People in finance, operations, and sales positions need applications that are tailored to their particular tasks but still enable them to use and share the same data. For example, sales people need financial data to make marketing decisions, and operations people must get orders from sales people to know what to produce. When business process systems are not integrated and are difficult to use, productivity suffers.

Microsoft has created business management solutions that address these two needs: applications that are customized for roles and integrated to share data using a common database. In addition, these finance, supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems are also integrated with Microsoft Office in a way that makes them familiar and easy to use.

By using integrated business management systems that are built around the way people in your departments actually work, you can better facilitate collaboration among co-workers, clients, and partners, so your business can better serve customers and identify business opportunities.

Accounting and financial professionals face many challenges when they need to:

• Generate business reports.
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations.
• Gain business intelligence.
• Share data for better planning and profitability.

Generate Business Reports

Your financial teams need to generate operational management, financial management, industry and governmental regulatory requirements, and executive management reports. They need a system that accommodates the types of information that support both managerial and financial reporting.

Your managers and staff can use Microsoft Dynamics to get up-to-date information on business performance by using either pre-defined functions for simple reports, or online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes for deeper analysis. With Microsoft Dynamics, people can review, edit, and manipulate data with the widely used spreadsheet application Microsoft Office Excel.

Additionally, using Excel to view and analyze data from Microsoft Dynamics enables people to quickly provide non-system users information they need. For example, your manager can export a list of the most profitable items from Microsoft Dynamics into Excel, and send an e-mail message with the resulting Excel workbook to his sales force, which does not use Microsoft Dynamics. The sales team can access item details in Microsoft Dynamics by using the Smart Tag functionality in Microsoft Excel. With role-based access, the manager can set specific user-access privileges to specific Microsoft Dynamics data, to help ensure that only the right people have access to sensitive information.

Ensure Compliance with Regulations

People need consistent, structured processes to help ensure compliance with industry regulations. When these processes aren't integrated, extracting dispersed data in a consolidated format to produce regulatory reports can be time consuming, and sometimes impossible.

Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, you can eliminate limitations to individual or team productivity. People can access information, documents, and business functions through their browsers, anytime and anywhere. Teams can easily set up collaboration sites, using business portal Web parts, to work together efficiently.

For example, Microsoft Dynamics can help your team put uniform processes in place to help guarantee accountability and reliability throughout your organization. Data from diverse locations will no longer be a problem because it will all be stored in one easy-to-access and easy-to-understand format. Teams that are required by industry-specific compliance regulations to be aware of all information and events that can affect your business will have the visibility and control they need to:

• Be better equipped to recognize and report events.
• Help ensure the integrity of your information and communications.
• Keep the right stakeholders informed.

Gain Business Intelligence

People need tools to analyze and report on data to make intelligent decisions. Microsoft Dynamics is integrated with familiar software and systems, so your employees can use the skills and familiar software they already have. For example, your accounting manager can use the drill-down capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Office Excel to create an intuitive financial-performance chart to present to her manager.

With roles-based access to information, Microsoft Dynamics helps your team members access the data they need to drive business performance. For example, a financial executive can analyze his specific projects and tasks against key performance indicators (KPIs), to clearly see what he must do to accomplish his goals by the end of the year.

When performance lags in a particular area of the KPIs, Microsoft Dynamics will send an alert to your business managers to ensure they know exactly where to focus their time and attention. In addition, your teams can generate reports within Microsoft Dynamics by using SQL Server Reporting Services, build and analyze data warehouses, and organize and use data efficiently-so they can make their important business decisions in less time.

Share Data for Better Planning and Profitability

In terms of team collaboration for planning and profitability, Microsoft Dynamics users can easily and efficiently review, edit, and manipulate data with the widely used spreadsheet application Microsoft Excel. Additionally, they can send this information to non-system users, and managers can control access to sensitive information for security reasons.

Companies engaged in supply chain activities-like delivering sales or services to customers, shipping products, negotiating with suppliers and trading partners, and managing inventory-face a variety of challenges, including the need to:

• Easily share information.
• Increase productivity by streamlining business processes.
• Integrate the demand-driven supply network.

Easily Share Information

Supply chains can become more efficient when you make it easier for people to share information with distributors and suppliers-not just regarding today's orders but design, forecasts, and other critical data, so in case of product launches, for example, everyone can plan to have enough supplies ready in time. If your company still operates with simple financials, spreadsheet-based planning, and disparate manufacturing and/or distribution systems, your management and production teams have no ability to look at the businesses from a customer or a corporate viewpoint without spending days on creating reports from data available only from multiple-and often conflicting-systems.

When you integrate Microsoft Dynamics with portal technology like Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, you can offer collaborative business capabilities in a more secure manner to individuals both inside and outside of your organization. Connect people and processes across companies at the convenience of a Web browser or their desktops for optimal supply chain management (SCM) productivity.

An effective supply chain enables your teams to be responsive to customer demand rather than just pushing products into inventory to fill orders. With integrated, easy-to-use systems that span your business, you can reduce your operating costs while improving your customer service: Sales and marketing teams can inform the warehouse when demand for certain products will rise or fall, so your company can plan ahead.

