Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Review

Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps sales, marketing, and customer service professionals track which customers they've spoken with, when they spoke, and the topic under discussion. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (starting at $65 per month) is a powerful CRM service with offline access, excellent reports, and tight integration with Microsoft Office 365. Much like our Editors' Choice Salesforce.com Sales Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online targets large enterprises, and the price tag and software interface reflects this. However, I found Salesforce.com easier to customize and to use to create automated rules. If your organization is heavily invested in Microsoft technologies such as SharePoint and Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will give you a better experience, but otherwise Salesforce.com is a stronger choice.

Microsoft Dynamics Pricing
The pricing plans for Microsoft Dynamics CRM are complicated, with different plans targeting sales and marketing professionals. The Professional tier ($65 per user per month, and the tier I tested) is recommended for sales professionals and customer support teams. It includes social media analytics, sales and customer service automation, and reports. Social Engagement Professional ($75 per user per month) provides tools for social listening, a social center, social accounts, and trend alerts. Sales Productivity ($105 per user per month, with a special introductory price of $65 per user per month) combines Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Office 365, and Power BI (Microsoft's business intelligence service), to help teams collaborate and close deals quickly. Marketing ($125 per user per month) offers campaign management, brand management, lead management and scoring, social marketing and marketing analytics. Microsoft Social Engagement Enterprise ($125 per user per month) offers unlimited streams, sharing, and posts, as well as with the CRM software. The Enterprise 360 plan ($200 per user per month, with a special introductory price of $150 per user per month) is recommended for marketing and customer support professionals, and offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Unified Service Desk, account management, lead and opportunity management, social management tools, pipeline management and forecasting, and data analytics.

If you already have Office 365 Enterprise E3, you can add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional and Power BI to your subscription for just $45 per user per month.

To sign up for Microsoft Dynamics CRM online, you must pay for a minimum of five users. Smaller organizations that want fewer than five users, or that want to have the on-premise version to install on their own infrastructure, need to work with a Microsoft Partner to get up and running. For basic CRM, the minimum subscription is $325 for five users on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional. This is a much-lower starting cost than SugarCRM, which is priced similarly but requires a minimum of 10 users on an annual subscription, for a grand total of $4,800 to start. The license for the on-premise version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be as high as $2,000 per user as a one-time cost, which is more than SugarCRM.

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Trying out the software is harder than it needs to be. Microsoft provides a guided tour, which is customized by job function, so you can see how a sales representative, a sales rep in the field, a sales manager, a customer service agent, and a customer service manager would use the software. The only way to actually get to the 30-day trial of the software, however, is to click on a tiny link all the way at the bottom of the page describing the test drive, or by clicking on a button on the top of the test drive pages. I was surprised that when I was talking with the sales representative via live chat that he never mentioned the possibility of the free trial. He insisted the only way to see the software was to buy it.

Clicking on the link (or the button) walks you through the process of signing up for a trial of Office 365 and adding Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to your account. You select a language and currency for your CRM account, and you can view a video tutorial while your trial is being set up. As with SugarCRM, this is a demo sandbox, not a blank instance of the software. There is test data already populated in the system. Since you ostensibly went through the test drive, you are familiar with how the software looks for different job roles—now this is your chance to play with the software.

The layout for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is different from other popular CRM services. The top bar has three menu options: Main (as depicted by the three horizontal lines), Sales, and Dashboard. The left corner of the top bar has icons for Recently Viewed Items, New (to create any element), Find, Profile options, Settings (as depicted by the gear icon), and Help. There is also a universal search box, which lets you search across all record types.

Remember how the test drive let you switch personas? You can switch among Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Settings (for the site administrator), and Help using the Main menu. When you switch to the Service persona, you see the Sales menu at the top changing to Service. It's a little tricky to get used to, but it is a nifty feature of the trial.

The options for setting up workflow rules are under Settings. This is where you can define processes, such as what kind of activities should happen when a lead is assigned to a sales rep, or what will happen when an opportunity is first created. If the lead doesn't pan out, other tasks might be triggered. For example, you might be prompted to reach out to the lead at a later date. Having these automation tools means there are fewer things fall through the cracks.

The power of the software is buried under Sales (or whatever persona you wind up using). When you click on that menu, you see the options for Customers, Sales, Collateral, Marketing, Goals, and Tools. You can create multiple dashboards, customized to show specific charts, graphs, and widgets. They are all accessible under Dashboard from the top bar. Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and our other Editors' Choice Zoho CRM ($24 Per User Per Month, Billed Annually at Zoho CRM)  also let you create multiple dashboards, which is really helpful for making different types of information visible without overloading one page.

