What’s happening at Convergence 2012

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m pretty excited about Convergence 2012.  The line-up of Microsoft Dynamics CRM sessions alone is pretty amazing:

• CRMUG Day One sessions
• CRM MVP Chat Sessions
  • One with a Developer focus
  • One with a System Administrator, Power and End User focus
• Birds of a Feather lunch sessions
• Microsoft Solutions Experience
  • Wow, if you haven’t looked at the description for this then you should, its pretty amazing
• Hands-On Labs
• One-on-One with Microsoft Support Engineers
• Product demos from Microsoft Product Managers
• A huge variety or product sessions from 100 through 300 level

The above is just a taste of the terrific content available. 

I am definitely getting the feeling that this is going to be one of the best Convergence experiences yet.  I’m also looking forward to meeting up with my fellow Dynamics CRM MVP’s and having the opportunity to chat with the community and hear and respond to your questions. 

Oh, and I would be remiss to not mention the parties.  Oh Ya, we work hard at Convergence but we also play hard.  I’ve already registered for the big bash on Monday night, Convergence Party by: Scribe, Experlogix, ExactTarget, InsideView and CWR Mobility.  What a great lineup of Dynamics CRM Solution providers and attendees.  You know we are going to have some serious fun.  If you are not already registered, I recommend registering today.  If you are attending, look for me and stop by to say hi.

If you would like to look me up during Summit or have a question, you can find me in the MVP Chat sessions on Sunday, Birds of a Feather lunch sessions on Monday and Tuesday, and in the Microsoft SharePoint kiosk on Tuesday morning.  I also plan to help out in the Hands On Lab area throughout the conference.

I’ll be packing my bag in a little over a week, trying on my Cowgal attitude and heading to Houston.  I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone, reconnecting with friends and fellow MVP’s and making new friends this year.

Even if you are not able to attend this year, you have to visit the Convergence 2012 site and check out Cowboy Rodney.  He is a hoot and a kick.

To coin a popular phrase, “Houston, we have a  Go”!

What Should You Expect from an Opportunity & Quote Solution?

Does your company have a complex inventory model with product and service dependencies that have corresponding business rules, dependencies or other characteristics that are challenging to remember or change?  Do your Opportunities, Quotes and Orders require your users to add several products and / or services from product inventory?  If so, I highly recommend that you take a look at Experlogix .

As your CRM users are probably aware, it can take up to 5 mouse clicks to add an inventory line item to an Opportunity, Quote or Order.  If users need to add 10 items, that equates to 50 mouse clicks or more, plus searching through inventory, remembering to add dependent items, doing manual calculations to identify correct quantities, etc.  What if I told you that your users could generate that same Opportunity or Quote in just 5 clicks or less with no manual calculations required, and users do not have to remember to add the inventory dependencies.  Have I captured your attention?  If so, then read on because that is exactly what this product did for the company where I previously worked.

VisionAIR is a software development company for the Public Safety marketplace.  Their Opportunities and Quotes can often be complex due to product / service dependencies and the various calculations required.  Order related CRM records (Opportunities, Quotes, etc.) can contain upward of 50 line items and for more than a year their Sales Team had to manually add all those line items to Opportunity records.  Yes, it is true, the Sales Team generated those records, remembered the line items needed and submitted their quotes for review prior to delivery so calculations could be checked, inventory added if needed, etc.  As you can imagine it was a time intensive task. 

Then along came Experlogix and their Sales Staff now generate the same record in CRM with sometimes 10 or less mouse clicks.  Yes, it’s true, from potentially 250 mouse clicks down to 10 ish.  Talk about a nice return on investment, happy users, reliable calculations, more time available to do what Sales people do best, Sell.

Add to the above, a company whose products are Microsoft Certified, fully integrated with Dynamics applications, and you have a winning combination.  Oh and one more thing, the product support team is responsive and provides outstanding service.

You may be wondering why I took a few minutes to blog about Experlogix.  My reason is that I’ve seen Experlogix in action.  I’ve witnessed times where Experlogix made the difference and was a critical part of the CRM implementation project success.  Over the years, I’ve heard stories from other companies who struggle with generating Opportunities and Quotes from CRM so I wanted to share this information in the event that it might help if you are faced with similar challenges.

Need help improving staff productivity, take the effort out of generating Opportunities, Quotes, Orders and / or Service Contracts, give time back to your Sales and Finance team and significantly reduce the possibility of errors on sale’s related deliverables then Experlogix is worth a look.

Online, Offline, Portals

Cheers