CWR Mobility Blog

Enhancing Your Demo Builder System with Mobile CRM

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:11:22 GMT

by Ross Dembecki, Sales and Partner VP for Asia-Pacific Region

For those unfamiliar with Demo Builder, it is a tool from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product team used by both Microsoft employees and channel partners to quickly build an end-to-end demonstration environment in the cloud that highlights Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online and SharePoint Online. There are several different demos available:

The Microsoft Demo Hub contains the link to download the Demo Builder tool. The install only takes a couple of minutes. Then it steps you through the provisioning wizard. While your demo deploys you can review the provided presentation script.

You will need an active user account on the Microsoft Demo Hub. To set one up, or login, go to: http://demobuilder.cloudapp.net.

With the rise of smart mobile devices in the business world, we are seeing CRM resellers and integrators showcase mobile CRM in every CRM demonstration. So, if you use Microsoft’s Demo Builder to simplify and accelerate your CRM demos, the steps below will show you how easy it is to add mobile CRM using CWR Mobile CRM Online.

The Steps to Mobile Demo Success – Get Your CRM Demo System Ready

1.If required, create a new “Microsoft account” (formerly known as a Windows Live ID) here: https://signup.live.com/

Note: We recommend you use a new account for each new demo system. This way you can easily share the user name and password with a prospect after a demo so they can explore the system on their own.

2.Armed with your new Microsoft Account, go to the Microsoft Demo Hub where you can login and launch the Demo Builder tool: http://demobuilder.cloudapp.net

3.Run the Demo Builder tool, make your choices and then provision your cloud systems. For the purposes of this article, let us run with the “Base Demo (Polaris).”

4.Choose your preferences.

Note: For partners in Australia, choose a different market (e.g. Singapore or NZ) in this step, because Demo Builder cannot deploy an Office 365 org for Australia because of the way the Telstra arrangement with Microsoft is structured.

5. After completing the steps in the Demo Builder tool, login to the Office 365 portal at: https://login.microsoftonline.com with your account.

6.You should be at your main console for the demo “company” on Office 365 with access to email (Exchange Online), sites (SharePoint Online) and CRM (CRM Online)

7.On the main menu bar click the three dots "…" and choose "CRM" from the pull down.

8.Once inside your new Dynamics CRM Online instance, go to the Dashboards, choose the "Demo Data Ager" dashboard, and then select Start to make all the demo data applicable to current dates.

9.Now your CRM demo organization is ready with relevant sample data. You can also review the Microsoft supplied presentation script. Now is a good time to think about the 3rd party products you would like to add to the environment.

The Steps to Mobile Demo Success – Add CWR Mobile CRM to Your New Demo System

You can quickly and easily add a 30-day trial of CWR Mobile CRM Online (the cloud based subscription service of our market leading mobile CRM solutions) to compliment your 30-day Dynamics CRM Online demo system. With these steps, you should have your first device connected in 10 - 15 minutes.

1.To get CWR Mobile CRM added to your CRM Online demo system, start here: http://www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm-trial-organization/online-instructions

Note: Follow the instructions (and watch the short video) on this page to get the mobile CRM trial integrated to your new CRM Online demo organization.

2.At the end of the CWR Mobile CRM provisioning, you will receive a page with the setup instructions for your mobile device(s).

Note: We recommend you SAVE this information.

3.With your preferred demo device (smartphone, tablet, etc.), install the CWR Mobility app from the relevant store/marketplace and connect the CWR Mobility app to your demo instance.

Note: After searching for CWR Mobility in the store, make sure you choose the one-labelled 5.1.

4.If you want to demo this from your PC (and maybe even project it to a live audience or on a webinar) you can try the Android emulator from http://www.bluestacks.com/

a.Once you are running BlueStacks, you can search and install CWR Mobile CRM 2011 5.1.

b.Select NO on sample database question

c. Complete the setup (URL, org, username, password, etc) and then wait for the metadata to sync.

d. After the app starts, go into sync and start a synchronisation.

e.Once the sync completes, the demo data from your Dynamics CRM Online organization will be in the offline database inside the Android virtual machine on your Windows PC. If you are not familiar with Android, the back arrow and menu buttons on the bottom left corner are your new best friends. The menu button is the "in application" menu where you will find contextually relevant actions like changing your view within a list.

You are now ready to include a mobile CRM portion into all your CRM presentations. For those of you familiar with working with CWR Mobile CRM, you will notice that in our 5.1.6 release, we now auto provision new users on first time connection as long as there is a license slot available. This shortens the demo preparation steps dramatically. In the past, you had to go into the CWR Configurator in the Settings area of Dynamics CRM:

Then you would add a CWR user, add a device to the user and connect a profile to the device. All that is done automatically now, which is why the steps above are so brief. However, depending on your demo needs, you may well be dealing with a custom entity or two, so please take the time to familiarize yourself with the tools in the CWR Configurator. This is where you can customize profiles, forms, modify sync filters and views, etc. This is also where you can add JavaScript code to the mobile forms using the new CWR JavaScript SDK.

