to help Dynamics users boost their sales databases. Twitter usernames can be converted into a Dynamics CRM customer record or sales lead, to which more data, such as a phone number, can be added over time.”

Read more…

The latest news:

- November 6 2009: Interim set of updated SQL 2005 Dashboards released for Analytics Accelerator R2, please review and provide feedback!

- October 19 2009: Social Networking accelerator has been released!

- October 13 2009: Portal Integration and Partner Relationship Management accelerators have been released!

Enjoy.

NYTimes Readers Visualization Proves Illuminating

Jim Glass — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:00:10 GMT

Luv this stuff. How fast and far does your blog post move? This New York Times piece is a fascinating read.

Project Honey Pot: 1 Billion Spammers Served

Jim Glass — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:28:02 GMT

One of my fav service providers, Project Honey Pot is a community of tens of thousands of web and email administrators from more than 170 countries around the world who are working together to track online fraud and abuse. The Project has been online since 2004 and each day receives millions of email and comment spam messages which are catalogued and shared with law enforcement and security partners.

If you run a website, own a domain, or contribute to an online forum you can join Project Honey Pot or at the very least check them out. I’d like to highlight their “1 Billion Spammers Served” post and recommend that you read it.

Our 1 Billionth Spam Message

Dec 15, 2009

On Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 06:20 (GMT) Project Honey Pot received its billionth email spam message. The message, a picture of which is displayed below, was a United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) phishing scam. The spam email was sent by a bot running on a compromised machine in India (122.167.68.1). The spamtrap address to which the message was sent was originally harvested on November 4, 2007 by a particularly nasty harvester (74.53.249.34) that is responsible for 53,022,293 other spam messages that have been received by Project Honey Pot.

Every time Project Honey Pot receives a message we estimate that another 125,000 are sent to real victims. Our billionth message represents approximately 125 trillion spam messages that have been sent since Project Honey Pot started in 2004.

At this milestone, we wanted to take a second to report some of our findings. Our goal is not to rehash the same old insights but instead to give a new picture that only looking at five years and a billion data points can produce. (There are a lot of charts, tables, and visuals tracking the statistics!)

David Yack: Silverlight Jumpstart

Jim Glass — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:08:19 GMT

Our CRM Regional Director (okay that’s only a small part of his job) David Yack has released another book called Silverlight Jumpstart. Dave sez,

“This book is designed to get .NET Business Application Developers up to speed quickly.

Silverlight Silverlight Silverlight. It’s everywhere! Now, it’s your turn to jump into the ring and learn how to develop your business applications using the new Silverlight technology. You already know how to do development with the .NET platform and Silverlight Jumpstart will teach you the skills to give you and your applications that competitive advantage. Everyone knows that Silverlight has strong visual capabilities, now learn how to build stronger business applications with that same technology.

This book is an introduction to building business applications with Silverlight. The goal of this book is simple; provide a quick way for an existing .NET developer to learn the basics of Silverlight.”

The Windows Club: Ready-to-use Win7 shortcuts

Jim Glass — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:43:00 GMT

Friend Ciprian has taken the pains to create 99 (oof!) ready-to-use Windows 7 desktop shortcuts ! Simply download them and place the one’s you want on your Windows 7 desktop.

The collection of 99 shortcuts have been neatly classified and the zipped download includes the following folders with these shortcuts:

Shut Down Menu – Hibernate, Lock / Switch User, Log Off, Restart, Shut Down, Sleep.

Troubleshooting - Aero Troubleshoot, Audio Playing Troubleshoot, Audio Recording Troubleshoot, Hardware & Devices Troubleshoot, HomeGroup Troubleshoot, Incoming Connections Troubleshoot, Internet Connections Troubleshoot, Internet Explorer Performance Troubleshoot, Internet Explorer Safety Troubleshoot, Network Adapter Troubleshoot, Performance Troubleshoot, Power Troubleshoot, Printing Troubleshoot, Shared Files & Folders Troubleshoot, System Maintenance Troubleshoot, Windows Media Player DVD Troubleshoot, Windows Media Player Library Troubleshoot, Windows Media Player Settings Troubleshoot, Windows Troubleshooting Tools.

