31 Oct 2014

The use of Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Sales and Marketing module plays an integral part of any business. Being the key drivers behind a company’s revenue stream. As such, they are a critical component of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) cycle.

Being a full featured ERP, Dynamics AX 2012 R3 comes with a comprehensive Sales and Marketing module that provides an extensive feature set for both the sales and marketing functions, helping you automate these two functions so that they are more manageable and productive.

In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the key features provided by the Sales And Marketing module in Dynamics AX 2012 R3, and how it can help streamline your business.

Benefits of Dynamics AX 2012 R3 for Sales And Marketing Module

The Sales and Marketing module Dynamics AX 2012 R3 provides extensive functionality for acquiring, storing and using a range of data in the sales flow, from the initial sales lead to future follow up and up-selling. The Sales and Marketing module in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 comprises of four key areas in terms of functionality, and the ability to obtain selected customer data through the Enterprise Portal. These four areas are as follows:

Sales Force Automation

The Sales Force Automation feature covers external business contacts ‘Prospects’ and their employees or ‘Contacts’ and automates activities that are typically performed by your sales team in their pursuit of these Prospects, such as the creation of Sales Quotations.

Sales Management

The Sales Management feature on the other hand, centers on the sales performance of individual sales personnel, sales units and the company overall and helps you keep track of active Prospects, Opportunities, Sales Activities, and Quotations across the company.

Marketing Automation (MA)

The Marketing Automation feature in the Sales and Marketing module in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 revolves around the creation and execution of activities related to marketing outreach, such as e-marketing (email blasts) and direct mailings to selected Prospects, and the collection and tracking of information from these marketing campaigns.

Telemarketing (TM)

The Telemarketing feature on the other hand, helps group all sales Prospects in one place, enabling you to contact them via phone for marketing outreach or for surveys, etc.

 

Apart from these 4 key functions, the Sales and Marketing module in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 also provides a number of features that greatly help in managing sales and marketing activities such as:

• Document Management – which enables sales personnel to store electronic correspondence such as letters, pamphlets, email messages and quotations related to sales opportunities and their meetings with prospects.
• Data Management – which enables you to store all Sales and Marketing transactions and data in a central database, for easier access and management.
• Project Management – which enables you to attach campaigns to existing projects or create a new project to track costs and employee time consumption, thus giving an accurate overview of the cost of any project. It also enables you to link quotations to a project, thus facilitating the transfer of quotation lines to the forecast. Additionally, it also allows users to create a project to track the costs of telemarketing initiatives; for example, where temporary employees have been used.
• Knowledge Management – the Knowledge Management feature enables you to collect articles, Internet links, audio/video clips, presentations, graphics, file paths, and files from stored locations in a secure, central repository, facilitating ease of navigation and access, and categorization based on the needs of the user. You can preview each file directly from this interface or open them in a separate application.
• Customer Self-Service – the Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal can even be set up for customer self-service. For example, you can enable the respondents of a marketing campaign to answer a questionnaire online. This greatly increases the quantity and quality of the quality of service and/or product research that you aim to glean from your customers.

About Folio3 Dynamics Services

FDS (Folio3 Dynamics Services) is a dedicated division of Folio3 that specializes in Microsoft Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics NAV and Dynamics GP based development, customization and integration services. Our main focus is on Enterprise Mobility. We firmly believe that opening up Microsoft Dynamics AX and other products to iOS Android, Windows 8 and Windows Phone users will have a huge impact on organizational agility and productivity.