I hope this has clarified the process and inspired you to add a mobile CRM segment to all your future demonstrations to new and existing customers. Happy selling!

An Introduction to Mobile Form Scripting with CWR Mobility's JavaScript SDK

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:35:59 GMT

Microsoft® Dynamics CRM celebrated its tenth birthday last month, and a lot has changed since that initial version. Dynamics CRM has grown from a relatively obscure product (version 1.0 was just a collection of APIs) to a powerful application platform.

Since its first release, CWR Mobile CRM has also grown. We’ve gone from supporting a single model (Windows Mobile 6.5) to multiple mobile platforms, with more on the way. Over the next few months, CWR Mobility will release some powerful new features that will continue to make CWR Mobile CRM the premier solution for mobile CRM applications.

In this post, the first in a three part series, we will examine one of those features: Mobile Form Scripting which was introduced in CWR Mobile CRM v 5.1.6.

Mobile Form Scripting

JavaScript has become a de facto standard for creating interactive Dynamics CRM forms. CWR Mobile CRM now brings that same power to all of our mobile platforms.

Unlike other mobile solutions that only let you program forms within their set of pre-defined tools or rules, CWR Mobility brings form scripting with JavaScript on par with CRM’s scripting itself. In keeping with our design philosophy, there is nothing new to learn. It’s familiar, it’s flexible, and it’s powerful. And in most cases, you can simple copy your CRM scripts and paste them into a CWR form, with relatively minor changes.

Types of Scripts

To introduce and demonstrate the power of mobile form scripting, we’ll consider scripts from the following general categories:

1. Data Validation
2. Automation
3. Process Enhancement and Control

Data Validation
If you’ve ever needed anything more than “is required” for a field, you can now create scripts that check form data before it is saved. Does the account number match our format? Is that currency field above the limit for this account?

Automation
With a mobile form script you can help automate data entry to boost user productivity and ensure better data quality. For example, if a new account is in a particular country, you can automatically assign it to a territory.

Process Enhancement and Control
Often the data that someone is entering into a form determines what else is required for that record. If the opportunity status is “hot” you may want to make the estimated close date required instead of recommended. If this new account is a “customer” then show all the customer-related fields, and hide all of the vendor-related fields. Or if the category is set to a specific value, change the options available in the sub-category (a “cascading picklist).

Over the next three weeks, we are going to take a practical look at scripts from each of these categories and how you can incorporate them into your mobile solutions.

Using Scripts in Your Mobile Forms
This week we’ll look at a sample data validation script, and how that can be incorporated in the mobile form.

Form Scripting in CRM
We’ll start with a simple currency field in the Account entity. In this case we’ve created a new field to represent a credit limit, and we’ll return an alert if the amount in that field exceeds a predetermined amount.

We’ve placed that field on our Account form.

In the form properties, we’ve created a new JavaScript library (new_MRR_Blog), which contains our validation code. We’ve defined and created a function that will be invoked when the CreditLimit field changes.

The JavaScript will compare the value we’ve entered into the CreditLimit field, and display an alert message if the value exceeds $100,000. Note the use of the default namespace, Xrm. We will refer to this later on.

The JavaScript code for the Account form:

function new_CreditLimit_OnChange()
{
    if(Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_creditlimit").getValue() > 100000)
    {
    alert("Credit limit exceeded");
    }
}

After the form is saved and published, the alert will be displayed should the value exceed $100,000.

Mobile Form Scripting in CWR Mobile CRM

The process of adding the same type of validation to the mobile form in CWR is, by design, nearly identical to the CRM procedure.

Before we begin, we’ve updated the Account entity in the Entities section of the CWR Configurator, which will make the CreditLimit field available to us.

We then added the CreditLimit field to the mobile form.

In the form properties, we create a new JavaScript library which will contain our mobile validation code.

CWR Mobile CRM maintains its own library of mobile functions because (1) the namespace we are going to use in our code is different that the form’s Xrm namespace, and (2) not all functions in the Xrm namespace have been ported to the mobile environment. You can find the complete mobile API reference on our web site. For the most part, however, the mobile form scripts are going to be nearly identical to the CRM form scripts.

You can see that the form properties are almost identical – we are using a (mobile) form library which will contain our scripting code, and we are specifying what function to run when the CreditLimit field has been changed.

When we open the mobile form library, you can see that the scripting code is the same, with one exception. We are no longer running code in the Xrm namespace – we are in a mobile-specific namespace called Mobile.

The JavaScript code for the mobile Account form:

function new_CreditLimit_OnChange()
{
    if(Mobile.Page.getAttribute("new_creditlimit").getValue() > 100000)
    {
      alert("Credit limit exceeded");
    }
}

After we save and publish the form, and synchronize the new form to a mobile device, we can see the results of the validation script on the mobile device.

This is the form we created running on an iPad. One of the great things about CWR Mobile CRM scripting is that this same form will work on any of the platforms CWR Mobility supports: iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, Android (Tablets and Phones), Blackberry, and more to come. Just like our form design, there’s no need to build device-specific code around one platform. You can support them all, with the same form and the same script.

