CRM MVP Larry Lentz blogs about something he has been working on for a while now. Kudos Larry.
The Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, & Arkansas (TOLA) Regional Chapter of the CRM User Group (www.CRMUG.com) held its inaugural meeting on Thursday, April 8th, at the Microsoft Office in Irving, Texas. We had a great turn out for our first meeting with approximately 20 joining in. The attendees mainly represented user organizations rather than just a meeting of Microsoft partners selling CRM. Although partners are welcome (I’m one), being users allows the members to freely share their experiences and learn from each other.
Lunch was sponsored by Sean Myers, President and CEO of Endeavor Commerce, www.SmartCatalog.com, a local Dallas area partner. Sean presented a great overview of his product, SmartCatalog (www.SmartCatalog.net). His presentation was a deep dive into how SmartCatalog was created. It showed a good example of what can be done with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how versatile the CRM platform can be. I think this kind of presentation from other vendors (and lunch sponsors) will be of great benefit and interest to the group moving forward.
James Johnston with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UX team gave a presentation via LiveMeeting. I’m not at liberty to discuss it as it was under NDA. But he gave the attendees a glimpse into the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5. One of the advantages of belonging to a group like this is access to such information.
Yours truly wrapped up the meeting with a presentation on various resources that are available on line for users, developers, and implementers to seek and share information about CRM with their peers.
The prime-mover of the group is Syed Ali with PrintPlace.com in Arlington, Texas. He is the visionary who conceived of the group, coordinated with the national organization, and organized the meeting. Please contact Syed at Sali@printplace.com for information on future meetings and how you can be involved. We hope to have meetings in other locations such as Oklahoma City, Houston, Austin, and of course, San Antonio. Thanks also to our sponsors at Microsoft, Brett Bergman and Tom Pertzborn, who made the facilities at Microsoft available.
Involvement in user groups such as CRMUG and our TOLA Chapter are a great way to more about a product like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and take better advantage of its capabilities both as a solution set and a platform. I hope you will join us at a future meeting.
Cheers,