Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4 For Dummies®

Chapter 22. Working with Cases

Before customer relationship management, or CRM, became a household term, organizations were focusing on something called sales force automation or SFA, which was essentially software that helped automate the sales process. Sales activities, opportunities, prospects, clients, and more were stored in the sales database. Salespeople would interact with the sales database either in the office or from a remote office. Remote office data was often synchronized back to the home office system. SFA was a great tool to help sales people win new business, but what about the rest of the organization?

Prior to the introduction of CRM software, customer service departments also recognized the need for effective case management software and often built or developed specific software for case or incident management. We think you're getting the picture: two products and two disparate databases. CRM solves the issue conceptually by treating the organization as a whole and recognizing that all customer-facing interactions should be stored in a single source or database.

A prime benefit of having sales and customer service share a single database is that customer interactions by both groups are captured in a central place. Sales people aren't blindsided by ongoing customer issues when calling on an existing customer. Customer service knows which customers or prospects to support, what the support requester's value is to the organization, and lots more. Management can report ...