Microsoft has developed a range of FREE add-on Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
Each accelerator is available at no cost to Dynamics CRM customers and showcase how Dynamics CRM 4.0 can be configured and extended to broaden marketing, sales and service capabilities.
Business Analytics Accelerator
Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is designed to support a range of business intelligence “maturity” levels for customers and partners. The Analytics accelerator has been built to cater for differing business intelligence skill-sets and experience levels.
Event Management Accelerator
The event management accelerator gives organizations the ability to manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for events. The event management accelerator focuses on three areas of event management, namely:
Event Planning - logistics around an event such as:
- Booking the venue
- Presenters
- Catering
- Presentation content preparation
Event Attendance - all aspects around managing the attendees such as:
- Inviting the target audience via phone, fax, letter and email
- Managing registrations via phone, letter, fax, email and web
- Tracking all people who actually attended the event
Event Review – Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports that measure the effectiveness of the event:
- How many people attended the event?
- What was the revenue impact of the event?
A core component of the event management accelerator is the web registration portal that customers and partners can deploy to allow web registration for their events and track these registrations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The solution also consists of a plugin to manage registration counts and waitlists.
eService Portal Accelerator
The eService accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides customer self-service capabilities (via a web portal) as a configurable out-of-the-box offering. For example you can allow your Clients to view, add and edit support case online at any time.
Enterprise Search Accelerator
The enterprise search accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals.
Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator
The extended sales forecasting accelerator enriches the out-of-the-box sales forecasting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Principally, sales users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can review their individual sales pipeline and quickly classify opportunities as committed, excluded or upside. Sales managers can monitor and track sales targets, budgets and performance against these forecasts for specific time periods (e.g. months and quarters).
Underpinning these capabilities are new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 reports that summarize sales performance for the organization as a whole or for individual salespeople.
CRM Notifications Accelerator
The CRM notifications accelerator allows users to subscribe to the CRM “business events” that are significant to them, e.g. a salesperson is interested in new leads and opportunities assigned to them whereas a customer service representative is interested in new service cases assigned to them. Once the user has subscribed (each user manages their subscription profile) to the types of events that are important to them they can elect how they want these event notifications to be delivered. Notifications are delivered via a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and can be consumed with many desktop tools including Microsoft Outlook 2007.
Sales Methodologies Accelerator
The sales methodologies accelerator is for customers who work with or want to work with one of the leading sales methodology vendors, including: Target Account Selling (TAS), SPI Solution Selling and Miller Heiman. Each of these vendors has their own distinct software products which need to be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a holistic approach to sales management.
The sales methodologies accelerator will provide customizations, advice and guidance for customers on how these sales methodologies can be configured, managed and integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
Social Networking Accelerator
The Social Networking Accelerator allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services. This accelerator delivers integration with Twitter; other networks will be introduced in future releases.
Here is a great video demonstrating how it works.
http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/c8c07884-86f6-4aa4-b617-daf65daa2f80
Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator
The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator allows businesses to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners. It provides pre-built extensions to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM sales force automation functionality, including new data entities, workflow and reports. Using the PRM Accelerator, companies can jointly manage sales processes with their channel partners through a centralized Web portal, as well as extend this integration to automate additional business processes.
Portal Integration Accelerator
The Portal Integration Accelerator easily connects Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web experience. This release builds on the eService portal engine and expands to allow customers to configure and expose any CRM entity to an external facing portal.