Month: July 2014

CRM Welcomes the Era of our Social Customer.

The business world is entering the “era of the customer,” and customers now expect to be able to interact with businesses quickly and through a variety of channels. They expect to have the ability to access information wherever and whenever they want. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help transform organizations into this “era of the social customer” by helping organizations understand their customers – who they are, where they are, and where they want to be tomorrow. This may be achieved through Social Listening and Social Insights.

July 30, 2014

Project Sponsor…What?

A Project Sponsor, what is that? Who is that? Why do we need one? Will it cost me more money? These are some typical questions I often hear when I, as a Project Manager, ask the question, “Who is the Project Sponsor”. Every project has a sponsor whether they know it or not.

July 28, 2014

Is Your Outfit as Out of Date as Your ERP?

We have all seen it. You walk into a conference room that looks as though it hasn’t been updated since the early 90s and then you look up and realize the person you are meeting with hasn’t been either. Why do people let themselves get so out of date? Do they think it works? Do they think there is no need to stay current?

More than likely, these are the same people that have not updated their ERP since the 90s.

July 25, 2014

Power Query–The Heavyweight Champ of Power BI

What is Power Query? Power Query is a self-service data extraction tool that is a free add-in for Excel 2010 or higher. It allows users that are already comfortable with Excel a smaller learning curve to start enjoying Power Query. Power Query has a vast array of options that it can use as data sources…

July 22, 2014

Document Management System…What?

What is a Document Management System and what are the benefits to my organization?

Document Management can be defined as the storage, tracking, and managing of electronic documents and images from paper based information captured through a scanner, computer file, email, etc. So at the simplest level, all PCs could be defined as a basic document management system.

July 18, 2014

“Big data, let’s make you useful.”

A popular buzz word today is “big data”. Big data refers to a collection of data from multiple platforms to generate data set and analytics. Using big data and analytics effectively is in high demand for many supply chain operations. In fact, it is thought to be the revolution in supply chain. Supply chains transact with multiple vendors, manufactures, distributors and retailers which can make for large data sets and unmanageable information. If data is delivered properly it can be effective in the decision making process and improving profitability.

Understanding how to use your data and where your data comes from are key factors in developing useful analytics.

July 17, 2014

Part 1: Five Reasons xRM is Better Than Application Development

IT professionals, business executives and developers, the people and organizations that use software and infrastructure to create custom solutions to business problems, are under pressure to cut costs and improve delivery timelines. In the past, there have been only two approaches to creating a customized solution to fit an entire organization. The first, a best of breed approach, is to purchase software applications that closely match the business requirements of each functional department and then integrate these best of breed applications…

July 14, 2014

Change Management in a Changing Environment

Amit talks about the upheaval that is caused within an organization when a new ERP application is introduced. He expresses some ideas/steps the organization can take to alleviate the issues related to this changing environment while describing his role as a project manager from the consulting side. “Going into an implementation many of us make the mistake of assuming that everyone from the business is onboard and will accept your ERP with open arms. If we make that assumption then we have already set ourselves to fail and the user adoption of your ERP will be the primary cause of this failure…”

July 10, 2014

Using CRM as a Line of Business Application

CRM is no longer the traditional customer relationship management tool, managing contacts and the sales pipeline. Before, CRM was to be only used by sales people to manage their contacts, relationships and their information. Now, CRM has been shared or integrated to other systems for marketing, analytics, projects, etc. CRM, as an enterprise application, has since evolved into a platform.

July 8, 2014

Advanced Allocations in Dynamics-GP

Dynamics-GP provides the capability of performing allocations when posting transactions in the system. Out of the box Dynamics provides two methods of allocating, fixed and variable. For most organizations these two methods of allocations is sufficient. But what if your requirements are more complex?

Think about if you were a government contractor. You need to allocate costs for G&A, Fringe, and Overhead. This can be a very complex allocation process. Or maybe you have your own trickle down allocation process. This could be where you have an allocation within an allocation that then takes the costs allocated by labor hours with the result and finally, allocates it again based on products produced.

July 2, 2014