Users, Contacts, Lead Management
Despite the fact that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online targets the same customer base as Salesforce.com, the user interface is more comparable to that of SugarCRM. Microsoft does it better in pretty much every way. The Accounts page lists all the companies in the system. You can page through the entire list, or use the handy A-Z filters at the bottom to just show all the accounts starting with that letter.

To view a specific record, you have to click on the hyperlinked name. If you click anywhere else on the record, you just select it. You can select multiple records this way. If you click on a phone number on the Contacts page, if you have integrated Skype (Compare Prices at Software Advice)  with your account, you will be able to make calls directly from CRM Online.

Each page displays its own set of options. When looking at an individual contact record, you see options for creating a new record, deactivating the record, linking the current record to a different contact record, adding the contact to a marketing list, and assigning a user to the record. When you are looking at the top-level Contacts, Accounts or Leads fields, the options change to creating a new record, deleting an account, running a report, exporting the data to Excel, importing from a different data source, and viewing data in charts. If you select Records, the options change yet again to allow bulk deletes, searching for duplicates and edits. While these options are quite useful, it's jarring that they change. I would have preferred the options to be consistent across the pages, to make it easier to learn and navigate the software.

The Collateral section of the software stores sales literature, quotes, invoices, and order information. It's an extensive document library. Like most CRM tools, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online treats Opportunities separately from Leads. The Leads record shows a timeline at the top, letting you easily see where you are in the process: Qualify, Develop, Propose, and Close. The summary section has details about marketing lists the current user is assigned to and recent activities. You can assign the lead to an opportunity from this view as well.

The Opportunity record looks a lot like the Leads record, with the same timeline at the top and summary section at the bottom. There is a ton of information available and a lot of features, but it isn't quite laid out the way many other CRM services are, so it makes for a slightly difficult learning experience. If you are familiar with Salesforce.com, Zoho CRM, or Apptivo, there is a learning curve. If this is your first time with CRM, it may actually be a more-intuitive experience.

Reporting and Third-Party Integration
Say what you will about the interface, there is nothing to complain about in the reports available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The Report Wizard steps you through the process, asking you to select the records that interest you, define filters, and select the columns for the report. If you've ever created pivot tables and charts in Excel, this wizard will feel familiar. The wizard can also use existing reports as a template for creating new ones. SugarCRM just provides a report builder where you select modules and create search queries. Microsoft's wizard is much easier to use.

While plenty of CRM tools support Office 365 and Outlook, some of them, such as Zoho CRM, do a better job integrating with Google Apps. If you are a Microsoft shop, CRM Online makes it easy to integrate with other Microsoft products. There is a button to just enable server-based SharePoint Integration. You can configure Skype to handle all phone calls from CRM directly. Dynamics Marketplace is similar to the Salesforce.com's app store, offering third-party tools. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online doesn't have any built-in integrations with popular software such as Quickbooks  or Zendesk. To use these tools, you need to get third-party connecters such as DBsync from the marketplace, or install your software API key in Zapier, a widely used third-party connector.

When you first log in to your trial instance, you are prompted to view a video tutorial and other help materials. The help materials are extensive, and it's easy to find the information you need. The chat support is easy to access, and, for the most part, I found the agents knowledgeable and eager to help. I put in a help request saying I couldn't log in and received a phone call within the hour to help me get into the account.

A Good CRM Choice for Microsoft Shops
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides excellent reporting tools and offers a lot of powerful features under the hood. The interface is clean, and, despite the steep initial learning curve, easy to work with. If you are looking for customization capabilities, Editors' Choice Salesforce.com Sales Cloud is still the best option. For businesses looking for a less complex system, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will feel too overwhelming, especially when compared with our other top pick, Zoho CRM. And Microsoft's interface is not as straightforward as that of Insightly or Apptivo. However, if you are invested in other Microsoft technologies or looking for a self-hosted CRM service, Microsoft Dynamics CRM should be on your short list.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional

3.5

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MSRP $65.00

Pros

• Offline access.
• Tight integration with Microsoft products.
• Multiple dashboards.
• Built-in marketing and automation tools.

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Cons

• Expensive.
• Steep learning curve.
• Difficult-to-find trial.

The Bottom Line

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offers an attractive interface, excellent reporting tools, and lots of automation features. It is designed for larger organizations with complex customer relationship management requirements.