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Metadata Technologies inaugurated its fourth office at Silicon Oasis, Dubai
At Metadata, our vision is very much intertwined with our Customer Relationship Management software offering because we believe in delivering the best for our customers and building long-lasting customer relationships.
Our new office in Silicon Oasis was inaugurated on 21st June 2023. Mr. Premchand Kurup, CEO – of Paramount Computers felicitated Mr. Rasheed Mohammed, Managing Director of Metadata. We were also joined by Mr. Sajid Madathil who was kind enough to say a few words about his pleasant memories with Metadata.
Mr. Rasheed Muhammed on Metadata expanding Operations:
“We appreciate everyone’s time and support here at the opening of our new facility in Dubai. For the past twenty years, we have been perfecting a Microsoft Dynamics Solution for Real Estate in the region. We have an amazing team of professionals who are experts in Microsoft Technology and the Property business. So, I thank you all once again for your presence.”, said Managing Director, Mr. Muhammed.
The inauguration was attended by the Dubai Team along with some key stakeholders from the Center of Excellence in India. The event was covered live through a Microsoft Teams call with the rest of the team members joining in via video call from the Development Center.
What our guests had to say:
“Metadata is a pioneer in CRM in the middle east. And I am really amazed by how they have grown over all these years and serving many of the Middle East Real Estate Companies. I wish them all the best in their new office in the Silicon Oasis.”
“I want to take this opportunity to wish Rasheed and the Metadata team – the very best. Congratulations! I think this is a very good move, to have a new office in Silicon Oasis. And I am sure that from here, they will grow in leaps and bounds. CRM and Dynamics 365 are great places to be in, and I wish them the very best.”
A testament to our commitment to staying ahead of the curve in our domain.
With a specialized focus on CRM solutions and domain expertise in real estate with Property-xRM, we look forward to tapping the growing potential in the market.
Sales and marketing teams use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to automate and manage the client lifecycle. CRM software consolidates client information into a single database, allowing users to better organize and manage relationships. A CRM helps automate common operations, while measuring performance and productivity. But, what are the essentials to improve CRM success?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a collection of approaches, methodologies, and technologies used by organizations to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout their relationship. The goal is to strengthen customer service relationships, increase sales, and encourage client retention.
Customers give data to CRM systems through a range of channels, including the company’s website, phone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials, and social media. CRM systems may also provide a wealth of information on a customer with a 360-degree view of data. A CRM implementation helps companies financially as well as in terms of overall performance over a period of time.
Challenges with CRM and how Strategy Consulting can help to improve CRM Success
1. Convincing Your People to Change
While adapting to new technology can be frightening, your people will be the most difficult of all the CRM issues you’ll confront. The shift will be relatively simple for a start-up with a young workforce. However, when it comes to persuading older employees to learn how to utilize a CRM solution and modify their habits, it’s a whole new ballgame. Building trust in your new CRM infrastructure can be a challenge. An unreliable infrastructure could negatively impact the business operations and customer experience.
Start Internally.
The Solution
People frequently have difficulty migrating to cloud-based tech solutions because their firm might have a clearly defined strategy for the changes ahead. Managers must foster a culture of learning and digital innovation for this change to succeed. This is a change that must begin internally. With clear communication and value building through strategy consulting, even the most apprehensive team members will realize how CRM adoption can help the organization succeed in the digital era. This must be promoted from the top down. CRM consultingguides and assists in handling the situation by focusing on key areas of distress among users and providing the right course of action.
2. Defining a Clear Scope
Lack of clarity in scope can lead to budget overruns. Many companies might fail to anticipate the amount and nature of data that needs to be migrated to the new CRM because of this. The capabilities and functionalities of a solution you choose may be much more/ much less than what your requirements are. The results? Lack of user adoption, failed implementation, and a constant back-of-the-mind alarm that goes off at the thought of a new CRM.
Define requirements clearly.
The Solution
Getting a training or workshop session for your organization in this regard can help dissipate some of the confusion and ensure that everyone is on the same page. A one-on-one interaction with the users can yield surprising results. And once those are uncovered, it’s about documenting the requirements and devising a plan to map the same with the most essential features or tools the CRM can offer. Again, the result – improved morale, better user confidence, improved efficiency, and a higher chance of success.
3. Selecting the Right CRM and the Right Partner
An obstacle that countless companies have difficulty in overcoming. Many organizations have paid three times as much for a CRM Software, only to be dissatisfied with it. This often happens because organizations, at the back of their mind, believe that if a CRM worked for a similar organization, it ‘would work’ for them too. The result – they might choose the ‘BEST’ CRM in the market, but not the ‘RIGHT’ CRM for their daily organizational requirements.
