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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.
The CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.
As of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.
Product Offerings
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −
CRM Online
CRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.
CRM On-Premise
CRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.
From the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.
Accessing CRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be accessed via any of the following options −
Product Competitors
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is undoubtedly one of the top products in the CRM space. However, following are the other products that compete with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Product Versions
Microsoft Dynamics CRM has grown over the years starting from its 1.0 version in 2003. The latest version (as of writing this article) is 2015. Following is the chronological list of release versions −
With Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises), you have several options that help make your deployment run optimally, reliably, and securely. In most situations where Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) is running in a production environment, we recommend that you apply the latest update for all Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) applications shortly after the update becomes available.
Dynamics 365 Server and desktop applications use two kinds of update technology:
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) Setup update
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) Setup update, also known as self-healing Setup, makes sure that you have the latest version of Setup. By using this feature, you can update the Setup program, before it installs anything on the computer, for the following Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) applications:
To use Setup update, select Get updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) during Setup. For Dynamics 365 for Outlook, Setup update applies the latest published update package at the end of Setup.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) application updates
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) publishes updates in a package format that is a collection of software updates. Microsoft fully tests and supports installing any published update for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) at the time of its release.
Distribution and application of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) updates
Dynamics 365 Server and desktop applications are engineered to use Microsoft Update, a service that can automatically download and install updates to Microsoft applications.
During installation or upgrade of a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) application, Setup asks whether you want to opt in, which sets Microsoft Update to apply automatic updates. If you don’t want to apply automatic updates during Setup, you can enable this feature later by turning on automatic updates in the Windows Update area of Settings. More information: Windows Update: FAQ.
When you enable Microsoft Update, updates are automatically downloaded for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) for Customer Enagement and for any other Microsoft applications that are enabled to use Microsoft Update.
If you don’t want to use Microsoft Update, you can still download updates from the Microsoft Download Center and manually install them or push them out to the appropriate computers by using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). More information: Windows Server Update Services.
Update requirements
An update may require updates to required components, such as the Microsoft .NET Framework or even an earlier Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) update. For more information about such requirements, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article for the update.
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