Recap

This entry introduced you to a powerful new capability of CWR Mobile CRM in form scripting with JavaScript. You’ve seen how you can take your existing scripts, copy them to a mobile form, and with a few minor changes, have those scripts running on any CWR Mobility supported mobile device.

If you are a CRM Administrator, or a Designer, or Architect – none of this is really new to you. You can use what you already know, what you’re already familiar with, to build more robust and effective mobile applications.

Next time, we’ll take a look at how we can use JavaScript in your mobile environment to automate data entry, making it easier to use your forms, and helping to boost the quality of your data captured on the mobile device. And in our last entry we will build some interactive forms – forms that enhance your data-collection processes and control the flow of that data.

Meanwhile, be sure to visit http://www.cwrmobility.com where you can find the latest CWR Mobile CRM 2011 v5.1.6.0 software, updated documentation and API references, product announcements and more.

And finally – if you are headed to the Big Easy for Convergence 2013, be sure to visit our booth (#950) in the Expo Hall. We’ll be glad to give you a first-hand look at all of our new features.

Tweet

Case Study: Global Investment Firm Promotes Thought Leadership with CRM Solution

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:15:56 GMT

Henderson Global Investors is one of Europe’s largest investment management groups with over £65 billion in assets under management. Employing 1,000 people across 15 locations worldwide, they provide clients with access to investment professionals representing a broad range of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, property, and private equity. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the firm has improved reporting, given staff mobile access to data, and is significantly enhancing the service it provides to customers.

Learn how Henderson improved their CRM data quality by adding mobile access with CWR Mobile CRM.

Click on the link to read the complete Microsoft Case Study. http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM/Henderson/Global-Investment-Firm-Promotes-Thought-Leadership-with-CRM-Solution/710000002229

Mobile First: Deliver the Right Mobile Experiences

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:42:18 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

Deliver the Right Mobile Experiences

To achieve maximum business impact, focus not just on delivering a mobile experience, but on delivering the right mobile experiences – experiences that help various roles within your business get their jobs done in new and more efficient ways.

Myths

• Recreating the desktop experience on mobile devices will be sufficient to meet your employees’ needs
• Having to think specifically about mobile experiences isn’t worth it

Mobile Experiences Must be Modern, Streamlined and Tailored

As reported on CRMsearch, according to Nucleus Research regarding their 2012 study of the addition of mobile device access to CRM, companies which achieved the least success when deploying mobile CRM were those that simply migrated existing desktop CRM processes to a mobile device, whereas those who reimagined how to take advantage of the unique capabilities of particular mobile devices achieved greater success.

Capitalizing on Mobile to create business advantage requires focus on delivering mobile application user experiences that enable new productivity gains for your organization’s diverse workforce.

• Modern Experiences. Mobile application user experiences should leverage the approach of consumer-styled applications; be visually compelling, elegant and effortless to use.
• Streamlined Experiences. Mobile application user experiences should be streamlined and uncluttered. The objective is to include targeted features and capabilities that meet the specific needs of a mobile usage scenario rather than simply force-fitting a desktop or web user experience into a mobile form factor.
• Tailored Experiences. Mobile application user experiences best fulfill their purpose when they are tailored to the role and tasks of a specific employee role. These experiences should contextualize information for the user – present information in the appropriate context in which the user needs to consume it – to help the user get their job done. Since organizations are comprised of a diverse range of roles, it will be advantageous to choose a mobile solution that can easily enable a range of tailored experiences.

Key Questions to Consider

• When on the go, do your users really need all of the features and functions from their desktop CRM application? Would they be better off with fewer capabilities better suited to an on-the-go usage scenario?
• How could you envision the capabilities delivered by mobile experiences varying between different roles within your company?
• What features and functionality specific to mobile devices could your users really benefit from when on the go that would either not be available or not make sense to be available in a desktop user experience?
• Will your users adopt the app? What will the mobile experience need to deliver to drive successful adoption?

To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

How to synchronize a hand-picked selection of CRM records (Leads, Contacts or Accounts) to your mobile device

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:57:24 GMT

By Mike Platvoet, Technical Specialist at CWR Mobility

To view specific data or CRM records on your mobile device CWR Mobile CRM uses Synchronization Filters to define which data is sent to the mobile device for offline usage. This requires you to set up a query that matches your CRM attributes. Examples of commonly used filters are: Accounts From My Region, All Contacts That I Own, or All Leads That Came in the Last 60 Days, and so on. But what if you can’t find any general criteria which match the records that you want to have on your mobile device? What if you just want to hand pick the records yourself? You can, using Marketing Lists in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In CRM, Marketing Lists are used to create a set of data typically used for mailings or campaigns. Marketing List tools allow you to add records using methods such as Selection and Advanced Find to maintain data in these Marketing Lists.

If you want to make a selection of your records available to synchronize, simply create a Marketing List and assign yourself as the Owner. Then add the records that you want on your mobile device to that Marketing List using the common CRM selection utilities for Marketing Lists.

The next step is to go to the CWR Mobile Configurator and create a Synchronization Filter that enables you to get that data to your device. On the Contacts, Accounts and Leads entities you will find that the Marketing List entity is available as a linked entity. It is quite easy to add a condition that specifies retrieval of records from only the Marketing List(s) for which the current user is the Owner.