Choose not the best, but the right one!
The Solution
Before deciding on which CRM software to choose, go through a thorough selection process. Define your process precisely, establish all CRM needs in advance, and evaluate who will utilize the system. CRM consulting helps in deciding and finalizing the best way to align organizational requirements with the right CRM. It also immensely helps to understand the implementing partner’s skills and expertise in the organization’s industry. If the partner has proven experience in successful implementations for organizations similar to yours, then the chances for improved CRM success is higher.
4. Getting the Management on board
One of the most difficult aspects of CRM deployment is obtaining management approval. Not just the approval, but also their active participation in the deployment phase. The sales and marketing department heads may believe that switching to a fully integrated CRM system will help the organization, but the C-suite may still need persuading.
The Management team’s involvement and guidance can build user confidence.
The Solution
To persuade top executives to give CRM adoption a chance, employees and team leads must express the right message. To put it another way, they must show how a CRM implementation will help the company strategically as well as in terms of overall performance. Once the convincing part is taken care of, the top management should also be involved in instilling the confidence among the end users to improve CRM success through active involvement. Once again, the value proposition and vision can be created with a comprehensive evaluation of the CRM implementation through end-to-end requirement mapping and most suitable suggestions.
5. The Investment – Time and Cost Factors
CRM implementation entails extra costs for training, maintenance, data migration, updates etc. It might also take away from the time required to run a business during the initial setup. Organizations with its existing systems might realize the need for a system upgrade, but the thought of all the investments and the hassles behind the process keep them from taking the step.
Undertake an ROI analysis for best results.
The Solution
The best way to tackle this dilemma is to undertake an unbiased evaluation of a CRM and weigh out the costs vs benefits through a comprehensive analysis. This is one of the key outputs of a CRM consulting engagement where subject matter experts interact with the users, identify business gaps and pain areas to lay down most suitable steps to ensure the best ROI. This presents an organization with a vision of what a CRM would bring and what are the benefits that can be derived.
Improve CRM Success with Metadata
So, if your organization is in a phase where it’s looking to implement a CRM, or thinking about replacing a CRM system, then CRM Consulting is the way forward. Sometimes, it’s also a case of getting a third-person view on the situation for an unbiased evaluation; an expert advice to get things under control, and have a clear plan moving forward. This is something that Metadata Technologies has successfully done in the past with Transformance Business Solutions Limited and FitBiz 360.
Metadata Technologies is much more than a CRM software vendor. Metadata’s years of experience in the domain has opened doors to a variety of different situations, be it reviving an organization’s previously failed implementation, or offering custom solutions for specific customer requirements. The team of certified and experienced experts interact with various user groups in your organization from start to end to improve CRM success.
Connect with Metadata Technologies quickly and easily. To know more, book a session with us.
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Why Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM for your Business?
Today, a quick web search on CRM will give you a plethora of alternatives, all claiming to be ‘The Best CRM’, or ‘The Most Suitable CRM’ for your business. While chances are that they might not be wrong, there are a few real questions that an organization needs to answer before choosing a CRM software:
“Does the CRM work for the size of my organization?”
“Are the functionalities customizable according to my requirements?”
“What are the added benefits that come along”?
Selecting the right software is a step most companies feel is extremely crucial considering the kind of investment that goes into its implementation. There’s a very natural and common ideology that kicks in – the most popular CRM or the one being used by industry leaders ‘must be the best’.
That’s far from being true. Organizations may have the best resources, but if they cannot handle them correctly, it’s useless. Just facts!
Let’s not dive too much into philosophy and get back to Microsoft and Dynamics 365 CE (CRM). First up, what’s the Microsoft Platform capable of? And, why Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM?
The Microsoft Platform
Microsoft, the world’s most valued organization, invests billions of dollars into R&D to make its offerings more relevant to the dynamic business world. Dynamics 365 is a portfolio of business applications that bring together customers, products, people, and data ranging from the front-end to the back-end operations, in a way that helps create impact faster. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE), previously known as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, is a customer relationship management solution that empowers sales, marketing, and service teams to drive an organization’s business.
With regular updates and improvements, the platform is constantly evolving through innovative ideas and functionalities. Irrespective of the size of an organization, Dynamics 365 CE allows them to manage business relationships, automate sales & marketing activities, and speed up customer service on one centralized platform. Here is a high-level overview of Dynamics 365 CE as a business solution:
4 Reasons why Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
Sr. No
Functionalities
Microsoft Dynamics 365
1
Level of Flexibility (Suitability)
Highly configurable based on the organization’s requirements. Flexible pricing, cost-effective, and suits all sizes of business.
