From the Blogs: Put CRM to Work...On Convergence; Migrating Data from Salesforce.com; Use AX to Check on Performance

Use CRM to Prepare for Convergence. What better way to use Dynamics CRM than to network in preparation for Convergence, upcoming March 11-14 in Orlando. Tidbits on Microsoft CRM blog (from The Norwich Group) provides a step-by-step guide to using Campaigns—creating a marketing list of all contacts, seting up a quick campaign, creating an email, sending out an email campaign, and then sorting responses. A nice touch includes links to Microsoft videos and white papers on exploiting campaigns.

The Pros and Cons of Migrating Data from Salesforce.com. Here’s a first-hand account about migrating data from Salesforce.com to Dynamics CRM 4.0 using the Data Migration Manager, from the Navint Microsoft CRM Blog. Among the advantages, aside from the fact it’s free, is that it can process multiple files at one time, can automatically create custom entities and attributes, and it does more than the Data Import Wizard from within CRM. It has some disadvantages—prime among them that it takes a couple hours or more to learn to use correctly.

Using AX to check on performance across an organization. The Daxguy has a nice overview on how managers across functions can use the Business Performance Management features in a Business Application. Among the features covered in this overview are Ad hoc Reporting, Production Reporting, Multidimensional Reporting and Analysis, Business Scorecards, and Financial Reporting.

Upgrading to CRM 4.0: Correcting problems loading Outlook add-in. The Sonoma Partners blog provides