February 25, 2013 Ken Jacobsen

Publishing Firm Functions Better Together with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office 365

A premier mid-Western publisher of media and health books featuring a wide range of educational and medical subjects desired a cloud-based platform to help them keep up with their ever-growing needs related to sales, marketing and document management. Once the company saw a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online demo and discussed their project goals and objective with The TM Group, they decided that Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office 365 was the solution that provided a powerful and collaborative platform.

The company was using a full-service mailing system called Cision Campaign Management Software for their marketing, and utilizing Mail Chimp to create and deliver their email newsletters. The company realized that a comprehensive, single CRM database would enable their business to better manage their contacts, opportunities and marketing efforts. Utilizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, they could also track medical specializations such as pain management, obesity, diabetes and oncology for their accounts and contacts. Their marketing department could then use the medical specialization information maintained by the sales department to better target and market the published books through various print publications or electronically through blogs.

One of the biggest benefits this publisher derived from implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is that it brought together their diverse groups of users. Before implementing a common solution, they had three types of users that functioned mostly independently. With all of them standardized on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, the three units are working together better now. Common information such as the categorization of their accounts and contacts by medical specialization can now be managed by the sales department (since it has both the closest relationship with the contacts and the best understanding of this information, which can then be leveraged by their operations and marketing teams).

The sales department also uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Opportunities to track the potential book projects submitted by authors and then look for funding resources to fund the publication of these book opportunities. Once they’ve lined up the needed funding resources for the proposed publications, the operations department uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage the process of getting the books published. The next planned phase will be implementing an email marketing solution that is integrated with MS Dynamics CRM.

This publishing team has fully adopted this solution, taking total ownership of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Originally published on www.crmsoftwareblog.com.

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