Microsoft Dynamics CRM – ALM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: CRM Solution Lifecycle Management
Today Microsoft released a new white paper titled ALM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: CRM Solution Lifecycle Management. It’s great to see a white paper or information being released in this area.
You can download the whitepaper here
What does this white paper provide?
This paper provides a coherent, end-to-end approach to development, including version control and build and release management, of enterprise business solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Why do we need to read this?
While there are a number of approaches to ALM for CRM in the market, a definitive and full lifecycle approach has not been concisely communicated by Microsoft. Many customers, partners, and consultants are reaching out for best practice advice and guidance in this area, and it is Microsoft’s responsibility to deliver on this expectation. This white paper delivers on this expectation.
You can download the whitepaper here
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
YellowDuckGuy – Blog Statistics as of May 1st 2013
When I started this blog I thought “Should I spend time creating one of these?” or “Will I get time to keep it updated?”. Time management is always a tough skill to balance but I decided I wanted to have a site where I can share my experiences, findings, resolutions to errors and a general reference site to support me when I’m working on customer projects.
It has been a ride since 2006. Initially started as a live spaces account (Microsoft shut it down in March 16th 2011) and now this yellowduckguy.com resides as a WordPress account. Since then I have been able to share more information and find time to keep the site up to date as much as possible.
Below is some of the statistics of this blog I thought I would share with you. Thanks for reading and commenting – much appreciated!
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
CRM – Gartner Reports 12.5% CRM Growth in 2012
Gartner is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner carries out an extensive research program to collect figures for worldwide release. Their website can be found here.
Here is some of the information shared in a press release today:
Salesforce.com passed SAP as the lead vendor in the worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) software market in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Total worldwide CRM software revenue totaled $18 billion in 2012, up 12.5 percent from $16 billion in 2011.
Vendors benefited from strong demand for software as a service (SaaS), which represented nearly 40 percent of CRM total software revenue in 2012, as organizations of all sizes sought easier-to-deploy alternatives to replace legacy systems, as net-new applications or to provide alternative complementary functionality.
Lets look at the figures released by Gartner:
Summary of the findings shows that Microsoft stands is in fourth place, trailing Salesforce.com, SAP and Oracle. The good news for Microsoft and its partners is that Microsoft Dynamics CRM officially joined Microsoft’s $1b businesses club in the calendar year of 2012.
As Microsoft releases more updates to Dynamics CRM Online (SaaS) and releases Orion (next major release of Dynamics CRM), we should see more growth by Microsoft in the next calendar year. It would be good to see Microsoft knock Oracle off 3rd position and continue to grow up the ladder.
Overall this growth is great for CRM as a whole worldwide. We look forward to another exciting 2013 year!
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
CRM – CRM for Dummies – Free eBook Compliments of Microsoft
I Noticed today a free distributed CRM for Dummies eBook available for you to download and read. So I thought I would give this a plug on my blog.
Blurb from the book:
About This Book
In this book, you discover information about functionalities that will improve the way you handle customer contacts, leads, opportunities and case resolution.
These out-of-the-box functionalities can make your sales and marketing processes more effective and efficient. Thanks to free trials, you’ll be ready to put your hands on and experience the power of operational CRM for you and your organisation.
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
Microsoft Convergence 2013 – Blog 4- Orion Roadmap & Look n Feel Screenshots
Wednesday 20th March 2013 session at Convergence 2013 in New Orleans, Jujhar Singh delivered a session titled CSCRM08 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Product Recap & Roadmap Primer. Now this is a session I had been waiting for. It contained the roadmap and look n feel of the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM code name Orion, which was released publically today to customers, partners and other attendees of Convergence 2013. I will continue on the theme of photos. They explain most of it – I’m sure you can read from the photos right?
The roadmap can be displayed in 4 areas:
- Polaris
- BCM
- Polaris Update
- Gemini
- Orion
- Orion MKT
The next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will come in the form of the Orion release in the second half of 2013.
The major themes for the Orion release are as follows:
- User Experience – Continuation of the journey in Polaris
- Ubiquitous – Role-tailored applications for Sales Professionals. (Ubiquitous key word replaces the word Mobile. You will be hearing this a lot more).
- Productivity – Internal Collaboration for the on-premise customers & Server Sync enhancements
- Business Process – Process-centric theme continued to the next level
- Online – Online first focus to continue (this means CRM Online will get all the new features first before OnPremise)
Now lets take a look at the new Orion User Interface. Firstly, you will notice it has no ribbon. Next it has no left navigation bar. The navigation bar is now at the top (as shown in purple colour in the screenshot below).
