Microsoft CRM Customization - Workflow Automation

In order to run smoothly, organizations often standardize processes across the organization and encourage users to adopt them. Unfortunately, each business unit has a unique set of business processes. Often employees are unaware of these processes, depend on co-workers for information, or unaware that the completion of certain tasks are dependent on another employee's completion of the previous tasks. You can use Microsoft CRM to automate internal business processes by creating workflows to carry out routine tasks that involve daily business operations. These processes can be designed to ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time, and help participants keep track of the steps they have to take to complete their work. Your managers can define, automate, and enforce specific business rules, policies, and procedures. For example, Microsoft CRM can automatically escalate overdue service requests, alert salespeople about pipeline management issues, and alert the sales force about key events. Or, incoming leads can be automatically assigned to sales people based on the lead's state. Define workflow rules or create new rules for automated business processes, including leads routing and notifications, opportunity and pipeline management, sales processes, case management, and data transfer to other applications. Create Workflow Rule enlarge image Automate Sales Tasks enlarge image Microsoft CRM Workflow tools enable you to: Define business policies based on established processes. Ensure that customer commitments are met. Automatically escalate issues to management when required. Level workloads across teams and territories. Manage key business policies and procedures. Ensure a consistent service process. Using Workflow Processes A workflow process is a group of interrelated action steps and the rules that drive the transition between these steps. When a workflow process is created, the event that will trigger the workflow process is defined. Each step in the process is a set of actions that are created within Microsoft CRM, for example, the creation of an activity, assignment of a lead, or sending of an e-mail message. Business workflow processes apply across the organization and are created by someone with sufficient privileges, such as the system administrator or business owner. For example, your system administrator can create a workflow process to handle the assignment and follow-up for leads, accounts, or opportunities, and another process to initiate and finalize contracts.