The screenshot below illustrates an example of how to get contacts from the Marketing Lists that I own:

Of course, this principle can be extended to the related entities of the Account, Contact or Lead, which are virtually all entities in CRM. You only need to add the relationship to the entity that you need.

The next example shows how to set up a Synchronization Filter that allows you to synchronize emails that are related to an Open Lead in your Marketing List:

Some warnings:
• Be careful if the user owns other Marketing Lists! It may be helpful to add an attribute to the Marketing List entity which you can use to filter the specific Marketing Lists (e.g. a Boolean field “Mobile Sync List”).
• Try to limit the number of linked entities in a Synchronization Filter. We recommend that you use no more than six linked entities in one Synchronization Filter. Using more than six entities is possible but may slow down the system during synchronization.

Now you have the tools to create and manage dynamic data from mobile devices without having to find general selection criteria that define which records are important to you. By simply maintaining your Marketing Lists in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you will always be able to have the right data on your device. I’m sure you will find many scenarios where this capability provides real business value for the mobile professional.

Mobile First: Require Everywhere-Mobile

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:08:09 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

Require Everywhere-Mobile

To take advantage of Mobile everywhere, the enterprise CRM applications you deploy must function everywhere.

Myths

• A web app experience is sufficient to meet the needs of mobile users
• Mobile Internet access is so pervasive that offline support is unnecessary
• 4G/LTE wireless is so fast that it makes offline support irrelevant
• Offline is a “nice-to-have”

Real World Ubiquity Requires Offline Operation

Imagine that the mobile business application that you envision creating to implement a key business process is the equivalent of a cash register terminal in your retail store. Whenever the cash register terminal is down cashiers have to save transaction records locally (for example, saving receipts or the cash register tape), then synchronize later to ensure transactions end up being recorded accurately. While most businesspeople would agree that this is an undesirable scenario in an isolated case, imagine this happening across every cash register in a regional chain of stores.

Here’s the key question: how often could your business afford to have this happen? The answer will help you decide how important offline operation is to the CRM application that will drive your business process.

As organizations around the globe have learned through hard-won experience deploying mobility, mobile solutions need to enable employees to remain productive everywhere. This means that connectivity-independent operation (offline as well as online) is a requirement of a mature mobile solution. This may continue to be the case for quite some time. Skepticism is warranted regarding vendor claims that Web technologies (such as HTML5 alone), which usually lack offline support and require a live internet connection, will meet your organization’s needs, that “Offline is more of a nice-to-have”, or that high-speed cellular technology such as 4G/LTE will soon make offline operation irrelevant. In the real world, mobile solutions must support ubiquity, and this means that offline operation is an essential requirement.

Relevant info must be accessible everywhere, all the time

Even in the world’s most developed cellular markets, employees on the move face many scenarios every day in which they lose cellular connectivity. Whether visiting a customer in a location where electrical interference must be minimized (e.g. medical facility or factory), a shielded office building, a rural location or just making updates in the car in an underground parking garage at a customer site following a customer visit, your employees need a solution that supports offline operation.

Even if offline scenarios represent minority usage cases for your employees, making offline operation a checklist requirement in a mobile application architecture evaluation to put your business in the best possible position makes sense. Your strategy should ensure that “offline” doesn’t mean “downtime.”

Key Questions to Consider

• How important is offline operation for your intended usage scenarios?
• If your users were offline 10% of the time, what would be the level of business impact? What if they were offline 30% of the time?
• Should offline operation become an essential requirement of your mobile application framework for CRM applications?

In our next blog post we'll dig deeper into the Deliver the Right Mobile Experiences pillar as it relates to a Mobile First CRM Strategy. To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

Mobile First: Enable Mobile Agility

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:03:11 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

Enable Mobile Agility

The capabilities of mobile devices and platforms and their market dynamics continue to evolve rapidly; plan for this as you consider deploying enterprise CRM applications.

Myths

• IT Consumerization is either a fad that will pass or a trend to be avoided
• Standardizing on a single mobile platform is the easy solution, because it means an IT organization doesn’t need to plan for potential moves to other mobile platforms
• Web apps provide a sufficient solution to insulate organizations from the complexity and rapid evolution of mobile platforms and devices

Embrace IT Consumerization

“IT Consumerization” refers to the recent trend in which new information technologies tend to emerge first in the consumer market, then eventually migrate into the business market as employees look to use the consumer technologies they’ve adopted for professional purposes. Often associated with Mobile, Social and Cloud technologies, IT Consumerization has emerged as a major shift within the IT industry.

Given the rapidly accelerating pace of technological evolution businesses can benefit tremendously by embracing IT Consumerization, determining how and where it can help them rapidly deploy new mobile-enabled business-processes that deliver new products and services or capture new efficiencies, while doing so in more cost effective ways.

Along with the significant benefits it offers, IT Consumerization also presents new challenges for IT, such as efficient management of large numbers of mobile devices, potentially comprising multiple mobile OS platforms, and ensuring that corporate data is secure. As your IT organization evaluates mobile solution platforms, be sure to make these criteria part of your requirements checklist.

