Understanding Dynamics 365 CRM Playbooks

Microsoft recently released Playbooks for Dynamics 365 for Sales and Customer Engagement. What are these, how might you use them, and what should you be careful about when working with them? Let’s take a quick look at all of those items. Spoiler Alert: I’m not a big fan. When you read over the official documentation (click here) and play around a bit, the functionality is intriguing, but… Continue Reading Geoff...

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Failure to Adopt CRM: 7 Myths and 10 Realities

The struggle is real: over 60% of CRM projects fail to gain user adoption. Visit any conference or user group that focuses on customer relationship management, and you’ll inevitably find well attended sessions that focus on user adoption. If you’re struggling with adoption, there are dozens of articles on our blog to help with this. But today, I want to focus on some of the reasons that… Continue Reading Geoff Ables’s...

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12 Reasons Why: CRM Activity Management Adoption

It’s a question we hear all the time: “why do I need to track my activities in our CRM solution?” And it is often accompanied by other questions like, “why do we need to have a goal about the number of activities we’re tracking?” and, “for that matter, why do I have to use CRM at all?” It’s a fair question. You’re a professional. You’ve been doing this job for years,...

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4 Things Successful Employees Do When Co-Workers Complain

Complaints: Sometimes they’re valid. Sometimes they’re drama. And sometimes they’re toxic. If you leave it to leadership to deal with complaints, you’re missing the big picture. Most employees complain to co-workers and never raise their concerns to leaders. Those complaints can fester and create a toxic workplace before you know it. How you handle complaints as an employee plays a role in… Continue...

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Attend CRM Workshops – Get Lead Conversion and CRM Consulting for Free!

C5 Insight will be presenting 4 strategic CRM sessions at CRMUG Summit’s pre-conference academy.  Topics will including planning, roadmaps, process design, journey mapping and user adoption.  These sessions are designed for sales/marketing/service leaders, project managers, and administrators.   And here are two special offers to: (1) get the C5 Insight Lead Conversion Solution add-on for… Continue...

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Omni-Channel = Big Data

Omni-Channels Customer Experiences Create Big Data Most businesses have begun to recognize the importance of engaging across multiple channels.  And most are beginning to realize the next challenge that this will present: even more data.  This is both an opportunity and a threat.  In Accenture’s study, “Big Success with Big Data,” 89% of business leaders affirmed that they believe big data…...

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9 Digital Transformation Success Partnership Tips

Transforming into a digital workplace is no small task.  A partnership to support your transformation requires far more than technical acumen.  There are many components in a digital workplace support partnership, but here are 9 of the most important (and often missing) that I’ve found. 1. Business Analysis Expertise Business analysts are the “bridge” between understanding what the… Continue Reading...

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Digital Disruption: A Tale of Two Cities

According to CNET, less than 1% of company executives were concerned about digital disruption in 2015. By the end of 2017, that number had jumped to 75%! From retail, to banking, to manufacturing, to cab driving – one business model after another is being disrupted in the digital age. How disruptive will this change really be? To understand our digital future, let’s take a look at another… Continue Reading Geoff...

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Privacy vs Personalization: Finding the Balance

  Every organization exists to serve people – customers and employees. Big data is a tool that makes it possible to serve more people than ever before. But like any tool, big data can be used for good, or it can be abused. New privacy laws and regulations are regularly being passed to protect us from potential abuses. How can organizations, and society, balance the benefits of big data with… Continue Reading Geoff...

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Make No Mistake: PEOPLE Drive Business PROCESS

It’s an age-old conundrum. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s not a simple question, because you can’t have a chicken without an egg, nor can you have an egg without a chicken. Similarly, companies often struggle with the question of whether PEOPLE can or should drive PROCESS as opposed to the PROCESS driving PEOPLE. It reminds me, too, of the trickle-down vs. trickle up concept… Continue Reading...

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