Customer relationship management is crucial, but organizations also need to manage many other relationships that are integral to success: employees, partners, suppliers, distributors, vendors, and many other critical stakeholders.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM can easily be customized for these "Extended CRM" scenarios and enhance the value of all relationships, improve business relevance, drive operational excellence and increase business insights.

This article aims to give you an overview of the new extended features of Microsoft's XRM.

XRM Framework

Microsoft XRM allows for rapid customizations, dynamic services, and prebuilt functionality:

  • Point-and-click customization of data management, workflow, user experience, access and security, analytics, and reporting;
  • Ability to deploy customizations either in your data center or in the cloud;
  • Application integration based on well-supported industry standards;
  • Extension of familiar and scalable technologies such as the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Visual Studio, the Microsoft .NET Framework and Windows Server.
Solution Management: Third-Party Plug-Ins and Applications
  • Ability to add and remove programs and features;
  • Support for secure code on the server;
  • Intellectual property protection;
  • Change management and versioning.

Workflow: Configurable Rules, Processes and Workflows

  • Point-and-click customization and configuration;
  • Personal, team, or organizational workflows;
  • Ability to build processes with conditional branching and nesting;
  • Automated actions with triggers based on events, time or business logic.

Systems Management: Superior Scalability and Performance

  • Multi-tenancy for multiple concurrent applications;
  • High availability, load balancing and clustering;
  • 100,000 concurrent users with virtualization;
  • Reduced power consumption, rack space and management overhead.

Partner Network: Marketplace Solutions

  • Ability to discover, download and deploy applications;
  • Both application and professional services listings;
  • New, optimized search logic;
  • Solution ratings and reviews;
  • Direct integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011;
  • View more information on Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace.

Microsoft Azure: Applications in the Cloud

  • Bring your mission-critical Microsoft Visual Studio applications to the cloud;
  • Integrate Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Azure through Azure App Fabric;
  • Simplify the way you connect with customers, partners and vendors in the cloud;
  • Leverage Windows Azure Data Services solutions to extend the reach of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

By Anjum Siddiqi