Make Your App Architecture Cross-Platform, Yet Able to Deliver Native Experiences

Essential to successfully embracing IT Consumerization are the architectural decisions that an IT organization makes regarding its enterprise mobile infrastructure.

To implement a mature approach to mobile infrastructure, IT organizations should focus on establishing an architecture that enables Mobile Agility, the ability to insulate the organization’s business processes from changes in underlying mobile platforms -- while simultaneously enabling the business to capitalize on the rapid advances of mobile platforms.

This suggests the adoption of a mobile application architecture that is cross-platform, yet enables the delivery of the native mobile experiences that business users demand, experiences which meet their needs in terms of mobile platform familiarity and performance. Whether your mobile device strategy is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or Standardization on one or more specific mobile platforms, this mobile application architecture choice will put your organization in the best overall position going forward.

Key Questions to Consider

• Does your IT organization have a mobile application architecture?
• Does your mobile application architecture enable the simultaneous support of multiple mobile device platforms? Does it provide an efficient model for doing this?
• Does your mobile application architecture enable you to deliver rich user experiences that take advantage of a native mobile platform?

In our next blog post we'll dig deeper into the Require Everywhere-Mobile pillar as it relates to a Mobile First CRM Strategy. To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

Mobile First: Lead With Mobility

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:04:28 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

Lead With Mobility

Make Mobility a top business and IT priority, and move mobile usage scenarios and requirements to the front for enterprise CRM applications.

Myths

• Mobile is still mostly for specialized roles such as field sales and service
• Mobile is an add-on

Make Mobile Usage Requirements the Driver

Going forward, mobile usage requirements must drive the design of CRM-based enterprise applications. While desktop and Web continue to provide important anchor user experiences, it will be mobile-deployed customer-centric business processes that separate and create competitive advantage among businesses. This trend is being driven by the pervasive possession of smartphones by employees, and further amplified by the aggressive adoption and deployment of tablet devices throughout enterprise organizations.

While the need for mobile usage began in customer-facing roles such as field sales and service, it has rapidly evolved beyond specialized scenarios; whether in a meeting, moving around a corporate campus, or on the go, businesses are now seeing the benefits of expanding mobile usage to enable general employees to access key business processes anywhere, any time.

The reality is that Mobile has become the new normal, and leading with mobility will enable you to capitalize on this trend rather than being forced to react to it.

Plan for Mobile Experiences to Drive User Adoption

As part of this trend, mobile experiences are moving to the front and will become the greatest driver of user adoption of customer-centric business processes. Leading with Mobility can help you ensure maximum user adoption of new applications rolled out by your IT organization, thereby ensuring support of key senior management stakeholders and setting the stage for achieving maximum business impact.

Key Questions to Consider

1. Where is your organization on the mobile adoption curve?
2. Where do you think your competitors are on the mobile adoption curve?
3. Is your organization moving fast enough to embrace mobility and move it to the front?
4. In your organization currently, can a new enterprise application be rolled out without delivering a mobile user experience in the first deployment? Should this be the case?

In our next blog post we'll dig deeper into the Enable Mobile Agility pillar as it relates to a Mobile First CRM Strategy. To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

Mobile First: An Essential Technical Strategy in the New Era

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:55:30 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

The convergence of a powerful set of new technologies–Mobile, Social, and the Cloud–is powering a rapid modernization of business processes and dramatically evolving the development and deployment of the applications that embody them. In a business climate in which Mobile has become the new normal, IT departments can play a critical role in ensuring that their business achieves strategic value from the use of these technologies.

Through the adoption of a Mobile First strategy for enterprise CRM applications, IT departments can help their business embrace and integrate mobility into existing or new customer-centric business processes in ways that help the company gain significant business advantage and ensure senior management support.

IT departments can adopt a Mobile First strategy for Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications comprised of four pillars:

#1 Lead with Mobility

Make mobile usage requirements the driver
Plan for mobile experiences to drive user adoption

#2 Enable Mobile Agility

Embrace IT Consumerization
Make your application architecture cross platform, yet able to deliver native experiences

#3 Require Everywhere-Mobile

Real-world ubiquity requires offline operation
Relevant information must be accessible everywhere all the time

#4 Deliver the right mobile experiences

Modern experiences
Streamlined experiences
Tailored experiences

In the next blog post we'll dig deeper into the Lead with Mobility pillar as it relates to a Mobile First CRM Strategy. To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

Mobile First: Mobile Businesses Win

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:55:00 GMT

The following blog post is an excerpt from the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper.

Today, organizations are moving rapidly to incorporate tablets and smartphones throughout key business processes. While this movement has its origins in the IT consumerization wave, mobilization of business processes is accelerating in response to demonstrable business benefits.

For example, sales force automation has been an early focus of many organizations deploying Mobile CRM. As reported on CRMsearch, in 2012, Nucleus Research reported that in a survey of CRM decision makers it found that providing sales people with mobile device access to CRM drives a 14.6 percent productivity increase. Significantly, 3 in 10 mobile CRM users said productivity improved by more than 20%.

