I am excited to announce the release of the Customer Portal and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Portal solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011!
They can be downloaded from the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace at:
- Customer Portal for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
- Partner Relationship Management Portal for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
These solutions are the graduated replacements of the portal Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM which were previously available on CodePlex. Both of these portals will run on Windows Azure or on your own web servers and they will work against Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 both Online and on-premises.
We engaged with Adxstudio Inc. on this project to update the portals to run on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. These solutions use the new solutions framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 so they are easier to deploy and manage. We also added some new features, leveraged new functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to improve some portal experiences and fixed several bugs.
So what can you do with these solutions?
eService
First and foremost, you can provide self-service capabilities to your customers and partners via these web portals. Both portals are fully integrated into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and allow web users to view and edit personal information, open service cases, search the KB for a solution, and schedule services in a timeframe that meets their needs.
Product Registration
You can expose product registration functionality to the portal so that your customers can register their specific product purchase information. This information is connected to their contact information in CRM and can be used for many sales, marketing and service scenarios.
Event Management
The event management module allows you to seamlessly plan, manage and optimize events with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Events can be published to the portal where customers can register their attendance for these events. You can then track all responses and leads from those events to maximize business opportunities.
Your customers or partners can view the events calendar, register for one or more events and add the registration information to their calendar.
Partner Relationship Management
The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) portal allows partners to easily engage with your organization on co-selling opportunities.
You can better track, manage and leverage partners by distributing sales leads and centrally managing sales opportunities through the partner portal. Partners can register deals they are working on and download sales literature that you publish to the portal directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. You also have the ability to create an “opportunity pool” for sales opportunities with no attached partner. These opportunities are published to the Partner Portal and partners can then “bid” for the right to manage a specific opportunity. The PRM solution allows you to track revenue generated by partners directly in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 which allows for better measurement of partner performance.
Partners are able to easily collaborate and co-sell with you via the portal in a convenient and secure way.
Manage web content from the portal itself
You can customize the functionality, pages, links, formatting, images and all text that goes on the web portal via the portal itself without having any knowledge of web programming.
These portals are community supported so if you have any questions or comments then post them on the CRM Labs Solutions forum. There is a vibrant community of customers and partners who are already using these solutions and should be able to help.
Enjoy!
Palak Kadakia