Momentum, the midsize business center newsletter: Choice relationships

Choice relationships

Dear subscriber,

You don't have to be on the Fortune 500 list to benefit from a customer relationship management (CRM) system; every company needs one in order to find, keep and grow customer relationships. The key is having the right CRM system to meet your needs now and in the future. As head of global product management and marketing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I'm delighted to introduce this month's issue of Momentum in which we look at CRM deployment strategies, including how to train and utilize power users to improve deployment and win over sales and marketing practitioners. We also invite your comments to help us ensure this newsletter is a great source of information for your business. Email us at mo-info@Microsoft.com.

Best regards,
Brad Wilson
General Manager
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Business Solutions

Featured articles

Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps two companies increase productivity

See how Microsoft Dynamics CRM helped two very different midsize organizations—a New York distributor of medical supplies and a city government in Portugal—accelerate vital business processes as much as 50 percent.

CRM champions

CRM deployments frequently fail because users resist the software. Internal CRM champions can help shepherd acceptance.

How to increase flexibility using Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM

The forthcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM, a hosted offering, will expand Microsoft's efforts to give customers more flexible software deployment options.

Technology at work

Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Exchange: A strong foundation for CRM

Just as a building is stronger with a properly built foundation, your CRM solution delivers better results when it can draw on the features and familiar user interfaces of Microsoft's core productivity and desktop applications.

Marketing help for smaller businesses

Microsoft Office Live Premium can help you organize and manage marketing campaigns.

Taking the pain—and some costs—out of upgrading

With new versions of Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server coming out soon, Software Assurance may make the process easier and more affordable.

Protect customer data with Windows Rights Management Services

Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) adds an extra layer of security to sensitive data. This article describes how you can use its capabilities to keep customer information safe.

How to train your CRM champions

There are three steps you should take to prepare your power users for the deployment of new CRM software: Train them on the basic application, train them on the prototype, and make sure they understand the underlying business processes.

Company, customers fly with integrated portals

Open communications expedite business processes for an aircraft repair services company.

The antidote to flagging profit margins

Marketing professionals can use technology tools to bridge organizational silos and build more profitable relationships with customers.

Technology puts insurance adjusters back in the field

Information technology is changing the way insurance adjusters work by reducing the paper shuffle and allowing them to work more efficiently at the site of a claim.

Spotlight

Blogs eat supermarket fodder

For many people, supermarket tabloids, those purveyors of glitz, glamour, sleaze, and the incredible, hold a lurid fascination. But with the proliferation of other media—ranging from niche-oriented cable TV programs to Web sites and blogs—their position and even their very survival are under threat. Over the summer, one of the most enduringly outlandish publications in the bunch, the Weekly World News, purveyor of such headlines as "Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby" and "Bat Boy Child Found in Cave," ceased its print publication.

The aptly named Grim Reaper (a pen name for an unidentified publishing professional) says, "We're seeing the shoe drop on the tabloid world. The cultural paradigm is shifting and people can read about exaggerated and questionable things on most blogs. This is why...the National Enquirer and The Star are losing circulation faster than Paris Hilton goes through dogs."

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Ph.D, a professor of English at Central Michigan University and an expert on popular culture, echos the Grim Reaper. "What outrageous tabloids like the Weekly World News do is to feed the human desire for the marvelous. It's no surprise that, surrounded by ‘real' news about war, murder, domestic violence, etc., and faced with real problems such as paying the rent, aging parents, and illness, that some entertaining escapist news about World War II bombers found on the moon and Satan captured would be attractive," he says.

However, he notes, while "collective imagining"—from Greek mythology to the tall tales of Paul Bunyan—changes with the times, "the desire to expand the parameters of our world and to create new universes remains constant." The same stories many of us have paged through at the supermarket checkout line, says Weinstock, are now simply playing out now in different venues—on YouTube, increasingly in science fiction and fantasy films, and in blogs.

So, good-bye, Weekly World News in print. Maybe we'll catch you on our mobiles as we're waiting in the checkout line.

Editor's Note: Do you have an interesting idea or anecdote for our Spotlight section? We're soliciting ideas for stories that are interesting, unusual, or humorous. If you have a story you think should be told, send us a note at mo-info@microsoft.com.

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