Increase Productivity by Streamlining Business Processes

Inefficiencies in business processes undercut many companies' chances for success. Productivity should rise as you streamline the following functions:

• Efficient order entry. Customers must be able to order products quickly and easily.
• Cost-effective and precise distribution. Warehouse managers need accurate data and repeatable processes.
• Accurate demand forecasting. Operations managers need to access sales data to plan for inventory and manufacturing.
• Supplier collaboration. Operations managers need to work with suppliers on design, forecasts, and constant improvement.

Microsoft Dynamics can provide your organization with a multitude of ways to plan, coordinate, and carry out delivery of goods and services more productively. You can use Microsoft BizTalk Server in SCM, manufacturing, and other lines of business to connect to legacy systems within your own organization or other companies to help achieve these goals.

Microsoft Dynamics solutions also give businesses a cost-effective way to integrate SCM with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, so you can engage effectively with even the largest customers and suppliers, who often require that all products be tagged before shipping.

Integrate the Demand-Driven Supply Network

Microsoft Dynamics includes fulfillment management and SCM functionality to help you integrate your order entry systems, distribution, and financials brings many benefits to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. For example, when financial applications are integrated with order entry and distribution capabilities, the initial order triggers the warehouse to pull the order, acknowledge the shipment, bill the order, and use this demand signal to help define future orders. Also, when orders are automatically sent to the warehouse for fulfillment and integrated with invoicing and re-ordering systems, your teams can save significant time and effort in data entry, customer service, and financial reporting.

An integrated, demand-driven supply network can provide many benefits, including:

• The ability to more proactively and profitably link pricing, promotions, and other sales incentives.
• The ability to make more informed decisions as a result of more accurate data and a better understanding of customer demand.
• A more efficient use of core assets such as plant capacity, equipment, and labor.
• A better understanding of what your customers want and need so that you can improve the products you create, your delivery times, and customer satisfaction.

With Microsoft Dynamics you can have a quicker and more reliable overview of the resources required to meet customer demand by performing rough capacity scheduling. And you can deliver customized products faster and more cost-effectively by reducing the manual work involved in designing, planning and producing them.

Three worlds must successfully integrate for your employees to do their best work: your company's internal world, which consists of your business processes and the team environment; the world of your customers, which consists of their past, current, and future needs; and the world of your partners and suppliers. How can your company infrastructure support your employees' successful navigation within and among these worlds?

As a people-ready business, you can help them to:

• Understand internal data and external market trends.
• Integrate and automate your business processes to grow sales.
• Get the information to better collaborate and understand the business and your customers.
• Adapt successfully to changes in systems and processes.

Understand Internal Data and External Market Trends

Understanding internal data and external market trends is essential when launching new products, optimizing campaigns, or managing direct sales and channel strategies. The faster a marketing and sales organization can act, the better it can deliver products to customers and increase revenue.

Integrate and Automate Your Business Processes to Grow Sales

Companies that do not have an integrated CRM system often track sales history and competitive information manually, using proprietary methods-such as e-mail stored on hard drives or individually maintained spreadsheets-that make access to accurate data cumbersome or even impossible. Data entry errors and duplicated data add to the confusion.

Such manual or poorly automated processes result in lost time and inconsistent sales processes. The lack of a centralized data repository that's accessible to employees in the field also impedes the ability of sales people to qualify leads and respond to new business opportunities. When your systems prohibit sales managers' ability to view and measure the return on marketing activities, your teams have no way of knowing whether the campaign was effective. Finally, disconnected business processes provide an incomplete view of the customer and of the business, not only limiting sales managers' ability to react quickly to new opportunities, but also driving up operational costs.

Microsoft CRM adapts easily to your existing business workflow and processes. You or your IT staff can quickly modify application forms, data fields, and relationships, and add new activities and objects without writing a single line of code. You'll also find a number of workflow innovations that speed use, including next-step suggestions and automatic task assignment. You can store your valuable customer data, contact information, and sales leads all in Microsoft CRM.

Get the Information to Better Collaborate and Understand the Business and Your Customers

Dedicated, skilled people work more effectively when they have:

• Access to a complete view of customer information and business data across the company.
• Standardized and consistent business processes to work effectively.
• Collaboration tools that simplify working with colleagues and partners.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your sales representatives can manage all sales data, campaigns, and marketing information from within Microsoft Outlook. They can view, update, and share contacts and opportunities across the organization, and access current product information, new leads, and contracts related to the sales process. This can all be done from within Microsoft Outlook without the need to learn a different system or switch back and forth between applications.

Adapt Successfully to Changes in Systems and Processes

In the past, barriers to successful CRM implementations have included the lack of employee adoption, use, and compliance across the organization. A key advantage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is its native integration with core Microsoft products, which helps organizations mitigate the risk of poor user adoption. Your employees can easily perform tasks because the user interface is familiar, and they do not need to switch applications to complete or track transactions. For example, sales representatives can track customer contacts and sales data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Microsoft Outlook as well as view activities, accounts, information about competitors, and more.