Windows Programs - Calculator, Command Prompt, Internet Explorer, Math Input Panel, Media Center, Notepad, Paint, Remote Desktop Connection, Run, Sidebar, Snipping Tool, Sound Recorder, Sticky Notes, Sync Center, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Explorer, Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Media Player, Windows Update, Wordpad, XPS Viewer.

Ease of Access – Ease of Access, Magnify, Narrator, On-Screen Keyboard, Speech Recognition.

Don’t say I’ve never given you anything. :o)

Mobile Workers to Make up 73 Percent of the US Workforce

Jim Glass — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:50:01 GMT

I recently received this from Citrix Online:

“By 2011, IDC expects mobile workers to make up 73 percent of the total US workforce. Whether mobile employees are out in the field or at home, sitting in a satellite office or constantly on the go within a corporate campus environment, they’re going to need an effective way to stay connected and productive.”

Wow. Here’s a little more about this service-based company:

The IDC, as I understand it is the International Data Corporation, a marketing intelligence and advisory service. The IDC has a slew of 2010 predictions that they will be posting throughout the month.

‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell

Jim Glass — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:57:00 GMT

I have been espousing the 10,000 hours to become a professional (in this case for music) for a while now and a friend of mine attributed that to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Wikipedia has a nice little blurb about the book.

“Outliers is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown and Company on November 18, 2008. In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines the causes of why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, and how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.” – Wikipedia

So I ordered the book for my Christmas break reading on my Kindle. Beth Jameson sez this about the book:

“The main tenet of Outliers is that there is a logic behind why some people become successful, and it has more to do with legacy and opportunity than high IQ. In his latest book, New Yorker contributor Gladwell casts his inquisitive eye on those who have risen meteorically to the top of their fields, analyzing developmental patterns and searching for a common thread. The author asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man, that "the true origins of high achievement" lie instead in the circumstances and influences of one's upbringing, combined with excellent timing. The Beatles had Hamburg in 1960-62; Bill Gates had access to an ASR-33 Teletype in 1968. Both put in thousands of hours-Gladwell posits that 10,000 is the magic number-on their craft at a young age, resulting in an above-average head start.”

Should be an interesting read. What’s on your list for the holiday season?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Videos

Jim Glass — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:30:12 GMT

Love this stuff. It’s amazing how differently many companies use our software:

I’ve been following the Leicester City’s use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a while now. So it’s nice to be able to put faces to their names.

More PDC ‘09 Highlight Videos

Jim Glass — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:11:25 GMT

Three must see sessions were video’d for those who were not able to attend. The three xRM sessions included:

Managing the Solution Lifecycle for xRM Applications (Nirav Shah)
Developing xRM Solutions Using Windows Azure (Andrew Bybee)
Build a .NET Business Application in 60 Minutes with xRM and SharePoint (Barry Givens)

Sonoma Partners blogs about their xRM Socialization Demo. Of course there are more Channel9 interviews from PDC ‘09. And Girish Raja talks about the PCD including a complete video of the Phone Company CRM and Azure demonstration that was received so well at the conference. There is a lot of goodness out there to absorb.

Did You Miss PDC ‘09?

Jim Glass — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:10:45 GMT

For those of you who missed PDC check out the http://microsoftpdc.com site for highlights and requested content.

PCD ‘09 featured an all-star lineup of guests including Mark Russinovich, Patrick Dussud, Steve Marx, Bob Muglia, Dave Campbell, Yousef Khalidi, Ray Ozzie, Erik Meijer, Kurt DelBene, Scott Guthrie, Don Box, Chris Anderson, Gary Flake, Carl Franklin & Richard Campbell (.NET Rocks).

To watch, go to www.microsoftpdc.com