Hootsuite Rolls Out Integrations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Yammer, SharePoint to Fuel Social Media Strategies

Hootsuite, a platform for managing social media, has released new integrations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, and Yammer.

With Dynamics CRM Online for Hootsuite, users can create leads, opportunities, or cases based on social media conversations, as well as add notes and log all social activities to document their engagements with customers, according to officials of the companies. From the Hootsuite dashboard, users can identify and create leads, opportunities, or cases and input them directly into Dynamics CRM Online. By adding social data to the customer record within Dynamics CRM, companies get more detailed overviews of each of their customers, officials said.

Hootsuite's integration approach has some similarities to Microsoft's own approach to social CRM via Social Engagement (MSE), but there are also clear differences.

"HootSuite stepping up to offer Dynamics CRM support is an interesting development," says Jukka Niiranen, a Microsoft MVP and Dynamics CRM consultant for Digital Illustrated. "In a way I think it will validate the use case for MSE with CRM customers and also provide a welcome benchmark for Microsoft's product team to keep an eye on. Rather than directly competing with HootSuite in terms of social channel specific features, I would expect Microsoft to invest in delivering more context specific social insights and analytics to the sales & service users already managing ...