CRM MVP Podcast

The Coronavirus Pandemic has affected millions of businesses around the world, one of those businesses is Dynamic Communities, Inc. The organization that runs the user groups globally and the organizer of many marquee events such as the User Group Summit that I've attended every year since 2012.

This year the organization has been under heavy criticism for actions like cancelling or drastically changing events at the last minute and refusing to provide full refund to attendees.

In addition to the horrible customer service some users experienced, the company laid off about 90% of their employees, and is currently trying to shift gears in an effort to stay alive.

Is COVID-19 to blame for what is happening at DCI?

Join me as I discuss with former VP, Program Team and GM of CRMUG Tony Stein and former Director of Global Dynamics 365 Community and GM of AXUG Heather Williams, who share their perspective and details behind some of the decisions that ultimately led DCI to this point.

Guests:

Tony Stein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-stein/

Heather Williams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-williams-68b69111/

The Product Catalog in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a polarizing piece of functionality. Some people love it and some people swear they'll never use it, some think it's too complicated and some think it's not complex enough, some companies rely on it where others avoid it at all costs, so I invited Microsoft MVP and Solution Architect Gustaf Westerlund to dive deep into the Product Catalog and share all of our lessons learned and best practices to those of you wondering how it all works and how it could benefit your business.

Special Guest:

Gustaf Westerlund: https://twitter.com/crmgustaf

How scary would it be to end up with a failed CRM Implementation that costs your company hundreds of millions of dollars?

This is exactly what happened on Halloween of 1999 to Hershey.

Let's talk about this failed implementation and what we can learn from it.

Dealing with data is one of the most challenging aspects of owning a CRM Solution. Whether you are using Dynamics 365 or Power Apps, I wanted to share a list of 10 things you can put in place to make sure your data quality is always high.

I also share a 10-question data readiness quiz to see how healthy your organization is in terms of data quality and data management...listen in and see how your organization scores!

There are countless online articles titled something like "Here are the secrets *insert profession or industry here* don't want you to know", and it gave me the idea for this episode.

Here are ten secrets you probably didn't know about us, the Microsoft MVPs.

In this episode, I cover 10 quick and easy improvements you can add to Dynamics 365. Some of these are simple settings that most people never enable, and some require special (but free) tools to enable them but all of them are super simple and can make a HUGE difference for your users' experience.

There are things we learn from others, and things we learn on our own by making mistakes or missing opportunities and learning from them.

Amey Holden is a Microsoft MVP and she is sharing the 10 things she wishes she knew early in her Business Application career. Hopefully you can learn something in this episode that you won't have to learn the hard way in the future.

Follow Amey: https://twitter.com/AmeyHolden

Links:

Pimp my LinkedIn Profile: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbrBBiv8mBqfklikU7wbYg

Ask the Experts LIVE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgbvXSAJLQ

Dynamics 365 Sales Insights enables organizations to bring together the art and science of selling. Engage buyers like never before with seller intuition and AI working in concert.

Lisa Crosbie is back hosting the show and she dives deep into Sales Insights, its features and capabilities, and her Top 10 features!

More info: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/sales-insights/

Implementing Dynamics 365 can be tricky, there can be so many moving parts, but some of the things that you do on every Dynamics 365 Implementation must be done at the right time to maximize value.

If you do something too early you may have to deal with it for the duration of the projects, constantly struggling to keep it up to date, but if you do something too late you might delay a project because you didn't start soon enough!

Here are my Top 10 things most people get WRONG in terms of timing when implementing Dynamics 365, and why it is so important to get it right.

July was full of surprises, starting with a positive COVID-19 test on July 3rd, my battle against a virus that took me to the hospital twice and almost killed me, plus I talk about Dataflex announced at Microsoft Inspire, and a new free tool available to the Dynamics 365 and Power Apps community, Power Text!

Link to Podcast episode I mentioned on the show:

http://divetalkmedia.com/episode-15-this-is-why-we-havent-posted-for-a-month