Mobilized business processes hold the potential to enable companies to deliver new products and services, increase the efficiency and effectiveness of personnel and processes, and to do all of this while reducing costs. Broadly categorized, the areas where businesses can achieve significant gains include empowering their organizations with greater insight, achieving superior business agility, and more ably winning, servicing and securing relationships with customers. Put simply, mobile businesses win.

Insight

Relevant & Timely Information
Mobility empowers the workforce by delivering relevant and timely information to the point of interaction with customers and partners. In addition, field teams can more easily and readily provide important intelligence back into the organization, making it available at the point of decision.

Data-driven Decision Making
Whether on the part of a customer, partner, or Management, a mobile-enabled organization more readily enables decisions to be made based on data. This enables the organization to make better decisions.

Common Understanding of Success
Mobile-enabled business processes such as CRM-driven sales force automation and field service processes enable organizations to gain a shared view of status and coordinate the actions of diverse teams across the organization through an integration of CRM, collaboration and mobility technologies.

Agility

Mobilize to Take Advantage of New Opportunities
Mobile-enabled business processes allow an organization’s workforce to move rapidly to capitalize on new opportunities. Rapid mobilization drives rapid learning, which in turn drives better results.

Outmaneuver Your Competition
Mobile-equipped businesses can mobilize faster and better than competitors to capitalize on opportunities.

Adapt with Changing Market and Customer Needs
Mobile-equipped businesses are better able to track and adapt to market and customer needs as they evolve over time, ensuring they maintain leadership in their target markets.

Customer Relationships

Most importantly, mobilized business processes enable organizations to better build and maintain superior relationships with customers and partners, staying connected with their changing and demanding needs. Use of mobility leads to a much greater degree of customer intimacy, as interactions with customers are fueled with deeper and more targeted information, offers and actions at the places and times they are needed.

Know Your Customer the Best
Mobilized business processes enable organizations to more easily capture, record and track customer preferences, needs and directions.

Anticipate Evolving Customer Needs
Mobilized business processes enable easier synthesis of evolving needs, whether of an individual account or an entire industry sector.

Drive Credibility and Satisfaction
Ultimately, mobilized business processes can provide the means to ensure that field personnel are better equipped to serve customers and partners. This in turn can help an organization better achieve credibility with customers and partners and, ultimately, drive high customer satisfaction, securing these relationships. Secure customer relationships and the high customer satisfaction that drives them can lead to outstanding business performance. As a March 2007 Harvard Business Review article reported, a ground-breaking 2006 study illustrated the relationship between customer satisfaction and financial success: companies with high customer-satisfaction scores dramatically outperformed the S&P 500.

To download the Mobile First CRM Strategy Whitepaper, visit www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/mobile-first

Key Issues to Consider when Evaluating Mobile CRM Solutions - Part 3

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:23:44 GMT

This is the final post in a three part series that highlghts the key issues a business should consider when evaluating mobile CRM solutions. Potential solutions should be evaluated in terms of how well they will complement your CRM environment, from the perspectives of your end users as well as your IT organization. This content is taken from Mobilizing Your CRM, a whitepaper which can be downloaded here.

HOW CONNECTED WILL IT BE?

Does It Support Online and Offline Operation?

The ideal solution should make information accessible and editable whether users are online or offline because, by definition, mobile professionals are on the go, whether in the field or on an airplane. Despite today’s advanced cellular infrastructure, mobile professionals regularly find that they roam outside of the coverage area, are in buildings which block coverage (hospitals, parking garages, etc.), or are traveling on airplanes with no coverage. Mobile professionals find that they require data stored locally on their mobile device which provides fast and continuous access to all of their CRM data.

Will It Support All of Our Users’ Mobile Platforms?

The ideal solution should support any mobile device hardware, whether in use in the field or within the IT department.

Can the Solution be Deployed On-Premise or Hosted?

The ideal solution should offer you flexibility in your deployment strategy, enabling you to meet your organization’s objectives in key areas such as deployment timeframe, manageability, security and cost-efficacy. So, regardless of whether you deploy your CRM system on-premise or have it hosted in the cloud, you will have a mobile platform that supports all deployment models (and can easily switch if your IT strategies or plans change).

How to attach pictures to a record in CWR Mobile CRM

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:20:23 GMT

by Mike Platvoet, Technical Specialist at CWR Mobility

We are often asked how to attach pictures to a record. Currently, CWR Mobile CRM supports attaching any file to a record on Windows Mobile 6.x devices. In this post I outline a potential solution for other devices.

Here is what I did:
After taking a picture with my iPad I linked the URL from that picture to any record on the iPad so it could be viewed by other users of CWR Mobile CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Here is how I did it:
While the example I show uses the iPad, it should work in a similar way on Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry as well.

First, install the Dropbox app on the iPad (which you can find on the App Store) and create an account. Dropbox is an online storage folder which is handy when you want to share large files with other people or want to access your files from any location. All you need is an internet connection. Others can also access your files using URLs that are linked to them, and here lies the key for my solution.

