A Valentine’s Day tale . . . When we look for our life partner we tend to aim for similar yet different. A soul mate who compliments our strengths and supports. And so after many years of wondering how good a match Microsoft Dynamics NAV is for Dynamics CRM I have decided to give it my blessing!
The reluctance has been wondering what additional benefits Dynamics CRM could offer Dynamics NAV users; after all, NAV already has CRM capability. Microsoft has been keen to convince people they need both but cynically we might observe that this is highly self-serving! What business benefits can be derived through investing in both solutions?
So this week I had a meeting with the chaps from Preact. Preact are a Microsoft Gold CRM Partner. They too are often asked by existing NAV users, but why should I want Dynamics CRM as well? The answer is that there is a role for both.
Increasingly NAV CRM is used by inside sales teams. Nearly all of our distribution clients use it as the biggest concern is sales history and buying patterns that are easily analysed from within NAV CRM. We are also seeing NAV CRM functionality being embraced across the business. In particular our clients have made use of activity tracking and analysis for quality control and credit control teams.
Dynamics CRM suits new business teams and marketing functions. For new business teams, often the point at which the ERP system is interested is when the prospect becomes a customer. The standard NAV / CRM connector makes that transition easy and keeps all contacts in synch across the applications. The chaps from Preact are particularly excited about how we can drive a list of customers using NAV CRM segmentation tools then upload this as a CRM Marketing List, thus enabling a marketing team using CRM to make use of additional features such as MailChimp integration to run the campaign.
We are excited to be working together on developing scenarios that really help businesses determine where the join between CRM and NAV needs to be for their business. Hopefully the beginning of a beautiful partnership . . . !
For further information on NAV CRM v CRM see our whitepaper or contact us.
