CRM 2011 Online Implementation Outline
For those of you that are experienced implementing traditional enterprise applications you are well familiar with the process that you must go through to get the hardware resources provisioned, prerequisite operating systems installed and upgraded to
the latest service packs. Microsoft partners and clients who have experience with earlier versions of CRM have looked for the release of the CRM Implementation Guide to assist them in configuring the underlying system(s) that must be in place prior to installing
CRM.
However, Microsoft's CRM Online 2011 system does this for you already and thus radically simplifies this process and in fact takes it pretty much out of the equation. (NOTE: You will still have to consider the client computer hardware, OS, and application
environment). But the official IG doesn't present the steps for implementing a CRM Online 'installation'. This article starts the process of outlining those steps from a real world perspective for CRM partners.
CRM 2011 Online Implementation Guide - Simplified Overview.
- Customer hires Partner to implement Vertical Industry solution or customize CRM to fit the way their business works.
- Partner enters basic information about the company.
- Enter Captcha
- Repeat step 3 several times until you get it right, enable audio version if necessary.
- Partner lip syncs to entertaining CRM informational video for 1-2 minutes while the CRM Organization is provisioned after watching it dozens-hundreds of time.
- Login in to the new CRM Online organization.
- Register yourself as the Partner of Record (POR).
- Obtain customer's credit card number, billing address, expiration data and security code and enter it into CRM
- Obtain Live ID for each of the users and send them invites.
- Customize CRM
- Import Data
- Train Users
- Go Live
- Customer cancels SFDC.com account
References
Open to partners only:
- Trial-on-Behalf Reference Available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Partners- Document outlining how partners can sign up for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online on behalf of their customers is available on MPN
Open to the public and partners:
The following documents and videos are informational resources to learning more about and how to get started with CRM 2011.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide - includes the IG, planning tools document and Claims Based Authentication instructions.
- CRM 2011 Online deployment page - Pricing, features
- Signing Up for CRM Online Assistance - phone chat and links to online communities
- CRM Implementation Partners & Solutions - use the Dynamics Marketplace to find a partner or a solution
- CRM 2011 Video - Sales Force Automation Demo