This new UI drives a better user experience for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Everything is happening in the one browser window. Note: I have no information on the Outlook UI. You will need to wait for Microsoft to announce this.
If you have used Outlook.com, then you will be familiar with the dropdown navigation. This experience is now similar within Orion as shown below.
More UI screenshots can be seen below
The mobility roadmap for Orion
Platform in Orion
The Next Frontier …
This slide gives you a snapshot of what is coming
This is the look n feel of the MarketingPilot application which will be a part of the Gemini release. Note the flat UI.
Exciting times ahead in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
Microsoft Convergence 2013–Blog 3–Opening Keynote
Today, Tuesday 19th March 2013, we were greeted with the Opening Keynote. This is the must attend session to kick of Convergence 2013. After taking in a good breakfast at the hotel we all headed over to get our reserved seats at the Keynote – right up the front!
Yep you read it right. 11,500 attendees to Microsoft Convergence 2013. Great turnout Microsoft. Also means 3,000+ partners in attendance.
What I will do for this blog post is post the photos in the order I took them and you can then consume the information from them. A picture is worth a thousand words .. right?
Walking into the Keynote area
Wow! that is a heap of seats. Thanks to those who had to set them all up. You deserve a beer or three.
Keynote Music
The team representing New Zealand start to fill up there reserved seats – that includes me!
Large attendance for Convergence 2013 Keynote
Speaker list for the Keynote, which included the customers sharing their experiences with the Dynamics products.
Officially announced today. Microsoft has acquired social monitoring analytics vendor Netbreeze to integrate with the Dynamics CRM platform. NAV 2013 and GP 2013 will be available in Windows Azure from June 2013.
5 Billion GBs of data is collected in 10 minutes!
Microsoft’s View: Devices and Services
Chobani share their experiences to the attendees
Weightwatchers share their experience to the attendees
Revlon share their experiences with the attendees
Now we start to see the demo information (via photos in this blog post)
Multi-tasking apps in Windows 8. Skype call goes out to Reuben in this demo.
The CRM UI flow process
Yammer integration with CRM. “Liked by Hamish Hill” – nice one!
Taking the power Netbreeze. The new product coming to the CRM platform
Analytics in motion!
Social experience inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM
That concludes blog posting number 3. Hopefully the photos were helpful, especially if you couldn’t make Convergence this year.
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
Microsoft Convergence 2013 – Blog 2 – Bourbon Street & Experience Center
If you reading on from my last blog post, then the next couple of things to blog about would be the trip to Randy & Andy’s Convergence 2013 party and the Convergence Experience Center. Consider this blog number 2 of the series.
I attended the Partner Q&A on Sunday 17th March. Quite a few asked the panel questions and they responded with the answers. Some of the content would be released at the opening Keynote for customers.
Once the Partner Q&A wrapped up it was off to refresh up and attend the Microsoft NZ drinks get together. This is a opportunity for the Kiwi team to get together and say hi and have a good chat over a drink and then head into the famous ‘Bourbon Street’ of New Orleans to the ‘Randy & Andy’s Convergence 2013 bash.
On the way, we got to experience (first time for me) the famous Bourbon Street. Few photos below to give you an idea of what it is like. I laughed as one store which sold clothes during the day converted to selling beer at night via beer kegs connected up out back. You don’t see clothes stores selling beer in NZ right? Correct me if I’m wrong.
The art of throwing green bead necklaces everywhere from the balcony was (how should I describe it?) “interesting”.
It was a good night out with the other kiwi folks and managed to down a few drinks (yea one too many!) and woke up the next day with a slightly sore head!
So after the hot chocolate from Starbucks at 1pm the next day kicked in and my energy levels on the rise, it was off to the Convergence Experience Center.
On Monday 18th March when I entered the Experience Center I was greeted by Karaoke in the Convergence Theater. You could hear this throughout the whole building. I didn’t stick around this area to see if anyone else got up for a sing.
Below are a few other photos from the Experience Center.
The cakes shown above were awesome. If there was a Facebook ‘like’ feature on this post, then I certainly will be giving it to the cakes on this table.
Xbox Kinect darts being played out at the Microsoft stand
The main message for this year’s Convergence 2013 is ‘A World Ahead’.
Well that concludes blog 2. Need to keep them brief as I only get small windows to do write ups. Next blog post should hopefully contain the Keynote.
Thanks for reading.
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