2
Integration Capabilities
Seamless integration with Office365, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ERP systems, and the entire suite of Microsoft Products.
3
Marketing Automation
Microsoft Dynamics for Marketing and ClickDimensions for a 360-degree unified view of customer data.
4
Artificial Intelligence
Advance AI for customer and engagement insights along with Chatbots and Machine learning capabilities.
1. Level of Flexibility
The basic functionalities of CRM include Lead & Opportunity Management, Report Generation, Dashboards & Analytics, Sales Automation, Customer Insights, etc. It’s no different with Dynamics 365 CE. The distinguishing factor, however, is the level of customizations that can be done on the platform to base it around the requirements of an organization. The Power Platform, including Microsoft Power Apps for development, Power Automate for custom workflows, and Power BI for reporting and analytics, brings in a diverse set of tools that allow users to develop customized solutions through Microsoft’s ‘Low-Code, No-Code’ approach. This gives organizations more power to control all the operations while maintaining and upgrading apps without additional costs.
And while we talk about Flexibility, the Dynamics platform extends beyond features. Being a cloud offering, users make payments only for services that they need. There are multiple options and packages available both on a monthly and user-basis, making it a great fit for small, medium, and large enterprises.
2. Integration Capabilities
This aspect is probably the clear stand-out. As the Business Applications facet of the Microsoft household, Dynamics 365 CE leverages the entire ecosystem and integrates seamlessly not just with its own suite of products, but also third-party applications. This ranges from Office365 to SharePoint to the Power Platform to LinkedIn, and even to ERP software like Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, Dynamics 365 Business Central, and Dynamics AX. All these applications connect seamlessly with Dynamics 365 CE, with no connectors required.
For example, with Outlook integration, an incoming lead can automatically be recorded in Dynamics 365 CRM and followed up through automated triggers and AI-powered reminders within Dynamics. One of the most recent developments has been the improved integration with Teams making internal approvals, tasks, and customer communication an absolute breeze.
Similarly, with LinkedIn’s acquisition, Microsoft has also brought the largest social business networking platform under its ecosystem of applications. Through Sales Navigator integration, CRM users can boost collaborative efficiency, thanks to a seamless mechanism that captures customer information and automatically converts them into leads.
3. Marketing Automation
With Microsoft Dynamics for Marketing (MDM), users can create more personalized experiences with real-time customer journey orchestration. By capturing information through mobile devices & channels like email, phone calls, websites, etc., users can address all the major touchpoints and win more customers. MDM acts as a unified platform that aligns members in your team with a centralized 360-degree view of customers, all while being tightly integrated with Dynamics 365 CE.
Another tool that’s recommended for marketing is ClickDimensions. With marketing automation, social media marketing, intelligent dashboards, and customer data solutions, marketers can achieve more with their marketing efforts. Like MDM, the access to customer data and marketing activities are unified and stored in Dynamics 365 CE. ClickDimensions includes multichannel marketing applications that work natively as ‘one solution’ with Microsoft Dynamics.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Let’s also address the buzzword doing the rounds in recent times. Artificial Intelligence (AI). Along with Salesforce, Microsoft’s AI functionalities definitely are at the top of the list when looked at from the CRM industry perspective.
With analytics powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (CI), businesses can unify customer data, create a unified platform, and also make predictions about future customer requirements based on activity trends.
By capturing interests, clearly laying out customer timelines, and analyzing churn risk percentages, Dynamics AI offers a vast set of proactive tools to optimize customer journeys to win high-value customers.
As an example, AI ChatBots powered by Azure can help organizations automate the routine interactions and query handlings of customer service agents. The Bots can also be integrated with Omni Channel for Customer Service ensuring responses 24×7.
Dynamics 365 CRM’s capabilities extend beyond the above-mentioned points, but these are the top 4 points that give a sense of why a business must consider the Microsoft platform for Sales and Marketing automation. Choose the right CRM for your business, not necessarily the ‘Best CRM’ in the market.
Remember the questions at the beginning? Hope the article answers those through the four main pointers and why Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM!
To learn how Metadata Technologies can help you in exploring Microsoft Dynamics 365 to help your organization, click here.
As a Gold Microsoft Partner, Metadata Technologies is a 100% CRM-focused company with 20 years of experience providing Customer Relationship Management solutions for business enterprises across the globe. Metadata has been the recipient of the Best Industry Partner Award in 2014 by Microsoft and is committed to delivering quality solutions to ensure peak customer satisfaction.
