Innovation Driving Collaboration | MS CRM 2015

Next month Xperience will be upgrading their MS CRM SaaS customers to the latest release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015. This upgrade will introduce customers to a plethora of barrier-busting features that will increase collaboration and secure access to data as part of the new new MS CRM release.

The main theme for this release is collaboration, which is of increasing importance to businesses. By introducing enhanced collaboration it enables users to adapt to the ever-changing buyer behaviour. Research shows, customers are 57% of the way through the buying process when they engage with a company which means the boundaries between sales and marketing are becoming blurred. For sales and marketing be more effective it is important they operate as one and Microsoft CRM takes steps to bridge the gap between the two disciplines, enabling businesses to cultivate relationships more effectively.

Nick Poncia, CRM Product Manager at Xperience Group, comments, “The 2013 release made gains in enhancing workforce productivity, a key concern for many businesses. With the 2015 release, Microsoft have built upon the foundations laid and have extended this into the realms of collaboration, particularly for sales and marketing. There is increased transparency which enable the two departments to operate as one, towards one goal.”

New innovative features of Microsoft CRM 2015 include the introduction of the new Sales Portal and Interactive Marketing Calendar that allow sales and marketing professionals to work synonymously toward the same goals. In conjunction with this there is an intuitive assisted selling feature that extends sales capabilities, by recommending cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. To further extend marketing capabilities, the new release introduces an A/B split testing feature as part of the advanced email marketing, to help marketers identify effective ways to reach customers. It is this extension of sales and marketing capabilities along with the collaboration platforms that enhance a business’ overall ability to manage and cultivate customer relationships.

With increased transparency, comes increased risk surrounding sensitive data. Microsoft have clearly understood this and introduced means of making data more secure. The new, hierarchical security modelling allows system administrators to classify data by role, giving executives, managers and company director’s different levels of authorisation. The security levels are easier to maintain and control, as more fields within the software can be given restricted access, whereas in the previous edition, this was constrained to custom fields. It is this hierarchal security that ensures business data and insights are protected, accessible only to those with the correct level of authorisation.

Please Note: MS CRM SaaS customers will be upgraded on 1st February between 2am and 8pm. During this time users may be unable to access their database. For real-time updates visit the status page.