In this example I want to show pictures of my contacts within CWR Mobile CRM (CWR) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (CRM). In CRM, I edit my Contact entity by adding a new field called Picture as a Single Line of Text field and setting the Format to URL:

You have the option to add the field to the CRM Contact form if you want to show the picture there as well, or you can even create an iFrame that loads the picture immediately on the form using Javascript.

Next, make the new field available in CWR Mobile CRM. To do that, go to the CWR Configurator in CRM and select the Contact entity. Click Refresh Metadata to update the entity definition. This will allow you to use the new Picture field on the mobile device as well.

Then edit your Contact form by adding the new Picture field. From the CWR Configurator main menu, click Forms to locate the Contact form. In edit mode, click Add Fields to find the new Picture field. Select Picture and click OK:

Save and Close the form and publish the changed form from the Forms list. Now when you sync your device, you’ll have the custom field available on your iPad:

How does it work?
First, I take a picture of my contact with my iPad using the Camera app. This can be done rather quickly using the multi-task bar by double pressing the main button or swiping up with four or five fingers when you have the app already launched.

Next I open the Dropbox app and tap Uploads on the bottom bar. I press the + to add a new item. After selecting Camera Roll I tap the picture of my contact so it is selected:

Press the Upload button to add it to your Dropbox folder. Back in the Uploads main form you will see the picture. Tap the link icon on the top right corner and select Copy Link to Clipboard:

Switch back to CWR and double tap the Picture field (still in Edit mode) so that the Paste pop-up becomes visible. Tap Paste and the URL from the Dropbox picture will be pasted into the field:

Press Done to save the record. Now when you press the blue link in the Picture field on the Contact form you should see this result:

When you synchronize your data the picture will show in CRM as well, either in a browser or in the iFrame.

Advantages:

No storage or long syncs on your device, you load the picture on demand. And Dropbox allows you to download it to your device when needed.

Disadvantage:

Works online only to load and retrieve the picture.

This actually opens a world of options for file sharing as there are Dropbox apps available for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 so this functionality can be used on all CWR Mobile CRM supported devices.

AirPlay: A Great New Solution for Demoing CWR Mobile CRM on iPad or iPhone

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:18:54 GMT

The Apple® iPad® and iPhone® are unquestionably the most popular clients for CWR Mobile CRM. With more and more employees bringing their own mobile devices to work and using those devices for business, this popularity continues to climb. So it makes sense that when we show CWR Mobile CRM in a sales or training demonstration, we'd like to show it on one of these devices. The problems is that Apple iOS has never been easy to project onto a screen or onto your PC screen to share in a local or web presentation.

Not anymore!

Enter Apple AirPlay®. Apple's technology for streaming audio and video from the iOS to other devices. Now, demoing CWR Mobile CRM on an iPad or iPhone is simple.

All you need is the application that "captures" and displays the stream from the iOS device. One such application is Reflection. You can find the application at http://www.reflectionapp.com along with instructions for enabling AirPlay on the device itself.

Happy demoing!

Key Issues to Consider when Evaluating Mobile CRM Solutions - Part 2

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:16:05 GMT

This is the second in a three part series that highlghts the key issues a business should consider when evaluating mobile CRM solutions. Potential solutions should be evaluated in terms of how well they will complement your CRM environment, from the perspectives of your end users as well as your IT organization. This content is taken from Mobilizing Your CRM, a whitepaper which can be downloaded here.

HOW INTELLIGENT WILL IT BE?

Can a Single System Provide an End User Experience That Adapts to User Roles?

Your mobile professionals have different roles and functions. The ideal solution should provide the specific information they each need to effectively perform their role, without any additional effort on their part. In this way, account managers will have instant mobile access to all their clients and contacts, sales leads and opportunities, and orders and quotes. At the same time, a service engineer working for the same company and using the same application will have custom access to all relevant information regarding repair assignments, parts, service contracts, etc.

We Need a Flexible Solution That Can Adapt to Our Size, Our Market

When looking for assistance in professionalizing their mobile workforce, organizations want to enable their field employees to benefit from up-to-date business information and optimize their response to changing situations or emerging opportunities. The ideal solution will enable this regardless of company size (from a handful to thousands of employees) or vertical markets (from banks and insurance companies to field service and pharmaceuticals).

The Mobile CRM solution should enable vertical solutions to be designed in close cooperation with partners who provide the specific knowledge to develop industry-based solutions. In this way, the resulting solution can adapt to your company and its business processes, adopting any mobile business model.

Finally, the ideal solution should work with your existing CRM system, simplifying and adjusting the application to new and changing situations and eliminating the need to hire programmers to make necessary modifications.

Is Mobilizing xRM a Need?

xRM, eXtended Relationship Management, is a strategy that goes beyond traditional customer-centric CRM by focusing on managing all relationships, not just those with customers. The “x” underpins a variety of tightly integrated applications which are used to manage internal and external transactional relationships. xRM provides a comprehensive, unified system for all aspects of business. The ideal solution should enable you to mobilize any xRM application, whether it is for HR recruiting and staffing procurement/vendor management or any other internal Line of Business application.

Fast ROI is a Necessity

Return on Investment (ROI) is always an important focus for new investments, but recent economic conditions have caused IT budgets to tighten even further. The ideal Mobile CRM solution needs to deliver a fast ROI.

Next, Part 3 - How Connected Will It Be?

CWR Mobility adds Wendell Simmons as Senior Product Manager

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:49:10 GMT

CWR Mobility welcomes Wendell Simmons to the team as our new Senior Product Manager. Driving product strategy will be his focus to ensure CWR Mobility continues to deliver best-in-class products that meet the needs of our customers and partners. Wendell will work closely with both internal and external stakeholders to manage product planning as well as deliver core marketing and sales collateral to support our partner channel.

Wendell has spent his career in enterprise software management and marketing at Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel Systems, and several start-ups. He comes to CWR Mobility from Upside Commerce, a Microsoft ISV supporting the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry integrating smartphones with Dynamics CRM vertical solutions. Wendell has extensive experience in product management and B2B marketing of Oracle ERP and Siebel System’s CRM suites. Earlier he co-founded and sold a successful SFA start-up focused on field merchandising and foodservice mobile sales products.

Key Issues to Consider when Evaluating Mobile CRM Solutions - Part 1

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:40:13 GMT

This is the first in a three part series that highlghts the key issues a business should consider when evaluating mobile CRM solutions. Potential solutions should be evaluated in terms of how well they will complement your CRM environment, from the perspectives of your end users as well as your IT organization. This content is taken from Mobilizing Your CRM, a whitepaper which can be downloaded here.

HOW FAMILIAR WILL IT BE?

Users Need to Recognize Their CRM System on Their Mobile Device

Mobile professionals are focused on business missions; technology and tools help them achieve those missions. The ideal solution should deliver a user experience that is immediately familiar to end users.

We Need to Leverage Our IT Investments

IT managers and system administrators are challenged to find a balance between empowering users with the best IT solutions and keeping their IT infrastructure secure and manageable. They must look for solutions that are integrated seamlessly into their current IT infrastructure, and that are scalable, secure and easy to implement and maintain. The ideal solution should leverage the investments in infrastructure and security your organization has already made.

Can a Single System Support a Choice of Devices?

The reality in many of today’s organizations is that mobile professionals use a diverse range of mobile devices, which represents a considerable challenge for IT departments. The ideal solution should enable your employees to use any mobile Internet-capable device they want, including devices they already own like an iPhone®, iPad®, BlackBerry® smartphone, Android™, or Windows® Phone. This ensures cost efficiency and a seamless transition to your Mobile CRM solution, since employees are most motivated when using a familiar device. Finally, rather than providing a generic layout for all devices, the ideal solution should adapt to the look and feel of the device at hand, as users expect.

Next, Part 2 - How Intelligent Will It Be?

Securing Critical Corporate Data in a Mobile World

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:37:22 GMT

	With mobility being the new normal, read our whitepaper, Securing Critical Corporate Data in a Mobile World, to better understand the importance of mobile security and how CWR Mobility ensures that your corporate data is protected. Download the whitepaper
Tweet

It's time to turbo charge your synchronization

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:56:14 GMT

The Synchronization Best Practices - Configuring CWR Mobile CRM for Success whitepaper explains the process in easy to understand terms and provides system implementers and administrators with ten best practice suggestions to uncover and eliminate performance roadblocks and provide mobile users a great synchronization experience. You can download the whitepaper from our Resources page on our website - http://www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm-downloads.

Ben Mitchell recruited to support Canadian and Latin American Partners

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:27:05 GMT

CWR Mobility recruits Ben Mitchell as the new Sales and Channel Manager for Canada and Latin America. Ben will work closely with our Canadian and Latin American partners to identify and support sales opportunities, drive certification training and share sales resources and best practices. Partners in Canada and Latin America are encouraged to reach out to Ben to help build their presence in their respective markets. He can be reached at bmitchell(at)cwrmobility(dot)com.

Ben began his IT career in the late 1990s as a Programmer Analyst at the Halifax Bank in the UK. He fled to Canada to avoid having to do any more COBOL programming and quickly found that he preferred sales to programming. After several sales and presales roles with Canadian software companies, Ben joined TenDigits Software, which is where he developed his mobile CRM skills and knowledge and a great reputation in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM channel.

Alfons de Jong joins CWR Mobility to help grow EMEA partners

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:56:48 GMT

We're excited to have Alfons de Jong on board as our new Sales and Channel Manager for EMEA. Alfons will work closely with EMEA partners to help identify and support sales opportunities, drive product training opportunities, and share sales resources and best practices. Current and prospective EMEA partners are encouraged to reach out to Alfons to help build their presence in their respective markets. He can be reached at adejong(at)cwrmobility(dot)com.

Alfons spent his career in Telecom and IT in direct and indirect sales roles. He comes to CWR Mobility from VeliQ where he was Senior Sales Consultant for the managed mobility cloud solution and was responsible for relationships with the larger partners. He has extensive international experience in the world of mobility, from telecommunications infrastructure to mobile internet and managed mobility solutions.